Marketing Management

We were in New York this weekend, and we walked by the Apple Store on 5th Avenue. A large crowd of people had gathered around an impromptu memorial to Steve Jobs — made of post-it notes, messages on MacBook and iPad boxes, printouts of “Think Different” ads, flowers, apples. I found it touching and inspiring: A series of post-it notes spelled out this famous Apple advertisement: Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, …

Photo: make a difference by thinking differently Continue Reading »

Yesterday, I attended Forrester’s inaugural CIO-CMO Forum. Sharyn Leaver, one of the hosts from Forrester, kicked off the event by saying, “This is the first time we’ve brought CIOs and CMOs together in the same room — hope everyone comes out alive.” Nervous laughter. And so began a fascinating day of joint CIO-CMO sessions, with more than its fair share of jokes about IT and marketing stereotypes: marketing is nothing but spin and fluff, and …

Top 10 Memorable Quotes from the CIO-CMO Forum Continue Reading »

This may be inside baseball, but I am mesmerized by the drama playing out at TechCrunch right now — and I can’t help but see a metaphor for the shift of marketing within it. The short version: TechCrunch is world’s most popular tech blog, acquired last year by AOL/Huffington Post, but largely permitted to retain its editorial independence. Founder Michael Arrington, a larger-than-life character on the tech scene, stayed on. However, Mike recently announced he …

Marketing lessons from the CrunchFund controversy Continue Reading »

Not every marketer needs to be a technologist. But given how deeply technology is now entwined in modern marketing, every marketer should be familiar with the essential laws of technology that effect your strategies and operations. Here are seven laws of technology that every marketer should know — along with a few nuggets of techno-culture that make for great beer conversation with the IT department: 1. Moore’s Law The most famous technology law of all …

7 Laws of Technology for Marketers Continue Reading »

Last month, CMO.com published a terrific interview with Lisa Arthur, the CMO of marketing technology firm Aprimo, “We’re All CMOs and CIOs.” Here are a couple of excerpts (emphasis added is my own): “The first truth is that most global companies express their fundamental business strategy through IT, and customer experience falls into that,” stated Lisa. “At the same time, business success today is more about marketing than ever before. And marketing is executed through …

We’re all CMOs and CIOs today… Continue Reading »

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 …

Chief Content Officer meets marketing technologist Continue Reading »

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 …

CEOs rank technological factors higher than CIOs Continue Reading »

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 …

Put strategy and creative ahead of marketing technology Continue Reading »