IT vs Marketing
Marty LaferriereChief Web Officer@marty_lul
JP RainsManager, Digital Strategy
@JPLaurentian
IT vs Marketing
• Perspective
• Organizational goals
• Services
• How to work with the other side
– Tips to formulate your requests
• Best practices and examples of congruence
PERSPECTIVE
I.T didn't get the campaign
Marketing ≠ Advertising
Source: http://bgimarketing.com/
There's corruption in Marketing's theory
Called Information Technology, not Data Technology
The reality
Marketing and I.T should conflict Marketing → dreamers, outreach I.T → engineers, problem solving Bidirectional facultative symbiosis
Seeing things from the other side
• Understand and appreciate what you don't know, internal gap analysis1
Seeing things from the other side
• Account for past experiences, remember what worked, not what didn't2
Seeing things from the other side
• Ask about priorities, there is no wrong answer3
Seeing things from the other side
• Leave room for innovation, don't settle for status quo
“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different
results.” - Albert Einstein
4
Organizational Goals - Marketing
• Typically reporting to VP, Marketing, Communications, Advancement
• Increase brand awareness
• Support recruitment growth
• Donor cultivation
• Align brand throughout institution
Organizational Goals - IT
• Typically reporting to VP, Administration or CIO office
• Information Architecture
• Integrity, consistency
• Standards, frameworks, best practices
• Support academic and administrative endeavors using technology
Services
IT
• Infrastructure
• Communication and collab tools
• Data management
• Service delivery
Marketing
• Recruitment
• Publications
• Pitch Books
• Advertising
• Photos & Videos
Equation for success
If you remember your math...
M U IT = {x : x Є M or x Є IT} =
A union of all skillsets, not an intersection
AGENT OF CHANGE.
Evolution
Instigators
Collaborating with IT
• Forget the “warm fuzzies”
• Pragmatic and PM approaches
• Appreciate institutional knowledge of IT personnel
• Relate the intangible costs of campaigns and cloud services
• Show flexibility of branding for tech
Collaborating with IT
• Sometimes the answer isn't ideal, WCAG/W3C and other standards may change the user experience.
Story time: International recruitment
IPv6, website visibility and foreign market SEO
Collaborating with Marketing
• They might be afraid of you
• Present ideas early and often
• Express how you think your initiative will help, but don’t assume results
• Let them determine the creative
• Story time: HIPPO Design
Collaborating with Marketing
• Stages of a project
• Create shared goals
• Respect the brand
• Ask for more stock photos
• Timing is everything
• Story time: inspired by Alan Etkin
Who is doing it right?
Who else is doing it right?
Laurentian?
Initiatives
• Creation of a “Web functional team”, not a “web department”
• New role, CWO and governance structure
• Physical proximity of team
• Leveraging the CMO capital/operating budgets
• Responsive Web Strategy Observe → Align → Respond
Summary
Be open about your projects
• Leave room for your collaborator to innovate
• Accept that you have the same goal(s) but different methods
• Don’t let politics get in the way
• Strike a balance, reward successes (and acknowledge failures!)
Questions
• Have you seen examples of great collaboration?
• Do you have any experiences to share?
• Other pieces of advice?
Marty LaferriereChief Web Officer@marty_lul
JP RainsManager, Digital
Strategy @JPLaurentian