Inside Kari Hanson’s Marketing Playbook

Beyond the Brief: A marketing conversation with Kari Hanson, Chief Marketing Officer at Robin.

Q: Kari, great to have you here. You’ve had a fascinating career spanning agencies, startups, and public companies. Can you walk us through the journey that led you to Robin?

Kari: It’s been quite a winding road. I went to Bentley University and got a bachelor’s degree in marketing. I actually started as a CS major. But after my first project was an EXE file for email that made an animated image (this was right around the time attachments to emails were being introduced), my professor introduced me to the marketing department. My junior year, I started a PR internship at technology companies, and I fell in love with the storytelling, access to founders and emerging technologies, and the pace. I ended up staying at that agency for eight years, working with startups launching out of stealth mode, in spaces like Wi-Fi and digital rights management when those technologies were just coming of age.

From there, I had what I call my “splash and dash” at ZoomInfo, where I helped rebrand them for a broader audience and led the communications strategy to spin out Bizo, which was later acquired by LinkedIn. Heading into 2008 and the recession, a former client recruited me to be hire number twenty at a company called SailPoint, in the security space out of Texas. I spent over a decade there, helping build the marketing function, grew to be the VP of marketing, and took them through their IPO.

After that, I realized I didn’t love the red tape of working at a public company, so I joined a seed-stage AI startup in Boston called Spiro.ai. I was there for about 5 years, until they were acquired. I was planning to take the summer off until I met the Robin team. I started talking to the head of HR, then the CEO, then the rest of the executive team, and I kept finding myself writing down all the things Robin should be doing from a marketing perspective. I was really excited by the company and the market, so it was an easy answer to join the team.

Q: You’ve described a pattern of gravitating toward companies taking on the big category gorillas. What drew you to Robin specifically?

Kari: That’s true! At SailPoint, we took on Oracle and IBM. At ZoomInfo, it was the big list of companies. At Spiro, we were taking on Salesforce. Robin appealed to me for the same reason: there’s no clear leader in the workplace operations space, but Zoom, Microsoft, and others all want to be it. I like being at the inflection point of a market forming.

The hybrid work reality has created a genuinely messy problem. Pre-pandemic, the office was well understood. Everyone had assigned desks, there was a front desk person, and life was simple. Then we went remote during COVID. Now, the majority of companies have realized that hybrid is the right answer, but that messy middle – people in at different times, in different places – is really hard to manage. That’s what Robin solves.

Q: When you arrived at Robin, what did you find, and what’s changed under your leadership?

Kari: I’m a numbers person. My kids love reminding me I’m a math geek, and when I looked at the data, it didn’t match the anecdotes. The team told me, “We sell to office managers; we never sell to facilities.” But when I looked at the actual pipeline, the deals closing were much larger, and facilities leadership was almost always involved. It turned out the office manager is our primary user, but their boss is our buyer.

From that, I worked on elevating Robin’s messaging from being seen as simply a resource booking tool to a platform story; we had a lot of capabilities that were, frankly, underselling our solution. I refined the ICP to squarely target mid-market and enterprise companies. The brand itself was strong; I was not the CMO who came in saying, “We need to rebrand.” But the story behind the brand wasn’t resonating with buyers, so I focused on that.

And perhaps the biggest internal shift: I believe that marketing should own pipeline creation. I oriented my team away from counting MQLs and instead driving qualified pipeline. We raised the bar and only sent ICP prospects who scheduled a demo to the sales team. That accountability changed how everyone on my team marketed. They came to me with lists of tools and vendors we shouldn’t have, money and effort we shouldn’t be spending, and new things we should be doing instead. The trajectory shifted significantly.

Q: What’s the core message resonating with buyers right now, and how does Robin navigate the charged emotions around return-to-office?

Kari: The messages that are cutting through right now are focused on automation and consolidation. Contrary to popular belief, people aren’t buying for AI; they’re buying for what AI can automate. There are a lot of workflows in managing an office that can be automated. And we have customers who can consolidate four or more tools into one, for less. Given the macro environment, which has real business implications, cost savings are top of mind with everyone. It’s not my favorite story to tell as a marketer – I like to have more fun – but it’s the one that’s sticking.

On the RTO narrative: it’s a ‘four-letter’ word to employees, but the reality is it’s already happened. The people we’re typically talking to, the director of IT and workplace operations leaders, didn’t make the mandate. They’re suddenly the bad guys, with employees saying, “You’re monitoring me.” What we try to do is help everyone pause and stop the debate. Let’s reframe the story around flexibility, because companies want to offer it and employees want to have it. Robin helps our customers deliver flexibility in a way they can actually plan for. Managing a hybrid office with fluid days requires intelligence. Robin provides it.

Q: You’ve described an “office tax” concept. Can you tell us more about how you’re thinking about quantifying Robin’s value?

Kari: Quantifying value is something I love, but it’s genuinely challenging when your customers range from 500 to 100,000 employees. We’re currently doing an annual benchmark study in partnership with an analyst firm, and this time we’re focused on what we’re calling l the office coordination tax – the hidden burden of managing the office when you don’t have the right systems.

Think about a large professional services firm, perhaps in an office with eight floors, and clients visiting constantly. They might have people dedicated solely to scheduling meetings with multimillion-dollar clients, who require IT setup, catering, and specific rooms. Then you need another person managing a visitor spreadsheet or tool for those visits? In parallel, how many employees are wandering the building trying to find somewhere to sit or a meeting for internal meetings? If we can quantify that usage tax, the time, the friction, the cost, that becomes a really compelling conversation. That’s my holy grail right now.

Q: What does go-to-market actually look like for Robin in 2026? How are you driving demand?

Kari: We pulled back from a very broad, SMB-oriented, tactical approach, like content syndication, mass webinars, and replaced it with high-impact, high-precision demand gen targeting the right people. Our ICP is companies with 500-plus employees, and once you get into the 5,000-person range, you’re working with a buying committee: facilities, IT, real estate, and the CFO. We’re still driving toward sub-90-day sales cycles. We closed one of our largest deals in 75 days last year, so it can be done, but you have to intentionally create urgency at every touch point.

The biggest friction isn’t necessarily competition; it’s the status quo. Everyone has something, usually a legacy tool that wasn’t designed for the hybrid era, and they’re clearly unhappy with it. But getting buyers to say “I’m going to stick my neck out and make the change” is genuinely hard right now. So a lot of our marketing is about making the switch feel less scary and making the ROI case impossible to ignore.

Q: Finally, what do people not know about you outside the office?

Kari: I have two middle schoolers, so right now my non-work life is oriented around sports, theater, and trying to keep up with the latest video game.

I commute to Boston two or three times a week, which I really enjoy. We have anchor days for my marketing team on Mondays. There is almost no traffic; it’s great to get the whole team together, and it really starts my week off on the right note. That’s my favorite day of the week. And of course, we use Robin to manage our office, which is honestly great for my team because we can experience what we’re marketing.

Q: Where can people connect with you?

Kari: LinkedIn is the best place to find me (Kari Hanson). I’m always happy to talk with marketers who are thinking about hybrid work, category creation, or driving pipeline accountability within a team.