Scott Brinker

Will your next marketing manager be a bot?

October 10, 2012 / Marketing Software / By Scott Brinker / 2 Comments

Do you think computers and software could run marketing as well as humans? Or better? Skeptics and humanists — which describes my leanings on this subject, even though I’m a technologist by trade — may reflexively answer “no.” The complex organizational and psychological facets of marketing — a discipline renown for creativity and imagination — seems like it would defy the purely mechanical capabilities of computation. That’s true today. But if you doubt the potential …

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He who controls the software, controls the marketing (video)

October 9, 2012 / Agencies / By Scott Brinker / 2 Comments

Here’s the video recording of my CreateTech presentation last month introducing marketing technologists to creative technologists. Unfortunately, the sound level is a little low and the slides aren’t in the video, but feel free to follow along with the deck below: Creative Technologists Meet Marketing Technologists from Scott Brinker

Creative technologists: meet marketing technologists

September 20, 2012 / Agencies / By Scott Brinker / Leave a Comment

I had the pleasure of speaking this week at CreateTech, a conference run by the 4A’s (America Association of Advertising Agencies). The gist of my talk was to introduce creative technologists — who work primarily in agencies — to the marketing technology movement that’s happening in marketing departments at brands. Those of you who are already familiar with the my talks about the rise of the marketing technologist will find much of this to be …

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3 different futures for marketing technology

September 17, 2012 / Marketing Software / By Scott Brinker / 3 Comments

My post from last week — is marketing technology consolidating or diversifying — resonated with the folks at HubSpot, and they invited me to contribute a few thoughts on that subject to their blog. The result: Will Marketing Technology Look Like iOS Someday? As illustrated in the graphic above, we consider three possible futures for marketing technology: Diversified with no real center of gravity (kind of what we have today), on the left. Consolidated into …

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BI and marketing should be peanut butter and jelly (interview)

September 14, 2012 / Interviews / By Scott Brinker / Leave a Comment

If you were to take a poll of the hot topics in marketing these days, “social media” and “big data” would both be top contenders. So when the folks at Viralheat, a provider of social media marketing software (covered in TechCrunch earlier this year), invited me to interview their Director of Business Intelligence, Erin Robbins O’Brien, on her perspective of “big data” and marketing, the hard part was narrowing my list of questions. Tell us …

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Gartner: 72% have a “chief marketing technologist” today

September 12, 2012 / Marketing Management / By Scott Brinker / Leave a Comment

Laura McLellan, a research VP at Gartner, caused quite a stir at the beginning of this year when she boldly predicted that by 2017, CMOs will spend more on IT than CIOs. Exclaims of, “Really?!?!,” echoed among marketing and IT professionals alike for months thereafter. But the evidence was compelling, and those of us working in the marketing technology space have been witnessing this trend first-hand. Now, Laura is back with even more research to …

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Is marketing technology consolidating or diversifying?

September 11, 2012 / Marketing Software / By Scott Brinker / Leave a Comment

Is marketing technology consolidating or diversifying? Every few weeks it seems like we see a new round of marketing technology acquisitions, especially from Oracle, Adobe, IBM, Salesforce.com, Google. For example, Google’s recent acquisition of Wildfire. There are certainly plenty of anecdotes to support the narrative that marketing technology is consolidating. At the same time, however, the pages of TechCrunch, VentureBeat, PandoDaily, GigaOm, etc., are constantly pumping out announcements of new ventures launching in this space. …

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Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic (2012)

September 5, 2012 / Marketing Software / By Scott Brinker / 41 Comments

UPDATE: The 2020 Marketing Technology Landscape is now available. Marketing is in a whirlwind of technological innovation. It’s thrilling, inspiring, and a little dizzying. Last year, I made the first version of a marketing technology landscape infographic to try to glimpse the “big picture” of this broad field. I’m pleased to now share with you the all-new 2012 version of this supergraphic above (click to open a large version that’s actually readable). Its purpose is …

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CMO should focus on process, content, and skills (interview)

September 4, 2012 / Interviews / By Scott Brinker / Leave a Comment

Marketo is one of the leading providers of marketing automation software. “No IT” was one of their early selling points, and I remember thinking at the time that represented a major inflection point in marketing’s relationship with technology. So I was excited to have the opportunity to interview Jon Miller, their VP of Marketing Content and Strategy, on the impact they’ve seen technology have in the marketing department over the past 6 years. Here’s his …

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“We want to test bold, new ideas that always work.”

August 30, 2012 / Marketing Management / By Scott Brinker / 3 Comments

Nobody likes to see their idea lose. Everybody wants straight A’s. Look good for the boss. It’s the Lake Wobegon effect: all the children are above average. (If you don’t appreciate that joke, take this pop quiz.) So at some level it’s not surprising that survey data of Fortune 1,000 marketers from the CEB Marketing Leadership Council shows that only 50% of marketers agree or strongly agree with the statement: “My team accepts that some …

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