Month: July 2024

The Evolving Nature of IT and its Influence on the Marketing Industry

IT, also known as information technology, involves the use of computers to store, create, exchange, and retrieve all kinds of electronic data. Similarly, information systems (IS) combine software, hardware, and telecommunication networks to collect useful data. The main difference between these two fields is that information systems work as the bridge between technology and people, whereas information technology focuses on helping them utilize and make sense of that system. Although they are connected, the two disciplines offer different sets of learnings and career options. This essay will focus on the projected influence that information technology will play in the future of the marketing industry.

The current field of study for the subject is marketing, with aspirations to work in marketing and/or advertising since advertising is a component of marketing. A particular career path of interest includes becoming a chief marketing officer (CMO) or a creative director. The major role of the CMO is to produce income by boosting sales via brand management. The technology used by a chief marketing officer includes data, e-shops and e-commerce, martech, and customer insights. However, one must consider technological advancements and innovations in the marketing industry taking place currently and in the future.

The Covid-19 global pandemic has had a tremendous effect on customer communication strategies for businesses and marketing organizations. According to a Forbes article written by Mirella Vitale, “The marketing landscape was already changing, but the pandemic accelerated this transformation. In order to stay relevant, CMOs and their teams need to be in a constant learning mode, today more than ever. Digitalization moves fast, and the shift to data-driven marketing is happening quickly and in real-time.” Companies are beginning to apply pressure to more areas of technology that understand customer experience. Some new innovations include communication channels such as emails, websites, blogs, and social media. A new and quickly expanding channel includes influencer marketing involving endorsements and product placements from organizations and people that can influence their audience to become potential buyers. These advances in technology in the digital landscape of marketing will affect the influx of data as well as its interpretation. With these vast collections of data being exchanged and stored, teams of marketers will be made up of creatives who plan and carry out campaigns in conjunction with data scientists who analyze and oversee this data-driven targeted marketing.

The role of a chief marketing officer is constantly changing and shifting to work within various areas of delivery, brand positioning, hiring, retention, and overall engagement. For students looking to enter this field and job title, almost all of these digital transformations would personally affect them. They would need to learn and gain hands-on experience working with different software, delivery models, communication strategies, and the technological shifts of the world around them. However, navigating customer insights would remain the number one priority within the marketing and advertising field.

How to create widespread change with minimal strategic effort

Consider an organization with a US $2 billion budget, a workforce of over 40,000, and one of the worst performances noted on the public record. One man turned that around in less than two years.

That is the story of Bill Bratton, the police commissioner of New York Police Department (NYPD), who within two years of being appointed as the police commissioner in 1994, established the New York City as the safest large city in the United States despite immense corruption, resistant workforce, limited resources, and an out-of-control crime rate.

Bratton was credited with changes across multiple performance metrics. In the two years of his tenure with NYPD, Harvard Business Review noted that “the felony crime fell 39%; murder, 50%; and theft, 35%. Gallup polls reported that public confidence in the NYPD jumped from 37% to 73%, even as internal surveys showed job satisfaction in the police department reaching an all-time high.”

But this was not an anomalous turnaround story. Bratton had a systematic approach he used across three different police departments (NYPD, Boston, Los Angeles) — proving with every turnaround story how change can be created and scaled.

Bratton did not try to influence every person in the police force. Instead, he focused his energy on a select few influencers, creating a compelling movement for change driven by the critical mass who were empowered to create change despite the cultural and financial limitations of the organization.

Yet, many leaders spread themselves thin trying to influence all the stakeholders relevant to their organization. Effective change leadership requires a strategic investment of your two most valuable resources — time and energy — to create buy-in from the key influencers while directly addressing the concerns of the naysayers.

Who are the key influencers in your department/organization, and how do you identify them?

Your key influencers are individuals who have the potential to direct the behaviour of others in your organization.

Individuals obtain power through their formal titles (e.g., executives, directors), their expansive networks internal and external to the organization, through their expert knowledge (e.g., engineers), through the goodwill they have created among their peers, through their strategic acquisition and application of knowledge, and through their ability to withhold resources (e.g., unions).

When trying to identify your key influencers, think of people who have one or more of the sources of power described above. Also include the Negative Nellies if they have one or more of the above sources of power, even if you or others aren’t particularly fond of them. Validate this list with your trusted advisors, ensuring inclusion of employees across the organizational hierarchy.

Once you have the list of your key influencers, focus on co-creating the change imperative with them. Let them guide the change efforts while you sidestep the resource hurdle by helping them focus their change efforts on select causes or departments, etc. This will allow them to scale their energy and efforts. Further, support the team by establishing clear boundaries for decision making and remove political hurdles to enable the team to take necessary action.

How do key influencers help diffuse and scale change?

Your influencers’ team will scale the change initiative formally through their structured efforts and also informally through their respective social networks. This team can influence change broadly through their social networks that constitute a broad diversity of individuals within and outside the organization. This happens in three ways.

Social networks are self-validated through trust built over a long period of time. Also, the employees can have more honest and open conversations about change with their trusted peers. Last, employees can observe and emulate the desired behaviours demonstrated by the influential members of their social networks.

Unleash the potential and power of your key influencers while creating an employee-led change movement that could not only transform your organization’s performance but also boost public opinions about it.

The success of the changes you want to create is ultimately measured by the degree of penetration of those changes across your workforce. Are people adopting the new behaviour, processes, technology, etc.?

You can expedite the change adoption by leveraging the power and influence of your key influencers.

Like the kingpin in bowling, your influencers have the potential to impact the remaining pins. Aim for the kingpin and you are bound to hit a strike.

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Categorized as Leadership