I believe marketing must lead its own technology. As detailed in my presentation Rise of the Marketing Technologist, I think marketing departments need marketing technologists on staff, led by a marketing CTO who reports to the CMO. It’s the only prayer marketing has in a world where technology is infused into every medium and message, operating and innovating at Google speed. Predictably, this is not a popular view in the IT department. IT’s self-identity for …
What’s the best way to scale marketing? When marketing grows beyond one person, how do you divide up the work? This is one of the key strategic decisions the CMO makes, as the architecture of the marketing organization shapes its strengths and weaknesses. As my operations professor at MIT often said, “structure dictates behavior.” The most common way of organizing marketing has been a hybrid of three kinds of divide-and-conquer approaches: by product (and overall …
The winds of change are blowing through IT, and it’s not a gentle summer breeze. Earlier this month, Hewlett-Packard announced they were cutting 9,000 IT jobs. They’re consolidating their data centers and making them far more automated, as more advanced software and hardware eliminates the need for so many hands-on system and network administrators. This isn’t a case of HP shutting down a business. They’re still going strong as a provider of IT infrastructure services …
The cloud threatens creative destruction for IT Continue Reading »
Forgive me for this rant, but I hope this will be helpful as an example of how short-sighted, overly aggressive marketing optimization techniques can backfire with long-term brand damage. I’ve been a register.com customer for about 10 years now. I know, some of you will instantly point out that they’re one of the most expensive domain registrars out there. I’ve known that in the back of my head for a while. But I don’t register …
When marketing optimization feels like extortion Continue Reading »
I continue to receive terrific feedback about my presentation and essay on the rise of the marketing technologist — thank you to everyone who has contributed comments, anecdotes, and ideas. The pent up desire for marketing to take control of its technological destiny is clearly bursting at the seams. You’ve inspired me to take that 3,000 word essay and 54 slide presentation and try to boil it down to its essence, in 153 words. In …
Last week, I gave my talk at Search Insider Summit on the Rise of the Marketing Technologist. Based on the positive feedback I received from brands, agencies, and technology vendors alike, it apparently resonated deeply. So, first, I’d like to share the slide presentation with you: Rise of the Marketing Technologist from Scott Brinker However, since slides can’t capture the full dynamics of the presentation, I thought I would follow with an essay version of …
Avi Dan has a great article that was published yesterday in Advertising Age, Why Brands Should Embrace Technological Change. It’s an excellent piece talking about the rapid shifts in marketing technology and encouraging CMOs to embrace the phenomenon with all their heart (and all their organizational structure). I was pleased to see him advocate for a chief marketing technologist role that would report to the CMO: CMOs must lead a number of internal changes as …
It’s a new year — a new decade — ahead. The 10’s will be a spectacular era for those of us at the intersection of marketing and technology. And before the next decade is out, there’s going to be a lot more of us in that nexus. But here on the immediate horizon, there’s the business of New Year’s resolutions. Of course, there are the obvious ones: better search engine optimization (SEO), better conversion rate …
3 New Year’s resolutions for marketing technologists in 2010 Continue Reading »
When it comes to innovation and new market opportunity — why some companies harness those forces to catapult to riches and glory, while otherwise good and strong leaders stumble and fall — the smartest guy I’ve ever met is Clay Christensen. The chart above is from an article Clay wrote a year or so ago, Innovation Killers: How Financial Tools Destroy Your Capacity to Do New Things. You might be saying, “I’m in marketing, not …
I’ve been thinking about quintessential marketing skills and how they’re evolving. Skills can be very specific, such as “mastery of ExactTarget for newsletter email marketing”. But I’m more interested in broader skills that transcend individual projects and programs. For instance, in marketing, I’ve found that the following skills have perpetual value: empathy with customers, seeing through their eyes; a good ear for authentic, persuasive language; a good eye for compelling visual design; open-minded creativity and …
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