Marketing Management

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 »

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 …

The Marketing Technology Manifesto Continue Reading »

Last week, I gave my talk at Search Insider Summit on the Rise of the Marketing Technologist. Based on the positive feedback I received from brands, agencies, and technology vendors alike, it apparently resonated deeply. So, first, I’d like to share the slide presentation with you: Rise of the Marketing Technologist from Scott Brinker However, since slides can’t capture the full dynamics of the presentation, I thought I would follow with an essay version of …

Rise of the Marketing Technologist Continue Reading »

Avi Dan has a great article that was published yesterday in Advertising Age, Why Brands Should Embrace Technological Change. It’s an excellent piece talking about the rapid shifts in marketing technology and encouraging CMOs to embrace the phenomenon with all their heart (and all their organizational structure). I was pleased to see him advocate for a chief marketing technologist role that would report to the CMO: CMOs must lead a number of internal changes as …

Appoint a marketing technology czar Continue Reading »

It’s a new year — a new decade — ahead. The 10’s will be a spectacular era for those of us at the intersection of marketing and technology. And before the next decade is out, there’s going to be a lot more of us in that nexus. But here on the immediate horizon, there’s the business of New Year’s resolutions. Of course, there are the obvious ones: better search engine optimization (SEO), better conversion rate …

3 New Year’s resolutions for marketing technologists in 2010 Continue Reading »

When it comes to innovation and new market opportunity — why some companies harness those forces to catapult to riches and glory, while otherwise good and strong leaders stumble and fall — the smartest guy I’ve ever met is Clay Christensen. The chart above is from an article Clay wrote a year or so ago, Innovation Killers: How Financial Tools Destroy Your Capacity to Do New Things. You might be saying, “I’m in marketing, not …

How finance hobbles marketing innovation Continue Reading »

I’ve been thinking about quintessential marketing skills and how they’re evolving. Skills can be very specific, such as “mastery of ExactTarget for newsletter email marketing”. But I’m more interested in broader skills that transcend individual projects and programs. For instance, in marketing, I’ve found that the following skills have perpetual value: empathy with customers, seeing through their eyes; a good ear for authentic, persuasive language; a good eye for compelling visual design; open-minded creativity and …

5 new skills for the future of marketing Continue Reading »

From a recent interview with Hal Varian, chief economist at Google and professor of information sciences, business, and economics at the University of California at Berkeley: We’re in the middle of a period that I refer to as a period of “combinatorial innovation.” So if you look historically, you’ll find periods in history where there would be the availability of a different component parts that innovators could combine or recombine to create new inventions. In …

Hal Varian on flexible innovation Continue Reading »

This was a fascinating week for social media and disruptive innovation in marketing. Take these 4 stories: Yesterday, eMarketer reported that people all over the world are spending more and more leisure time online, on both a daily and weekly basis. A study by TNS Global found that in 2008, US adults spent 30% of their leisure time on the Internet (in China, that number is actually 44%). In the US, the amount of time …

4 stories of disruption in marketing Continue Reading »

Forget the usual stereotypes of IT and marketing. Start with the assumption that all marketers and all IT people are smart, talented, enthusiastic, and dedicated to the success of the company, above personal preferences or departmental jockeying. They’re each very good at what they do. So why is there such legendary frustration at the intersection of the two? The Problem The gap that is the marketing/IT divide is, in my opinion, not a matter of …

Why IT and marketing are diametrically opposed Continue Reading »