Want to understand the org chart of modern marketing?

I sure do.

We know that marketing is changing dramatically — a perfect storm of social networks, omniscient search engines, big data, an explosion of marketing software, and the ascendency of digitally-powered customer experiences.

The technology and the customer-centric phenomena in this transformation are fascinating — and are well-covered by a bevy of analysts, bloggers, and enthusiastic innovators. But there’s a harder problem lurking in the shadows that receives less attention: how should businesses change marketing management to thrive in this new world?

One of the most powerful management levers is organizational structure. And while many companies are altering their org charts in marketing, to better adapt to a digital world, there isn’t much statistical data out there on what these new org charts look like.

Well, the folks at VentureBeat and I would like to change that. So we’re collaborating on a study of the “top layer” of the modern marketing org chart. Here’s your chance to be one of the first people to see the data from that study — by participating in a survey to help us gather it:

http://intel.venturebeat.com/surveys/new-marketing-org.html

The most important question we ask is:

What’s the list of titles of the people who directly report to the most senior marketing executive? So, for a large company, you might answer: VP Product Marketing, VP Marketing Operations, VP Customer Intelligence, VP Content Marketing, etc. No names — just titles.

We then also ask a number of follow-up questions, such as the list of titles — in marketing, IT, or otherwise — who are involved in the purchase decisions of key marketing technologies, such as CRM, web content management, and marketing automation.

These open-ended questions will take a little more work for us to analyze, but we think it’s vital to get a high-fidelity picture of the variety and the clustering of different kinds of positions and labels.

We also inquire about some of the newer C-level roles that are bandied about, such as a chief digital officer, a chief customer officer, and a chief experience officer. And we also ask about the presence of technical marketing professionals such as marketing technologists and data scientists and the titles that are used for senior people in those positions.

And, at the very end, there are a few questions about firmographics, so we can break out how different size organizations in different industries approach these issues.

I believe this could be an insightful peek into the state of modern marketing management. Will you participate and help us get others to participate? You’ll then be the first to know what we find.