Agile
Marketing
When clear and simple
processes drive innovation
EDITORS
Available on
David Quinn, Senior Director,
App
Store
Corporate Marketing at EMC
Corporation, and his Agile
Marketing team:
Steve Colombo, Amy Callahan,
Carolyn Cerce, Jill Fitzgerald,
&
Available on
Ellen Deutsch
www.emc.com
Google
Play
“Agile Marketing” is
a thought-provoking
booklet created by EMC’s
Agile Marketing Team,
led by David Quinn,
Senior Director, Corporate
Marketing at EMC
Corporation
3
Dear
Reader,
it. My Agile Marketing team (about which you will learn more in chapter 2) and I think it is time
for something new. We believe that a shift to an agile marketing model is the right change.
This e-book tells the story of agile marketing and of how we, at EMC, successfully embraced
I’ll start with a simple question. Why does marketing exist?
this methodology to tackle some of the challenges our marketing department was struggling
I’ll spare you the dozens of ‘official’ definitions that are
with. To understand the concept of agile marketing, and EMC’s own case story, it is essential
living out there (that you probably know all too well) and
to realize that the underlying ideas and approaches are rooted in the simple fact that our
move on to the essence of the matter. Marketing is here
environment has changed dramatically. These evolutions have a— direct or indirect—impact
to help us sell products and services to consumers, right?
on the way we manage our marketing activities. To me, this broader picture is key to grasping
Only the latter have changed so much over the last few
why and how we have moved our methodologies in the direction we have over the last couple
years that it’s actually scary. They are not the only ones to
of years. I feel a lot of us marketers tend to focus too much on the ‘small’ world of just our
have undergone such a dramatic transformation, though:
department, our company, our Management, our strategy and our (internal) customers. In
the amount of information available has, our tools have
the current connected economy everything influences everything else, so we must accept the
and–perhaps most alarming of all–our competition has.
outside so that we know how to function ‘on the inside’. That is actually the very first step to
becoming an agile organization.
And yet, in the midst of this ever-increasing pace of
permanent changes, a lot of us marketers keep doing what
Happy reading!
David Quinn
Senior Director, Corporate Marketing
at EMC Corporation
we always did, without rethinking the way we work too
much. Maybe we went a little digital. But that’s pretty much
If you are interested in learning how EMC’s solutions can help
For more information on EMC’s implementation
your company, please find more information on www.emc.com.
of Agile Marketing I can be reached via Twitter at :
@DavidQuinn1004
5
6
1
Long term planning
is a thing of the past.
This is the time for
keeping up and running.
Chapter
Why the ‘old’
marketing
should move on.
Marketing
in the moment
1
for one and one for all’. Contrary to common belief, we are still dealing very much with mass
marketing today. Be it in a totally different format than before. The mass is just hidden behind
Remember when decision-makers could sit down and
the individual. And he is a force to be reckoned with: as difficult to catch (or keep) as he is
think? And then think some more? And dream up a clever,
powerful.
long-term plan? And then wait for the others to read it? And
have it go back and forth until everyone–or the majority, or
Our customers have indeed undergone a massive transformation over the last years. They
just the one with the loudest voice—agreed that that was
are more demanding, more vocal and more connected than ever. Their attention spans keep
the way to go? And remember when the entire organization
on shortening. So we will want to treat them in just the way they want. And they do want a
‘stuck’ to the plan for the entire period that it was meant to
lot. They want to be recognized over all the different channels they are hopping between.
be followed? Those days are pretty much over.
They want relevant information, dialogue and welcome advice that recognizes them as the
unique individual they believe themselves to be. ‘Old marketing’ approaches based on a
Today, we have changes and insights flying at us from all
slowly evolving one-way monologue – telling them what to do, instead of listening to what
directions. This is no time to be complacent. This is the
they want - will no longer do in this new supersonic environment.
moment for keeping up and running. The laws of the market
have changed and so should we. Because this is the age of
The Internet is responsible for the greater part of this evolution, of course. It has completely
the community. The era of the network. The epoch of ‘all
changed how consumers decide to buy. The purchasing process used to be a combination
7
1
of an initial stimulus, the first and the second moment of truth. If our ads were effective, the
Chapter one Marketing in the moment
consumer responded to this incentive by visiting our stores or contacting one of our sales
From the linear & clearcut marketing funnel…
people. Then, the combination of the product and service and the salesperson would–in the
best case–result in a purchase (the first moment of truth). Once home, or in the office with
Eyeballs
the product, the consumer used it and formed an opinion of his or her purchase: the second
moment of truth. All in all, buying used to be a pretty straightforward and linear experience.
Awareness
ZMOT eats
the marketing
funnel for
breakfast.
Consideration
Preference
Over the years this traditional funneled process
has exploded to form a complex map of touch
points. Just to give some examples from the
Google/Shopper
Sciences
study:
50%
Action
Loyalty
of
consumers used a search engine to find out
Buyers
information before buying, 49% talked with friends/family about the product, 38% comparison-shopped online, 36% sought information for a product brand/manufacturer Website,
31% read product reviews or endorsements online, etc.1 Google calls this comprehensive,
online decision-making period the ‘Zero Moment of Truth’. So we’d better have strategies and
8
tactics for showing up at the right place, at the right time with the right content.
So it is safe to say that our environment has multiplied in intricacy over the years. Professional
experiences used to be linear and clean-cut. The fast-paced, dynamic and networked character of today’s market has changed all that. We need to evolve along with the market. Rigid,
long-term planning and siloed thinking is no longer relevant in this context. In fact, in a world
…to the
comprehensive
‘Zero Moment
of Truth’
that is ruled by complexity, unpredictability, volatility and
the intricate interdependencies between connected parts,
being slow and inflexible is frankly dangerous.
The greatest danger in times of
turbulence is not the turbulence;
it is to act with yesterday’s logic.
There is no denying that this slow and seriously consid-
Peter Drucker,
author and
management
consultant
ered approach did make sense at one time, of course. TV
ads, for instance, were (and still are) extremely expensive.
Getting it wrong, meant losing a lot of cold hard cash. So
marketers cultivated a low tolerance of failure and thought
very slowly and prudently–backed up by a lot of expensive
market research and focus groups–about what their next
approach would be. They made (long term) plans and carefully stuck to them. Made sense. But with cheaper channels
like websites, online tests and social media that are so
much more flexible - and fast - it no longer does.
The fox and the
hedgehog: why
agile marketing
makes sense
Before we go into more details about agile
marketing, let me first tell you author and statistician Nate Silver’s story of the fox and the
hedgehog. According to him hedgehogs are
those people who tend to see the world through
their ‘big ideas’ about the role of government, the
effect of taxes on the economy, etc. They are ’type A’ personalities who believe in governing
principles about the world that behave as though they were physical laws and undergird
Our current world is actually too complex to be stabilized,
virtually every interaction in society.” They tend to be specialized, they believe order can be
structured and predicted. Static, locked in and uncom-
accomplished and are usually very reluctant to change their predictions.
promising organizations will not be able to survive in this
environment. “It is those organisms best adapted to the
environment that will have a greater chance of surviving”2,
remember? And agile marketing is just the right way to
approach an unstable market, knowledgeable customers
The Fox knows many things, but the
Hedgehog knows one big thing.
Archilochus,
Greek poet
and an increasingly fast competition.
Foxes, on the other hand, are “scrappy creatures who believe in a plethora of little ideas and
in taking a multitude of approaches toward a problem.” Silver feels that ‘foxes’ make better
9
1
Chapter one Marketing in the moment
predictions because they are more willing to consider multiple points of view, and they are
less likely to view everything through their partisan lens.
