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