Scott Brinker

Google, don’t break my heart with shoddy marketing

June 16, 2014 / Other / By Scott Brinker / 2 Comments

Marketing has had, historically, a bad rap for being — how do I say this diplomatically? — creative with the truth. Not necessarily lying outright, although that’s certainly happened. But often deliberately choosing words — as well as choosing what to omit — so as to lead people to slightly or wholly inaccurate conclusions that favor the marketer. One of the things I love about where marketing is headed today is that leading marketers are …

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Tag management software as marketing middleware

June 15, 2014 / Marketing Software / By Scott Brinker / 11 Comments

Tag management, at its core, is a relatively straightforward marketing technology — but one that has taken on new life with the rise of the home-grown, heterogeneous marketing cloud. First, a brief orientation on tag management: Many marketing software applications require marketers to insert little snippets of code — “tags” — into their web pages to enable things like visitor analytics, remarketing, A/B testing, visitor profiling, personalization, etc. Large sites can end up with dozens …

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Build Your Own Marketing Cloud with Tag Management

The Golden Age of Marketing Software (video)

June 8, 2014 / Marketing Software / By Scott Brinker / 5 Comments

A couple of months ago, I was honored to be invited to present at The Next Web Conference in Amsterdam. I gave a 19-minute, TED-style talk on “The Golden Age of Marketing Software” — a whirlwind overview of the marketing technology landscape, the dynamics of marketing as a technology-powered discipline, and the rise of the marketing technologist. Yes, all that in 19 minutes. TNW professionally recorded and edited my presentation and was kind enough to …

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Ridiculously biased in favor of open marketing platforms

June 5, 2014 / Marketing Software / By Scott Brinker / 1 Comment

On the topic of “open marketing platforms” — foundational marketing software systems that make it easy to plug in or connect with other marketing applications built by third-parties — I admit that I’m thoroughly biased. As an industry observer, I’ve staked my prognostication badge on the case for consolidated platforms and diversified ecosystems (2012), the emerging third-party era of marketing automation (2013), and open platforms as the enablers for 1,000+ marketing technology vendors as the …

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Financial Times reveals the executive view of marketing technology, an evolving relationship of marketing and IT

May 28, 2014 / Marketing Management / By Scott Brinker / 2 Comments

I was delighted to learn that the Financial Times — an international newspaper for senior executives and financial types that makes The Wall Street Journal look like light pop reading — dedicated an 8-page special report on the intersection of marketing and technology, officially released this morning. Recognition that marketing has become a technology-powered discipline has now reached the highest echelons of boardrooms and executive suites. This is a big step forward — albeit a …

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The 4 quadrants of marketing management, a 2×2 model

May 26, 2014 / Marketing Management / By Scott Brinker / 8 Comments

Having spent many years in the “conversion optimization” subdiscipline of marketing — a forerunner to what is now known as “growth hacking” in some circles — I’ve mulled over the inherent tension between innovation and optimization for a while. They’re two different mindsets. At its best, innovation is about exploring a wide range of bold, new ideas that challenge the status quo — often questioning assumptions that an organization takes for granted. Many of these …

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How The Second Machine Age will transform marketing

May 15, 2014 / Marketing Management / By Scott Brinker / 5 Comments

The incredible change we’re all experiencing these days is highly fractal. Similar patterns are emerging at many levels, and we can learn a lot by zooming in and zooming out. For instance, we can talk about how marketing technology is changing — which it is, at a phenomenal pace. But we can also go higher up and examine how marketing overall is changing. We can go even higher up and realize how businesses, industries, and …

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Adobe embraces open model for its Marketing Cloud too

May 14, 2014 / Marketing Software / By Scott Brinker / 12 Comments

The battle of the marketing clouds is heating up. Last month Oracle announced its unified Oracle Marketing Cloud, and yesterday IBM introduced ExperienceOne — both massive visions of how all the different acquisitions they’ve made in the marketing space will be stitched together into more cohesive offerings. But with all these proclamations of marketing technology nirvana, I have one overriding criterion that I look for: do they embrace an open model for third-party marketing applications? …

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Why we bet our whole company on marketing apps

May 8, 2014 / Marketing Management / By Scott Brinker / 38 Comments

Most readers of this blog know I wear two hats. I write this blog — a labor of love — but I’m also the co-founder and CTO of a marketing software company, ion interactive. However, I rarely write about my company here, because (a) I prefer to use this space to explore bigger themes in our industry, and (b) I assume that you’re here for those bigger themes too. So over six years of writing …

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Marketing Apps: The Intersection of Messages, Media, and Mechanisms

MarTech agenda announced with 14 amazing talks that illuminate marketing technology management

April 29, 2014 / Marketing Management / By Scott Brinker / 1 Comment

I’m as giddy as a kid in a candy store. With the launch of the new MarTech Conference, I’ve been given the joy of creating a program that covers the kinds of topics that I’ve always longed to see addressed in the world of marketing technology — presented by hand-picked speakers of impeccable credentials, brilliant ideas, and infectious passion for this amazing intersection of disciplines. Today, we’re announcing the agenda for the inaugural MarTech Conference …

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