View Upcoming Digital Marketing, Media and Advertising Conferences & Exhibitions
Phone:
From the DigiMarCon Stage: Kimberly Deese of Directive and the B2B PR Playbook
Watch: “The B2B PR Playbook: 5 Programs to Build Brand Influence in an AI Landscape” — Kimberly Deese, Head of PR and Communications at Directive, from DigiMarCon’s official session library.
Two stage slots at one DigiMarCon is not an accident. Kimberly Deese, Head of PR and Communications at Directive, taught “The B2B PR Playbook: 5 Programs to Build Brand Influence in an AI Landscape” and joined the “Digital Marketing Trends That Matter” expert session — because the agency she helps lead has made a name doing PR the way performance marketers do everything else: measured in pipeline, not placements.
The Playbook: PR That Reports in Revenue Language
Deese’s framework — the Influence Pyramid — runs Visibility → Credibility → Influence → Business Impact. Her argument, in Directive’s own telling, is that PR is “not underfunded, it’s unproven” until it reports in the language the business runs on: qualified pipeline and demand. In an AI landscape, that discipline matters twice over, because the brands LLMs cite are the brands with earned authority — exactly what a real PR program builds.
Watch: “Digital Marketing Trends That Matter: Expert Insights for Gaining a Competitive Edge” — Kimberly Deese, Directive.
Who Is Directive?
Directive (Directive Consulting), based in Irvine, California and led by founder-CEO Garrett Mehrguth, is a performance marketing agency built exclusively for B2B companies. By its own September 2026 account it has served more than 420 B2B brands and influenced more than $1 billion in revenue, reached $30M in annual revenue while remaining founder-led, and just expanded the Communications division Deese helps lead — bringing performance principles to B2B PR, social and influencer marketing.
Proof, in Their Clients’ Numbers
- Arctic Wolf (SaaS cybersecurity): pipeline +59%, closed/won revenue +109%, meeting volume up 57%, cost per meeting down 36% in the year after Directive took over.
- AxisCare (home-care software): scheduled demos +200% year-over-year, organic traffic +70%, and in the GEO phase, LLM share of referral traffic rose from under 4% to 15% with 24 net-new leads from LLMs.
Why This Matters for Every Marketer Here
Every B2B team is being asked the same question by its CFO: what did that coverage, that campaign, that brand work actually produce? Deese’s sessions are a field guide to answering it — build influence in programs, measure it in pipeline, and let AI search reward the authority you earned.
Explore Directive at directiveconsulting.com, and see who else taught and sponsored across DigiMarCon in our DigiMarCon World 2026 Sponsors & Featured Speakers hub.
Thank you to Kimberly Deese, Directive, and every speaker, sponsor and exhibitor who makes DigiMarCon, the world’s largest digital marketing conference series, possible. — Dennis Yu
No comments