Announcing the build-your-own martech landscape kit, fun for the whole office

As we’ve been slaving working away on the new 2018 edition of the Marketing Technology Landscape (“Martech 5000”) graphic — and that’s not the editorial “we,” but indeed a whole team of obsessively-compulsive martech lunatics dedicated industry advocates — it suddenly occurred to me this morning that we’ve been selfishly hoarding the fun.

Seriously, you’ve not lived until you’ve tried to squeeze 5,000-some-odd logos on to a single PowerPoint slide. It’s an epic Zen exercise that’s guaranteed to bring you to a state of total madness enlightenment.

So in the spirit of community sharing, here’s a martech landscape scaffold PowerPoint slide.

Have at it!

(Medical disclaimer: some side effects of producing your own martech landscape may include drowsiness, irritability, repetitive stress injuries, and increased risk of outbound contacts by martech vendors. Talk with your doctor to see if martech landscaping is right for you.)

Although you can martech landscape in single-player mode, it’s more fun as a team activity. We suggest bringing a large group from your marketing department together for a mandatory marathon, 48-hour weekend offsite to render your own grand vision of the martech industry. (Pro tip: don’t describe the activity in too much detail to them in advance.)

You’ll be amazed how time flies by as you:

• Argue over whether there should be an “AI” category or if everything has AI
• Debate for hours which category a particular vendor should be placed in
• Critique a colleague’s logo packing skills (“you can fit 50 more in that box, easy!”)
• Discover weird patterns, like how many CDPs are named “Blue”-something
• Realize you missed a category and need to start your layout all over again

With a little creativity, you can turn your group martech landscaping session into a drinking game. Every time you have a logo that is missing a vowel (e.g., RankTrackr), take a shot. Every time somebody claims Adobe should be in a category, take a shot.

You Are the Martech Analyst You’ve Been Waiting For

For all you martech vendors, this build-your-own landscape represents a significant breakthrough in PR and analyst relations.

Instead of having to convince Gartner or Forrester to include you in their particular Magic Quadrant (that Marty Kihn character is completely unreasonable!) or Wave — or, more humbly, trying to convince us here at chiefmartec.com to include you in a particular Martech Category Box^® on our Landscape, you can take matters into your own hands.

Literally.

Think your company belongs in the Customer Data Platform (CDP) category? Just drag your logo into it. Boom, done.

You don’t need any blessing from David Raab of the Customer Data Platform Institute. (Pro tip: after you’ve added your logo to the CDP Martech Category Box^®, send a copy to David as evidence of your CDP-ness and demand, vociferously, that he include you in his next CDP Vendor Comparison matrix.)

Think you should be represented in multiple categories? Ctrl-C. Ctrl-V. Boom, done. Even more categories? Ctrl-V. Ctrl-V. Ctrl-V. Boom, boom, boom, done.

Want to be in a category-of-one by yourself? Add a Martech Category Box^®. Label it exactly the way you want. For instance, “Mobile Predictive Carnivore Influencer Platforms.” Drag your logo in the box. Boom, done. (Pro tip: label the category as plural, but make sure you’re the only one in it.)

Why stop with just editorializing with your own logo?

Don’t think Salesforce really belongs in the CRM category? Ctrl-X. Boom, done.

Wish some of your competitors simply didn’t exist? Well, hey, if you don’t put their logo on your landscape, then ipso facto they don’t. Or you can move them to a Martech Category Box^® that you think better characterizes them, with your own label, such as, “Slightly Dodgy Adtech.” Your sales reps will love you for it.

Contest: Who Can Create the Best Martech Landscape the Fastest?

BONUS: If you can produce the most-complete, tightest-packed, properly-categorized martech landscape and send it in to us before we lose our collective minds finish our official version of the 2018 Marketing Technology Landscape, then I will personally buy you the beverage of your choice at the MarTech conference in San Jose, April 23-25.

P.S. Alternatively, if you want to be one of the first people to see our version and analysis of this year’s landscape and, more importantly, learn how many of the best brands in the world are harnessing all this innovation to deliver compelling marketing and world-class customer experiences, then come join us at MarTech.

See: 3 marketing technology myths we’ll debunk at our vendor-agnostic MarTech conference.