Bulldog Solutions Joins Hero Digital in Disrupting B2B CX
The Players 
Hero Digital
Hero Digital is a leading independent customer experience company helping B2C and B2B companies reimagine how they create new business value. They help create omnichannel customer experiences by combining customer experience (CX) consulting, design, engineering, digital marketing, data, and analytics.
Hero Digital’s CX Maturity Model helps customers with the creation and execution of their CX strategy and roadmap, which assists with design to deliver great products and experiences. They take pride in their engineering excellence, which empowers them to create and build systems on their partner platforms. Their marketing experts work alongside statisticians, analysts, and engineers to leverage data and facilitate the crafting of digital marketing strategies. Hero Digital’s vast vertical expertise includes retail, health care, B2B tech, financial services, and hospitality. Some of their notable partners include Adobe, Sitecore, Salesforce, Episerver, Acquia and Marketo. Highlights of the work they’ve done include:
Technicolor
Hero Digital helped Technicolor develop a website that would capture their essence. The site delivers a robust CX through rich and compelling visuals showcasing the entertainment giant’s work using Drupal and Marketo technology.
Salesforce
Hero helped Salesforce migrate its website to Adobe Experience Manager while preparing for their Dreamforce event, described as being the largest software conference on earth.
Universal Health Services
By designing and developing new website tools, Hero Digital helped UHS improve the patient experience across 30 of their acute-care hospital websites—all based on Drupal technology.
Bulldog Solutions
Bulldog Solutions is an award-winning B2B marketing services agency known for ‘unconventional’ B2B marketing. Bulldog has helped its clients succeed by focusing on the creation of smart strategies and engaging creatives using top marketing technologies, expert media planning, and actionable analytics. They have a unique approach backed by a proven track record while their fun, creative style is a breath of fresh air in the somewhat prosaic space of B2B commerce. Bulldog Solutions’ work speaks for itself:
Sungard
Sungard partnered up with Bulldog to create a playful and charming campaign geared toward IT professionals about topics that don’t exactly create excitement—disaster recovery, cloud services, and business resiliency solutions. Despite the campaign running during a typically hectic and distracting time of the year—the winter holidays—the promotion did remarkably well. Enjoy the video here:
Symantec
Bulldog helped Symantec build out-of-the-ordinary email campaigns directed at IT professionals using playful, unexpected visuals and messaging that highlighted the human-centered goals of IT pros.
Frontier Communications
Using their creative magic, Bulldog was able to help Frontier Communications uniquely connect with their customers by creating a character that IT professionals can relate to— The IT Sage. It made one of the top-performing social media campaigns in Frontier’s history. “By answering questions about how they ran their IT networks, visitors were ranked on a scale of geekdom, like “Gigabyte Guardian,” “Pocket Protector Defender,” and “King Geek.” And their answers offered fantastic insights into Frontier’s audience.”
Check out this video featuring The IT Sage:
The Acquisition
In an effort to ramp up their B2B service offerings, Hero Digital announced their acquisition of Bulldog Solutions and will now serve as the “B2B powerhouse” from their location in Austin, Texas. By joining forces, the two companies believe they can offer unparalleled services to B2B CMOs by combining their experiences to meet the increasing demand for human-centered products and marketing in the industry.
Bulldog CEO, Randy Watson, is joining Hero Digital as the General Manager of the Austin office reporting to Hero Digital’s CEO David Kilimnik, while Bulldog’s founder, Rob Solomon, will become SVP of Strategy at Hero with no changes to the rest of the executive team.
Bulldog Solutions, recognized by Forrester for their strength in B2B marketing, is bringing its B2B marketing expertise to Hero Digital. “The B2B journey is far more complex than its B2C cousin,” said Watson. “This merger creates an unparalleled end-to-end B2B customer experience solution for clients that integrates CX consulting, design, engineering, digital marketing, and data.”
