Geoff Wolf, EVP Client Strategy
“Marketing is rapidly becoming one of the most technology-dependent functions in business.”
In 2012, consulting firm Gartner predicted that by 2017, a company’s chief marketing officer will be spending more on technology than its chief information officer.” (Harvard Business Review, July-August 2014)
Wow, technology expense as a variable marketing cost is quite a concept!
It is now 2017, and the HBR story goes on to say that a “Chief Marketing Technologist” is part strategist, part creative director, part technology leader and part teacher. I would add to that another very important part: “tactical marketing guru.”
Combining that rather unexpected technology spending statement with the parts that make up CMT job responsibilities brings me to ask this: Is it a wise choice for a marketing budget to include money for the technology of communication between the strategic, creative, technologies and marketing teams? I think so.
A technology budget is valid as a marketing expense to the degree that it enables better communication. Money is wisely spent on tools necessary to enable different teams in different places to share a common understanding of the brand story that makes a business unique and helps it stand out from its competition. While the different places could be offices within a single site or across miles with off-premise resources, technology offers more effective communication methods than email and text messaging with all their attachments.
The key here is that actually seeing each other’s expressions and hearing each other’s voices is a far, far more powerful communication method. This is especially true when it comes to how a marketing team communicates a brand story. The degree of passion and feeling that emanates from a brand story starts with the merchandise and should infuse everything, even in seemingly disconnected marketing tasks like catalog circulation and email deployment.
Let’s look at an example of how a technology-enabled “in-person” meeting can benefit marketing success. A top-down process for catalog circulation usually provides the circulation planners with one of two scenarios. In the first case (my personal preference), executives present their vision of breakeven values or contribution per order metrics to the catalog circulation team with instructions to develop a plan that stays close to these expectations. This usually conveys the message not to lose money or gives a green light to spend a few bucks to acquire a customer. The second case is that the circulation team is given a fixed budget and told they need to optimize that marketing “allowance.” But the catalog circulation manager is rarely, if ever, exposed to a merchant—to some extent, that team is operating blind.
What if we were open to an entirely different dimension of the planning process?
What if the circulation planners were present at a merchandise turnover meeting where the merchant presents a new product line and shares their excitement and passion for a product story? Further, say the products are about staying warm and feeling cozy and that will become the theme for the catalog pages. An experienced circulation team hears this and immediately starts thinking about some data overlays that can target the list selection they will be serving up. Cooler geographic locations come to mind, along with data modeling attributes targeting brands and products that own the “coziness and good feelings” product market. If the technology was present, the only additional cost for the circulation team to be able to feel the merchant’s passion first-hand would be to join a team video conference. Just a few moments would be worth so much more than an email attachment blandly stating that “new quilts” are the product focus of the next catalog version.
In fact, an experienced circulation person should already be asking questions and insisting on being included in the meetings where the merchants and creative directors get a glimpse of this kind of information. It is a win-win for the brand when those team members responsible for targeting lists are part of the process from the beginning. Technology-driven meetings can make this happen very, very efficiently by allowing the tactical people to participate in a catalog “turnover” meeting, even for only 15-30 minutes when appropriate.
This technology could be used effectively for a targeted “welcome series” email campaign. The whole point of a welcome series is to immediately make the new customer “feel” the brand story and purpose. Imagine if the tactical email team was invited to dial into the same merchandise turnover meeting and experience the passion of warm and cozy quilts. The way my mind works is to capture the passion on a video and embed that into the welcome series so the new customer can “feel the love!” Who is better equipped to present the heart and soul of a brand than the people who develop the merchandise? With technology, they do not even have to schedule an extra meeting to do it!
Those who work in the trenches are actually always thinking like CMTs, even without the title, but they are rarely invited to the party. Technology spending is taking over all of our budgets and we need to have an open mind about the best, most effective ways to direct this new budgeting reality.
Here at J.Schmid, we exist in both a creative and a tactical space daily. Part of our minds develop the vision and the other part deploys it. I guess we have split personalities in this regard—and that is a good thing when it comes to marketing.
Need some marketing technology therapy? Give Geoff Wolf, EVP Client Strategy, a call at 913-236-2401 or email geoffw@jschmid.com
