Product Marketing Lead · Post-acquisition · 2023–2024
Kpler AIS: three vessel-tracking networks, one product.
SECTOR
Maritime data and API
STAGE
Post-acquisition integration
MARKET
Global
ROLE
Product Marketing Lead
PERIOD
2023–2024
COMPANY
kpler.comStages covered
01
Research
02
Competition
03
Segment & position
04
Message
05
Launch & enable
06
Measure & maintain
The same six stages as the PMM Operating System.
The situation
Technically the coverage was excellent. Commercially there was no product.
Kpler's acquisition of MarineTraffic brought two terrestrial AIS networks together, alongside satellite and shipborne feeds from partners. On paper that was the most complete positional picture of the global fleet available anywhere.
In market it was several datasets with several names, several stories and no single thing a customer could buy.
The diagnosis
The advantage already existed. Nobody could explain it.
Terrestrial AIS is dense near coasts and blind mid-ocean. Satellite fills the gap but at lower frequency. Sold separately, each has an obvious weakness and a customer has to assemble continuous coverage themselves, from more than one contract. Combined and normalised, the weakness disappears. The work was not building the advantage. It was making it a product with a name, a boundary and a price.
Sell the datasets separately
Accurate, technically honest, and it makes the customer do the integration.
Merge them into one verified feed
One endpoint, one contract, continuous coverage, one story.
When I arrived
When I left
Several datasets
One product
Coverage gaps between sources
Continuous positional coverage
A different story per source
One narrative, five personas
Customer integrates it themselves
One endpoint, one contract
What I built
One product, out of three networks.
01
03 Segment & position
Product definition
One product where there had been several sources.
- Terrestrial, satellite and shipborne positions merged into a single feed
- A single API endpoint returning the latest available position for the global fleet
- Scope, boundaries, capabilities and limitations written down explicitly
- All positions cleaned, validated and normalised before reaching the customer
Three sources, one feed
Terrestrial network A
Terrestrial network B
Satellite and shipborne
Kpler AIS
Coastal density and open-ocean continuity, sold as one thing.
02
03 Segment & position · 04 Message
Positioning on coverage and trust
The claim: a trusted, verified, owned source.
- Positioned on continuity of coverage and ownership of the network rather than on feature count
- Primary value proposition built around unmatched coverage and granularity from a network the company owns rather than licenses
- Deliberately named the limitations, because a data buyer who finds them later stops trusting everything else
03
04 Message
Persona messaging
Five buyers, five reasons, one feed.
- Government and maritime security: detecting suspicious vessel activity, enforcing maritime law, monitoring pollution
- Trade finance analysts: origin, destination and route of cargo to assess risk and monitor supply chains
- Traders: market intelligence, arbitrage, trade route optimisation, counterparty reliability
- Supply chain and risk managers: visibility of goods in motion, accurate arrival and departure times
- Fleet operations managers: vessel tracking, collision avoidance, route optimisation, performance reporting
04
05 Launch & enable
Enablement for a technical product
Making a data feed commercially simple.
- A Product Oracle: the single internal source of truth on what the product is, who it is for, and who it is not for, including the anti-persona
- A sales playbook, factsheet and FAQ
- Competitive battlecards built from a sourced grid
- A messaging matrix mapping every claim to the persona and the proof behind it
The judgment call
Naming the limitations on purpose.
The temptation with a merged data product is to describe it as complete. It never is. Positional data has latency, gaps and edge cases, and the buyers for this product, government analysts, traders, risk managers, are exactly the people who will find them.
The Product Oracle stated the limitations and prerequisites in writing, internally, before anything went to market. A data buyer who discovers a limitation after signing stops trusting every other claim you made. Saying it first is cheaper than being caught.
What this proves
Four things, if you're deciding whether to hire me.
I integrate after acquisitions.
Three networks, one sellable product.
I make technical products commercially simple.
An API feed with a narrative five different buyers recognise.
I write the internal source of truth.
Product Oracle, playbook, battlecards, messaging matrix.
I state the limits.
Trust in data products is built on what you admit, not what you claim.
Frameworks installed