Marketing Management

Normally, I don’t write about career moves on this blog. But an article that appeared in Ad Age this week about the upcoming departure of famed McDonald’s CMO Silvia Lagnado — and the company’s decision to not name a new CMO — caught my attention. Another CMO role disappearing is newsworthy — that’s been emerging as a trend lately. But what really caught my attention was how they’re filling the gap: they’re promoting two VPs …

McDonald’s drops CMO role and creates a new SVP marketing technology role (under the CIO) Continue Reading »

You can’t escape Amazon in the digital economy. Now a trillion-dollar company, they have disrupted diverse sectors from retail to software development with a deftness and drive that’s admirable and alarming. They actually seem to be speeding up their rate of innovation as they scale, defying the Law of Large Companies that causes giants to get dragged down by their own girth. How do they manage that? A week ago at the MIT Platform Strategy …

Want to innovate like Amazon? Here’s their formula Continue Reading »

Last week, I staked the claim that “martech is marketing.” Whatever you think of martech and its relationship to marketing at large — or what you believe its relationship should be — it’s hard to deny that it’s not a part of marketing’s domain. Love it or hate it, marketing technology is entangled in the practice of modern marketing. The question is simply to what degree. There’s actually quite a range of possibilities for what …

Martech is marketing, kind of like fixing things is home ownership Continue Reading »

“Martech is marketing.” The MarTech conference recently updated its tagline to that phrase, evolving beyond our original motto, “Marketing. Technology. Management.” It’s not that the conference itself changed. But since we launched the event five years ago, the context in which it operates — the profession of marketing — sure has. Over that time, the landscape of marketing technology has grown from around 1,000 vendors to over 7,000. But that’s more of an expression of …

Martech is marketing: a wide spectrum of possibilities Continue Reading »

Wow, now that’s an infographic! I’m excited to share with you the agenda for the MarTech, taking place in Boston, September 16-18. If you want to learn how to leverage technology effectively as a marketing leader, this conference was designed for you. As an all-access ticket holder, you’ll be able to participate in the full program: all five keynotes 24 educational sessions — in three editorial tracks of Technology & Operations, Data & Analytics, and …

Check out the agenda for MarTech and reserve an early bird “alpha” ticket Continue Reading »

We’re almost ready to publish the full agenda for the next MarTech conference in Boston this fall, September 16-18. But in advance of that, I’ve just got to share with you the four amazing people who will be keynoting the event with me — I’m giddy with excitement: Cesar Brea, Partner, Bain & Company You know that scene in The Matrix, when Neo downloads martial arts training straight into his brain, and he says in …

4 amazing keynotes you won’t want to miss at MarTech in Boston this fall Continue Reading »

Back in the early days of martech, there was an apocryphal statistic that most marketers only used about 15% of the capabilities of their marketing automation systems. (I heard this stat thrown about for years, but googling suggests that SiriusDecisions published it officially in 2013.) Marketers would buy these sophisticated tools, but then just keep pumping out the same old batch-and-blast emails to their entire list. A research study in 2015 showed that, even years …

Martech stack utilization is a misguided metric (when it’s disconnected from value) Continue Reading »

In my never-ending quest to bring martech nerdiness to new heights — or depths — I played around with a few of these “adaptations” of Shakespeare on LinkedIn and Twitter a couple of weeks ago. Not exactly in iambic pentameter, I’m afraid. Enough people seemed amused that I decided to post them here. My apologies to the Bard. (And to you, dear reader.) (Yeah, I’ve been thinking a lot about platforms and integrations in martech …

#ShakespeareSunday #MarTech Edition Continue Reading »

Christopher Douglas runs the Triangle Marketing Club, an energetic community of marketers (and students planning to become marketers) in Raleigh, North Carolina. He’s one of those dynamic “connectors,” always bringing people together and enthusiastically plumbing helpful intersections between them. Last year, he invited me to speak to their group about the 5 disruptions to marketing that I believe are changing marketing as we know it — and to partake in some absolutely delicious fried chicken. …

An intimate evening discussion about five marketing disruptions (video) Continue Reading »

Every MarTech conference is always a whirlwind of insights and ideas. It usually takes me a couple of weeks after the event to synthesize what my key takeaways were from the event. Here are five that have resonated deeply with me — with huge thanks to Katie Kelly for giving me permission to share her awesome sketch notes that illustrate these beautifully. 1. Building High-Performing Martech Teams Patty Spiller, senior director of growth marketing at …

5 MarTech takeaways: teams, product management, decentralization, marketing leadership, IT governance Continue Reading »