Notes from the Field
Recently I attended Oracle’s Modern Marketing Experience (#MME16) in Vegas. The event was started by marketing automation platform and company Eloqua, which Oracle bought in 2012, and has evolved into a “must-attend” for marketers.
I had a few reactions.
First, the MME took me roaring back to the days when I worked for the U.S. Government and came down with acronym-phobia. My first days were filled with B2B, B2C, IPs, ABM, ISP, MMS, SMS, DNS, HB, SB, BI, WIFI, DIY, DMP, CDO, CRM, ERP, PPC, SEO, SFDC and their too-soon conversion into “verb” use.
Once I got over my issue(s), I dug in and tried to wade through the terms and digest.
The rooms were filled with all types of marketers — from corporate to agency and others — all trying to learn the current, evolving landscape. To me, this many people willing to admit that they need to know more is fascinating since it illustrates the speed and scale of changes in the marketing arena.
The event itself is an immersive study for sales and marketing teams to try and grapple with the onslaught of technology (AdTech and MarTech), apps, data and the exponential reach and growth of the combination of these tools. Plainly, many in the enterprise are struggling with the dilemma of choosing the right tool(s) and those deliberations and the need to get started. While not exactly “paralysis by analysis,” there’s a struggle of when to pull the trigger. Spend too much time doing research and you risk be tossed back to square one when the landscape changes. Or invest too much in any tool, and you risk getting stuck and unable adopt the next flavor.
The event seeks to pinpoint the key issues that marketing and sales leaders need to bone up on or implement. Of course, there was no single decisive moment, yet Account-Based Marketing (refer to ITSMA, SiriusDecisions or Demandbase for the definition), Intelligent Content Sourcing (combined with social listening) and Responsive Content Generation (in effect, ensuring that your content is aligned with the market and not written in a vacuum) were the buzzwords and/or foci for the near term (+/- 12 months?).
Only time will tell if these, or other prognostications, will have staying power.
