The four essential principles of how I chose my new martech leadership role.
I AM VERY EXCITED to officially announce my new role in a growing company that helps businesses to improve their advertising spend effectiveness through AppNexus, Google, WPP and more. It’s a perfect fit for my tech growth expertise and passion.
Many people thought I’d be taking a bigger role in an established public business, given my experience and passion for the industry. This essay however, is an explanation of why I still prefer to mentor and lead growing businesses that are an important part of ensuring digital industry success. It’s what I enjoy and frankly I still have so much energy and experience to share with smart businesses.
- If you are not following me on my Medium or Twitter accounts yet, please do it now; the automation of advertising and it’s agencies in APAC is mainly where I will be focused.
- LinkedIn does a good crash course on ‘Chris Brinkworth’, my early involvement with Tag & Pixel Management, the Attribution industry etc if you need one here.
My discovery process of “which role next”?
This narrative is my candid dissection and knowledge sharing of why I chose to lead SaleCycle’s existing APAC business and why I didn’t take other more grandiose (sounding) career paths with companies I mention below. To me, duplicating success through experience is more important. After three separate experiences in different start-up sectors competing against Google, Adobe etc in the UK/AU/USA in the marketing cloud and adtech world, this is now where I am focusing in APAC.
I hope it is useful to anyone considering a leadership role or change of career.
Perhaps you are pivoting a business or you are a marketer investing in programmatic media or tech in APAC over the next 12 to 24 months (with an estimated representation of 82% of display-related digital dollars being programmatic by 2018 , I expect that this may be a few of you!).
This insight below is a combination of sage advice from trusted mentors, collectively in charge of $BN’s of adtech and media spend. I have combined it with my own unique view of the moving parts of the martech world (given my roles over the past 15 years) where I have been exposed to 1000’s of adtech and media tools and how marketers truly engage with those tools vs what they were sold.
Factors that impacted which vertical I am focused on:
There are four key correlating areas that impacted my decision and where I am focusing my time now.
- The viability of programmatic market is a given, but the ‘direct response’ aspect of programmatic is not yet solved for. It’s still a proverbial Monkey on the programmatic back as discussed below.
- Candor, Culture and Clarity are the material elements (I have learnt from experience) that impact not just a healthy workplace but also the wider eco-system.
- An imbalance of Promises vs Delivery is lingering as result of a (now contracting) VC funded Adtech and MarTech ‘arms/features race’ (maybe this relates to point 1 that I added)
- Supply Chain Logistics businesses have grown/emerged as superstars and doing great things. Supporting these tools and businesses is a great space to be playing in, for the next few years!
Market Viability:
While the adtech industry now automates it’s trillions of display advertising impressions each month, there is still a ‘direct response’ and ‘attribution’ stigma attached to the majority of that spend. That stigma will not go away for years.
Programmatic businesses are dealing with creating those better ad experiences for advertisers, publishers and consumers — a business model that also assists with the “immediate conversion” aspect of that traffic being delivered by programmatic, is still a big problem waiting to be solved in tandem. After all, they click on an ad, or visit a destination page for a reason, right? Ensuring they have the right experience when in buyer or research mode as they visit a destination is an extremely viable area to focus on. Sure, big data, multivariate testing capabilities and more mean that you can apply segmented personalization in many ways; the problem however is that that promise is too far off and the industry still needs to validate a hypothesis before most tools will ever get live or delivered. We are wasting billions of dollars and I’m happy to take a share of what I help to bring back.
Candor, Culture and Clarity:
I’ve learnt that candid, open conversations and a cultural fit within a business has always ensured a clarity of purpose or direction that permeates through product, marketing and sales. Clients, partners (and competitors) pick up on this vibe and know what to expect from such a business. It is powerful.
I first noticed this energy in NYC and Philadelphia with early days of Rubicon Project, Monetate and MediaMath as memorable examples of startups that thrived on this fit. It was palpably obvious their teams knew what they were there for and what their purpose was (top to bottom and then back again!).
HOWEVER, if there is poor Candor and/or no Cultural fit between leadership and its teams, that Clarity is lost. A sense of apathy permeates throughout the business and (sadly) the wider eco-system it interacts with, also feels this (including client/product misunderstanding covered below).
Deciding factors for me, as an example of this were the SaleCycle Glassdoor rating where employees and former employees publicly and anonymously left reviews here about management and the B2B Vendor Review ratings for public and unedited, uncensored feedback left from live clients here about their business.
These were night and day compared to other businesses in my consideration set, so remember to ensure your business is the same. If you cannot be candid with your staff, potential candidates or with potential customers about your business goals, product or services you are not going to be successful nor will attract talent.
