The IT and marketing divide in business - and why it should change

It must be a familiar experience to marketing and IT managers working in Fortune 500 or other large structures. Meetings where the marketing guys talk about brand image, user experience and design and how technology must enable this. Vice versa the tech-guys keep saying that security and scalability are important and that more systems to serve more channels will not fit into the budget.

The C-level insists on having measurable results and to be present in all marketing channels but most and above all on the mobile channel. Oh and of course budgets went down again for next year.

Will this ever work? Without disruptive changes in the way businesses are run today I don't think so. Here's why.

If you're in digital marketing and brand management you ignoring the importance of digital technology is clearly a risk. But likewise, IT managers will have to enter in discussions with the marketing guys since usability, user friendliness, privacy and security issues are so closely related to what technology can and will enable.

In fact today marketing agencies and marketing managers are more successful if they understand technology and are able to have a fairly deep discussion with the IT guy. Take an iPhone application e.g. If you have no clue on what services and features are available on a device and how they can add value to your customers or how it will help you in your campaigns, your IT guys will effectively control your outcome.

But everybody with a bit of experience on either side knows how tough it is for marketing managers to talk about API's, database architecture and offline/online service availability. But IT managers have the same issue with softer values such as user friendliness and great user experience. Nothing better than a command window where you can direct call a services with a bunch of Unix command lines.

So fine, the stage is set and we understand the roles and know the players. But how can a business solve this issue? What is needed to bridge the divide between UX and IT?

Here are a couple of thoughts

Hybrid Teams, hybrid resources

Marketing should not be the exclusive domain of the marketing people. In fact in the most successful projects I've delivered the client had IT and Marketing people in every meeting. The project brief was created by marketing but had to be signed off by an IT director. Although this leads to more effort and increased work load at first, there is efficiency gained at the end of the project because technology supports the creative idea and vice versa. Nobody can hide behind arguments such as: we were never told it had to be this way or we could have told you that this design cannot be enabled by our IT infrastructure.

Finding hybrid resources or training them can be tough. There is a reason why IT developers love code and they don't care much for design. Research shows that human beings do function differently and some of us will just never understand design, others will never be able to read or produce a single line of code. So the most likely options is to have senior resources that over time have built up a hybrid expertise and can bridge the gap between the two disciplines.

MarkITing

More and more toolkits, campaign platforms and white labeled app development concepts are thrown onto the market. Running a campaign on Facebook does not require any deep IT skills unless you want to develop a game. We're slowly moving towards a world where anybody can run a campaign much like anybody can write and publish a book these days, thanks to all the software and digital print services available.

That means that marketing will have to include more 'light' IT skills so that campaigns on Facebook, SEO-tactics and tweets can be managed in an agile way.

Reversely the role of IT will have to include controlling and checking of third party services such as Facebook. Whether this means that pure 'hardcore' in-house software and platform development will be reduced remains to be seen.

Business need to change

The toughest part though is how businesses are organized today and how this will have to change. Hybrid teams and changing skill sets or in the services provided are probably easy to achieve via HR and the strategy department. But is it actually still a good idea to keep IT and Marketing separated. In digital marketing the combination of skill sets within one department will lead to more stride but in my opinion also to better campaigns and better branding.

But maybe this change should go even further. Social Media marketing requires different profiles. A Social Media marketing manager might as well come from the public sector. Softer social political skills might as well be the necessary quality to make a brand successful on mobile and in the social media space.

Now how to measure

Classic touch point measurement as in Unique Visitors, Conversion Rates and Click Troughs will remain important. But how do you measure mobile success or social media success? Should you track the number of Likes, the Evaluations your product gets on Amazon, the number of Friends the brand has? This and other ways of tracking your campaign in the digital space require again resources that have a marketing and IT understanding of the playing field.

Education

Its encouraging to see how Social Marketing, SEO and mobile are popping up as topics in the programs of Business Schools, Universities and Academies. The jury is still out on the quality of these initiatives. Fact is that there are executive programs that address these topics so there's no excuse for execs and board members to continue going uneducated about these topics.

So ultimately

Change is necessary and looking at the current pace of change in digital marketing and branding this is change will be a more and more pressing issue on the agenda of the C-level. Let's see and track how this pans out in the future and how it will improve the playing field for marketeers, IT managers and their agencies.

Pigbook

Here is one of the best discussion starters I've seen in a while...

Just think about it. What is Facebook selling?

That would be consumer insights and targeted advertising based on these insights if you ask me. But without further interpretation, knowing what your potential or real customer prefers, talks about or reveals is maybe not exactly what you want to sell them.

Give your customer what he or she wants is what I often hear. But how do we know what they want? Yes we can listen to them, observe them, track them or put them in categories. And we can do all of this on Facebook.

Henri Ford said: if I would have asked my customers what they want they answer: faster horses. He then gave them a car...

Now what's my point here. On the one hand Facebook is brilliant. It has clout, momentum, lots of conversations, remarks, media and games. Data galore and insights by the truck load. Yet do you really behave like you do in every day life?

I bet that most of us take care about what we post and how we phrase things. These days employers, candidates and family will be able to take a sneak peak at your profile unless you've completely shielded it off for the outside world.

So is Facebook seeing us as we are or is it dealing with my Facebook-me? What will this do to the value of using Facebook for media, marketing and branding purposes? I can't help thinking that while the younger generation might live their life on Facebook, it is nothing more than a billboard at your local supermarket that happens to have an enormous amount of content and a million ways of spending your entire life on it if you choose so.

