I believe these two things are true: Technology is changing very rapidly, and those changes seem to be accelerating. Changing an organization — how it thinks and behaves — is still hard and slow. These two truths are at the core of this blog’s mission: helping marketers understand how marketing technology is changing and how [...]

Last month, I was invited on a fascinating marketing roadshow with SAS in southeast Asia, keynoting CMO events in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and India. I’ve posted my slide deck and an essay version of my presentation on Combining Art & Science in Modern Marketing, if you’d like to read it. (Fair warning: it’s [...]

It’s been a few weeks since my last post — sorry for the radio silence. I’ve been on a whirlwind tour of southeast Asia with SAS, keynoting CMO events in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and India. It was a fascinating and inspiring journey, but regrettably, I didn’t find much time to write while on [...]

(This also appears as a guest post on SAS’s Left of the Date Line blog for the Asia Pacific region.) Later this month, I’ll have the privilege of meeting with groups of CMOs and other marketing leaders across southeast Asia as part of an event tour with SAS Institute. We’ll be visiting Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, [...]

In a world powered by software, the developers who create that software — especially the really good ones — are increasingly the center of influence and power in business. That’s the core thesis of Stephen O’Grady’s brief-but-brilliant, 48-page book, The New Kingmakers: How Developers Conquered the World. This is highly relevant to marketers and marketing [...]

The terms “marketing technologist” and “growth hacker” seem to be gaining traction out there. Voice-based marketing automation provider ifbyphone recently released their annual State of Marketing Measurement Survey for 2013, which included the following results on the evolution of the marketing team: 31% have a marketing technologist 25% have a growth hacker Marketing automation is [...]

Darling, I don’t know why I go to extremes Too high or too low there ain’t no in-betweens — Billy Joel There’s a common fallacy known as a false dilemma or false dichotomy. It’s where you’re artificially presented with a black-and-white, either-or choice: you’re forced to choose between all of one or all of the [...]

Last month, I attended the Marketing Operations Executive Summit — an intimate gathering of around 100 marketing operations executives — to give a talk on agile marketing. What I left with, however, was a profound appreciation for the ascendency of the marketing operations role. In the words of Craig Moore, a director at Sirius Decisions [...]

Any doubt that marketing is becoming a technology-powered discipline? The ITSMA (Information Technology Services Marketing Association) shared results from their latest survey on marketing technology at a briefing outside of Boston earlier this week. The slide above shows the big picture result: today, 21% of B2B marketers believe that marketing technology is critical to deliver [...]

Earlier this month, I read Oracle/Eloqua’s new report on Defining the Modern Marketer: From Ideal to Real. One of the more fascinating aspects of the report, based on a survey of 556 B2B marketers, was the shifting balance between the “art” of marketing and the “science” of marketing. Which lead me to write: what do [...]