I think a great marketing technologist should be part optimist, part pessimist. The optimist needs to indulge his or her imagination to drive the organization forward. To wonder, “what if?” To keep an open mind about new technologies and processes. To engage in the sort of creative free association and collaborative brainstorming that leads to innovation. And, most importantly, to be fearless in diving into the implementation of those ideas, making them real. The pessimist …

Marketing technologist: part optimist, part pessimist Continue Reading »

Awesome little essay by Andrew Chen from last week: Growth Hacker is the new VP Marketing. As far as I’m concerned, you can almost perfectly substitute “growth hacker” with “marketing technologist,” as much of the rationale for this new breed of marketer is the same. Here’s his opening paragraph (emphasis added is my own): The new job title of “Growth Hacker” is integrating itself into Silicon Valley’s culture, emphasizing that coding and technical chops are …

Silicon Valley Marketing Technologists: Growth Hackers Continue Reading »

One of the other points that leaped out at me in the Econsultancy/Adobe report I discussed earlier this week — Are agencies hopelessly screwed or on the verge of a spectacular Renaissance? — was the increasing challenges of finding good technical talent. Under the heading “the tech talent time bomb,” the report cites research from McKinsey that claims: “By 2018, the United States alone could face a shortage of 140,000 to 190,000 people with deep …

The tech talent time bomb in marketing Continue Reading »

Jonathon Colman, SEO marketer for REI, shared with me a deck he put together for ad:Tech, From an Army of 1 to Agile SEO Teams, which has some great insights on agile marketing. Here’s his deck: From an Army of 1 to Agile SEO Teams – adTech 2012 View more PowerPoint from Jonathon Colman At the end, he included a number of links to other resources on agile marketing (including this blog, thank you!). As …

HubSpot’s brilliant marketing organization structure Continue Reading »

There’s a punchline in there somewhere, but I’m partially serious. While everyone is coming around to the merging of marketing and technology/IT — and the value of hybrid roles to lead and operate at that intersection — the titles that people use for these roles vary tremendously. I like the phrase chief marketing technologist (a biased choice, I admit). My annual survey of marketing technology memes for 2012 favored the titles director of marketing technology, …

What do you call a marketing technologist? Continue Reading »