You are what you eat. You are the company you keep. And now a new maxim: You are the software you use. Like all great maxims, of course, that’s more than a little overstated. But now that software and technology underlie almost everything we do — inside our our organizations, as well as in the media and vehicles we use to engage with prospects and customers in the outside world — it’s important to appreciate …
I have a non-green confession to make: I love paper plates. Paper plates, paper napkins, plastic forks and knives. They’re always fresh and clean. Bring them outdoors on a picnic, no worries of losing or breaking anything. Blithely sully them with cheeseburger and chili dog, potato salad and watermelon — and then simply throw them away. No cleaning, no optimizing the dishwasher. It’s an absolute miracle of modern living. Now, while I’ve curbed my desire …
My friends, marketing software has officially become Big Business. Last Friday, IBM announced its acquisition of enterprise marketing software company Unica for $480 million. Combined with their August 2 acquisition of web analytics leader Coremetrics (for an undisclosed metric ton) and their May 24 announcement to acquire Sterling Commerce (for $1.4 billion) — along with its own WebSphere web application software — IBM has quite quickly assembled a premier enterprise marketing management (EMM) software portfolio. …
Adobe, IBM and the big business of marketing software Continue Reading »
I believe marketing must lead its own technology. As detailed in my presentation Rise of the Marketing Technologist, I think marketing departments need marketing technologists on staff, led by a marketing CTO who reports to the CMO. It’s the only prayer marketing has in a world where technology is infused into every medium and message, operating and innovating at Google speed. Predictably, this is not a popular view in the IT department. IT’s self-identity for …
Marketers love data. Web analytics, behavioral targeting, social media monitoring, audience measurement, and ever-expanding CRMs are all testament to the demand for more data about prospects and customers. But that kind of data flows one-way: from the outside world into marketing. However, a new way of marketing with data is emerging that heralds a more significant shift for marketing — and for the web itself. It’s about reversing the flow, having marketing publish data to …
What’s the best way to scale marketing? When marketing grows beyond one person, how do you divide up the work? This is one of the key strategic decisions the CMO makes, as the architecture of the marketing organization shapes its strengths and weaknesses. As my operations professor at MIT often said, “structure dictates behavior.” The most common way of organizing marketing has been a hybrid of three kinds of divide-and-conquer approaches: by product (and overall …
The winds of change are blowing through IT, and it’s not a gentle summer breeze. Earlier this month, Hewlett-Packard announced they were cutting 9,000 IT jobs. They’re consolidating their data centers and making them far more automated, as more advanced software and hardware eliminates the need for so many hands-on system and network administrators. This isn’t a case of HP shutting down a business. They’re still going strong as a provider of IT infrastructure services …
The cloud threatens creative destruction for IT Continue Reading »
Forgive me for this rant, but I hope this will be helpful as an example of how short-sighted, overly aggressive marketing optimization techniques can backfire with long-term brand damage. I’ve been a register.com customer for about 10 years now. I know, some of you will instantly point out that they’re one of the most expensive domain registrars out there. I’ve known that in the back of my head for a while. But I don’t register …
When marketing optimization feels like extortion Continue Reading »
Razorfish just released a great new report, Nimble: Publishing in the Digital Age, written by Rachel Lovinger. The target audience is clearly large publishers and mega media companies, but there are important trends here that are relevant to everyone who thinks of distributing content on the web — e.g., anyone in marketing. The three key points that pop out to me — particularly because I keep seeing them in a lot of posts and discussions …
3 nimble trends changing content and marketing Continue Reading »
I continue to receive terrific feedback about my presentation and essay on the rise of the marketing technologist — thank you to everyone who has contributed comments, anecdotes, and ideas. The pent up desire for marketing to take control of its technological destiny is clearly bursting at the seams. You’ve inspired me to take that 3,000 word essay and 54 slide presentation and try to boil it down to its essence, in 153 words. In …
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