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Modern Marketing’s Toughest Culture Gap

Years of working closely with marketers in all sizes of companies has led me to realize that there’s a serious problem out there. It’s this: 95% of today’s marketers can no longer write a complete marketing plan for their products or companies.

They’re used to working at some level with brochures, print ads, TV commercials, data sheets, and the like. And they’ve learned to use (or live with) pretty static websites, CRM (it’s something Sales use for their stuff), flash animations for that extra special touch, sporadic email marketing campaigns and the occasional banner ad.

But they don’t know much about more recent inventions such as adserving, systematic email campaigns, search engine strategies, viral marketing and the like. Yet, for most businesses, these recent inventions are the most efficient and effective place to put their marketing dollars.

Why don’t they know much about the fastest-growing piece of the marketing cake? Because:
- Many marketing professionals still aren’t aware of the impact of the Web on the present and future of their businesses
- No one has created an overview of advanced marketing tools that puts things into useful perspective
- It’s not taught well enough in business schools
- There are few follow-up courses for people already in business
- Many marketers are reluctant to leave safe ground and dip their feet in new waters

I believe that professional marketers should be able to write complete, effective business plans that draw upon many of the insights and tools available today. But it’s not as easy as reading a few books or attending hands-on courses in various aspects of digital marketing. There’s a deeper problem to be solved first.

I like to think of today’s marketers as falling into one of two basic categories: traditional marketers and "marketing engineers". Traditional marketers:

- Go for most marketing professionals
- Are strongly represented in B2B companies
- Think in terms of branding and mass marketing
- Like to focus on visuals and emotive messages
- Prefer not to work with numbers or technology
- Buy into things that have an emotional pull
- Focused on the heart of the consumer
- Sell the sizzle, not the sausage
- Understand the nature of man – greed, fear, etc.
- Think in terms of people’s aspirations

Traditional marketers know what moves peoples’ hearts but they usually can’t or don’t want to put their efforts into systematic marketing. They stay within their comfort zones, venturing out only to grab a particular one-off tool such as Flash animations to "do something innovative" before retreating quickly to their poetic universe. Fine and good, but this large group of marketers is coming under increasing pressure from top management to be more accountable, to deliver results.

At the same time, there are a number of forces changing the playing field. Just a few of them are:

- Technology is changing the market
- Social networks have become more diverse
- Globalization is changing the face of segmentation and reach
- Outsourcing is making complex marketing far more achievable
- Purchasers base decisions on trusted advisors – people like themselves
- New response times
- The ability to track what happens
- Data-driven marketing
- Measurement of results
- Increased speed of competitive entry
- Increased speed of business model change, taking established businesses by surprise

For traditional marketers, branding has long been king. The bursting of the dotcom bubble revealed the folly of this blind belief. It was the peak of emotion-driven, non-results-oriented nonsense. Branding (focused on differentiation + awareness) had become the objective - an end in itself.

Start-up companies focused on being unique, on being seen by the masses, at the expense of sound business models. An absurd example is an American company (whose name escapes me) which ran a series of TV commercials featuring a gerbil being shot out of a cannon and into a brick wall. Attention-grabbing, yes. But few remembered the company or what it was offering. For many companies, marketing became the essence of everything; everything relied on the success of building the brand. The message and its positioning were the primary focal points.

The traditional marketing mindset screwed up the potential of dotcom companies, necessitating a marked shift in thinking before web-based business could become broadly viable. Traditional marketing thinking saw websites as computer-based brochures. It saw emails as electronic letters. It saw the online world as a mere digital version of the offline world.

It was a time when traditional marketing thinking was exposed to a tough acid test.
And the world soon found out that the intuitive, non-data-driven approach of marketing couldn’t deliver. Branding wasn’t the answer to everything, after all.
I now believe, in fact, that traditional marketing mindset fuelled the creation and subsequent crash of many dotcom companies.

The new wave of marketers are engineers by nature. They were born in the hard-selling, entrepreneurial world of IT. When the Internet/IT bubble burst, they were looking for new areas to move to, taking their online skills and understanding of technology with them.

They think like engineers:
- Problem/solution-oriented
- Data-driven
- Tech savvy
- Model-driven
- Systematic
- Results-oriented
- Not people-oriented
- Process-oriented
- System-oriented
- Control freaks

They use hi-tech tools such as blogs, Podcasts, analytical tools, etc., seeing such tools as miraculous opportunities rather than (as traditional marketers might) bothersome technology.

They talk about "tag clouds" and other terms that mean very little to other people. But what is really interesting is that they are beating traditional marketers at their own game. Take one of the world’s largest headset manufacturers, for example. When a small group of IT department employees decided that the marketing department wasn’t tackling the task right, they were determined to apply their systematic, technology-oriented approach to getting the job done. They said: we can do this marketing thing better - we can solve these problems faster, cheaper, more systematically, with better results. Using the IT budget, they set up a technology-based marketing system, made it available to the marketing managers of the company’s many subsidiaries and starting getting results far in excess of those previously achieved by the marketing department.

