September 2019

The theme of my keynote talk at the MarTech conference earlier this month was “platforming marketing.” (Watch a reenacted video of the keynote here.) I’ve spent much of my career thinking about two broad topics: marketing and platforms. Yet it took me a while to recognize that the patterns I see in software platforms are the same thing I now see happening with the democratization of martech within marketing organizations today. They’re both striving to …

Platforming Marketing: 8 P’s of Self-Service Martech Continue Reading »

We had a fantastic MarTech event this week. Huge thanks to everyone who contributed and participated in it. My keynote was “Platforming Marketing” — how the next stage of martech maturity is about applying platform principles in marketing to empower your entire organization to leverage martech capabilities in their work. While we did not record the keynote live, I decided to recreate a version of it with Loom: I hope to see you at a …

Video recreation of my MarTech opening keynote: Platform Marketing Continue Reading »

You’re familiar with Gartner’s iconic hype cycle, right? Pretty much every technology follows the same pattern of unrealistic hype in its early stages, followed by a crash of disappointment when those lofty aspirations fail to materialize. But then it steadily climbs up the “slope of enlightenment,” where reality and reasonable expectations eventually converge. I’ve heard many people say that martech has entered the “trough of disillusionment” stage of the hype cycle this year. After buying …

Is martech in the trough of disillusionment? I hope so Continue Reading »