Anatomy of a Marketing Intelligent Technology Team
I am a marketing technology strategist. This past weekend, at a party, I was introduced as a ‘Coder’ by a Creative Executive friend of mine. Now, I don’t know if that was just because of the fact that the friend who introduced me has always known me as someone from the technology team or the fact that its how technologists are viewed. Nothing wrong or untrue in my being a ‘coder’ or a ‘techie’. However, this is how most creative or marketing people view all ‘technologists’ – Unemotional, non-creative or customer experience illiterates whose sole area of conversational comfort is technology, codes and platforms.
As a technologist, I wake up in the morning and have ‘my brand’ of coffee, catchup on the news thru ‘my preferred’ channel, get affected by an awesome campaign on the TV, and emotionally connect to a great creative idea. In other words, I am Human. I also get affected by marketing. However, as a marketing technologist, I also see through various technological challenges that the marketer had to overcome to connect with me. In other words, I am a Marketing Intelligent Technologist.
If you are a pure marketing and/or a creative person, how many times have you gone out for a drink with your tech team and had a great drunk evening where the topic of conversation is marketing, brands, customer experience, and not Java, .Net, CSS, SEO or extendible platforms. If the answer is never, try it. You’ll be surprised.
A marketing intelligent tech team is still in touch with their human side. It thinks beyond codes and understands where a creative idea begins, what’s the emotion behind it, and has the capability to carry those emotions to the end consumer. Technology is just a piece of the game. It’s the game that a marketing intelligent technologist understands. This team, when they meet, do not talk about platforms and technology as the only topic of conversation. This team talks about ideas, and creatives and measurement, customer journeys and experience and yes also how to technologically bring it to market.
The Emotional Quotient of Technology Implementation
By definition, Technology is considered unemotional and just logical. Creative and Marketing on the other hand focus on emotionally connecting with their consumer. That is where lies the chink in the chain.
Creative ideas and marketing strategies are only as good as its implementation. In digital world, that is implementation by technology. Often, great creative designs and excellent marketing campaigns fail because their technology team or partner was not emotionally involved in it. They implemented the idea based on ‘functional/technology requirements’. Agencies and business groups will often exclude technology partners earlier in the ideation phase of the process. That may work only if their technology team is already marketing/creative savvy and while understanding the requirements from scratch notes/briefings or wireframes they can maintain the emotional quotient of the idea.
Technology vendors and partners are a commodity these days. However, finding a technology vendor that not only has the hard skills of technology but also the softer skills of emotionally connecting with your creative and marketing team and thereby carrying the emotions to your consumer can be difficult. Creating, building and maintaining an emotional bond takes time, and trust before being on the same wavelength. Find a technology partner that not only has lived your world but also contributes to your creative ideas in addition to implementing it from a ‘Functional Requirement Document’. Give your technology team a seat at the ideation phase table. Ride the creative wave together with them. Remember, they are the last link between your idea and your consumers. Make sure the emotional chain is not broken.