Marketers today should be a lot more like these foxes. They move forward in small steps. They
are permanently monitoring and measuring their environment. They incorporate ideas from
We are uncovering better ways of
developing software by doing it and
helping others do it. Through this work
we have come to value:
different disciplines, regardless of their origin. They are tolerant of complexity, and do not try
to fight it with order. They know that sometimes, you do need to fight fire with fire. Presented
with new data, they are quick to adapt.3
So, should we stop planning altogether? Of course not. You need both. In IT, there is the
concept of ‘dual speed’: one part of it is fairly static and the other part changes permanently.
Individuals and
interactions over
processes and tools
Working software
over comprehensive
documentation
Customer
collaboration over
contract negotiation
Responding
to change over
following a plan
The same goes for marketing. You need strategy and long–well, longer–term planning. The
big difference is that today we should not write our shiny one-year marketing plans in stone.
If the market modifies, we re-evaluate and adapt them. We have to be agile about our plans.
10
The roots of
agile marketing.
This agile methodology was an answer to the traditional
To fully grasp what agile marketing is all about,
waterfall approach in the software development world. It
you first need to understand that the meth-
was called that because, on paper, the process did kind
odology behind it has its roots in IT. The agile
of look like a waterfall, cascading sequentially from one
software development methodology was born
stage to another. A project would start with comprehensive
on a (possibly) sunny day somewhere in the nineties. And in February 2001, 17 software
requirements gathering. Once they were finalized, archi-
developers had a brainstorming session at the Snowbird (Utah) resort to discuss lightweight
tects would map out the design. Once that was done then
development methods. Their ‘Manifesto for Agile Software Development’, that eventually
developers would begin implementation. Then it would go
came out of that, is a good place to start, to explain the basics of this approach:
on to verification, delivery, and maintenance forever after.
The problem with that was that this process was sluggish
be a perfect recipe for disaster. Every company should ‘marketize’ (yes, we are stretching the
and it is just a plain reality that requirements do change
use of this term, but it describes exactly what it should) and personalize the agile methodology.
over time. By the time the implementation was over, the
software was often already quite outdated. Even worse,
So, agile marketing is definitely not a rigid copy of agile development. And while we are at
communication with the client was kept to a minimum
it, here’s another thing it certainly is NOT: controlled chaos. On the contrary. Agile is a very
resulting in a shortage of verification during the devel-
process-driven, even orderly methodology that allows its practitioners to respond and adapt
opment process. It was not uncommon for developers
quickly, in a market dictated by speed.
to arrive - beyond happy with themselves - with their
nice, shiny software. Only to find the client furious and
demanding a re-do, claiming that this was not what he had
ordered… at all!
Agile marketing, a short definition
Before going into more detail about the main characteristics of agile marketing, my
The agile approach was a smart answer to this conundrum.
team has tried to pull together a definition of how we see it, as there are so many
It has a strong customer and quality focus. It works in small
different definitions bandied about.
iterative steps. It stimulates face-to-face conversation
and collaboration between empowered cross-functional
teams and other stakeholders. It is based on the perma-
We view it as a clean and simple process-driven manner of marketing that stimulates
transparent communication, collaboration and the sharing of intelligence and experience. In reality, it does this by utilizing empowered and multidisciplinary teams with
nent delivery of small chunks of results. It favors continual
a strong sense of individual accountability, regular short meetings, short delivery
measuring, review, feedback and ongoing adaptation. And
cycles, continuous measuring and a ‘fail fast and learn’ philosophy. Its ultimate goals
it tries to keep everything simple. That is how you operate
are speedy adaptation and proactive innovation in response to a market that is as
when the market changes at the speed of light and your
fast as it is unpredictable. Agile marketing is never ‘done’, it is always in flux.
customers keep growing more volatile by the day.
So much for the ‘history’ lesson. This part has been kept
To our team, as well as many others, agile marketing centers on two poles of excellence:
deliberately short because we strongly believe that no
Adaptation and Collaboration. We will explain how we perceive agile marketing by unifying all
marketer should literally copy this IT approach. That would
its main characteristics by means of these two main themes.
11
Adapt or perish,
now as ever, is nature’s
inexorable imperative.
12
H. G. Wells
Adapt
Chapter
Marketing
in the moment
1.1
When rafting in rapid waters, you do not try to steer in a
straight line. One needs to nimbly and constantly change
course to maneuver around the unexpected rocks that
Habits & innovation
For most people–except maybe a
few pioneers–innovating is perfectly
might tear the boat apart. Just like that, today’s market is
counterintuitive. Why would we put our
not about linear travel from A to Z with fixed stopovers and
faith in something if we are not 100% sure it will even work, right? One of the reasons for this
a predictable end station. Rather it is about the flexibility
reserve towards the new is that our brain always tries to be as ‘lazy’ as possible. Perfectly
to choose the right direction at the right time all the while
understandable: it takes up no less than 25% of our body’s energy.4
navigating a gazillion little forks in the road.
So if our brain can transform something into a habit, it will. Habits are governed in the very
So how can agile marketing help you, to be well… more
center of our brain—the basal ganglia—which creates routines by means of a habit loop.
agile? First of all, it helps one plan, but in a much more
This loop always comes in the same format: a cue (e.g. a business owner asks us for a mini-
iterative and adaptive manner. It teaches us to chop
product-website), a routine (e.g. you have a template ready for that, so you use it) and a
up big plans or projects into little chunks. It allows us to
reward (e.g. the business user is happy that you were able to work quickly because of that
experiment in a safe environment. It tells us to stay critical
template.). Our brain creates these habits out of sheer efficiency: they automate certain
about how we work and to keep reinventing ourselves. And
thoughts or movements so our brain needs to ‘think’ less.5 This kind of cognitive efficiency is,
it frees us from the dictatorship of perfection.
unfortunately, the arch enemy of innovation.
13
1
Chapter one Marketing in the moment - 1.1 Adapt
The problem with habits is that they are so ingrained into the brain that they are exceedingly
First of all, agile marketing teaches us to scale experiments
difficult to break. For example: homeowners cut their lawns in the same pattern every week.
down to a manageable size. If we try out smaller things,
They like the pattern…. It makes sense to them. It looks good to them. It feels good to them
when they do not work out, we just move on quickly to
and week to week it’s ‘easier’ to do it the same way. Try convincing someone to switch that
other small bets with little harm done. Agile teaches us how
up! The same goes for habits: they wear a path in our brain which can be changed, but never
to fail fast, learn from it and then readjust. It helps us adapt
actually disappears. Never underestimate the power of habit.
in baby steps and reduces the threat of spectacular failures.
It is less about incredibly expensive Big Bang marketing
It gets worse. Our brain even fears change, because–long ago, when it started to develop–
the Pleistocene, maybe eating some mammoth meat, and everything was as it was. Great.
And then something changed: a cave lion, maybe. Not so great. That is why our brain is really
suspicious of change stimuli. This basic instinct is still wired in our synapses.6
Sheltering
change.
