Bloghound

Marketing runs on technology today — but what will it take to get the marketing and IT organizations to work together more collaboratively?

A new paper, “The New Marketing - IT Power Partnership,” by David Bond, head of business and IT strategy at Sapient, and Mark Jeffery, associate professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management looks at why aligning the two functions is especially critical today, what commonly gets in the way, and ideas on best practices from marketing executives at Hyundai, Celebrity Cruise Line, Nissan, and Vodafone.

I found Steve Wilhite’s comments especially insightful (he’s the new COO of Hyundai America.) He believes that while downstream changes (new channels, consumer generated media, etc) are really changing marketing, “upstream changes may be even more dramatic.” By upstream he means things like product development, time and cost to market,, new ways to hardwire customer insights into the business. Areas , perhaps, that deserve more attention than Web 2.0.

He also cautions marketers not to be seduced by transactional campaign data. “Some of the technology allows for very rapid learning and feedback, but it can take you down a very destructive path. For example, if you see how a campaign can considerably generate a certain kind of lead generation or dealer visits within certain costs, you’re tempted to keep doing that. However, transactional data can lure marketers away from investing in more strategic initiatives like building a foundation for demand creation.”

(Full disclosure: I worked with Dave and Mark in this project.)

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