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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.com
Data & APIMaritime

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.

01 · What this engagement produced

9 of 34 outputs

Research

Competition

Segment, position and price

Message

Launch and enable

Measure and maintain

Solid is what this engagement actually produced. Dashed is what it did not reach.

02 · 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.

03 · When I arrived, when I left

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

04 · What I built

4 workstreams

One product, out of three networks.

01Product definitionOne product where there had been several sources.

03 Segment, position & price

  • 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

Coastal · High frequency

Terrestrial network B

Coastal · High frequency

Satellite and shipborne

Open ocean · Lower frequency

Kpler AIS

One endpointGlobal fleet, every responseCleaned · Validated · Normalised

Coastal density and open-ocean continuity, sold as one thing.

02Positioning on coverage and trustThe claim: a trusted, verified, owned source.

03 Segment, position & price · 04 Message

  • 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
03Persona messagingFive buyers, five reasons, one feed.

04 Message

  • 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
04Enablement for a technical productMaking a data feed commercially simple.

05 Launch & enable

  • 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

05 · 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.

06 · 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

Product OracleThe Messaging Matrix