14
efforts, and more about divided little experiments.
every change in our environment could bring death. You were chilling in your cavern during
I’ve failed over and over
and over again in my life
and that is why I succeed
Michael
Jordan
Secondly, agile enables an organizational culture that does
These
bar-
not punish failure. You cannot decide to go agile, have your
riers are why most of us keep
psychological
people believe that innovation and experimentation beats
doing what we are doing.
doing safe things and then ‘punish’ them when they make
And why we naturally hold
a mistake. We would almost say “don’t bother trying agile
back from innovation. The
marketing if you are not prepared to accept that mistakes
agile methodology is smart,
will be made”. In fact, there will probably be a lot of them.
though. It knows that we are
afraid, or at the very least extremely cautious, when it comes to trying new things and fearful
This tolerance of failure is not an option. Companies with
of making mistakes. So it creates a safe environment for trial and error.
a severe mistake allergy will harvest an “If it ain’t broke,
don’t fix it” culture. And this will result in the innovation
Google Answers—were both uncharted territory for the company. While AdSense grew to be
… of absolutely nothing. That is a very rocky road to be
a multi-billion-dollar business, Google Answers (which lets users post questions and pay an
going down today. Even yesterday, for that matter, if we can
expert for the answer) was retired after four years.
believe the research that Shell performed to uncover the
secrets of long-lived companies.7 Besides fostering decen-
Even while Google Answers failed, Wojcicki said they learned a lot in that time, and were
tralization and collaborative forms of management (flat
able to apply the knowledge they had gathered to the development of future products. She
organization, anyone?), these long-lived companies were
states “If we’d been afraid to fail, we never would have tried Google Answers or AdSense, and
particularly tolerant of activities in the margin: outliers,
missed an opportunity with each one”. True, these ‘experiments’ can hardly be called small
experiments and eccentricities within the boundaries of the
bets (though they might seem so to a giant like Google), but the spirit in which they were
cohesive firm, which kept stretching their understanding of
developed, fits within the philosophy of ‘fail fast’.
possibilities. Real survivors and winners have always cherished experiments, and–as one needs to be when testing
Spotify does it differently: with small quick and dirty experiments that are killed really fast
things out–were thus tolerant of failure. In today’s fast-
if they don’t work. Their ‘squads’—similar to scrum teams and designed to feel like a mini-
moving environment, this mindset is even more essential.
startup–are even encouraged to spend roughly 10% of their time on ‘hack days’. On those
days employees do whatever they want, typically trying out new ideas and sharing them with
We understand that this may just appear ‘wrong’ to most
colleagues.
marketing organizations. Because we have been brought
up to believe that all blunders will cast a shadow on our
“We’re here trying to ‘manufacture & fail’ on a regular basis, and we think that’s how you
reputation . But those who decide to take the leap, will
learn”, is how Dave McClure, the angel investor and founder of 500 start-ups, put it. “Getting
be walking with giants. Google, just to call out a relevant
used to that, bouncing back from that, being able to figure out what people hate and turn that
big hitter, is well-known for its ‘fail fast and learn’ culture.
into what people love... If you’re not willing to take the risk of failing and experience failure,
Susan Wojcicki, Google’s Senior Vice-President of Adver-
you’re never going to figure out what the right path is to success.”8
tising, even incorporated “Never fail to fail” a while ago into
her “eight pillars of innovation”. She describes how two of
the first projects she worked on at Google—AdSense and
15
1
Chapter one Marketing in the moment - 1.1 Adapt
16
Testing,
testing,
one, two
If you want to be able to react in a flexible manner to the market, you must know what really
No wonder that Gartner predicted that, by 2017, the CMO
works and what does not. And you must know it all the time, because what was effective
will spend more on IT than the CIO does. It did not always
yesterday will not necessarily be so today or tomorrow. Agile marketing is therefore big on
use to be so. Remember when John Wannamaker said “Half
testing and measuring. Not just after the project, like traditional marketers do. During the
the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I
entire marketing engagement as well.
don’t know which half”.
The good news is that, now more than ever, we have solutions at hand to carefully analyze
Continuous monitoring and measuring of how our efforts
most of our efforts, and even in (near) real time. All kinds of smart web analytics tools can
influence consumers allows us to keep learning what is
show us how customers came to our website, how long they stayed there and where they
actually working and what we should change. The awkward
went before leaving or buying. Clever Big Data solutions can even analyze video streams
thing is that a lot of (marketing) organizations lack the
from in-store camera systems and create mappings of customer foot traffic throughout the
elasticity and innovation mindset to really act upon this
stores. Once merged with sales data we are now able to optimize the product placement in
information in a timely fashion. This is one of the major
our stores. Or we can use social media sentiment analysis to learn how consumers really feel
points where an agile methodology can prove to be of
about our company, brand or services.
value.
Parting
with
Perfection
Another important part
of agile marketing is
the ‘Good Enough’ principle. In agile marketing,
perfect is the enemy of
good. Because timing is everything is today’s fast-paced
market. Some marketers will have difficulty with this. They
will want to get everything right before getting their website
or e-book out there. Those who wait for 100% perfection
may spend so much time getting there that they risk losing
the valuable window of opportunity. They also fail to realize
that total control is an illusion in an environment that
moves like greased lightning, anyhow.
Now, please do not misunderstand our position. It is
commendable to be striving for perfection. We all need
that mindset if we want to achieve great things. You should
always aim for excellence, settle for good and don’t sweat
the mistakes when they happen.
Boring
is the right
thought at the
wrong time.
17
Jack Gardner
author
Two people will collectively
know more than one.
Three will know more than
two. And when you have a
room full of smart people
sharing their knowledge,
there’s very little you can’t
accomplish together.
18
Douglas C. Merrill,
organizational guru
and former CIO
at Google
Collaborate!
Chapter
Marketing
in the moment
1.2
We are living in a world that is brimming over with data
more difficult it is to simply “keep up” by yourself. And it’s not that our brains are becoming
and information. And it is coming at us from all sides at
less developed. Rather it is our individual relative knowledge level which is decreasing
the same time: from our own neatly stacked databases and
through no fault of our own. It’s informational overload at its core.
metadata or in a much more messy, unstructured format
from the Internet, social networks, smartphones, digital
In such an environment, having employees or even departments work alone on their little
TV, security cameras, voter registrations, sports statistics,
island is not an option. We all know silos crush intelligence. Today is all about building
weather reports, etc. And it keeps growing. Faster and
bridges and destroying useless boundaries. The more connections you have, the smarter you
faster. In the US alone, the digital universe is expected to
are. Our brain functions that way11, and so should our companies. Because when our markets
grow from 898 exabytes to 6.6 zettabytes between 2012
and our consumers act like networks, so should we. If ’location, location, location’ is the
and 2020. That is more than 25% a year!10
motto of real estate agents, then ‘connection, connection, connection’ should be that of the
9
agile organization, be it marketing or other.
Though incredibly full of potential for organizations when
analyzed correctly–not in the least for their marketing
That is why smart companies work with connectors. Virtual ‘linkers’ like online internal
departments–this abundance of information has severe
communities and smart knowledge management systems. Or architectural unifiers like open
consequences for our individual employees as well. To put
office spaces that increase communication and contact between employees. Or human ones
it very bluntly: the more information there is at hand, the
like social media specialists that connect with our customers.
19
1
Chapter one Marketing in the moment - 1.2 Collaborate!
We too, at EMC, use such connectors in our agile marketing
It is all about creating bridges between departments, branches, employees, projects and
story, as you will learn in the next chapter. We work with
partners. It is about connected collaboration. Between business and marketing. Between
Engagement Managers that bridge the gaps between
marketing and IT. And between our ultra-specialized experts that need to work together like
the business owners in our company and our numerous,
closely knit guerrilla groups and combine their talents.
slightly siloed marketing sub-departments.
Markets are disappearing,
becoming networks of
information with the
customer at their heart.
And if the outside world
becomes a network,
companies will have to
follow suit.
The agile
collaboration
method
Agile marketing is so serious about collaboration that
it streamlines it by means of a methodology, that the
development world calls ‘Scrum’. This agile software
development framework has a strong focus on team
unity, face-to-face communication and customers. It
Peter
Hinssen
IT thought
leader and
author
is well suited for projects with rapidly changing or highly emergent requirements. In other
words, perfect for a marketing environment.
How Scrum works
Surprisingly though, many of our marketing departments
20
are still built in a very top-down and stovepiped manner.
