Published

I’m the author of the book Hacking Marketing: Agile Practices to Make Marketing Smarter, Faster, and More Innovative published by Wiley.

My goal was to help marketers at all levels — even those with no technical background or inclination — adapt marketing management to the wild and wonderful whirlwind of a world now dominated by software.

My underlying thesis: as marketing becomes more and more entangled in software — as everything becomes more and more digital — the art of managing marketing increasingly resembles the art of managing software.

For most people, that probably sounds a little strange. After all, marketers and software developers have historically been on opposite ends of the career spectrum.

But when you realize that marketers are now paddling water up to their chins in websites (software), analytics (software), social media (software), marketing automation (software), interactive content (software), mobile apps (software), and so on, it starts to seem obvious. Software has eaten the world — and marketing too.

And this is actually a really good thing.

Software gives us the potential to innovate and scale marketing in highly agile ways that defy the conventional laws of gravity as we knew them in the classical marketing universe.

But it’s like the leap from Newtonian physics to quantum mechanics — the “rules” of what’s possible are different and can feel a little counterintuitive. To effectively harness the digital forces of software, we must not only innovate what we produce in marketing, but innovate how we produce it too.

If this sounds intriguing to you, you can download the introduction, table of contents, and first chapter of Hacking Marketing as a free PDF.

Here are several of the amazing marketing leaders — many of my heros — who graciously reviewed Hacking Marketing and offered these remarks:

“Hacking Marketing provides a brilliant road map on how to evolve the capability and culture of marketing practices using parallels from the most disruptive industry in the world, the software industry.”
– Ram Krishnan, SVP & CMO, PepsiCo

“Hacking Marketing not only creates a compelling model for how to think about the intersection of marketing and our digital world, it helped me re-think the way I approach my role as a CMO.”
– John L. Kennedy, CMO, Xerox Corporation

“Marketing success is based on the experience it delivers, and now Scott Brinker lays out a terrific manifesto about how to rethink the operations underlying it”
– David C. Edelman, Principal, McKinsey & Company

“A must-read operating manual for CMOs who want to lead in the digital age.”
– Ajay Agarwal, Managing Director, Bain Capital Ventures

“An original take on how the management of marketing must transform to keep pace with our increasingly digital world.”
– Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer, MarketingProfs

“An inspiring read for anyone who wants to master the art and science of modern marketing management.”
– Mayur Gupta, SVP and Head of Digital, Healthgrades

“Scott shows how great marketing management today is closer to modern software development than the marketing of yesterday and helps marketers understand how to incorporate those principles to succeed.”
– Rishi Dave, CMO, Dun & Bradstreet

Harvard Business Review: Rise of the Chief Marketing Technologist

I wrote an article in collaboration with Laura McLellan, The Rise of the Chief Marketing Technologist, that was featured in the July-August 2014 issue of Harvard Business Review, part of their spotlight focus on “the new marketing organization.”

It describes the basic framework of the role and the forces that are motivating the growth of hybrid marketing/technology executives, and it also provides short vignettes of five real-world marketing technologists.

In addition, there are a number of other venues where I’ve had articles published on the subject of marketing-technology intersections and innovations, including:

• TechCrunch — Interactive Content Can Save Content Marketing From The Dark Side
• Brand Quarterly — What Marketers Can Learn From Software Developers
• Copyblogger — Why Interactive Content May Be the Most Exciting Marketing Tactic of 2015
• AdAge — The Case for a Chief Marketing Technologist
• InformationWeek — Why Marketing Should Run Its Own Technology
• Chief Content Officer — Breaking the 4th Wall with Interactive Content Marketing
• Chief Content Officer — Why Your Content Marketing Team Needs a Marketing Technologist
• Chief Content Officer — Rise of the Marketing Technologist
• Adweek — An Open Letter to the CEO of WPP
• IDG CMO (Australia) — Why today’s CMO will be tomorrow’s CEO
• IDG CMO (Australia) — If you’re not in charge of digital, you’re not in charge of marketing
• Chief Marketer — Big Data is Good — But Big Testing is Better
• CMS Wire — 2014: The Year Agile Marketing Takes Off

I contributed a chapter to the book Multi-channel Marketing Ecosystems, edited by Markus Stahlberg and Ville Maila.

As part of their promotion for the book, the publisher has agreed to let me distribute a PDF of my chapter that discusses software as the new fabric of marketing — Software-driven marketing ROI. Click the previous link or the image to the right to download your free copy (no registration required).

Others have also covered my evangelism of this subject, including:

• Forbes — Agile Marketing Is Like Riding a Bike
• CMO.com — How CMOs Can Reconcile The “Change Gap”
• Mashable — Should Your Company Have a Chief Marketing Technologist
• ITSMA — Why Marketing Needs a Chief Technologist
• Online Marketing Institute — Managing Marketing Technology: 5 Questions with Scott Brinker
• MarketingProfs — Marketing Smarts Podcast: Why You Need a Marketing Technologist
• Six Pixels of Separation — The Time Is Ripe for a Chief Marketing Technologist
• MarketingSherpa — Chief Marketing Technologist: Finding the Right Person to Connect Powerful Tools with Effective Campaigns
• MediaPost — Evolving on the Fly: Growth Hackers, Agile Marketers, Bayesian Strategists and CMTs
• Content Marketing Institute — Why Your Brand Marketing Needs a Chief Marketing Technologist
• Forrester — Savvy CMOs Must Steer Their Marketing Technology Decisions In The Right Direction
• FierceContentManagement — Marketing technologist could act as bridge between CMO, CIO
• CMS Wire — CIO Reports to CMO: Technology Under Marketing?

I also write a monthly column on Marketing Land (previously on Search Engine Land) on conversion optimization, post-click experiences, marketing experimentation and testing, and related topics. A few of my favorite columns over the past few years have included:

• Marketing Technologists Are The Secret Weapon Of Conversion Optimization
• The Artist Formerly Known As The Marketing Funnel
• The Quintessential Marketer Scientist
• 4 Principles of Marketing as a Science
• Why Big Testing Will Be Bigger Than Big Data
• The Art of Seductive Landing Pages
• Death to the Cliché Landing Page
• Why Your Content Marketing Needs to Be More Active
• Who’s Afraid of the Big Bold Test?
• Have You Adopted Agile Marketing Yet?
• 4 Principles of Conversion Content Marketing
• The READY Conversion Optimization Framework
• The 5 Rings of Conversion Optimization

And, of course, I also contribute posts to ion interactive’s blog, which I might add contains many great pieces from some of the most amazing post-click marketing experts I know.