January 2013 – chiefmartec

Balancing marketing technology and IT at a Fortune 500 firm

January 30, 2013

Marketing technology management can look straightforward on paper, when analysts and pundit-bloggers such as myself draw simplified diagrams of new organizational structures with a few quick brushstrokes. But the real work of implementing these organizational changes for “the new marketing” — and the cultural shifts entangled in that mission — especially at a major Fortune […]

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3 epicenters of innovation in modern marketing

January 28, 2013

Here’s another way to visualize the relationship between big data and the other innovations happening in the marketing department. I propose that there are three epicenters of innovation in modern marketing: The first is customer communications and the revolution brought about by social media. Marketing communications has, rather quickly, moved from being a one-way broadcast

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CMOs must become systems thinkers and culture champions

January 24, 2013

There are few companies that are witness to The Great Digital Transformation of the world at the scale of IBM. And as that transformation overtakes the marketing department — an epic collision of cultures like no other in the history of business — I envy the court-side seats they have seeing this play out across

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The big data bubble in marketing — but a bigger future

January 21, 2013

Let’s face it: marketing is in a big data bubble. That’s both a “big data” bubble and, more generally, a big “data” bubble. Everyone is talking about data, big data, data analytics, big data analytics. Vendors, analysts, consultants, pundits, bloggers, etc., are all falling all over themselves to squeeze these terms into their propaganda content

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50% of all new marketing hires will be technical

January 13, 2013

“Starting in 2013, after the CMO realizes that he/she does not have the skill sets in place for data analytics proficiency, 50% of new marketing hires will have technical backgrounds.” That is prediction #5 on IDC’s Top 10 CMO Predictions for 2013, released last week by analysts Rich Vancil and Kathleen Schaub. I dream about

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New species of marketers in the marketing kingdom

January 11, 2013

“As a marketer, you have two choices: adapt and survive, or stand still and die. The ones who do the first the best will emerge at the top of the marketing food chain.” That’s the concluding quote from Gord Hotchkiss’s latest article on MediaPost: Evolving On The Fly: Growth Hackers, Agile Marketers, Bayesian Strategists And

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The drama that swirls around data in marketing

January 7, 2013

Great article in The New York Times this past weekend, Can Social Media Sell Soap?, sheds some light on the war in marketing between the “humanists” of Don Draper’s world and the “quants” of the digital marketing revolution. The essence of the story: data-driven marketing is incredibly promising, but it is not all-powerful. Those who

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Marketing services and technology M&A increased 67% in 2012

January 2, 2013

The Jordan, Edmiston Group, Inc. (JEGI) investment bank released their report of 2012 M&A deals in media, information, marketing, and technology sectors last week. Overall, the number of deals and the total value of deals were way up — a 50% increase in the number of deals and a 43% increase in total value over

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A striking example of the power and peril of data

January 1, 2013

Here’s a parting story from 2012 that I think sets the stage for a major theme of 2013: data has power. Last week a newspaper in New York published an interactive map of gun permit owners in Westchester and Rockland counties. It made it effortless for anyone to see who has a gun permit in

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