Scott Brinker

The inaugural #MarTech begins, wish you were here…

August 19, 2014 / Marketing Management / By Scott Brinker / 3 Comments

As this post goes live, the inaugural MarTech conference will have started. About 400 of you are here at this sold out event — and let me say, I am thrilled to be here with you. For the rest of you, I wish you were here — and I’d like to share with you my opening remarks for the event, marking this milestone in our emerging profession. I started this blog over six years ago, …

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MarTech Opening Day: View from the Stage

What does a marketing technologist actually look like?

August 18, 2014 / Marketing Management / By Scott Brinker / 4 Comments

To paraphrase Forrest Gump, “Marketing technologists are as marketing technologists do.” Or maybe that would be Forrester Gump? (Or Gartner Gump?) Pardon the slightly silly intro. I’m a little giddy here on the eve of the inaugural MarTech conference. Whether you’re coming to MarTech or not, here’s an opportunity to participate in a crowdsourcing exercise for our community that will help us shed more light on the emerging profession of “marketing technologists” — and be …

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Modern marketing is for underdogs and innovators — and marketing technologists

August 14, 2014 / Marketing Management / By Scott Brinker / Leave a Comment

This has been a banner year for marketing technology — and marketing technologists — being recognized as an integral part of modern marketing. Featured articles in the Financial Times and Harvard Business Review, both true mainstream business publications. The launch of the MarTech conference, taking place in Boston next week, which has completely sold out. And I’d now add the publication of a new book, The Marketing Performance Blueprint: Strategies and Technologies to Build and …

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Could Google be the ultimate marketing cloud company?

August 12, 2014 / Marketing Software / By Scott Brinker / 5 Comments

Pop quiz! Write down the names of three multi-billion companies who either provide a “marketing cloud” today — or are potential contenders in that space over the next few years. Done? I’ll bet you a beer at MarTech that there was one company who wasn’t on your list: Google. (Okay, be honest: they wouldn’t have been on your list if you weren’t reading an article titled “Could Google be the ultimate marketing cloud company?”) Google? …

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Google Across the Marketing Technology Channel

Must-read interview on marketing technology leadership with the CTO of SapientNitro

August 1, 2014 / Interviews / By Scott Brinker / 4 Comments

Sheldon Monteiro, CTO of SapientNitro, is one of the sharpest people I have met in the marketing technology space. We were introduced by Mayur Gupta, the global head of marketing technology at Kimberly-Clark — and also a SapientNitro alum. Taking Mayur and Sheldon as two points on a line, you have to extrapolate that SapientNitro is kind of “stellar nursery” for producing amazing marketing technologists. Pretty much every conversation I’ve had with Sheldon has set …

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Symantec’s marketing technologist is an evangelist, an influencer, and a negotiator

July 24, 2014 / Interviews / By Scott Brinker / 2 Comments

I’m incredibly excited to share with you the following Q&A with Bala Kudaravalli, a leading marketing technologist at Symantec. (With thanks to Scott Vaughan at Integrate for introducing us!) With Symantec’s permission, Bala was able to share some very helpful details about the marketing technology transformation effort that they have underway at the company — and the cross-departmental governance structure that they’re using to manage it. Given Symantec’s size, the scale and scope of this …

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More unicorns! LinkedIn’s head of marketing technology

July 22, 2014 / Interviews / By Scott Brinker / 3 Comments

It’s fascinating to watch a new profession — marketing technologists — emerge from the digital star foundry. It’s a phenomenon that we should expect to see more frequently in The Second Machine Age. But while that’s thought-provoking at a theoretical level, it’s breathtaking to watch it actually happen with real people you know. It also reveals how much we rely on patterns from the past to determine what we believe about the future — unfortunately, …

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Navigating the Class V Rapids of Marketing Technology

July 18, 2014 / Marketing Management / By Scott Brinker / Leave a Comment

Earlier this year, I gave a presentation at the Marketing Operations Executive Summit hosted by the good folks at MarcomCentral that walked through my marketing technology landscape and talked about some of the dynamics with our industry moving towards platform ecosystems. MarcomCentral recently posted the video, which I’m embedding below (or watch it here if you’re reading this in email and the video doesn’t appear). They did a nice job of editing between video footage …

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Jason Heller on a mission for the marketer of the future

July 17, 2014 / Interviews / By Scott Brinker / Leave a Comment

Jason Heller is the founder and CEO of Agiliti, a New York consultancy that specializes in digital transformation of marketing operations and strategy. I first became aware of Jason a few years ago through a series of columns he wrote for MediaPost, such as Achieving Simplicity From Complexity and Fostering Digital Innovation. We’ve had a number of chats since then, and I’m always impressed by the insight and passion he has for digital transformation in …

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Agiliti's Framework for Digital Transformation

Secrets of an ace recruiter of technical marketing talent

July 10, 2014 / Marketing Management / By Scott Brinker / Leave a Comment

Pretty much everybody acknowledges that talent acquisition in marketing today is a hard problem — especially for technical talent for marketing technology, marketing operations, and marketing analytics. But that’s kind of like complaining that winter is cold in Boston. It’s a true statement, yes, but complaining about it doesn’t make you any warmer. You need to get yourself a sweater, a jacket, and a wool hat. You need to make sure your heating system is …

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