OK, let me say it once and for all: I hate these 2.0 or 3.0 or 2.5 or whatever other crappy BS label people have a tendency to stick after everything and anything new these days. No it's not cool. No it does not mean a thing. Yes, it reflects a narrow technologistic (yes I made up that word) vision of the domain to which you're slapping this number.
This is the reason why the next series of posts is not going to be called "Marketing 2.0" even if, I guess, this would be how most people classify it. Enough justifications.
Those of you who know me are familiar with the company I work with (and if not, it's not too hard to find either). I've been in this company since 1998, started in France as a presales, moved to Canada in 2001 to work as a product manager and eventually was put in charge of all products and marketing for our Connectivity solutions group.
I've always worked in that group, regardless of what was going on around us: in 1999 the company I worked for decided to shift their positioning to become an ECM vendor. They eventually got acquired by a much bigger ECM vendor, the company I work for today. Those years were not easy on us. My colleagues and I had to adapt to a new reality where we were not the poster child of the company anymore, however our business was solid enough that we continued to enjoy a solid revenue stream and good profit levels.
So what do you do when the focus suddenly shifts away from you, you've just been acquired by a company which core business is lightyears away from yours and all it seems you have to look forward to is a slow and painful trip to nothingness ? Many people would probably start looking for another job either in another department within the company or in a new company all together.
I took a different path.
I saw this new situation as an opportunity for me to revisit what we were doing and how we were doing it. Lack of attention was a blessing. Lack of attention would give me time to take a good hard look at our marketing strategy and operations and make any adjustment that I deemed necessary to improve our performance.
This was in December 2007, and I had just been put in charge of our Connectivity Marketing solutions group. I knew I had a lot in front of me ... and boy was I right.
This series of post will describe what we've been going through, the changes we've made and how we've grown from not-even-close-to-amateurish into what we are today. This journey is ongoing. There are many more changes we're making this year and I'll document them here as well.
I believe all marketing organizations are at one stage or another of this journey. Some of them are right where we were a year and a half ago, some are where we are today and some are much further ahead. I hope that sharing my experience will give the readers some sense of what needs to be done if you have to modernize a marketing organization, what pitfalls to avoid and what to look forward.
In the next episode: introspection, revelation and Tenzing Norgay.
