Utter the phrase ‘world record attempt’ in anything other than a sporting contest and the immediate connection is to Guinness World Records and the eponymous book that records them.

As head of marketing during one of the biggest tech mergers in the history of IT, Dell EMC’s Helen Dean has had a pretty big and intense year. And while it wasn’t exactly a walk in the park, she describes it as a surprisingly smooth transition thanks to a strategic approach to communication and culture.

Many modern businesses live and die by the stories they tell -- and the stories that are told about them. It's crucial to strike the appropriate tone in today's always-connected forum of oversaturated media and crowded mobile and social distribution channels, but it's no longer about one narrative from a single voice.

The Marketing Society defines marketing’s primary role as follows: “To create sustainable growth by understanding, anticipating and satisfying customer need”. Yet in our ongoing quest to deliver bottom-line results, many marketers tend to overlook the very fundamental aspect of sustainable growth.