Agile Marketing — What makes marketing agile marketing?

It happend at the #Scrum2017 event, somewhere between Leiden en Amsterdam in The Netherlands. My teammate Rosanne and me were giving a workshop about Agile Marketing and it was a really tough one. People has been very critica

This inspired me to write down what it’s been about.

The most present question was this one:

“What makes marketing Agile marketing?”

The answer we gave: The same that makes IT Agile IT or HR Agile HR — a need to change. A need to become a more responsive team or even a more responsive organisation. And I saw some of the participants looking puzzeled.

Are you asking yourself the same questions like our participants did? What is it then exactly and why should I feel the need? Do I have a problem at all? What is the point?

[1]

Why?

Because change is the ‘new black’ in the digital world so to speak. And innovation is the new emotion in customer experience — at least for marketing campagnes.

The reality is: digital dynamics are everywhere! The status-quo.

If I look around me, I recently experience marketings campagnes becoming more and more creative. Like many people, I have already seen a lot. Thus, to reach me, a campagne must be even cooler, more unexpected, more maybe blowing me away. Otherwise, it feels not up-to-date, right?

Larry Downes and Paul Nunes already showed with their article [1] that most of the recent market adoption takes place in the so-called Fast Majority domain of Roger’s Bell Curve — Early Adopters and Early early Majority together.

Market change is one change we are living in. Another on is the personal or team change.

I so often hear marketeers complaining about their work hours they ‘need’ to run or that they don’t have even time to get lunch.

Andrea Fryrear [2] measured this:

Well, not in the way your are producing like this — running min 45.9h/week, staying the only specialist in the team, keeping hundreds of lose task rolling or even worse making campagnes for products customers don’t want.

And for Andrea:

“Agile is our only hope!”

What is that Agile then?

Agility is a mindset to empirical work and learn how to

1. Invest your peoples creativity in the right marketing service.
2. Do it in a healthy way.
3. Be transparent about work load and progress.
4. Have the right discussions based on data not on politics or gut feeling.
5. Experiments are the new

Mindset means just a set of principles. Principles that help you through your day to continuously ask yourself the right questions. Mostly in the Agile world, the principles are accompanied with some practices that help you to remind yourself — like for example Scrum gives you.

Ok. When you adopting the new principles than here a word of wisdom:

WISDOM #1 it’s hard, it takes time and sweat.

You and your colleagues need to be very disciplined to get used to the new way of working, which is definitely not easy. Challenging each other will definitely makes you stronger together.

To have understand that, now is the moment you should ask you the question: what is your

need to change? It takes effort, money and time to change, so why you want to do it.

WISDOM #2 Don’t do it, just because it can.

If you don’t know the why behind your change, everything you try will just not work out.

The same goes with introducing agility.

WISDOM #3 Agile is not just doing the same work faster, it is a fundamental change in thinking principles of people.

Which steps to take?

If you have a need to change, than here are the first steps you can follow to approaching your Agile change and making your Marketing team more Agile:

1. Check, if your problem/decision domain is the complex and empiricism the only approach to get answers to your questions [3]. If so, Agile is what you are looking for. Otherwise, not! Then there are different mindsets you need.
2. Check, that you understand why Agile is applicable to marketing even if it orgininally comes from IT [2, 4].
3. Check, that everyone gains knowledge about the Agile Mindset [5]. Not only some knowledge, but the principles! Practices like Scrum gives you are helpful, but watch out for doing the practices only and not understanding the principles behind it.
4. Start reprogramming your processes to support the adaption the Agile.

Last, but not least the opinion Andrea gave me on the first Business Agility Conference in New York Februari 2017.

Interview with Andrea Fryrear:

References

[1] LARRY DOWNES AND PAUL NUNES — The Faster a New Technology Takes Off, the Harder It Falls

[2] Andrea Fryrear — A Common Sense Journey Into Agile Marketing (slide download here)

[3] Cynefin Framework

[4] Annika Wetzko — Why considering the adaption of IT management frameworks can boost your way of working

[5] www.agilemanifesto.org & www.agilemarketingmanifesto.org