Scott Brinker

Insights from the explosion of marketing touchpoints

July 18, 2011 / Interviews / By Scott Brinker / 2 Comments

At the Online Marketing Summit here in Boston last week, I caught up with Steven Woods, co-founder and CTO of Eloqua. I’ve been a fan of Steven’s since his first book on the transformation of sales and marketing, Digital Body Language. He now has a new book — Revenue Engine: Why Revenue Performance Management is the Next Frontier of Competitive Advantage — that continues this discussion on the new marketing. So I took advantage of …

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Chief Content Officer meets marketing technologist

July 12, 2011 / Marketing Management / By Scott Brinker / 2 Comments

The latest issue of Chief Content Officer magazine has just been published, featuring an article by yours truly: Rise of the Marketing Technologist. Although the gist of the piece is already well-known by readers of this blog — from posts such as my marketing technologist presentation at Search Insider Summit last year — the story of how marketing’s DNA is changing continues to be refined and expanded. I was thrilled that CCO magazine felt that …

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You might be a marketing technologist if…

June 22, 2011 / Other / By Scott Brinker / 7 Comments

How do you know if you’re a marketing technologist? Well, you might be a marketing technologist if… …you regularly use three or more different web browsers. …you know that third-party cookies aren’t leftover snacks from two previous social gatherings. …you have spent weeks trying to get two different web analytics packages to report the same numbers. …when someone mentions Amazon, you think of web services, not books. …you read TechCrunch more than AdAge (but you …

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Should agencies show more -aaS?

June 21, 2011 / Agencies / By Scott Brinker / 2 Comments

First there was SaaS — software-as-a-service. Then PaaS — platform-as-a-service. Then IaaS — infrastructure-as-a-service. These days it’s EaaS — everything-as-a-service. Development-as-a-serivce (DaaS). Testing-as-a-service (TaaS). Content-as-a-service (CaaS). Social-media-as-a-service (SMaaS). I’m not making these up. Is it AaaS — anything-as-a-service? Is the right adjective for that AaaS-inine? Which made we wonder… Should agencies simply rebrand themselves as MaaS — marketing-as-a-service? “We’re not mass marketing. We’re MaaS marketing.” (A homage to homonyms.) They’d better hurry. One of their …

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CEOs rank technological factors higher than CIOs

June 10, 2011 / Marketing Management / By Scott Brinker / Leave a Comment

I recently read the report from the 2011 IBM Global CIO Study, the result of “face-to-face conversations with more than 3,000 chief information officers worldwide.” Frankly, it read a little more like an IBM sales brochure than an objective research report — kind of light on actual data. But I did find one semi-quantitative diagram to be particularly intriguing: In a study last year, IBM asked CEOs to rank the impact of external forces on …

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Google finally innovating with search ads

June 9, 2011 / Marketing Tactics / By Scott Brinker / 2 Comments

Maybe it’s the Mad Men marketer in my hybrid DNA, but I’ve always been a little underwhelmed with Google AdWords. The business model of pay-per-click (PPC) is great. The ability to scale to thousands of micro-targeted ads is great. The analytics and testing capabilities are pretty good. And, hey, major hats off to intercepting buyers at their moment of expressed “intent.” But the design canvas — trying to market to people with a maximum of …

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Is marketing becoming a math state? Is that good?

May 23, 2011 / Marketing Software / By Scott Brinker / 7 Comments

There’s a fascinating debate raging in the DigitalNext section of Ad Age that captures some of the current “culture wars” on Madison Avenue between marketers (“mad men”) and technologists (“math men”). A few weeks ago, Kendall Allen wrote a piece titled: The Dangers Of Online Advertising’s “Math State” that begins with this shot across the bow: Ever notice that in online advertising no one talks about the message? It’s all about the mechanics, how an …

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Put strategy and creative ahead of marketing technology

May 15, 2011 / Marketing Management / By Scott Brinker / 7 Comments

Where should marketing technology live in the marketing organization? I agree with Forrester’s recommendation of creating an office of marketing technology within the department — headed by a marketing CTO or chief marketing technologist, reporting to the CMO. (For smaller companies, that “office” might consist of a single marketing technologist with many hats.) But what should be marketing technology’s relationship to the rest of the marketing team? The above diagram proposes one possible structure: Leadership …

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5 Strategies for Business, Life and Really Hard Math Problems

May 13, 2011 / Marketing Management / By Scott Brinker / 4 Comments

These are remarks I’m delivering today for the Phi Beta Kappa induction ceremony at my alma mater, the School of General Studies at Columbia University. Since these five strategies come in handy in my work nearly every day, I thought I share them here as well. When I arrived at Columbia, a 30-year-old software entrepreneur with a chip on his shoulder about never finishing college, I was pretty fearless. Tackle art history, no problem. Learn …

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Forrester: Establish a marketing technology office

May 12, 2011 / Marketing Management / By Scott Brinker / Leave a Comment

A recent Forrester report on Understanding The Marketing Technology Buying Process (which is also available from Neolane) had a few exciting revelations. Their survey of 137 customer intelligence professionals — whom they see as a new breed of marketer — showed that marketing is now starting to lead the buying process for marketing technologies. I know, that probably sounds obvious — marketing leading marketing technology decisions. It’s like asking who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb? But …

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