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Michael Sprouse joined Epic Advertising as Chief Marketing Officer on June 1, 2007. His current responsibilities include overseeing all marketing strategy for the company, media buying, direct marketing programs, public relations strategy and outreach, internal communications, corporate development and cross-platform initiatives.

Prior to Epic Advertising, Sprouse served as Senior Vice President of Marketing for Playboy Enterprises, Inc. In his time at Playboy, Sprouse helped to oversee a business transformation as the youngest senior executive in the company's 54 year history. His marketing leadership opened up many public speaking and PR opportunities including the Keynote presentation at ETail (twice) as well as numerous press mentions.

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Marketing & Tech: Bring Back That Lovin’ Feeling!

Written on
May 9th 2008
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by Mike Sprouse  |
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tugofwar_small.jpgADOTAS EXCLUSIVE — If you work in the online marketing industry, or anywhere in the digital media environment, you’ve undoubtedly been exposed to the inner workings of technology departments as well as your very own marketing department. In the old days, the dynamic between the groups was push-pull or pull-push. Though there was a lot more strain between these departments, say, five years ago with emerging technologies and new ways to market to online users than there is now, there is still a lot of industry discussion about “Who’s winning?” or “Is science driving innovation and consumer marketing more than marketing itself?” or vice versa.

I’ve seen a lot of commentary on topics ranging from online ad sales being akin to selling pork-bellies all the way to DIY advertising portals created solely by technology and cutting sales out completely.

I have very strong feelings on this topic, and let me get this out of the way right off the bat: the two groups need to be “married.” Which isn’t to say that they need to be intertwined or formally aligned in an organization; however, technology must work regularly with marketing and vice versa. Not just “meet,” but actually work together to get projects done. There is no substitute for having art and science joined at the hip.

Thinking back on my own experience, one of my old companies had a technology group and a marketing group. Six years ago, I was head of the marketing group and I had a counterpart leading the tech team. We were both hired at roughly the same time to lead our own departments, and the first few weeks we met constantly, talked about how the teams would work together, established weekly meetings for ourselves, went on the occasional lunch together, and generally thought of ourselves as the ones to become a future model for how the online marketing industry dynamic should work inside a major corporation.

This all lasted roughly two months and then the teams drifted apart for no apparent reason. Workflow suffered, productivity suffered, and most importantly — innovation suffered. Because the groups were so seemingly different, in their very fabrics and behavioral make-ups, we regressed into the “norm” at the time.

Fast-forward six years. Right now, I literally do work almost daily with an in-house PhD. We’re very different people, but also share a lot of commonalities. Its just one example of how things have changed over the years and how I would say they have to be for companies going forward to stay competitive, or better yet to lead the competition. Media buying, media planning and technology teams should do weekly meetings and be in constant contact with each other. CIO’s and CMO’s should sit in a room with each other daily.

Is this a “pie in the sky” vision? No. It’s happening, though not as much as it should be at most places. Taking some simple steps like the above result in better speed to market, better communication, better sharing of trends, barriers and internal conflicts. Most importantly, the result will be true innovation sometimes that is unpredictable and unforeseen.

Whatever a company’s goal is – whether it is speed to market for an existing product, a new marketing tactic, getting better reports, or a whole host of other possible goals – when a marriage of art and science come together is when real innovation can happen and be most successful. You must create this “environment” because it is not inherent in most organizations.

It was pointed out on a recent industry blog post that marketing needs to supersede science or actually is superseding science in some cases; I disagree with this notion if you’re in the online marketing industry. Online marketing at its very foundation means “Technology-enabled marketing.” And if we want to move the industry forward in a responsible and lucrative way, we need both right and left brains to work together with no score-keeping, no hidden agenda and recognizing each other’s strengths and capabilities.

Another point to underscore this premise: If you’re the head of a marketing department for a digital media or online marketing company, wouldn’t you make sure your staff had some clue about the technologies in the marketplace, the technologies your company is currently employing and their capabilities? If you’re the head of a technology department, wouldn’t you make sure you had staff that understood the product or service’s position in the marketplace and understood the value proposition being sold to help aid in technological advancement?

I’ve heard some industry experts claim that having technology and marketing, art and science, work in unison is a sort of Obama-like vision of “change” that sounds terrific but needs to be backed up with execution to really come to full fruition. I can tell you that there are places that it is happening and those companies are at the front lines of innovation and having some success these days. Facing recessionary times, I’d encourage companies to use their entire collective brains, not just the “left” or “right.”



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