“As B2B CMOs navigate a highly considered purchasing decision, they will need a partner with B2B experience, specificity, and depth,” said David Kilimnik, CEO at Hero Digital. “B2B CMOs who make the customer the hero of their brand are the ones who will crush their competition. We are purpose-built to deliver on this, with the right mix of creativity, business acumen, and martech [marketing technology] expertise.”
CMSC Media wanted to learn more about this merger, so we reached out to both Hero Digital and Bulldog Solutions find out how each feels about the union, and what the future holds for the newly enhanced Hero Digital.
David Kilimnik, CEO of Hero Digital
Tell us about Hero Digital, and what is it that you guys do?
“We are the leading independent Customer Experience company, built for the sole purpose of helping CEOs and CMOs grow their brands by putting humans at the center of their businesses. Inventing new business ideas, crafting gorgeous experiences, and then optimizing each interaction - this is what we love to do.”
What, would you say, are the areas in which Hero Digital excels?
“We accelerate company growth for those who believe what we believe: that the digital economy has put power in the hands of customers and that brands have to sprint if they want to compete. We are fully integrated - we bring ideas, connect them to experience, activate them through marketing, then closing the loop to deliver revenue. When we can connect the parts and move at speed, we are at our best.”
Why did Hero Digital choose to acquire Bulldog Solutions?
“Bulldog has built a reputation on curiosity, courage, and an unconventional approach to B2B marketing. We acquired them [Bulldog Solutions] because we love this, and we believe that this is what B2B marketers need today. Consumer-level expectations require B2B companies to change or die, and we believe that Hero’s CX focus combined with Bulldog’s B2B depth will be a killer combo for B2B brands that want to thrive in the digital economy.”
How do you think this merger will benefit your clients?
“Bulldog’s depth of expertise in B2B marketing is second to none. Our B2B practice will deepen substantially with them as part of the team, and all of our B2B customers will benefit. For Bulldog’s customers, we would love to partner with them more broadly than Bulldog has historically. Demand generation efforts will drive bigger results with beautifully crafted websites and deeper customer insights. Our clients are ‘our everything’. We will be at their service, and hope to be the best partner they have ever had.”
Randy Watson, General Manager, Hero Digital, Austin 
Who is Bulldog Solutions, and what do you guys do?
“We’re a digital agency that focuses exclusively on large, complex B2B marketing. We develop and execute lifecycle marketing across all channels to fuel our clients’ growth goals.”
Forrester recognized you for your B2B capabilities. What are some of your strengths in that sector?
“We bring the B2B trio together: strategy, technology/data, and creative. We’re extremely good at developing the strategy for holistic marketing programs, stitching together the key technology components to execute and measure performance, and designing inspired communications at every stage of the customer lifecycle. Bringing those together allow us to lead in modern marketing trends like account-based marketing and broader demand creation.”
What made Hero Digital a good fit for Bulldog Solutions?
“We’re both a little obsessed about marketing that works – not to drive vanity metrics alone, but tangible sales results that move the needle for our clients. We’ve worked hard to challenge the stale conventions of B2B, both creatively and technically, and Hero Digital is very likeminded in their approach.”
What does Bulldog Solutions bring to Hero Digital?
“First, we bring a long track record of driving impressive results in major B2B brands. Second, we bring an established presence in one of the fastest-growing, most innovative cities in America—Austin. Austin provides access to exceptional talent, in a destination clients love to visit, where we can easily serve both the East and West Coasts.”
Is this new Hero Digital going to be the ‘hero’ CMOs need to help transform the B2B marketing ecosystem? Between Bulldog Solution’s track record in creative campaigns, content strategy, and creation and Hero Digital’s wide range of CX services, it will be interesting to watch what the new team will do and how they will influence the B2B marketing space.
Ellie Somfelean
Ellie is a Reporter and Content Marketer with CMSC Media. She is passionate about social media and digital marketing. She has a vast experience with content creation, influencer marketing and brand promotion.