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Long gone are the days where a company’s marketing and tech teams are independent with little-to-no collaboration. As of recently, companies are making a strong shift toward merging the two divisions given marketing’s push to use mobile technology. Marketing teams are becoming less overlooked in mobility conversations as they increasingly become the main advocate for enterprise mobility efforts. As marketing and IT are teaming up with more frequency, we can explore some of the new possibilities this notion brings.
Many large companies, like Starbucks, have led by example, showcasing firsthand how marketing and IT are blurring together. Alexandra Wheeler, the VP in charge of Starbuck’s global digital marketing group has made it her personal initiative to intertwine the teams more since joining the Starbucks team in 2006. Upon first coming onboard, she launched the “ My Starbucks Idea” program and teamed up with SalesForce.com to gather fresh ideas directly from customers on different ways to market their holiday campaigns (those cute, homey cups, coasters, and hand warmers they distribute from late November-January). After brainstorming with her marketing team, Wheeler decided to launch an augmented reality mobile app for the holidays that allowed users to point their smartphones at images on cups and receive fun character videos on their phones pertaining to winter activities like skiing, decorating the tree, etc.
After proposing this project to the team, Alexandra quickly realized the need for IT’s input on successfully rolling out this new mobile platform. The cups were printed and the app was in place, however no viable QR code or “trigger” was curated for the launch. After a momentary panic, she decided IT and marketing needed to team up, a concept that ended up being an accidental long-term solution to many of their previous problems.
Once the Starbucks tech army marched onto the project, the newly found collaboration between the two teams resulted in issue resolution and increased innovation. After deciding the new scanning feature would be stand-alone rather than its’ own application, the launch was successful and holiday heartstrings were pulled.
Although Starbucks is only one example, the underlying message is that marketing should no longer be overlooked as a key internal stakeholder when rolling out mobile technology and B2B mobile initiatives. To that same point, the collaboration between marketing and IT is becoming the rule rather than the exception. This blurred line will ensure that the right forces are behind enterprise mobile strategies and elevate it to a more strategic level.
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