Digital Transformation

The role of the ‘Chief Marketing Technologist’

Blake Cahill, Head of Global Digital Marketing at Phillips, is unequivocal about the importance of understanding today’s fast-moving mobile and social technologies.

‘As a marketer,’ he says, ‘if you don’t understand those technologies well and how they’re being used by relevant audiences, it’s going to make it incredibly tough for you to do your job well.’

And he’s right. Indeed it’s no surprise that, as technology becomes ever more central to the marketing role, many businesses are now seeing the need for a special kind of professional who can bridge the gap between marketing and IT.

Of course there are already people applying technology principles to marketing under a variety of job descriptions: marketing operations, digital strategy, conversion optimisation, growth hacking and so on.

But it is increasingly clear that we are currently witnessing the emergence of a quite specific new breed among marketing professionals – the marketing technologist.

And it’s significant that most businesses embracing this new trend underline the importance they attach to the role by appointing a formal Chief Marketing Technologist (CMT).

96% of enterprise businesses ‘feeling the pressure’ of digital transformation

In terms of their markets and their business models, the vast majority of companies surveyed are under significant pressure from the shift to digital.

This comes from our brand new report Leading a Digital Marketing Evolution, produced in association with Epsilon, in which we exclusively surveyed companies with over $1.5bn in annual revenues, roughly in alignment with the top 1,000 global organisations.

The report looks at how Global 1,000 enterprises are remaking themselves to deal with the modern, always-on and mobile shopper. It explores the challenges that large companies face in being responsive, efficient and innovative. It asks how and why some businesses excel and others lag behind. 

Using industry leaders for comparison, this report offers dozens of measures that marketers can use for education, benchmarking and inspiration.

The landscape for brands has been fundamentally altered. The rise of the mobile-first, always-online consumer has meant companies have had to adapt or in many cases completely relearn what they previously knew about marketing.

10 insightful GOV.UK blog posts on service design

So, we’ve been talking about Government Digital Services (GDS) and GOV.UK quite a lot on the Econsultancy blog.

This is for two reasons. One: it’s great (in the middle of open, agile transformation that starts from without). Two: Mike Bracken is speaking at the awesome Festival of Marketing in November.

Here I’ve rounded up 10 of the best blog posts from GOV.UK’s 59 (count them!) blogs. Each post deals with user experience, service design or digital transformation.

I hope you enjoy them as much as we have.

digital-cream-melbourne-roundtable-blog-full

Eight key takeaways from Digital Cream Melbourne

Last week I had the pleasure of attending Digital Cream Melbourne, continuing our series of roundtables worldwide where the crème de la crème of client-side digital marketers can share a mixture of their frustrations, challenges, insights and tips.

Following the roundtable discussions and a brief keynote which I presented, the moderators at each of the sessions came together to share their thoughts from the day on a panel.

For those of you that couldn’t be there, here are some key takeaways that I noted.

GOV.UK fixes Reddit user’s bug in just a day

We and many others have made our love for Government Digital Services (GDS) quite clear. 

From its UX, to its style guide, to its place in changing the perception of the web.

However, I thought it worth quickly flagging up an interesting post on Reddit that shows just how far GDS has come and the standards it is setting.

In the post a redditor from the Home Office highlights a poor experience and a developer from the GOV.UK team fixes it within a day.

If you want to hear from Mike Bracken, executive director of digital at GDS, get yourself to the Festival of Marketing in November.

1

Six useful email alternatives to ease your workload

At Econsultancy’s recent Digital Transformation event it was suggested that businesses could improve productivity by getting rid of email for internal communications.

The theory is that doing away with email saves time as employees aren’t fighting a constant battle with their overflowing inboxes.

Also, your colleagues will think twice about sending frivolous messages or trying to kick tasks down the line if they have to get in touch by instant messenger, which is generally seen as a more personal form of communication.

And perhaps the most obvious benefit is that getting rid of email encourages face-to-face meetings, which can help to improve teamwork and ‘break down silos’ (yeah, I said it).

This is all very good in theory, but what are the alternatives to email? Well here are six alternatives for you to investigate…

How can Pharma organize for agility in the digital age?

As pharma and healthcare companies embrace the need for digital transformation, how can they ensure that they are set up for success?

I was recently invited to speak at a Brand Innovation Summit in Princeton NJ. Senior representatives from a number of large Pharma and healthcare companies attended the session co-hosted by Hale Advisors and  eXL Pharma.  

Attendees were looking for answers to key questions such as: “what makes a company nimble and able to embrace digital transformation?” and “What types of organizational structures are best for pharmaceutical and healthcare companies looking to build digital marketing capabilities?” 

10 speakers you’ll want to see at the Festival of Marketing

Our Festival of Marketing event was last week crowned ‘Event of the Year’ by the PPA.

I thought I’d give November’s Festival (12-13) a push and list some of the speakers we have confirmed, as well as blog posts about each brand mentioned, to give a bit of background.

The Festival of Marketing is all about educating, inspiring, celebrating and empowering today’s modern marketer. It includes 120 sessions across ten streams, plus one-to-one advice clinics and networking with 4,000 senior marketers from across every sector.

We hope to see you at Tobacco Docks in London!

What does Ryanair Labs reveal about company culture?

This week Ryanair revealed its Labs project, an innovation lab based in Swords, Dublin, with a remit to reinvent the online travel industry.

There’s a Labs website and the company is recruiting for 200 staff.

On the page of the website titled ‘Why work for Ryanair Labs?‘ I was struck by how much the reasoning echoed many of the points Econsultancy has been discussing around digital transformation and company culture.

Let’s take a look.

Five key trends and takeouts from Google I/O 2014

This year’s Google I/O conference, held weeks after Apple’s WWDC, showed the world that Google really is taking over every aspect of our lives, and challenging its fiercest rivals.

As Android users have increased from 530m last year to more than 1bn this year, Google announced its ‘biggest ever overhaul’ with a completely new set of Android products. 

Read on for my top five developments (plus a dose of healthy rivalry)…

1 … 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39