Of course, the skills of such marketing engineers aren’t applicable across the range of marketing tasks - they suck at creative, for example. The IT guys mentioned above left that up to each subsidiary’s advertising agencies. That’s not saying that marketing engineers aren’t creative - they often create highly innovative solutions - but that they find it difficult to focus on emotional factors when creating their solutions. You could say they are strong on systems but weak on the message.

Where do the two types of marketers meet? Typically, in situations where the engineer is an online services provider of some kind, perhaps selling email marketing, adserving, search engine optimization, or even just Flash animations. The traditional marketer is the customer - a product manager or marketing manager.

Most often, they talk entirely different languages. Marketing engineers don’t know how to sell solutions to traditional marketers. They dive down into details, talk about solutions they have made for other companies and the impressive results. Traditional marketers are left wondering what the big picture is - where does the marketing engineer and his or her offering fit into the overall picture?

To make things worse, marketing engineers talk in terms of numbers, something that makes many marketing professionals (who are most at home with words and pictures) instantly turn off. It’s a clash of an emotional paradigm vs. a rational paradigm.

Marketing engineers can also do themselves a disservice by going in with a specific solution such as an animation, then expecting that they can deliver a CRM system to the same client later. What they don’t understand is that the Flash animation and their general approach positioned them as tactical partners rather than strategic partners, as the Flash animation company rather than as a company that could do something more. Of course, not all marketing engineers are like that – Microsoft’s people have always talked in terms of visions, big pictures, before getting down to business. But that’s another story.

Okay –-so there’s a culture clash. But here’s where marketing management need to work out a cultural integration policy. Marketing departments of the very near future will need to comprise marketers from both camps, and they’ll need to figure out how to work together.

I’m hoping someone will come out with a book, a consulting house, a series of training courses, or something similar to teach each group about the mindset and tools of the other. The one aspect I worry about is: can two such widely differing groups (in Danish: "sproglig" versus "matematisk") ever really build up the mutual respect and understanding it takes to work well together? Looking at marketing departments that have engineering types employed, albeit in narrow functional areas, it doesn’t look promising. I’ve heard too many comments such as "when we start to talk about the visuals, those guys just start drumming their fingers" or "I can’t believe they spend so much time making wild, unsubstantiated guesses, then slinging big chunks of marketing budget into the darkness".

Marketing as an art form is on its way out. But what kind of multi-cultural hybrid organization will arise from the ashes?