Collaboration for them is just passing a finished piece of
‘product’ on to the next one, with very little communication
or interaction between all the separate players. They afford
The process starts with a project backlog. This is a well-defined list of tasks requested
by the business owner or developed by the team to achieve their goals. It evolves
via a series of short iterations called sprints, which last from one to four weeks. Each
sprint begins with a brief planning meeting and concludes with a review.
very few connections to their fellow employees of other
During the Sprint Planning meeting, the team reviews the project backlog and agrees
departments. Agile marketing can help solve that problem.
upon the tasks to be accomplished during the current sprint. During the entire sprint,
the team meets up every day for a short 15-minute standup meeting. People are
literally standing up during them, in order to force them to really keep it short and
efficient. The goal is to have each member of the team answer three questions at the
standup meetings:
Combining
forces
One of the strongest
forces of agile marketing
is the manner in which
it works with
What did
I do
yesterday?
1
2
What will
I do today?
3
Are there
any obstacles
that stand in
my way?
cross-
functional teams. The standup meetings have business
owners, with very different backgrounds, working alongside
marketing professionals of all kinds. Team members learn
tips, tricks, approaches or insights from one another
which they would never have gleaned on their own. When
you go agile, you will be surprised how much you and
your colleagues will learn about your organization or the
expertise of others. Information that is hugely valuable to
everyone trying to maneuver in a fast paced environment.
With this approach, everyone involved in the team knows everything they need to know
about the project on a permanent basis and–as important—they know that the others know
it too. Everyone agrees together on what the priorities are too, which is a problem that a lot
of marketing departments are facing (often the prioritized project is the one tabled by the
business owner that is screaming the loudest or carries the most weight).
The great thing about this methodology and especially the daily standup meetings is
that you create an ultra-transparent and open environment that leaves little room for
miscommunication.
Innovation
is not grown in a
greenhouse,
it evolves in an
ecosystem.
21
The Cross
Innovation
Manifesto12
1
Chapter one Marketing in the moment - 1.2 Collaborate!
This interconnected thinking and innovation ecosystem
that agile marketing enables reminds of what cross-innovators are trying to do. True, this is a different story than
agile marketing. But we want to prove that innovation is
often just the pooling and combination of little, clever
thoughts. It does not always come from one big pioneering
idea that no one ever thought of, although that is how most
people do perceive innovation. Clever originals like CREAX
help companies innovate based on the great premise that
“Somewhere, someone has already solved your problem”.
Their cross-functional experts solve specific problems by
offering a helicopter view on existing technologies across
all industries.
And such an approach does work. Wildcat Discovery Technologies, for instance, applies drug discovery technology to
design better batteries in the same way that pills are developed. Sometimes innovation is ‘just’ recycling something
from another industry. Even some of the ‘big’ innovations
were born that way. Henry Ford, pioneer from the auto-
22
I invented nothing new.
I simply assembled into a car the
discoveries of other men behind
whom were centuries of work….
To teach that a comparatively
few men are responsible for
the greatest forward steps of
mankind is the worst sort
of nonsense.
Henry Ford
mobile industry and founder of the Ford Motor Company,
boldly stated the following:
The agile methodology enables something similar. Different minds with different backgrounds and expertise work together and enlighten each other with information they would
likely never have acquired otherwise.
viewed favorably to say the least. You will be held fully responsible for wasting the other team
members’ – who were counting on you to be ready – time. So you are compelled to tell the
It’s on
you!
others “I will not make it”.
Some of you might wonder if such a structured and process-driven approach to marketing
will stifle creativity. We firmly believe the opposite. Agile marketing’s efficient way of working
and communicating frees up time to be more inventive. It allows different personalities to
fertilize each other’s ideas into something even more original. It grants the right to try out
‘crazy’ things, fail fast, adapt and learn from them. If you do it right, it will drive imagination
and innovation.
That concludes the more general and conceptual part of our story. Now, let’s all go to the
lobby. Bear with me, here. There is a valid reason why we should begin there. All will be
revealed in chapter 2.
One of the best benefits of the emphasis of agile marketing
on close collaboration, comes in the form of greater transparency and accountability. When a project team talks
so openly about their achievements, the to do’s and the
challenges they are facing, you create a certain kind of
peer pressure-induced state of accountability. When you
promised everyone “My website copy will be ready in 2
weeks” but never told them, at any of the standup meetings between then and the deadline, that there was no way
you would be ready in time, you know that you will not be
23
2
24
Our Engagement
Managers build
bridges between all
the stakeholders in a
marketing project
Chapter
EMC Corporate
Marketing goes agile:
our story
We are big believers in how actions and reality checks
eat words for breakfast any day of the week. Any ‘how to’
booklet is essentially an empty vessel until you enrich it
with a real life example. So we will tell you the story – of
Solving two
business problems
2
First off…we did not embrace agile
marketing
to
just
“do
something
different”. We were aware, and recognized
that we had two very serious challenges
how we, at EMC, implemented agile marketing. This is the
handicapping our Corporate Marketing
tale of our team and the Corporate Marketing organization.
organization: one from the perspective of Corporate Marketing and another one from that
It is a human success story. And a real adventure. We are
of our business owners. The challenges were not new nor were they uncommon. Fortunately,
extremely proud of what we accomplished, but as with
Jonathan Martin, our SVP of Marketing is all about trying new ideas and taking a risk to force
every big change, there were some bumps in the road. And
improvements. He challenged us to address the issues and we took it on with his backing
as ‘agile’ dictates, we will be open about those too because
and support.
the painful parts of reality are so critical to the success of
anything we undertake.
The first issue was our Corporate Marketing department was continuously overwhelmed with
requests. Some of it had to do with our type A, hard driving culture. “The more I do, the
25
2
Chapter two EMC Corporate Marketing goes agile: our story
better I’m doing”: that was pretty much the mindset of our internal workforce. And most of
the time this drive to achieve is a good thing – but not in every situation. In reaction to this
continuously strained workload, the Corporate Marketing teams often prioritized in a less
than scientific manner – because it was their only choice and sole way to survive. If you
were a very well connected colleague—or maybe just a really nice one—your project naturally
landed near the top of the pile. But if you were too pushy or failed to follow through in past
encounters you were likely to be in for a significant wait. This is not a condemnation of anyone
…this is just human nature. And we will bet that we are not the only ones dealing with this
kind of situation.
The second challenge that we had to tackle was that our business owners–those requiring
the services of (multiple) Corporate Marketing functions—were pretty much left to their
own devices. They often had to guess which of the Corporate Marketing groups they had
to engage, possibly forgetting rather important ones through no fault of their own. And if
Participative
evaluation
they did become aware that they needed additional help and capabilities, it often came to
light at the very end of a project or effort. Such oversight is not surprising when working
with 17 different functions (website, creative, social media, video…) and about 180 different
specialists. As an example our dedicated SEO experts, were constantly being overlooked at
the outset and were often asked to participate when it was already too late and copy had to
In corporate culture change,
always involve all your
stakeholders at a very early stage
be adapted to set things right. The result? ... Wasted time, rework and project delays.
Agile marketing is very big on collaboration. So the first
26
Because of the rather stovepiped working model of Corporate Marketing, these business
thing we did when we undertook the task of investigating
owners had to address all the different functions separately, ending up repeating the same
the problem, was to get together a team (of volunteers) to
story numerous times. This was not only inefficient from a time management point of view;
define how we were going to address these issues within
an extra danger was that their content and requests were often partially lost in translation.
our organization. And, in the spirit of working as a collabo-
rative unit, one of our first ideas was to quiz every function
After weeks and weeks of brainstorming and interviewing all of the stakeholders, our volun-
in Corporate Marketing and ask them to define the biggest
teer team agreed that the communication and the collaboration between all marketing
problems they were dealing with in their day-to-day work.
stakeholders and the business owners of projects was disconnected and not fluid enough.
