If I were a CMO

Image credit: Big Time Attic

I would bask in all the attention the IT world is paying to me seeing that I am going to be spending lots of $$$ in the  next few years. If Gartner says it is true, the IT world usually jumps, correct?

But I would be pissed that many IT vendors treat me like an executive who has just discovered technology. Hello, how about some reminders?

• Google has generated over $ 200 bn in revenues over the last decade and guess what – the majority are described to Wall Street as “advertising revenues”. Last time I checked my fellow CMOs and I write those checks
• Or how about  Microsoft spending over $ 6 billion on acquiring aQuantive, a digital agency, way back in 2007? Or Adobe spending almost $ 2 billion on Omniture in 2009? They were buying a path to my door ahead of other IT vendors
• Let’s go a bit further back – back when  TV was “new technology”. Guess who encouraged Nielsen to start audience measurement in the 1950s?
• Or SKU data from point of sale terminals. Guess who encouraged IRI and others to provide us that pattern analysis?

So, to the next snot-faced kid who comes in and tells me his mobile app or sentiment analysis tool will solve all my problems, let me suggest you go read Prof Philip Kotler  (whose classic marketing textbook is now in its 14th edition) and come back to me with some tech savvy thoughts on the 5 Ps.

Take Product – make my job easier by helping our engineering teams make our products and services smarter with sensors, software and satellite support

Or Price – come to our analysts with dynamic pricing models we can actually use in our industry

Or  Place – show me how to rationalize our growing digital assets and homogenize marketing campaigns in the global marketplace we now compete in

Or Promotion – show me how we can help our retail partners use facial recognition or other means to customize our offers

They say my CMO colleagues may spend more tech money than the CIO in a few years. Frankly, we have spent money on tech much longer than the CIO. So, please don’t treat us like Luddites.