Hacking Marketing

6Parallel Revolutions in Software and Marketing

Over the past few chapters, we've established the foundations of this book's premise. We've recognized that marketing is a digital profession, subject to digital dynamics, and that software controls everything digital. We've seen how marketing has therefore become a software-powered discipline, dependent on software-mediated channels to reach its audience, and that marketers are even creating plenty of software on their own now.

Connecting the dots, we arrive at a pivotal revelation: Modern marketing management actually has a lot in common with software development management.

That may seem a little strange at first, because for a long time marketers and software engineers were considered to be on opposite ends of the career spectrum. More than a few Dilbert cartoons made fun of the stereotypes of each. Many of the frustrations between marketing departments and information technology (IT) organizations in the early years of the Internet stemmed from the different and often-opposing priorities these two noble yet separate professions held. They didn't always speak the same language, and each felt the other didn't necessarily understand its worldview.

But as a consequence of the world becoming digital, these two occupations have not only collided—but also started to blend, as in Figure 6.1. IT has moved beyond managing back-office infrastructure to having greater responsibility for customer-facing systems. Marketing has moved beyond ...