At dinner the other night, my companions asked me what I liked best about my job. Truthfully, the list is long, but I led with how much I like talking to smart, interesting people about the cool things they do. It happens during vendor briefings. It happens during our weekly staff meetings (team members like Martin Kihn, who recently found a way to connect Jay-Z and Hadoop in a blog post, can always be counted on for a laugh). Other times, it takes place in larger venues (like the ExactTarget Connections User Conference, where I wrote this), when the person you’re listening to is someone like Jim Collins, author of the management best-seller, “Good to Great.”
In his presentation, Collins highlighted several differentiating characteristics of great companies, including the discipline that leaders of those companies demonstrated. Fanatic discipline. Singular focus. Consistency of action. I loved the fact that he was discussing this in front of a room of digital marketers. Because sometimes we act like we think we can be successful – or at least be in the game – without having to play by similar rules. Yes, you want to manufacture pharamaceuticals? You should be fanatical. In fact, feel free to err on the side of being a zealot. But make a mistake on a 140 character tweet? Enh….suboptimal, but probably OK.
The Digital Marketing culture has always operated a little looser than other marketing disciplines, not to mention looser than the other departments within the org structure. This is partially due to the ease of experimentation. It’s much easier to launch a Facebook page than run a quarter page ad in The Wall Street Journal. Our ongoing casual approach of things is also rooted in the natural irreverence in the discipline (when early campaigns take the form of Burger King’s “Subservient Chicken,” it’s hard to be the serious guy in the room).
But as we approach what many are describing as “the transformative era of marketing,” many marketers are raising the level of their game. Some are still finding their way, recasting their identity through every new digital media channel they try…flirting with Vine…toe-dipping into Twitter…throwing hash tags around to see what sticks. But others have moved out of their digital adolescence, and now that they’re out on their own, are doing some pretty impressive things.
Great digital marketers will emerge when we start seeing the fanatic discipline applied to other parts of the organization now applied to digital marketing. It will require detailed planning. It will require measurement tracking that connects metrics with business objectives. It will require leadership that is willing to embrace the creativity that is core to digital, while imposing on it the consistency of delivery that is expected in other disciplines.
Recently, one client posed to me the following question: “My CEO just told me he ‘had a guy’ who could get our company on LinkedIn. He wants to just go ahead and let this guy do it….do you think this is a good idea?” My answer was pretty direct – it might be, depending on your strategy, your objectives, who the guy is, what you’re going to have him do, and the cost. This CEO’s question came out of a casual treatment of the discipline. To him / her, LinkedIn was the digital marketing equivalent of a shiny object.
The time has come to do better than this folks. Be smart. Be consistent. Be fanatics. Hold your digital programs to higher standards. And be Great.
