Making the Argument for Marketing as a Science.

So much data, so little time to make sense of it all.

Been reviewing the debate about marketing being more of an art than a science, sparked to a great degree by a recent Harvard Business Review blog post on "How to find, asses and hire the modern marketer."

I agree with their premise that marketing as a discipline has undergone a significant amount of change, mainly driven by emerging technologies and the analytic data it has created. They argue that modern marketers need to be adept at understanding data and analytic information beyond simple metrics.

The Scientific Method

The long and short of it is that modern marketers need to take a "test-learn-apply" approach to nearly everything they do. It doesn't really matter how much ad agencies, marketing executives and senior management like marketing programs / ad campaigns, but rather how well they engage their target audience and get them to do something aligned with the firm's marketing and business objectives.

And it is more about engaging in a mutually beneficial conversation through marketing rather than shouting at or simply entertaining people with advertising. The HBR blog post has some great "test" criteria for evaluating the skills of a "modern marketer" around knowledge and use of data and analytics to aid business decision making and gain learning from failed efforts. They provide some smart guidelines to help assess a marketing candidate's technology and analytical "IQ" in addition to their marketing savvy.

Ad Age just reported that more and more Chief Marketing Officers now have engineering backgrounds. The story cites the likes of Salesforce CMO Lynn Vojvodich and Jet Blue's SVP Marketing and Commercial Strategy Marty St. George, the latter holding an engineering degree from MIT. 

St. George commented "Today, in the world of big data and trying to find a way to turn this incredible volume of noise into insights and actions, I definitely find myself falling back on my engineering tricks." he went on to say "When an issue comes up, my first thought is: How much data can I gather to try to triangulate around what's happening? I think that's definitely consistent with an engineering mentality."

This trend calls for a significant re-education of "seasoned marketers" and I've found many of the local Meet-Ups in NYC a great place to gain best-practice knowledge around data / analytic thinking, including "Data Driven NYC" / "Hardwired NYC" / "NY Tech Meet Up" and fun groups like "NYC Data Wranglers."  Note than many of these events "sell out" fast - so be sure to plan ahead to get a seat.

The modern marketer - akin to winged Pegasus in power?

These Meet Ups draw an eclectic combination of data geeks, business people and entrepreneurs more than willing to talk about what they're working on and how they are defining this new data-driven world. It's great to then connect with them on Linked In and follow them on Twitter.

The best part of the HBR post is the description of the modern marketer - having a blend of creativity and reasoning talents, inquisitive, inventive and enthused by a culture that is advanced and agile. I am going to work hard on further developing all these skills / professional attributes in 2014.