These questions came up when looking at the Facebook and You cartoon the first time and I am still no further as to how to answer them.

Naturally the power of Facebook to reach out and touch your customers, to convey a brand message or a story is there. But what are the limits imposed by the fact that we know we're being watched and we know that total privacy nor the right to forget, i.e. for your profile or data on your profile to cease and desist completely are part of Facebook's corporate values.

So are we behaving differently on Facebook compared to every day life. Are we e.g. more honest because we know or feel we're being watched? A quick search via Google showed that sciences says this is the case but I am convinced that quite a few users do not even realize that Facebook and a great many others are watching over their shoulders.

So in short, will we keep using the barn and eat the free food and deal with the consequences that come with this? Do we know if Facebook generates skewed behavior or do we go with an even stronger statement: our behavior on Facebook is what brands need to deal with in the future.

To be continued.

Matt

Windows Phone: Turning the Tiles

The more I hold a Windows Phone 7 (WP7) phone in my hand the more I have to admit that the OS has a certain charm to it. I find it hard to explain why the turning tiles and the quirky and at times erratic navigational paradigms do lend it a charm that is by now lost on me on the iPhone and the iPad.

The question is what would it take to make it a serious contender on the market. Fact is that we now know that Microsoft is seriously supporting and even sponsoring the development of relevant apps for Windows Phone. They are specifically searching for apps that can be ported to the WP platform. Of course having apps in the Windows equivalent of the AppStore is important. But is it enough? As I've pointed out on a few occasions before Apple is not doing itself a great favor with its black box certification process with hardly a chance of parole if your app gets refused. As much as it contributes to a certain quality level of the Apps in the store it also stalls all attempts to create innovative apps that push the envelope of the iPhone or iPad.

Still though if you ask me today I think that the constraints imposed by Apple drive innovation on the other platforms. Whatever doesn't pass or is hard to achieve via iOS will certainly fly on Android, WP and maybe even Symbian 3.

Now going back to WP, why would this OS actually work? Here are 4 reasons:

1. Windows Phone is closely governed by Microsoft which should guarantee inter-device compatibility

2. There are 25 Million Xbox users out there that Microsoft seems to target

3. Microsoft is still king in the B2B market

4. There will always be consumers that want something seriously different (and maybe less expensive if you insist)

Let me elaborate each point a bit more in detail:

1. Google's bet on Android as an open and freely available standard has helped delivering an impressive growth. But they're now about to receive the consequences of this back in the form of a boomerang that has grown by the same proportion as their market share. What we tend to forget is that open means fragmentation, which means head-aches for developers when it comes to compatibility.

Apple is at the total other side of the spectrum with its closely controlled iOS. WP7 sits somewhere in the middle. The OS versions are neatly governed. The use is subject to a license that imposes compatibility. It might be a while till we see more WP7 phones coming to market and specifically for Nokia to catch up but I predict that the ease of app distribution on this platform will be a big plus. This in turn will help consumer acceptance and cross device UX alignment a lot which will make it look and feel much more like a unified brand experience, which is one of the strong points of Apple.

2. The Xbox community has not been served very well when it comes to mobile use of Xbox apps, till WP7 appeared that is. There are now signs that Microsoft will try to use the potential power of this community to push WP7 upwards. 50 games were available at launch and more are coming. Can we expect mobile phones that double as controllers or input devices for Xbox much like the recent Sony Xperia Play? Who knows.

3. Microsoft is still the reference when it comes to business software. Outlook, Exchange Server and even Excel or Word are widely used and can be easily integrated with B2B mobile use. Although specific mobile versions of these apps are still not superbly optimized, the pure integration from a platform and connectivity perspective mostly under existing software licenses are seductive. This might be a big driver for decision makers controlling the mobile phone fleet of big corporates. Imagine the upside of a CityBank not going for iPhone as announced but WP7...

4. Last but not least there's always a group of consumers who want to be different while still having access to the majority of the features that turn a smartphones into such desirable items. The turning tiles are eye catching and some of the form factors of WP7 phones out there could pass as fashion statements. Think of WP7 as the Saab of mobile but then with much better financial back-up.

But what is the real challenge?

As much as WP7 is fairly well put together the eco-system of Microsoft is still a mess. Confusing branding of services and the hotchpotch of channels and touch points have yet to be sorted. From Windows Live to Hotmail, from MSN to msnbc via Windows Market Place, Maps and the Microsoft Store, it is nowhere near the slick Apple iTunes and AppStore system and much more pretentious than Googles all-white and no-frills offerings.

The announcement of Nokia partnering with Microsoft only raises more questions around their Ovi eco-system, not to mention all the other services, channels and platform that Nokia still features today...

Yet a proper well functioning eco-system is very important to keep users interested in your platform and build a true, long-lasting relationship. Unless of course this is not what you're after.

Is there light in all of this? Well, one thing that Microsoft has superbly well sorted for years already is their single sign-on or Passport - or Windows Live ID as its currently called - that they consistently use across their channels. Once you have your login you can pretty much access any Microsoft related service with the same login and password. Google has this too but it is almost no surprise since they've always marketed their services under one brand and from (seemingly) one platform. 

Although I am not sure if they are using this to the full extent they could potentially leverage if they finally decide to axe all those different services and pull all of it together under one brand name.