One of the main things that we dug up was both simple
We were operating in an environment that was, while hard working and well meaning, siloed
and common to all parts of the organization. Every function
and overtaxed. We needed connectors. Bridge builders. Middle (wo)men, if you will. That’s
felt the same way. They were frustrated by the fact that they
how the idea of the Engagement Manager came about. We needed them to weave a strong
were not being involved from the ground floor up. Everyone
web between all the stakeholders in a marketing project.
wanted to be involved earlier in the cycle of work. The late
entries to projects conflicted with their understanding of
Before we go any further, it should be noted that we did have great marketing efforts before
the right requirements and deadlines and their agenda. No
we went agile. There is no denying the talent of our experts in each of their functional areas.
one ever had a clear grasp of just how all the part were
And their determination and drive to get things accomplished was second to none. But as we
supposed to come together.
said in an earlier chapter, we could have adapted faster to certain situations and could have
produced content and assets even more effectively and in a shorter period of time. All of our
As a by-product of this effort we discovered one of the
marketing efforts could have been more focused and more hard-hitting if we’d limited their
basics of effective change management: if you want to
number to a few ‘Wow!’ moments, instead of simply working to produce as much as we could.
change your corporate culture, involve all your stake-
And these challenges were only going to become bigger in a world of such an increasingly fast
holders at a very early stage, and let them have their say in
pace. That is why we decided to tackle all of these issues with an agile marketing approach.
what’s next. It is much more difficult to engage employees
when they are confronted with a fait accompli. Any change
project should be bottom-up driven and collaborative. The
approach of one person jumping forward and demanding
“From now on we are going to do agile marketing, no
matter what you want or what your challenges are”, will be
sure to end up in disaster.
Let’s all go
to the lobby…
Our concept of the Engagement Manager is partially
inspired by a Scrum Master13 and a Project Manager,
but the engagement manager is truly its own beast.
We like to describe ourselves as the front door to
marketing. Business owners (those needing services), go through that door and together
27
2
Chapter two EMC Corporate Marketing goes agile: our story
we begin our work with them in the lobby (You see, we
promised the lobby was coming back in our story). If they
The Agile Marketing Methodology–EMC Style
need our assistance with an ‘engagement’, we will work to
identify just whom from our ‘marketing house’ they require
for their project.
After that, we call every one of the stakeholders of that
particular project, the business owners and all the
marketing experts –our ‘virtual’ team–together for one, big
When business owners come to our ‘engagement’ office, we first hold a Business
Objectives Meeting (BOM) with them. This is when we outline the objectives and
activities and identify all key stakeholders. We also check if they are really ready for
the project. Because we are not going to bring everyone together to find out that the
business owners are nowhere near to delivering that core message we need to start
the project.
meeting. The business owner only needs to tell his story
We always try to begin with the basics. We avoid asking “what do you want” (a website,
once. Everyone is in on it from the ground floor up and
a folder, a white paper,…) because what business owners initially want is not always
people can decide about priorities, timing and additional
the same as what they need. We dig a little and inquire about their objectives, their
needs or opportunities together, in terms of the marketing
target audience, their budget, their past marketing products,… We act as filters. Some-
strategy and the clear outputs. This way we have addressed
times we find out together that the specifics they had in mind initially should be
the two business problems we described above. It becomes
re-evaluated. That is why the BOMs are so crucial.
a unified effort for the Corporate Marketing teams and a
In the iterative planning meeting, we gather all the stakeholders in the same room.
one stop shopping experience for the business owner.
That way we ensure upfront participation and understanding for all. We act as advisors,
asking pointed questions if things are not formulated clearly or suggesting things that
seem to have been forgotten. As engagement manager we do not profess to be experts
in ANY of the Corporate Marketing functions but we do act as advocates for all of them.
28
We want to make sure all the possible bases are covered by asking questions and
challenging teams to think more broadly. At the end of the Iterative Planning meeting
we, as a virtual team also define the sprint sets together, clearly stating the activity
backlog, deliverables, participants and timelines.
Unlike in agile software development, our standups are not conducted daily. We had
to scale them down – again a reality check. We could not afford to require that our
departments or functions–creative or the .com team for instance–had to participate
in 5 or more standup meetings every day. So we try to organize the standups in a
more efficient manner, sometimes merging two of them into one. We do have them
frequently though–about 2 to 3 times a week–because they are essential for the
communication, transparency and accountability of all key players. And, yes, we DO
The engagement
manager: tying the
marketing network together.
ask all of those that are in the room to stand up during the entire meeting, although
we cannot vouch for those participating via conference call from other departments
around the world. Standing up forces everyone to keep it short. This is always a chal-
So what is so special about our engagement managers?
lenge in any meeting as we all know. But forcing the standup actually works.
Well, they know our Corporate Marketing department
At the end of each engagement, we offer a demonstration of all the deliverables and
show the connections between the assets. This is an important part to stimulate the
synergy of a team: “Look at what we accomplished together”. Most marketers simply
through and through and are the perfect advocates for
each of the 17 different functions. When Business Owners
come to us, we bring them in contact with the team they
move on from one project to the next and never celebrate their accomplishments or
need but we also educate them about innovations they
see just how it is that THEIR work fit into the bigger picture. Some of them never even
could benefit from. We might tell them, for instance, about
see the end product they had their part in. Being confronted with results–good and
the short 45-second videos or a ‘fun’ infographic others
bad– fosters responsibility and job satisfaction.
have made and which will take best advantage of various
Testing, measuring and reusing what’s good and cutting out what does not work:
that is also an essential part of agile marketing. After each engagement, we hold
retrospectives, asking ourselves “Did we plan effectively” and “Did we deliver?” so
we can keep refining our process. We look at the data to see what worked, what did
not and why. Only then can we keep improving and innovating.
social media tools. Our engagement managers are facilitators and enablers. Their only goal is to make others shine
and be the best they can by really working together and
enriching each other’s experience.
What they are not, though, are project managers, hounding
everyone with their checklists to make sure that everyone
does their job. With a limited number of Engagement
Managers and a multitude of projects and marketing
29
2
Chapter two EMC Corporate Marketing goes agile: our story
efforts, there is simply no time for that. But is goes further
At the very beginning, our colleagues feared that the EMs would complicate things. They
than that. We want to avoid a Big Brother feeling. We
thought that adding an extra stakeholder to the marketing mix would increase the risk of
simply refused to add an extra layer of hierarchy and start
misunderstandings, mistakes or slower processes. This would indeed have been the case
checking up on people. That goes against everything that
with ‘sequential collaboration’: where one person does something and then gives it to the
agile marketing stands for and is against all the latest
next and that one gives it to the next… That was what collaboration used to be: like a relay
organizational trends. We ‘just’ make sure that everyone
race. But our marketing team, these days, is playing like a football team. We enable ‘simulta-
works together better and communicates better. We are
neous collaboration’: working together in the same place at the same time, keeping an eye on
there to ‘kill’ miscommunication, mistakes or double work
what the other players are doing and helping each other until a goal is indeed reached. If you
and help drive better and faster results. And we will never
get everyone in the same room together, with one mediator facilitating things, there is no way
tell the marketing specialists how to do their jobs. They are
that this complicates matters. On the contrary: it makes things so much simpler.
the experts. They know what they are doing. And it is essential that they feel that we respect that.
Our agile marketing approach allows everyone to be proactive and consultative, rather than reactive and passive.
As we said, our marketing experts actually used to be firefighting all the time, with every request coming at them,
of course, being “super-urgent and absolutely essential
for business value”. Our collaborative engagements allow
them the luxury to filter the priorities together, pick the
30
most valuable projects, work more efficiently and become
proactive, rather than fending people off. That is a great
way to fuel creativity and innovation. It buys them time to
dream up new things and actually do what they do best!