An imbalance of Promises vs Delivery:
It is a lack of candor (above) on ‘slideware or vaporware’ vs real features attached to the lack of honest delivery that has left many marketers and agencies feel let down right now and you would be blind (or oblivious) if you saw or said otherwise!
In my view (and that of my mentors), for the next 12 to 24 months we will continue to experience some nasty by-products that are the direct result of the aforementioned Candor for Clarity problem, combined with an industry that grew too fast and promised too much, too soon and is now contracting without delivering on that promise.
Why? Sadly, in a highly competitive and validated market where growth is demanded by VC, several things become apparent that are well documented in the book “Start Small, Stay Small”.
Namely: Market comes first, marketing second, aesthetic third, and functionality a distant fourth.
If you have a sizeable market and low competition — you can have terrible marketing and terrible functionality and people will be fine with it (TagMan’s interface in the early days was horrible — but people bought it because competition was zero and need was greater). If there are two of you with the same market, then your marketing wins if the other’s is terrible (TagMan were great at marketing). If you both have the same marketing then a better interface will make sure you win!
End story: While marketers and agencies may look for more features in a terrible interface the tool that always gets attention has a slick interface and looks like it will be better to use. Regardless of the support, the actual delivery or training.
In a growth market, slick marketing and interfaces win out over true long-term functionality.
As a result now VC funding is retracting; recent and common headlines you may have seen around adtech and martech are either critical, negative, or prose about problems without solutions.
“Agencies are light years away from understanding MarTech” (B&T)
“Negative customer experiences affect online conversion rates” (Emarketer)
“Online conversion rates declining” (Power Retail)
“Is it time to disrupt the murky media-agency business model?” (Mumbrella)
Agencies are not the problem:
I am very bullish on agencies still.
Because of:
1.The absolute shift in the function of what agencies were previously asked to do
and
2.The contraction of adtech funding (that is leaving little to zero support for agencies and marketers who bought their tech).
and
3.Promises of tech were oversold and under-delivered by salespeople who didn’t understand what they were selling. Worse, the large businesses packaging up these same technologies are not providing the support nor is the problem or industry getting any easier.
I do not therefore believe (all) agencies are at fault in the main. I also do not feel that marketers are entirely wrong to say (some) agencies are at fault.
We are currently in a situation where the majority of both marketers and agencies are (sadly) innocent bystanders that have been left trying to come to terms with coping with new technologies they bought/licensed that were not ready for prime time. In tandem, they are being asked to manage technologies that they were not trained for (nor had built into their operating models).
This will even itself out in my view and that of my contacts. So — while bringing tech ‘in-house’ will be (with good reason) a phase for a few years, agencies will adapt and take back responsibilities and this is where there is a lot of opportunity. Brian Lesser’s great approach with the new Connect agency within WPP is a good example of taking his Xaxis experience and solving for this issue.
Tools I trust over the next few years:
There are certain companies that I am bullish on and know that the continued growth of these businesses will enable many companies to thrive as part of catering to their ecosystem. The lion’s share of global digital ad-spend over the next 24 months will be shaped by these key businesses who are a stable and trusted part of making the supply chain of this new programmatic world work.
I feel that AppNexus, Facebook, Google, Omnicom, MediaMath, Publicis, Rubicon Project and WPP are all entities primed to help enterprise brands locate, acquire grow and measure market share in the new programmatic world more so than others currently visible to me. You will notice that some are services, some are supply and many are both. I’ve deliberately left off the Marketing Clouds, because I believe those tools are still part of the Clarity problem as they mop up adtech companies while trying to make them work well together and try to deliver on promises over the next 12 to 24 months.
In my experience, any tool or service that can complement all of the companies above to deliver on their promise to clients is a great place to focus and that’s the final reason I chose SaleCycle.
A candid full-service design, implementation and optimization of a niche toolset is sure to help the wider ecosystem convert their existing media-driven traffic through personalization with confidence. I am certain that marketers, agencies (and some vendors) need this assistance over the next 24 months when dealing with the larger part of the supply chain as the industry shifts and still needs to cope with the direct response and attribution side of this shift in tandem.
The added benefit of the Candor, Culture and Clarity being part of SaleCycle makes me even more sure that it’s going to be a great few years ahead! After all — people go to a new site or app for a reason, right?
(Obviously if you, or your teams are interested in how the next 12 to 18 months can be a much happier place for your business’s acquisition and conversion results, then I would love to personally introduce you to a member of SaleCycle’s global leadership team nearest you or hire you locally).
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