Marketing Management

This is both an anniversary post and a state-of-the-market update. Three years ago, I launched this blog to focus on marketing technology — and perhaps more importantly — the new professionals emerging at that intersection, marketing technologists. At the time, I did a quick Google search for a couple of phrases: “chief marketing technologist” and “director of marketing technology” to see how popular those job titles were. Both terms predated my blog, although neither was …

Got marketing technologists? 1,000-fold growth Continue Reading »

Aaron Levie, the CEO of co-founder of Box.net — and a self-acknowledged purveyor of “shadow IT” — wrote a terrific post for the Fortune Tech blog on CNNMoney.com today: To save the IT department, blow up the IT department. On a daily basis, a select group of individuals are making technology decisions on behalf of their entire organization. They’re implementing services to solve real business problems, sometimes under the guidance of their IT department, but …

Box.net CEO: The new reality of IT lives outside IT Continue Reading »

Paul Dunay listed the rise of the marketing technologist as one of his 11 B2B Marketing Predictions for 2011. “Marketers for the last few years have been closet techno geeks, and it’s time for them to rise up — companies need digitally fluent marketers who can apply technologies to make marketing more measurable and scientific.” Hear, hear! So starting in 2011, I’d like to put a spotlight on these rising stars and launch a series …

Interview request for marketing technologists Continue Reading »

If ever you wanted evidence of just how sweeping and fragmented “marketing” is, try making a list of every kind of marketing out there. It starts simple enough, with search marketing, email marketing, product marketing, viral marketing — next thing you know, you have over a hundred terms! Inspired by a conversation with my friend Mark Kapij, I decided to put together such a list. To keep it somewhat manageable, I decided to only include …

131 different kinds of marketing Continue Reading »

Mary Meeker, the renowned Internet analyst at Morgan Stanley, just gave her presentation on Internet trends at the Web 2.0 Summit. Mary’s presentations are legendary because of the clear, data-driven insights she brings to what is a huge and highly chaotic market space. In this presentation, she posed 10 questions that Internet executives should ask and answer. The one I found most interesting was #4: Advertising. She advocates that advertising is still ripe for innovation …

50 billion reasons for marketing innovation Continue Reading »

“Shouldn’t all marketers be marketing technologists?” That’s a comment I’ve been hearing more frequently. One of the more interesting objections to my case for a chief marketing technologist is, “Shouldn’t the CMO be the chief marketing technologist?” I think there are two separate ideas being confounded here: 1. Marketers who are technology savvy. 2. Technologists who apply their skills in marketing. I know, that might sound like a subtle, nit-picky distinction. But there’s a big …

Marketing technologists make fire Continue Reading »

Caron Carlson, editor of FierceCIO, just posted Letting Marketing Handle Its IT, Part 2, continuing the discussion started last week. (See my post on governance vs. management in marketing technology.) Caron highlights some of the comments left by readers to part 1 and draws her conclusion in the last two paragraphs of this new editorial: A comment by CIO Christine W. sums it up well. In her company, she writes, all technologies require her approval …

IT dictators in an age of marketing democracy Continue Reading »

My recent article in InformationWeek — on why the marketing technology genie isn’t going back into the IT bottle — has stirred a few lively responses. Caron Carlson, editor of FierceCIO — got to love that name, especially walking into a debate about the future of marketing technology — responded with an editorial to her readers, Are you ready to let marketing handle its own IT? One of her concerns is my suggestion that, while …

Governance vs. management in marketing technology Continue Reading »

InformationWeek just published a guest article of mine, Why Marketing Should Run Its Own Technology. While I’ve been advocating greater technology leadership to marketers for a while, this is my first attempt to “reach across the aisle” and make my case directly to the IT community. Always up for a lively conversation, I don’t pull any punches, describing three structural differences in this new era of technology-driven marketing that I believe will limit IT’s ability …

Why the marketing technology genie isn’t going back into the IT bottle Continue Reading »

Earlier this week I had the honor of presenting at Pivot, a new conference in New York City hosted by Chris Shipley (see 5 reasons to be excited about Pivot). My talk: The Case for a Chief Marketing Technologist. It sparked a number of interesting conversions, both at the conference and around a wonderful article that was written about it on Mashable, Should Your Company Have a Chief Marketing Technologist? I’ll follow up on some …

Advocating marketing technology leadership at Pivot Continue Reading »