Welcome to this week’s Supply Chain Radar, where new sites drop, prospect lists grow, and Manifest prep hits full throttle. 🚨🎰
Pesti just unveiled its brand-new home, built for the brands shaping the future of supply chain marketing. No fluff, no jargon, just the connections, creativity, and strategy that turn market noise into market impact.
And with Manifest around the corner, the message is clear: the fastest route to the decision-maker isn’t always straight ahead. Sometimes the smartest approach is the about-and-around way, navigating influence, trust, and timing to win where it counts.
👉 Scroll on for the site launch, the Manifest playbook, and the strategies you need to stand out in the new year.
New Site Drop: Pesti is LIVE 🚨
Because great work doesn’t market itself, we built a home for everything that makes Pesti… Pesti. Our new site lays out exactly how we help supply chain brands earn trust, spark trends, and turn strategy into real growth. No spreadsheets, no fluff: just connections, creativity, and outcomes that move industries forward. If you want to lead, not follow, this is where it starts.
Manifesting the Decision-Maker: The About-and-Around Way ⭐
As we ramp up for Manifest, we’ve started building our prospect list and it reminded us of one of the marketing golden rules: the shortest route to the decision-maker isn’t always the fastest, or even effective, especially when that person is a senior executive at a large organization.
Since the first Manifest in January 2022, we at Pesti—the event’s official media partner—have helped numerous businesses achieve event success by building targeted prospect and media lists, pre-booking meetings with key contacts, the media and maximizing ROI for both sponsors and attendees alike.
True to form, there was always one thing that came up over and over again with the people we were working with: they wanted to rush to the top. They wanted to find and talk to the biggest and most important decision-maker and have them go in their favor.
It’s a bit like us trying to reach the global VP of Marketing at GXO or the CMO at Penske, or landing a front-page interview with the Editor-in-Chief of The Wall Street Journal. —“Good morning, Ms. Wall Street Journal. I’d like a front-page feature for one of our clients, and your personal blessing while you’re at it.” —It just doesn’t work that way.
The truth is, you rarely go straight to the top because the top is usually unapproachable. Those leaders got there by playing the game, by being sharp and selective, and they’re not easily swayed. And that’s okay. Even if the person you think is the ultimate decision-maker truly is, it’s fine that they’re not your first target. More often than not, the smarter move is to look around them and find who influences them, who they trust, or who may have direct access.
What we’ve learned over the years and continue to recommend is that more success will come from broadening your target list. Instead of going straight for the top, develop and apply what we call the about-and-around approach. That means finding ways to get closer to key decision-makers by engaging the people and networks around them. Learn who influences them, what they care about, and where they spend their time. Maybe you build rapport with trusted colleagues, mutual connections, or even through shared interests. Anything that helps you understand them better and stay on their radar before you ever make the direct ask.
When complex services meet even more complex pricing, Miles Boost by G2Mint delivers clarity and control. Estes Logistics modernized its entire pricing infrastructure through a single AI-powered connection, achieving 91% faster rating, 75% quicker invoicing, and fewer errors across every mode.
The result? Smarter margins, faster billing, and happier customers.
Think email marketing is just “send and pray”? Think again. When a debate inside Pesti turned into a full-blown experiment, we learned Sundays rack up opens, Mondays drive clicks, and Fridays… well, don’t. With 68,000 SCR readers, our tests proved there’s no magic day—only what works for your audience.
Dock and yard operations are under more pressure than ever with automation gaps, congestion, late arrivals, green mandates, peak chaos. That’s why we’re building the 2026 State of Dock & Yard Management Report, and we need real-world insights from the people living it daily. Your input shapes benchmarks, identifies tech gaps, and guides future innovation across the industry.
AI visuals are everywhere, but not always in a good way. From European trucks showing up in U.S. marketing to chaotic, unreadable infographics and those cursed cartoon filters, sloppy AI usage is starting to hurt brand credibility. Pesti’s Slopocalypse post breaks down the worst offenders and how marketers can clean things up. But we want to know…
With more than a thousand exhibitors, nonstop sessions, and every major supply chain decision-maker packed under one very Venetian roof, Manifest isn’t the kind of event you just show up to, it’s one you show up prepared to dominate.
But without a strategy, even great brands disappear into the noise.
That’s why Pesti — Manifest’s official media partner — exists. We help teams walk in with clarity, walk out with real pipeline, and make every conversation, every meeting, and every minute on the floor work harder for you.
Let Pesti build the PR, social, video, and creative engine that gets you in front of the people who matter most.
The calendar is about to flip, which means one thing for supply chain teams: budget season. And in a world where marketing spend hovers in the single digits, every dollar has to pull weight. It is time to plan smarter, align goals, prioritize high-impact channels, build contingency buffers, and turn content + PR + events into real commercial outcomes.
Here’s the scoop on the SCR Egg-O-Meter: It’s a brand-new rating tool that checks out what the media said about business and supply chain execs in the past 30 days and scores them based on the tonality of mentions from a natural language processing algorithm.
The “Egg-o-Meter” is like a quirky kitchen gadget for measuring how well a supply chain leader can cook up success. It cracks open key traits—like adaptability, collaboration, and innovation—and scrambles them into a perfect leadership recipe. The goal? To avoid being a hard-boiled traditionalist or a runny risk-taker. It’s all about being the ideal sunny-side-up mix to lead teams through the ever-changing heat of the supply chain kitchen! 🍳📦
Katja Busch, chief commercial officer at DHL - 66.82%
Katja Busch, Chief Commercial Officer at DHL and Head of Customer Solutions & Innovation (CSI), sits at the center of one of the most ambitious logistics transformation agendas in the world. Her leadership is helping shape a future where global supply chains are not only faster and smarter, but also more sustainable, secure, and resilient. Under Busch’s direction, DHL continues to push the boundaries of innovation, most visibly through the new Europe Innovation Center in Troisdorf, Germany.
This 5,360-square-meter flagship facility exemplifies DHL’s belief that supply chain progress requires collaboration. Built with cross-laminated timber, powered by renewables, and achieving zero GHG emissions, the center reflects Busch’s commitment to sustainability woven directly into innovation. It showcases next-generation technologies such as AI, robotics, IoT, and green logistics tools—each aligned with DHL’s Logistics Trend Radar, which identifies AI (44%), robotics (28%), and ESG (25%) as the biggest forces shaping the future.
Busch emphasizes that innovation means nothing without real-world deployment—and DHL is proving that at scale. Across its global operations, DHL Supply Chain has rolled out nearly 10,000 automation and digitalization projects and integrated 8,000+ collaborative robots, ensuring new solutions move from concept to concrete impact.
Her influence also extends into high-value verticals like luxury. Busch has led insights showing how luxury supply chains increasingly rely on visibility tools like IoT, RFID, advanced security, and premium delivery experiences that blend sustainability with brand identity.
DHL’s Strategy 2030 deepens this push. Massive global investments, including €1 billion in India alone, back new health logistics hubs, low-emission facilities, electric fleets, and AI-driven IT centers.
And DHL continues to lead conversations globally: Will Heywood, Chief Customer Officer at DHL Supply Chain, will speak at Manifest this year.
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