Hah!

“Hah” is the very scientific conclusion I draw from a fascinating new study by Accenture and the CMO Council, an organization representing about 6,000 top marketing executives. By surveying and interviewing both chief marketing officers and CIOs, the report throws a lightning bolt of reality at any CIOs who think they have a hunky-dory relationship with their CMO. (Get the full report, “The CMO-CIO Alignment Imperative,” here.)

The authors point out lots of reasons why the CMO and the CIO should get cozy with each other. Digital touchpoints, whether on a smartphone, Web site, or kiosk, are becoming increasingly important to the customer experience. Marketing efforts are under pressure to be more measurable, reach customers through more channels, and personalize messages more. It has been a slow-burning trend over the past decade that smartphones, wireless tablets, social networking, and high-powered analytics will put a rocket on in the next two years.

The marketing-IT relationship isn’t blossoming, though. IT and marketing are estranged in many companies, despite the potential to drive more revenue by working together. Here are a few reasons that I took from the report…

via Global CIO: IT & Marketing: Can’t They Ever Get Along? – Global-cio – Workplace trends – Informationweek.

This report offers more support for what this blog is all about: that Marketing and IT need to—no, must—work together to successfully engage and serve today’s customer, client, and constituent. Connecting with them starts with connecting Marketing and IT.

Marketing is now a tech-driven discipline, but the historical gulf between IT and marketing departments remains at many companies. This gulf exists partly because marketing pros just don’t believe IT understands digital marketing, but it’s also about speed. Nearly two-thirds of respondents to a survey of chief marketing officers and CIOs last year said they had problems implementing marketing technology systems. The main reason cited? IT gives it a low priority.

via 8 Signs Your IT Team Is Too Slow – Global-cio – Executive insights/interviews – Informationweek.

Aha, looks like others see the connection between Marketing and IT—the theme of this blog. There’s just no way these days to be successful in any venture, project, or initiative with a disconnect between the two. Think websites, social media, and even video which is generally delivered online, and via a website, and viewed on a mobile device. Nuff said…well, they’ll actually be much more on all that, like now: Read my post on the survey referenced above, then, from there, review the results.

When I came on board this international environmental engineering and consulting firm, the marketing department oversaw the company’s Intranet, which I inherited, I think because a web-savvy guy in that department put it together. Same thing happened with the website, so Marketing managed it too. More often than not, it’s an IT guy or developer who maintains the website because it’s generally technical in nature. That distinction is going away and yet growing at the same time (more on that below.)

Often clients too expect a technical person to develop, update, or maintain their website, but a website is actually a marketing channel and more, and the message should be managed and even “developed” by a marketing professional.

A similar thing happened in the early ’90s when easy-to-use desktop publishing programs came into play, or really when Microsoft Publisher was released. During the years that followed, many managers had their assistants or the lone assistant/receptionist start putting together a newsletter just because this new tool was available and not because these newfound editors had ever produced or published anything before.

At the same time, color printers started becoming affordable and more common and so all these poorly designed and written newsletters looked like something out of an Andy Wharhol exhibit–color everywhere, even main text, just because you could!

But just because you put a paintbrush in someone’s hand doesn’t make him or her Michelangelo!

Any seasoned graphic designer knows you use color to accent. In fact, a reader shouldn’t even notice the color if it’s done right. It just part of a great design.

To be fair, having something like Publisher available enabled someone who might have the innate talent to produce a newsletter, even if modestly, and/or without spending the big bucks for a professional package like Aldus/Adobe Pagemaker or QuarkXPress which also demanded a learning curve for a wildly different user interface. Publisher was comparatively inexpensive and generally used the Microsoft Office interface, or at least a Microsoft one. So, it gave desktop publishing access to someone who did have some talent for such things.

The same could be said for video. Video cameras, editing software, and hosting services have some down in price and sometimes zero cost, making video production accessible to the masses, and YouTube shows it! There’s a lot of bad video on the Web, but there is some stuff we benefit from because someone didn’t have to be a TV or movie studio to produce a great piece.

The point: Use the right person for the job.

And that person knows it’s important to use the right tool for the job.

Hence, the idea of the marketing department maintaining the company’s website makes sense. Regarding the Intranet? Well, perhaps management and HR in collaboration with IT is the answer there–though in our case the marketing department leveraged it more than anyone. But a website today is the key marketing channel for any company, and a tool which business development professionals can use to generate leads and ultimately close sales. It’s the only “front door” most people will enter or “building” they’ll visit. It’s the only company or “person” customers will ever see, and the first and maybe only impression they’ll get. It’s your customer device connection. It’s all that and more (which I’ll talk about in another post).

So you can see that calling in the 20-something developer to work on what amounts to your company’s connection to the world and beyond–your image and key shaper of your brand–or having a friend’s high school kid work up your new company’s website because he or she “knows how to code,” is a bit misdirected and shortsighted. This is the pervue of a marketing professional, so don’t sell it short.

So if we can agree that a website is a marketing function rather than just an IT one, let’s then agree that it is actually both. A website is a good example of “where marketing and IT meet.”

With the available of browser-based website development and maintenance tools–the kind where there’s “no coding involved”–a marketing pro could almost handle the whole website without IT intervention. In reality, even those options generally require some IT help, especially for more complex systems like a high-level content management system (CMS). So, whether creating a website the old-fashioned way or using browser-based tools, it’s a joint effort–bottom line.

Need to shape and deliver a message? Marketing. Need to distribute marketing collateral and business information? Marketing. (By the way, a website is also an excellent distribution channel, providing information anywhere, anytime, 24/7… but that’s for that other post.) Need to get the website produced? IT. Need some special functionality? IT. You get the idea.

A website is a joint effort, a partnership between Marketing and IT, like more and more projects these days.

And that’s my point and what this blog is about. Sometimes it’ll feature stuff related more to marketing; sometimes more to IT. But overall, it’ll be from the viewpoint that by working together we will find new clients and serve current ones.

So, ready to make the markITing CONNECTION? Super! Together let’s go “where marketing and IT meet.”

And while I love technology and solutions as much as the next person, and absolutely love the creative process, remember that none of this matters apart from a relationship to God, the Creator. Everything comes into context and focus in Him. It all finds meaning in Him. (John 17:3)