The Rise of the Platform Marketer: Performance Marketing with Google, Facebook, and Twitter, Plus the Latest High-Growth Digital Advertising Platforms

Chapter 13Organizing for Success

Special Contributors: Leah van Zelm and Peter Kemp

Across industries, a common phenomenon is occurring. Customer expectations are increasing, budgets are shrinking, and technology is enabling an efficient, personalized customer experience. Mass digitization of media and channels provides the capabilities needed to deliver on customer expectations, but that's only one part of the equation. The other part of the equation is the operating model.

Historically, as businesses have evolved toward more customer-centric business practices, they've added functions and brought in expertise in the various required competencies, but in doing so, they've often created silos that hampered success and measurement. E-commerce organizations, for instance, were formulated as stand-alone units to test and incubate digital commerce, completely separated from other channels in terms of processes, tools, protocols, and policies. The approach makes sense in many ways—allocating budget to prove the concept; giving the team autonomy to optimize the experience, free of existing constraints; and minimizing interdependencies that may slow down success. Yes, these are good things.

The unintended consequence is that multiple channels often touch the same consumers, resulting in redundant activities that drive inefficiency and channel conflict. The customer experience becomes a by-product of the organization rather than a vision that drives the organization. Even today, call ...