Like taking
candy from
a baby
marketing teams were completely overbooked and overSimplicity. That is one of the core features of agile marketing,
worked, a lot of the projects did not get out on time and
one of the 12 principles of the Agile Manifesto, and one of
quality suffered.
our favorite ones. The framework and processes we use
for our engagements are deliberately kept simple. We
Business in general and marketing specifically are all about
always use the same steps, as described above. This kind
choices. You cannot opt for a quantitative (focus on price
of ‘automates’ the collaboration and makes it into a habit. You can only break bad habits–
and efficiency) AND a qualitative (customer experience)
like working in silos and following the same pattern without ever innovating–by ‘overwriting’
value proposition for your business model. It is also impos-
them with good ones.
sible to have one product or one message that speaks to
the entire world. 16-year-old girls who love Taylor Swift and
In a way we do this by repeating the simple processes, as described above. This well-oiled
live with their parents in a two bedroom condo do not want
‘automation’ of collaboration, offers our specialists the room and the time to be at their
(to hear) the same thing as 59-year-old COOs who listen to
best: copywriters have more time to write better texts, graphic designers supply the most
Miles Davis in their Aspen Mansion while sipping on a cup
surprising visuals and social media gurus develop the most spectacular campaigns. Agile
of Kopi Luwak coffee. So we carefully choose how we will
marketing specifically enables all parties to focus on the activities they do best.
package our product and what message we will send out
to whom.
Life is really simple, but we insist
on making it complicated.
Choices are what define us. And that is why we help
Confucius
Chinese
philosopher
business owners and marketing experts choose and prioritize 20 projects over the maybe 60 projects they might
have done before. That makes each project all the more
outstanding and innovative. Agile marketing, you see, is
But this simplicity is not only ingrained in our agile marketing processes. It is also how we
decide about the priorities. We make sure that Corporate Marketing does “fewer things
better”. As we noted, our culture used to be very “the more, the better” driven. But if our
about quality, not quantity.
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2
Chapter two EMC Corporate Marketing goes agile: our story
32
Simplicity also comes from empowerment. Instead of fostering long and tedious approval
media, blog or advertising activities. Newsjacking only
processes involving many tiers all the way up the chain, we trust that our marketing experts
works if it goes fast. Waiting for approval from 6 levels of
know what they are doing (together). That allows them to react with the least possible delay.
management will not cut it. Just keep it simple.
We want to keep that window of opportunity wide open and get our message out there in
time – in essence, striking while the iron is hot. Like when we newsjack an item for our social
Timing is
everything!
Timing beats
perfection.
best choice in a given circumstance. And even more so if you are working in an environment
In our agile marke-
of driven employees who often just want to show you how they ‘nailed it’. Be aware of that.
ting engagements, we
also advise the stake-
holders not to beat an action to death. If it is 80% ready,
just get it out there when the opportunity is ripe. This, of
course, mainly applies to larger and composite marketing
projects. Some projects, situations or industries are unfit
for this approach. You cannot complete 80% of an airplane
Be agile about
your agile
marketing
We were agile about our own agile marketing
too. We saw it as an experiment. We first started
to work with a group of volunteers, very much
aware that this was an initiative that might fail.
and then try and see if it works. We will also never ask a
Once we’d gathered enough information about
copywriter to finish 80% of a blog article and then post it.
the ‘as is’ situation of Corporate Marketing and felt we knew enough about the agile principles, we started with just one small bet. We chose one specific project and conducted a
It will work in a situation where a website is fully functional
pilot, doing all the things we had learned and trying out different things along the way. And
and flawless on the content side, but might for instance
when that project worked out, we did another one and before we knew it we became ‘official’.
miss two non-essential pages. Or it might in a campaign
Instead of a volunteer army we built a full time organization with dedicated engagement
for which we have a folder, a website and a social offen-
managers on staff. And then we started enabling more and more engagements, involving
sive ready, but for which we are still waiting for a longer
more and more business owners and marketing experts.
white paper. We’ll just get them out there and add the white
paper in the mix later on.
In the (agile) spirit of honesty and transparency, we have to admit that it was a rocky road at
first. As we said, most people tend to get extremely uncomfortable when it comes to change.
Timing is everything in marketing today. You have to
We are not kidding when we say it: some of our colleagues actually used to duck away when
balance that ‘missing’ 20% against the window of oppor-
they saw us coming in the halls. They feared we were going to tell them how to do their job.
tunity, when you can make the biggest bang. Does this
They thought we were going to monitor them or cause them to lose precious time. We were
approach scare people? Yes. As we said, it is human nature
perceived as “Red Tape”, inhibitors to getting the job done. We were not necessarily the most
to try to get it ‘just right’. It’s just that it’s not always the
popular folks at that point in time.
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Chapter two EMC Corporate Marketing goes agile: our story
It was a blessing that we did a pilot project first so we could show the next ones on the list
that the agile approach worked. And thankfully we had involved everyone from the outset by
asking what their challenges were! Now we could literally ask them “Did you not say that you
were always held up by the other colleagues because they were never transparent about how
they would not meet the deadline, and was this not solved by organizing the 3 transparent
meetings per week?”… People don’t like to be told what to do, because you could just be
selling them hot air if you have no proof of value. You need to be able to show them what you
did and what the results were. That is also why we always have a demonstration at the end of
The EMC agile
marketing mission
each engagement meeting. So we can display what was done.
The treasure trove
of collaboration
One of the best things to come out of our new
1.
Do fewer things better and more efficiently
2.
Enables all parties to focus on the activities they do best
3.
Allows everyone to be proactive and consultative, versus reactive
and passive
4.
Facilitates prioritization and allows
everyone to work on (or receive) the
most important items as agreed
upon by all
5.
Communication and status transparency
6.
Accountability is king
way of marketing was the merging of great minds
working together. Innovation is not just about
the big brainstorms or the high-profile innova-
tion jams focusing on revolutionary inventions. We believe that if you have just the right
people working together, smarter and more closely, they will automatically cross-pollinate
each other’s ideas and innovate. It is like the cross-innovation we talked about earlier, but
within the perimeters of just one organization. Going agile has pushed our marketing team
beyond the utilitarian into innovation. It brings what Peter Drucker said to a whole new level:
34
Because the purpose of business is to create a customer,
the business enterprise has two–and only two–basic
functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and
innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing
is the distinguishing, unique function of the business.
Peter
Drucker
author and
management
consultant
We already wrote about most of the principles stated in
going to get fired”. In such a safe environment all the marketing stakeholders feel comfort-
our mission above, but we just want to elaborate on how
able enough to tell the truth, and that is crucial in our standups or other meetings. We just
we work on achieving transparency and accountability,
want to take away that crippling fear of failing that is such a big obstacle for not only effi-
which really are two of the most essential ones of our agile
ciency, but creativity and innovation as well.
marketing approach.
In all of the projects they are involved in, our Engagement Managers want to cultivate the
feeling that “we are all in this together”. They want the stakeholders to feel that they are
Zapping the
corporate nod
not just doing their own thing but are part of a greater whole. Everyone is there on an equal
Have you noticed
that when you ask
people how they
are, they always tend to answer “Fine” or “Great”, even if
they are not? We call it the corporate nod. And it’s all about
being afraid to say you are not going to meet a requirement or a deadline—for whatever reason–and keeping it
to yourself. It is about being ashamed to admit that you are
“failing”. Because whatever outcome other than the one
that was projected up front is a flop in our eyes. It’s natural.
We hit on this already in chapter 1.
The ‘corporate nod’ is a habit that’s very hard to break.
But we think we’ve cracked it to a large extent. One of the
driving forces behind this was that our leadership team
really meant it when they said “If you have an idea, try it. If
it blows up or even smolders to death, that’s ok. You are not
playing field. No one is more important than the next man. There is no hierarchy. There is
no ‘boss’ on an engagement. Just a bunch of people trying to achieve the best project they
ever did, together. A key feature for achieving this kind of responsibility is peer pressure, of
course. People will just try that little harder in a transparent environment where their efforts
are permanently out in the open. As we said, the tricky part is, of course, not to slide into a
Big Brother environment, governed by command and control.
But the accountability of our marketing stakeholders is not merely driven by peer pressure.
