You know how rockstars have this reputation for throwing stuff from the hotel window into the pool? Hell, Keith Moon even parked his Rolls Royce in the deep end once. In tribute, we’ll be throwing all the crap, bullshit acronyms, empty fads and snake oil of marketing, week on week, straight into the Rockstar CMO swimming pool.
This week Ian Truscott is on the 11th floor, flinging agile marketing off the balcony, waiting for the splash… It’ll be one hell of a bill, but oh so worth it…
Don’t agree? Tell us why. We’re all ears.
It feels like everyone and everything is ‘Agile’ these days. As our cultural lexicon steals more and more terms from tech – from ‘life hacks’ to ‘growth hackers’ to people being ‘pinged’ – ‘Agile’, as a method of getting things done, is just one more term that’s crossed over from the developer scrum and into all forms of business, marketing included.
Like most contemporary software vendors, at censhare our core business follows an agile methodology. A growing company in a competitive space, we have to be agile as an organization. And as a marketer in this environment, I also need to be agile. With Trello boards to manage tasks, we break the big tasks into chunks (sprints) and with measurement strategies in place, we hopefully fail fast and, of course, quickly turn things around when stuff doesn’t work.
Wait, you may be thinking – is this Agile Marketing? Is Ian one of those cool kids?
To which I recoil, HELL NO!
I am deeply cynical of this particular brand of snake oil.
No. What I do is not Agile, but agile – small ‘a’. Using contemporary tools to get shit done. Maybe with a techie background adopting these tools comes more naturally to me, but what marketing isn’t agile? When has it ever not been? Launching a new campaign, testing, refining, adapting to the audience is what marketing does and always has. It is, by its very nature, an agile vocation.
“What marketing isn’t agile? When has it ever not been? Launching a new campaign, testing, refining, adapting to the audience is what marketing does and always has.”
Our desire to label stuff has developed a rash of niches in our marketing operations; digital marketing, social media marketing, content marketing – to name a few. And now it’s time to put Pandora back in her box. Let’s just call these these things what they are – marketing. Who in this business in 2018 is not a digital marketer? You are a marketer. Full stop.
The same goes for our systems and operations. These cool cats with a penchant for being a ‘ninja’ at something; or industry analysts, determined to carve out their own research niches, are creating these silos. This is the very enemy of agile. This is the enemy of joined-up planning and execution.
Sure, we marketers may need to build a better reputation for getting stuff done, and the language of Agile could be our way of talking about it – but I say let’s chuck this buzzword in the pool and just become better marketers.
To be a marketer, be agile. Small ‘a’.
Got a marketing bugbear you’d like to unceremoniously dump? We’d love to hear from you – get in touch.
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