|
The Basics of Branding
We don't just drink coffee anymore, we make a Starbucks run. We FedEx packages, we TiVo programs on television, we Google people on the Web. Brand names become verbs -- and part of the fabric of life.
Organizations have multiple choices regarding how, by whom and under what circumstances IT work will be conducted. And IT has a role to play in the decision. Our research indicates that large-company CIOs are stepping up to manage the brand of IT, but most midmarket CIOs are not (see Figure 4).
While large-company CIOs are willing to allocate resources to managing the brand of IT, they haven't come out of the closet, so to speak. Not one technology executive has the word "marketing" in his title, unless he was assigned to the marketing division. Yet there is a growing understanding that marketing IT is something IT people do.
As the CIO at a global financial services firm explains, "We have a chief marketing officer who knows that the marketing of technology is part of her remit. I know that working with her to help her do that is part of our remit." This IT executive also employs a director of change management who plays a key role in developing a marketing strategy for IT.
Smart midmarket CIOs are beginning to see the light as well. The CIO at a rapidly growing transportation company explains how he markets IT with a stealth approach. When he was at a larger company, he had dedicated resources for IT communications. But with the smaller budget of a midsized company, that isn't practical. "One of my business analysts who has good communication skills runs this program," but it's neither a full-time job nor recognized officially within the company, he explains. "They are not going to want to fund me having a communications person."
So instead of fighting a battle that's sure to be lost, this CIO has given his business analyst tasks that include orchestrating corporate newsletter articles, following up on customer satisfaction surveys and other activities that constantly "remind the business that they are getting their money's worth," he says. But "I don't specifically call it out, because the structure and culture of this company would not perceive that as a good use of money."
There are essentially two tricks to marketing IT. The first is to make it look like anything but marketing. This kind of stealth marketing requires fully understanding the communication pathways and processes inside your organization and subtly inserting IT-friendly messages into them.
The second is making sure you have smart customers. As Carl Sagan once wrote, "We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology." We can apply that observation to midmarket enterprises, which are grossly dependent on IT but have few executive team members who know enough about technology. This is what makes marketing IT such a slow, painful journey -- but one still worth the destination.
SURVEY METHODOLOGY: Researchers contacted 565 companies (460 large companies, 105 midmarket organizations) in 17 vertical markets, including banking, construction, consumer electronics, education, entertainment, fashion, food, government, insurance, manufacturing, pharmaceutical, philanthropy, publishing, retail, services, technology and telecom.
Thornton May is a respected futurist, adviser and educator whose insights on IT strategy have appeared in Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek and numerous computer industry publications. To comment on this story, email editor@ciodecisions.com.
|
 |
|
|