We try to endow our colleagues with a sense of pride and joy about what they have accomplished together. That is why we always hold extensive demonstrations at the end of each
engagement. So everyone can see the results. Yes, we do bask together in the golden light
of the successful ones. But we remain critical as well. We have retrospectives too, where we
talk about the lesser outcomes or what could have been done better. So we can learn from
those and get better.
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Chapter two EMC Corporate Marketing goes agile: our story
It’s all in
the mind(set)
Some of the above has, of course, already been discussed
Not only did we formulate a mission for our agile
in depth–collaborative, transparent, flexible, empow-
marketing project, we also defined and documented
ered, simple, fail/learn and “keep going!” (about the 80%
a mindset as a guideline for all our efforts. We try to
threshold and get it out there)–so we will just focus on
be social, for one. We share all of our demonstrations
those that still need a little explanation.
and retrospectives, all of our ‘recipes’ (we, for instance, have some very elaborate roadmaps
for the different kinds of product launches), methods, frameworks, work plans and other best
Global, first. EMC is a global company and thus needed
practices on an online internal community. Every piece of content about every engagement
to take this into consideration when going agile. It is not
is 100% open to anybody. We work to find the latest tools and communication methods and
always easy to juggle collaboration and standups between
are committed to sharing best practices online. It’s important to have this ingrained in the
stakeholders that work in Boston, California and India.
DNA of the organization.
There are limited timeslots in which we can get together
and, obviously, getting them in the same room will not
work. So we have a mix of ‘live’ standups and conference
calls. But we make it work.
Mindset
Our Engagement Managers help make sure that every
campaign is ‘global proof’. We always check–before implementing them on all kinds of carriers—whether certain
36
slogans or visuals are acceptable in certain countries or
Social
Empowered
Collaborative
Global
possibly use the bullet train as an image for our ‘Back to the
Transparent
Simple
train accident recently with several casualties. Of course,
Flexible
Fail/Learn
cultures. That is, for instance, how we learned we could not
future’ campaign in China, where there had been a bullet
situations like that cannot always be predicted in advance.
Keep Going!
But through close collaboration with all the international
branches, we can try to avoid these things as proactively
as possible. And when we don’t, we just react as quickly
as we can to those kinds of situations, by using the agile
approach.
Keep
reinventing
yourself
We are dead serious
about
revitalizing
ourselves.
We
monitoring,
keep
measuring
We keep measuring
and reinventing
ourselves
and adjusting our efforts.
After each engagement and together with all the project
stakeholders, we analyze what worked, and what did not.
We measure our launches–seeing that those are extra important to us and are managed in
We use what we call our ‘micro-dashboards’ as a directive
a very thorough manner—differently. We use a ‘fun’ infographic which documents very thor-
to make sure we discuss everything in detail and never
oughly the impact of our efforts. It shows the attendance at our virtual events, which were the
miss a thing. We talk about how the collaboration went and
most popular breakout sessions, what was the amount of downloads of collateral and which
what the new insights or innovations were. We discuss if
were the most popular ones, how many of our tweets were shared… All of this is, of course,
there was any course correction or issue avoidance. We
intended so we can quickly and clearly see what worked and what did not. So we can readjust
tackle how we communicated and where the roadblocks
the next time around.
were. We go over each step carefully together to see what
we can learn and what ought to be changed.
We also organized a focus group with an outside supplier. That way all the engagement
stakeholders could impart, in full anonymity, what they thought about our methodology and
approach. We received some very helpful insights from that and now we are looking into it to
see how we can close the loop on the feedback we received.
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Chapter two EMC Corporate Marketing goes agile: our story
On top of that we now register the accomplishments of our engagement team as a whole. So
innovation. So it is our job to be chameleons, to change
we built a quarterly macro-dashboard to self-examine ourselves in the most critical manner.
when our environment does and come up with fresh ideas.
We tried to keep it as simple as possible, by looking at it in just 5 different dimensions. It
That is exactly why we take our ‘temperature’ so much with
shows–among other things—that we had a 40% increase in engagements from 2012 to 2013,
the retrospectives and the dashboards. That is why we are
how many of those were annual, how many and what type of launches we had, how many of
currently working on a ‘Chapter 2’ in our agile marketing
the stakeholders we reached and what kind (Corporate Marketing, sales, business sponsors,
project, to define all the things we’ve learned along the
vendors or partners…). And last, but not least, we look at all the innovations in Corporate
way and what the next steps should be. We keep looking at
Marketing, in our launches, as well as in our engagement methodology.
what’s next. Being agile marketers, there is no other choice.
One of the best innovations in Corporate Marketing that was enabled through agile marketing
So, that was our agile marketing story. We hope that you
was the prestigious Human Face of Big Data project, one of the largest-ever collaborative
found it helpful. We tried to be as honest as possible and
events in human history. Millions of people around the world were able to share and compare
not leave out the hard parts. As we all know, there are no
their lives by means of a free mobile app. The project triggered a global conversation about
real hero stories in business, although literature would
humanity’s new ability to collect, analyze, triangulate and visualize vast amounts of data in
have us believe the contrary. Mistakes are made. Thanks
real time.
to ’agile’, these will no longer cast a shadow on our reputation, but teach us and grant us freedom from habits.
We try to innovate wherever possible. Over the course of time, we began to look outside of
38
Corporate Marketing and have brought other EMC departments into the mix. Launches are
We are reminded of this quote by Thomas Edison: “I have
a great example of how we step outside the box: we include our partner organizations, our
not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work”.
communication teams and our field teams as full participants ensuring that all key players are
The words apply perfectly to the agile mindset. The irony
in the game from the beginning.
is that there are so many versions of this quote around and
that only one of them is not actually a mistake.14 If we have
Do not think, because we allow for experimentation and fast failure or focus on interaction
indeed misquoted Edison, we sincerely apologize and we
and collaboration, that ours is a ‘soft’ environment. Our management teams expect us to
promise to get it right next time if we learn which one is the
continuously reinvent ourselves. One of the core goals of our agile marketing is fostering
true version. We are good with that.
To conclude: one of the things we love most about agile
marketing is how human it is. Loads of methodologies
or approaches start from some ideal type of character
or mindset that a lot of us simply do not have. Agile is
different. It takes into account all of our basic flaws and bad
habits and tries to act on them in a very simple, processdriven manner. It is all about taking away the complexities
and making them simple. It knows that we are terrified of
failing and loathe change and tackles that – head on. It
realizes that we like to keep things to ourselves and finds
a loophole for that. Agile is smart. It knows that we are not
perfect and starts from there.
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3
40
If you want to make
enemies, try to change
something
Woodrow Wilson
Chapter
The agile marketing
starter’s roadmap
3
We should be very clear about one thing here. We KNOW how difficult it is to transform. The
with the agile marketing concepts. It thrives in a trusting
truth? Our own agile marketing team is not exactly made up of a group of ‘change-y’ type of
and sharing environment. It prospers in a flat management
people. Just ask our colleagues. So we wanted to impart some lessons learned and some key
structure that fosters collaboration, and where employees
basics before we send you on off into the wilds of Agile Marketing.
are empowered to do what they are best at without having
to go through all the layers of the organization to receive
It is absolutely crucial that you have executive support for your
Ensure
executive
support
agile marketing project. Your executives will be impacted by
the agile approach in more ways than one so it’s necessary to
have them on board. Moreover, their management style will be
an essential enabler (or definite roadblock, depending on the
situation) of the agile methodology.
We cannot repeat it enough (and yes, we did already, many times…): autocratic managers
operating in a unilateral, slow and competitive hierarchical environment will not match up
approval.
If your Management is intolerant of failure and demands
that everything is 100% perfect before it is released,
agile marketing might not be the way for you. You cannot
possible expect employees to experiment at will and then
be severely reprimanded each time they get something
wrong.
