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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 »
Just read a great article in the MIT Sloan Management Review, The Secrets of Marketing in a Web 2.0 World. The authors interviewed more than 30 executives and managers in both large and small organizations that are at the forefront of experimenting with Web 2.0 tools in marketing and came up with a set of emerging principles for marketing: Don’t just talk at consumers — work with them throughout the marketing process. Give consumers a …
Let me state right up front: I am an advocate of scientific marketing. Just in case there’s any doubt as you read on. Marketing ideas should be tested and one should apply the scientific method to those tests. Most of marketing is now measurable, directly or indirectly. With digitally produced and distributed marketing — particularly channels such as search engine marketing, online advertising, email marketing, post-click marketing, and web site optimization — it’s often practical …
Marketing as a science, but science is a creative endeavor Continue Reading »
What is the role of a chief marketing technologist? Short version: a chief marketing technologist (CMT) is the person responsible for leading an organization’s marketing technology. A company may or may not be a “technology” business, but in today’s world it needs to deftly leverage technology in its marketing to: optimize its marketing strategy and tactics; interface with its audience through digital channels. In a wired world, marketing must be technology-savvy for a business to …
Every profession has its vernacular, the insider lingo that serves as both a shortcut and a sort of secret handshake. Acronyms and abbreviations are often the epitome of such jargon, inscrutable to those outside the club. (“Fix the DNS with the new IP for your SaaS CRM ASAP — think of the SLA!”) But some rare abbreviations bring grace and beauty to an otherwise jumbled stack of industry terms. One of my favorite has always …
I have spent most of my working life at the intersection of marketing and technology. I’ve been on both sides of the fence, with a background as a software engineer and platform architect on one side and many years of experience in product marketing (and enough corporate marketing to be dangerous) on the other. I’ve consulted separately with marketing departments and IT departments, for small start-ups and the Fortune 500. But by far the most …
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