...a major input to branding and communication projects for customers who require intensive strategic process as well as creative ideas. - Claus Wittenborg Managing Director Advance A/S Modern Marketing’s Toughest Culture Gap Years of working closely with marketers in all sizes of companies has led me to realize that there’s a serious problem out there. It’s this: 95% of today’s marketers can no longer write a complete marketing plan for their products or companies. They’re used to working at some level with brochures, print ads, TV commercials, data sheets, and the like. And they’ve learned to use (or live with) pretty static websites, CRM (it’s something Sales use for their stuff), flash animations for that extra special touch, sporadic email marketing campaigns and the occasional banner ad. But they don’t know much about more recent inventions such as adserving, systematic email campaigns, search engine strategies, viral marketing and the like. Yet, for most businesses, these recent inventions are the most efficient and effective place to put their marketing dollars. Why don’t they know much about the fastest-growing piece of the marketing cake? Because: - Many marketing professionals still aren’t aware of the impact of the Web on the present and future of their businesses - No one has created an overview of advanced marketing tools that puts things into useful perspective - It’s not taught well enough in business schools - There are few follow-up courses for people already in business - Many marketers are reluctant to leave safe ground and dip their feet in new waters I believe that professional marketers should be able to write complete, effective business plans that draw upon many of the insights and tools available today. But it’s not as easy as reading a few books or attending hands-on courses in various aspects of digital marketing. There’s a deeper problem to be solved first. I like to think of today’s marketers as falling into one of two basic categories: traditional marketers and "marketing engineers". Traditional marketers: - Go for most marketing professionals - Are strongly represented in B2B companies - Think in terms of branding and mass marketing - Like to focus on visuals and emotive messages - Prefer not to work with numbers or technology - Buy into things that have an emotional pull - Focused on the heart of the consumer - Sell the sizzle, not the sausage - Understand the nature of man – greed, fear, etc. - Think in terms of people’s aspirations Traditional marketers know what moves peoples’ hearts but they usually can’t or don’t want to put their efforts into systematic marketing. They stay within their comfort zones, venturing out only to grab a particular one-off tool such as Flash animations to "do something innovative" before retreating quickly to their poetic universe. Fine and good, but this large group of marketers is coming under increasing pressure from top management to be more accountable, to deliver results. At the same time, there are a number of forces changing the playing field. Just a few of them are: - Technology is changing the market - Social networks have become more diverse - Globalization is changing the face of segmentation and reach - Outsourcing is making complex marketing far more achievable - Purchasers base decisions on trusted advisors – people like themselves - New response times - The ability to track what happens - Data-driven marketing - Measurement of results - Increased speed of competitive entry - Increased speed of business model change, taking established businesses by surprise For traditional marketers, branding has long been king. The bursting of the dotcom bubble revealed the folly of this blind belief. It was the peak of emotion-driven, non-results-oriented nonsense. Branding (focused on differentiation + awareness) had become the objective - an end in itself. Start-up companies focused on being unique, on being seen by the masses, at the expense of sound business models. An absurd example is an American company (whose name escapes me) which ran a series of TV commercials featuring a gerbil being shot out of a cannon and into a brick wall. Attention-grabbing, yes. But few remembered the company or what it was offering. For many companies, marketing became the essence of everything; everything relied on the success of building the brand. The message and its positioning were the primary focal points. The traditional marketing mindset screwed up the potential of dotcom companies, necessitating a marked shift in thinking before web-based business could become broadly viable. Traditional marketing thinking saw websites as computer-based brochures. It saw emails as electronic letters. It saw the online world as a mere digital version of the offline world. It was a time when traditional marketing thinking was exposed to a tough acid test. And the world soon found out that the intuitive, non-data-driven approach of marketing couldn’t deliver. Branding wasn’t the answer to everything, after all. I now believe, in fact, that traditional marketing mindset fuelled the creation and subsequent crash of many dotcom companies. The new wave of marketers are engineers by nature. They were born in the hard-selling, entrepreneurial world of IT. When the Internet/IT bubble burst, they were looking for new areas to move to, taking their online skills and understanding of technology with them. They think like engineers: - Problem/solution-oriented - Data-driven - Tech savvy - Model-driven - Systematic - Results-oriented - Not people-oriented - Process-oriented - System-oriented - Control freaks They use hi-tech tools such as blogs, Podcasts, analytical tools, etc., seeing such tools as miraculous opportunities rather than (as traditional marketers might) bothersome technology. They talk about "tag clouds" and other terms that mean very little to other people. But what is really interesting is that they are beating traditional marketers at their own game. Take one of the world’s largest headset manufacturers, for example. When a small group of IT department employees decided that the marketing department wasn’t tackling the task right, they were determined to apply their systematic, technology-oriented approach to getting the job done. They said: we can do this marketing thing better - we can solve these problems faster, cheaper, more systematically, with better results. Using the IT budget, they set up a technology-based marketing system, made it available to the marketing managers of the company’s many subsidiaries and starting getting results far in excess of those previously achieved by the marketing department. Of course, the skills of such marketing engineers aren’t applicable across the range of marketing tasks - they suck at creative, for example. The IT guys mentioned above left that up to each subsidiary’s advertising agencies. That’s not saying that marketing engineers aren’t creative - they often create highly innovative solutions - but that they find it difficult to focus on emotional factors when creating their solutions. You could say they are strong on systems but weak on the message. Where do the two types of marketers meet? Typically, in situations where the engineer is an online services provider of some kind, perhaps selling email marketing, adserving, search engine optimization, or even just Flash animations. The traditional marketer is the customer - a product manager or marketing manager. Most often, they talk entirely different languages. Marketing engineers don’t know how to sell solutions to traditional marketers. They dive down into details, talk about solutions they have made for other companies and the impressive results. Traditional marketers are left wondering what the big picture is - where does the marketing engineer and his or her offering fit into the overall picture? To make things worse, marketing engineers talk in terms of numbers, something that makes many marketing professionals (who are most at home with words and pictures) instantly turn off. It’s a clash of an emotional paradigm vs. a rational paradigm. Marketing engineers can also do themselves a disservice by going in with a specific solution such as an animation, then expecting that they can deliver a CRM system to the same client later. What they don’t understand is that the Flash animation and their general approach positioned them as tactical partners rather than strategic partners, as the Flash animation company rather than as a company that could do something more. Of course, not all marketing engineers are like that – Microsoft’s people have always talked in terms of visions, big pictures, before getting down to business. But that’s another story. Okay –-so there’s a culture clash. But here’s where marketing management need to work out a cultural integration policy. Marketing departments of the very near future will need to comprise marketers from both camps, and they’ll need to figure out how to work together. I’m hoping someone will come out with a book, a consulting house, a series of training courses, or something similar to teach each group about the mindset and tools of the other. The one aspect I worry about is: can two such widely differing groups (in Danish: "sproglig" versus "matematisk") ever really build up the mutual respect and understanding it takes to work well together? Looking at marketing departments that have engineering types employed, albeit in narrow functional areas, it doesn’t look promising. I’ve heard too many comments such as "when we start to talk about the visuals, those guys just start drumming their fingers" or "I can’t believe they spend so much time making wild, unsubstantiated guesses, then slinging big chunks of marketing budget into the darkness". Marketing as an art form is on its way out. But what kind of multi-cultural hybrid organization will arise from the ashes?	Viewpoints Nailing the Value Proposition 10 Smart Things to Think About Value Propositions Is H.C. Andersen bad for business? Misplaced Modesty Looking Like a World Leader English as a strategic asset Modern Marketing's Toughest Culture Gap