The Epic Collision of Marketing
& Technology by Scott Brinker @chiefmartec

Technology
Madison Avenue

How big is this technology
asteroid? A) Big B) Very Big C) OMG

Big

VERY
BIG

O
M
G

“You go marketing with the
technology you have — not the technology you might want or wish to have.”

technology management is deciding which
changes are adopted technology changes exponentially ? ? organizations change logarithmically

70% …of marketers feel that
the marketing function will fundamentally change over the next 5 years. Accenture Interactive: Turbulence for the CMO report 2013

What is driving this fundamental
change?

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2
3

1

In the beginning…
(1960)

Product 4P’s Theory Price Marketing
Mix Place Promotion

Product 4P’s Practice Price Marketing
Mix Place $$$ Promotion

But the Internet delivered a
one-two punch to the reigning promotion champ… Instant Experience 1

The distance between promotion and
product experience has collapsed to a click.

An explosion of customer experience
touchpoints.

The
Extended
Product

But the Internet delivered a
one-two punch to the reigning promotion champ… Instant Experience 1 2 Open Communication

ZMOT: Winning the Zero Moment
of Truth by Jim Lecinski

“Yeah, but we’re in B2B…”

“Big, large, glass buildings do
not buy software. People do.” – Jonathan Becher CMO, SAP

The “new” champ of the
marketing mix…

Extended Product 4P’s Revised Price
Marketing Mix Place Promotion

Develop marketing staff who think
like “product owners” more than marketing managers. A “product” might be anything that customers interact with — for instance, a website. — Interview with Ray Valez CTO of Razorfish Author of Converge http://chiefmartec.com/2013/09/front-row-merging-marketing-technology/

Customer experience is your brand.

But what are experiences made
from?

2

Fact #1: The world is
now digital.

Domo Infographic: Data Never Sleeps

Fact #1: The world is
now digital. Fact #2: Everything digital is powered by software.

“Software is eating the world.”
Why Software is Eating the World, Marc Andreessen, The Wall Street Journal, August 20, 2011

“I feel more like a
CIO than a CMO! I have marketing automation, CRM, listening platforms—I’m up to my eyeballs in technology.”

Migration from old to new
Large market Cloud Computing Migration from IT to SaaS Trackable Medium Measurable ROI Disruptive Innovation Opportunity for new players Software Economics Low cost, high margin Relatively easy to sell Low barriers to entry New Ventures Marketing Spend

Today

Mega Suites Today Backbone Platforms
with 3rd-Party “Apps”

Backbone
Platforms with
3rd-Party “Apps”

We don’t control the environment.
We don’t control the customer. We want to be differentiated. Marketing is not ERP.

Platform strategies are starting to
emerge in marketing automation. http://chiefmartec.com/2013/10/emerging-third-party-era-marketing-automation/

A Golden Age of Marketing
Software

Software is how marketing “sees”
and “touches” customers in a digital world.

Analytics shapes perceptions. Automation guides
processes. Optimization hones tactics. Listening directs engagement. Targeting defines segments. CRM structures relationships.

“He who controls the spice,
controls the universe.”

“He (or she) who controls
the software, controls the marketing.”

The King Solomon Marketing/Technology Split

We want marketers who are
also techy-savvy (and vice versa). Marketing technologists. Growth hackers. Digital strategists. Marketing operations. Data scientists. Marketing nerds.

Data from Gartner 2012, graphic
by IBM.

Technology Authority Cowboy Laggard Prisoner
Technology Expertise

Not everyone in marketing needs
to be a technologist. Just as not everyone in marketing had to be a “creative.”

Technology Finance Storytelling Design Technology
must become a part of marketing’s DNA.

21% of CEOs think technical
expertise is a top 3 CMO skill. Only 13% think agency experience is.

3

Traditional marketing management followed a
relatively well-structured, staged yearly plan. Plan Produce Deploy This is known as waterfall project management. Review It’s a predictive approach to management.

Going back up the waterfall
is not pleasant.

That is a dead marketing
plan.

Agile marketing is an approach
for adaptive marketing management. Derived from agile software development methodologies such as Scrum and Kanban.

The elements of agile marketing:
Team Process Artifacts Philosophy

This is your backlog. Update
Backlog 1 2 5 9 Write down tasks or “stories along the buyer’s journey.” 3 6 7 10 11 Prioritize them. 4 8

This is your task board.
Sprint Planning To Do 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 1 4 2 In Progress 5 3 The team takes a set of tasks—in order—that they will commit to completing in this sprint. Done

Sprint During the sprint, team
members take on tasks in order of priority. Work “in progress” is easy to see. Kanban limits work in progress. To Do In Progress Done

Sprint 1 day Every day,
the team meets for a 15-minute stand-up. Each person on the team answers three questions: Daily Stand-up 1. What did I do yesterday? 2. What am I going to do today? 3. Are there any impediments holding me back?

Sprint Review To Do In
Progress Done At the end of the sprint, the team conducts a review of the work completed. This is a good time to demo and report on progress to management. Often inspires new tasks to be added to the backlog.

Sprint Retrospective The team also
does a retrospective meeting — not about the work, but about the process and their interactions: What went well? What could have been better? What should we try next time?

The agile cycle continues…

Agile marketing isn’t about working
faster. One Long Cycle vs. Multiple Short Cycles It’s working in a more incremental and iterative fashion — to have more flexibility to adapt to feedback and changes.

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So back to that epic
collision…

Don’t think of it as
the end of the dinosaurs (it is).

Think of it as the
rise of the modern marketer.

Reach me at: sbrinker@ioninteractive.com Twitter:
@chiefmartec Co-founder & CTO ion interactive, inc. http://ioninteractive.com Blogger Chief Marketing Technologist http://chiefmartec.com