Marketing and Technology - Should your agency do both?

The conversation at breakfast this morning was where do technology and marketing intersect and what does that mean for our clients. This time the group included Mary a pragmatic CEO, Joe a former IT Director turned consultant, Don the brand guy and myself, the unabashed marketing evangelist.

We tried looking at the problem from the business point of view. “The CEO is simply trying to add shareholder value, drive greater sales and profitability,” started out Mary. Then she told us the story of another CEO she had recently met at a conference. That CEO had just finished Fred Reichheld’s book, The Ultimate Question, which convinced him that customer loyalty was a magic bullet for success.

All his company had to do was to ask their customers one question, “How likely is it that you would recommend this company to a friend or colleague?” Of course last year he was talking all about hedgehogs and big hairy, audacious goals. But that was the wisdom of a different guru. We all grinned, been there, done that, we thought, but as we buttered our bagels and started to think about the CEO and the problems his company was facing, we tried to put ourselves in their shoes and made up an imaginary dialogue between the CEO and his management team on how to drive loyalty.

The head of sales would say, “Well maybe we could do a better job of qualifying new customers to make sure the business relationship is a good fit.” The VP of marketing would say, “We need to better communicate our brand promise both within the company as well as to our customers and partners. That will make us credible and hence drive loyalty.” And the CIO might add, “There’s some great new technologies out there that will help us both communicate and collaborate with all the stakeholders better, and my team can is up to the task .”

At this point Mary almost choked on her eggs. “That never happens in the real world. The sales guy is motivated by the volume of sales, that’s how they're incented. The marketing team are all a much of wannabe artistic types who believe they are mis-understood by the rest of the organization and the CIO is worried about delivering what they’ve already committed to, let alone volunteering to take on something new.”

Both Joe and Don disagree. Joe says today’s CIOs know that their real customers are internal and if they are to succeed they need to make sure their customers, like sales and marketing, succeed as well. Don chimes in to say that while most marketing organizations are undervalued in companies today, the way to gain respect is to demonstrate ROI and good marketers know that. That’s why they're embracing more cost effective channels like the Web and email and the really smart ones are figuring out how to use user-generated content, the meat of Web 2.0, to harness the least expensive and most effective tools, like word of mouth.

Joe shoots back and says that marketers can’t do any of that without technology. Everyone around the table nods in agreement and then it dawns on us. What if we offered our clients not only brilliant strategy and kick-ass creative, but could actually build the systems that enable this kind of technology-enabled marketing. And Mary adds, “Of course we can’t forget about being able to deliver on the reporting, metrics and analysis that guides the optimization of all three, the marketing strategy, creative execution and technology enablement.”

“But that’s not where the money is,” said Don, trying to bring us back to reality. Most marketing spend is still on traditional advertising, even Amazon.com sends out flyers in the Sunday paper.

“But don’t you remember hearing about Jim Stengle, the Global Marketing Officer from P&G, say that the traditional mass marketing model was broken, the future of marketing lay in attracting consumers, not in targeting them. And that was back in 2004,” I finally spoke up and joined the fray. “Recently, Ad Age magazine named the Mentos and Diet Coke video on YouTube, ‘The most important piece of consumer content of 2006’ and the mint in question enjoyed a 15% spike in sales, all at no cost and almost instant global reach.” By that time I was getting pretty animated and almost knocked over the last of the orange juice. “It’s not where agencies are today that counts, it’s where the market is going,” I insisted. “We’re not trying to re-create the wheel, just make it a little rounder.”

The bill came and Mary, the CEO paid it as usual. We weren’t sure we had found the answer to world peace, but at least we had a good breakfast and re-enforced our decision to make sure our agency was as rooted in technology as it was marketing. If for no other reasons, then our clients like only having to write one check.
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