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If the CMO is the new CIO – We Should All Say Uh-Oh!

If you haven’t noticed there’s great buzz afoot over a recent report where analyst Laura McLellan concluded that by 2017, the CMO will spend more on IT than the CIO.  This proclamation is going the technology/marketing wonk version of viral. Even Michael Lazerow used it in his New Beginnings post explaining why he was super-excited that Salesforce.com had purchased his company Buddy Media.

But the real point here is that most of the articles are focusing on the wrong thing.  They seem to be taking one of two points of view.

The first is that marketing is becoming technology-driven and therefore the field is opening up for huge spend by marketing departments. This seems to be the angle that Lazerow is using as a proof point of why his company’s acquisition is a smart one for SalesForce.   I think this is partially true (the spendy part) – but that successful marketing has never and will never be “technology-driven”.

The second angle is that CMO’s and CIO’s must become more aligned and more kumbaya in the way they work together.  There is a recent Fast Company article as well as a less recent CMO.com post that seem to focus here. I think this is absolutely true – but, yeah, what else is new?

I did think, however, that one point of view has captured a unique and productive perspective on this – and that was Scott Brinker over at the Chief Marketing Technologist blog.  Scott wrote about how because marketing is unlike Finance or Human Resources, that marketing technology can never be like ERP.

But to me – most of these posts miss an important point, which is WhyWhy are CMO’s spending more on technology?

Why The Shopping Spree

One of the things that I’ve been observing as I work with clients and teach workshops – is that we all know that marketing (as a business function) is fundamentally changing.  It’s always changing!  But, right now – it’s just unclear what it is exactly changing into. We all have ideas of course.  For example, I’ve been working primarily in the content marketing space watching and helping marketing departments turn more into a ‘media operation’.  But no one knows for sure.

But there are two things we can say for certain.  One is that embracing chaos and change is the new normal for the marketing department.  The second is that no CMO I’ve ever spoken to cites a “lack of technology” as a reason they are struggling.

In fact, quite the opposite – today’s marketing department is flush with software, and features and user interfaces and technology that no one uses.  Vendor feature sets overlap, and the marketing group spends its time trying to figure out which tool will solve the most immediate problem in the shortest amount of time.   Then, it’s a mad dash search to either make what they have work – or (as the report suggests) engage with, or go around, IT to acquire a new piece of technology to solve the challenge.

In short – we CMO’s and our marketing groups are the worst kind of buyer.  Because we’re trying to find our footing in this chaotic, changing world – we’re in the middle of the grocery store and we’re starving!!  We buy the bag of chips, the cookies and the ice cream and we’ve got all of them open before we even check out.

This Too Shall Pass

As marketing departments start to embrace the change and chaotic nature of “market as conversation” (it’s prerequisite to quote the ClueTrain in most blog posts) developing processes that focus on agility, flexibility and the ability to pivot quickly will be the name of the game.

So is this the end of large suites of marketing-focused products?  Absolutely not.  Core functions such as Content Management, Big Data Analytics, Social Listening, Sales Force Automation and other enterprise wide solutions that are implemented well provide efficiencies of scale across a large business.   And (yes, I repeat) implemented well, these solutions can actually be an enabler of that agility.  But, increasingly, we’ll see the need for these large solutions to have the ability to plug in pieces of technology that will support a custom, or “trendy” process on a temporary basis.

Savvy marketing departments will start to utilize conversational technology as it does creative, media tactics, channels and story.  As it continues to serve a productive purpose – feed it.  When it stops – move along and embrace the change.

So, where does that put the CMO and the CIO as buyers of technology?  Well perhaps it does mean that the CMO will ultimately spend as much or more on technology than the CIO.  But the CMO also spends more on squishy stress balls than the CIO does – and no one has any problems with that.

As the articles mentioned at the beginning rightly discuss, alignment will be key. But, that’s alignment, not capitulation.  Marketing has an historical tendency to give in to the CIO’s technology prowess.  It is incumbent upon both the CMO and the CIO to accept the responsibility, embrace change and to acknowledge the uniqueness of marketing “processes” and the acquisition of technology that facilitate them.

That is a differentiating opportunity for today’s business – the ability to change and forge into the unknown.  As the U2 Song says – “the sweetest melody is the one we haven’t heard”.


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