The case for a Chief Marketing Technologist

Our dependence on technology is unmistakable and its presence in our lives, indispensable. We have heard enough about how change is the only constant and how evolution is inevitable. Clearly, technology rules the world today and the rules of new-age marketing need to be aligned to them.

A fairly recent Gartner study rightly brought the term ‘Chief Marketing Technologist’ into focus and created a buzz in the international markets when it stated that in 2013, 81 per cent of organisations surveyed had the equivalent of a chief marketing technologist, compared to 70 per cent in 2012.

The study also accurately emphasised the fact that the role of a chief marketing technologist is that of “part strategist, part creative and part technologist” and “broadly the equivalent of a CTO and a CIO dedicated to marketing”.

The Chief Marketing Technologist’s (CMT) roles and responsibilities have already been heavily discussed in the international sphere. The debate, in most cases, remains whether the CMT should be a separate individual within the marketing team who acts as a liaison between technology and marketing, or if he should be working more closely with the IT team, or if the chief marketing officer should be re-designated as the chief marketing technologist. In my opinion, the bottom line is simple – marketers need to come up with more technology-centric ideas to appeal to their customer base. The focus should be entirely on reinventing the role of marketers, across all levels, to suit the current dynamics rather than arriving at a conclusion with regards to where to place this new Chief Marketing Technologist. Our energies should be channelised into making marketing and technology work in synergy with each other for best results aimed at achieving customer satisfaction.

While the influence of technology is evident across all sectors, it seldom happens that the evolution of a particular industry is so phenomenal that it alters the lifestyles of people in a way never imagined before. The Indian telecom industry is a stellar example of this phenomenon. From sending an SMS to being connected on Whatsapp, from forming communities on Orkut to having groups on Facebook, from shopping in local markets to ordering merchandise online, the telecom industry has seen it all and that too in a short span of time.

As a heavily technology-oriented industry the telecom sector has been among the first to recognise the increasing importance of technology across all its functions – be it marketing, customer service, or even data analytics.

Today, terms such as apps economy, social media, connected living, content, videos, music, downloads and digital brand engagement have become synonymous with Indian telecom. Needless to say, a traditional marketing mix no longer works effectively with the consumers. Today telecom marketers eye technology as an enabler and influencer. They realise that it is easy for people to leave their wallets behind, but not their mobile phones. This behaviour demonstrates the consumers’ affinity to the device, making it a definite go-to-market engagement tool. Not just in telecom, but across industries companies are turning to technology to market their products through innovative methods such as background advertisements in games, experiential applications, targeted mobile advertisements and digital innovations. As chief marketing technologists, these new-age marketers have begun to incorporate technology in the marketing mix right from the stage of product conceptualisation.

The marketing strategy is also being aligned keeping the consumer’s digital nature in mind, in addition to providing advanced targeting abilities to brands. The concepts of mobile marketing and e-commerce are a result of such transformations where a consumer prefers a mobile screen to a TV screen. Today, a majority of our telecom consumers are digital consumers who like to be approached by a brand via new-age media. Therefore, service providers are increasingly integrating newer technologies within existing conventional media formats such as augmented reality, Bluetooth-based targeted messaging in malls and laser-based projections in OOH media. Specifically in digital media, handset targeting, operator system targeting and device and content targeting are trends that are increasingly gaining popularity. Brands across the world are constantly experimenting with integrated on-ground activation, based on technologicalmarvels, and being loved by all. As marketers, it is imperative for us to keep ourselves abreast of these and think of newer ways to surpass the existing customer delight levels.

With information explosion coming from diverse sources, big data is the name of the game for any marketer today as it helps to understand the end consumers better. It is influencing business strategies like never before and marketers must know how to clearly handle the vast sets of information and transform it into actionable execution applications. Marketing data will continue to expand exponentially as more media is measured – via impressions, clicks, machine to machine, mobiles and social actions – and smart marketers must start to think about how they will leverage this data now. This suggests that more than data sharing, it requires functional integration. Big data and data science are enabling marketers to uncover new patterns of customer behaviour and identifying definite customer insights that are critical for development of new products and services which eventually translate into better sales growth and increased market share. Not only that, technology by means of social media platforms is empowering customers to reach out to a brand directly, make purchases at online stores run by telecom operators, share their feedback through digital media, and so on.

As marketers’ roles evolve, so do their duties. One of the key roles that chief marketing technologists need to perform is to develop young marketing talent. Aircel, as a young telecom brand, focuses on data and youth and we feel that it is imperative to develop an entire ecosystem within the organisation so that the work culture itself is deeply infused with technology. Having said that, one must also not forget that while the younger marketing pool is more tech-savvy than their previous generations, it is important that the gap between new-age marketing methods and traditional marketing mechanisms are harmoniously bridged to extract the best of both worlds.