41
3
Chapter three The agile marketing starter’s roadmap
If by chance you are dealing with such an environment,
not fit your challenges or your company’s culture. First evaluate how your organization is
you might want to have a serious conversation with your
going about their tasks and document the pain points. Be thorough. Be relentless. If you want
management team. It might seem madness to ask Manage-
‘agile’ to work for you, you first need to unearth all the flaws in your corporate culture and
ment to change their leadership styles, just because
existing processes, so you can attack them one by one.
Marketing would like to try out this new little agile trend.
True enough. However, We would like to point out that we
When you have found a method that will work for your type of challenges, be aware that this
are living in a networked and increasingly flattened envi-
too will not be clean-cut and eternal. As your environment evolves, so will your organization
ronment in which only ultra-fluid, collaborative, sharing,
as a whole. Your marketing department will thus need to adjust your agile approach. You
bottom-up driven organizations will thrive. As Jack Welch
will need to implement all the things you learned through experimentation, failing and
once put it: “Change before you have to”.
redirecting. Challenge yourself and your team on a permanent basis. There is no such thing
as the perfect agile approach, as it needs to keep evolving all the time by its very nature and
definition.
Personalize
it & keep
evolving
There is no plug-andplay formula for the
agile methodology. We
‘marketized’ it to our own
situation, keeping some
things, adapting others or simply leaving them out. For
42
instance, in the agile development world the Scrum Master
always has someone else lead the standup meeting every
time. This would just have made things more complex in
our environment, so we never used that.
Develop your own method. Don’t just copy ours. It might
Forewarned is
forearmed
As Woodrow Wilson so nicely put it “If you want to
make enemies, try to change something”. Introducing agile marketing will definitely not make
you popular. In fact, 52% of those surveyed by
VersionOne in its “7th annual state of agile development survey” gave “ability to change
organizational culture” as the biggest barrier to further agile adoption. 12% of them stated
that “company philosophy or culture at odds with core agile value” was the leading cause of
failed agile projects. To make it even scarier: according to the ‘2013 Change and Communication ROI Study’, only about 55% of all change initiatives meet their original objectives.
Agile marketing is not ‘just’ a methodology that you can implement in order to collaborate
better, react faster or become more innovative. It is a fundamental culture shift. According to
Tobias Mayer, author of ‘The People’s Scrum: Agile Ideas for Revolutionary Transformation’,
Scrum is much more about changing the way we think than it is a process.
So, as with every change management project, make sure to involve your stakeholders as
soon as you can, even before formulating the change objectives and the way to get there. In
the collaborative environment that is agile marketing, that’s how you should work anyway. Do
not just ‘throw’ agile marketing at your marketing department. This will just make adapting it
all the more harder.
Start
small
When you want to introduce culture
changes it is essential that you
start small–like we did, with a pilot
project–and then carry on, step by
step. In fact, this is not just one of
the basics of change, but of ‘agile’ as well: work step by
step, in short cycles and, after every deliverable, re-evaluate and change course, if needed.
The good thing about that is, that you only need to really
‘convince’ the first group of the pilot project. They will be
the hardest sell. But once that project is over, and it was
(more or less) a success, the next project will encounter
less resistance. Because you will be able to show what you
have achieved. Results speak so much louder than motivational words and promises. So always catalogue your proof
points and your successes for further use.
Of course, there is a slight chance that your first pilot
project will fail, possibly even miserably. Be prepared for
that. But do not get discouraged. That too, is ‘agile’. Get
back up on your feet, brush yourself off and try to find out
what exactly went wrong. Measure your mistakes, analyze
their source, learn from that and try to adapt your personal
agile marketing methodology to it.
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3
Chapter three The agile marketing starter’s roadmap
Spread
the word
Keep communicating every step
of the way. Show your success.
Have your management team
talk about agile marketing at
internal meetings and presentations, even if it is a short
reminder of just one of its core concepts (like the ‘fail fast
& learn’). Use an internal social platform to document all
of your best practices and methodologies. Continuously
‘advertising’ your agile marketing project is crucial if you
want to involve and engage your entire marketing organization.
And our very last piece of advice: KEEP IT SIMPLE! It is one
of the core components of agile marketing. What you are
trying to do is to ‘simplify’ an increasingly complex environment with straightforward processes and collaborative
best practices. Anything that will make your situation more
complex should be avoided at all times. We repeat: KEEP
IT SIMPLE!
44
Our life is frittered
away by detail.
Simplify, simplify.
Henry David
Thoreau
poet and
essayist
Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed reading our e-book. I know my team
believe it is, just like every parent in the world thinks that their child is the most beautiful,
and I loved writing it, in the spirit of sharing insights and
creative or brightest one in the world. (I know mine are.) But we do sincerely believe that we
collaborating with peers.
got it out there at the right time. And the fact that you have made it up to here proves that we
are on the right track.
We actually tried to apply the principles of agile marketing
in writing this book. I sat down with my entire team and we
Last, but certainly not least, I would like to thank my fellow team members for their help with
decided what exactly we would add to it, enriching each
this e-book as well as all of their innovative work from the inception of this agile marketing
other’s perspectives and particular experiences. We tried to
effort. None of this could have succeeded without you:
keep it human as well and be transparent about the pitfalls
and the mistakes we made, in the spirit of ‘practice what
Steve Colombo, Amy Callahan, Carolyn Cerce, Jill Fitzgerald, Ellen Deutsch
you preach’.
Stay Agile!
Is this the most perfect booklet you will find about agile
marketing? Probably not. Although we would really like to
David Quinn
Senior Director, Corporate Marketing
at EMC Corporation
45
About
David Quinn has led a variety of marketing functions for EMC in both web marketing and marketing support. In prior lives he managed the
David Quinn
introduction of web properties into Data General Corporation at the leading edge of the internet in the business environment including
one of the first ever business/sales oriented intranet sites. He is currently leading the Engagement Office within EMC’s Corporate
Marketing organization with a crack team that is continually working to define, deploy and refine new methodologies for success within
the marketing organization.
Sources
1
Chapter
1.1
1. Google/Shopper Sciences, The Zero Moment of Truth Macro
Study, U.S., April 2011
1.2
2. Who else but Charles Darwin?
10. The digital universe in 2020: Big Data, Bigger Digital
Shadows and Biggest Growth in the Far East, IDC Country
Brief, sponsored by EMC Corporation.
3. The idea to apply Nate Silver’s fox & hedgehog simile to agile
marketing, comes from Jim Ewell’s ‘Agile Marketing’ blog. Read it here, it’s really smart.
4. “Why We’re So Afraid of Change -- And Why That Holds Businesses Back” on www.forbes.com
5. Charles Duhigg, The Power Of Habit
6. “The 3 Most Dangerous Psychological Barriers to Change” on http://agilelifestyle.net/
7. This research was never published but incorporated in “The living company: Habits for survival in a turbulent business
environment”: see the article entitled “The living company: Habits for survival in a turbulent business environment” on www.businessweek.com
8. Why Silicon Valley Loves Failures, on http://www.inc.com/
9. The digital universe are the digital bits created, replicated and consumed in a single year.
11. Research has revealed that intelligent people have more efficient connections between their different brain areas.
2
Chapter
12. http://www.cross-innovation.eu/practices/manifesto/
13. According to the Scrum software development framework
from agile marketing, the scrum master is a buffer between
the team and any distracting influences
14. From “I didn’t fail the test, I just found 100 ways to do it
wrong” (which is also attributed to Benjamin Franklin in other
versions) to “ …I Have Just Found 10,000 Things That Do Not
Work” or “…I have simply found 999 ways how not to create a
light bulb” and there are still slightly different variations to be
found. Feel free to let me know which the right version is. I’m
actually quite curious.
Agile
Marketing
When clear and
simple processes
drive innovation