Tide And Tech Wait For No One

We are witnessing a tide in the affairs of C-level marketing and technology executives that must be taken—and taken seriously. Though many enterprises have managed to stay afloat, up to now, cobbling together various marketing point tools, anyone paying attention can plainly see that those days are over.

Tide And Tech Wait For No One

My 9th grade daughter is studying Shakespeare. “Julius Caesar,” to be precise. I had not read it for quite some time, so I dusted off my “Complete Pelican Shakespeare” from college and dove in with her.

One of the quotes she had to parse was from the discussion Brutus and Cassius have in Act IV, Scene III, wherethey are deciding their strategy for engaging the army Octavian and Antony have mustered. Cassius wants to lay low for bit, to rest and prep for battle. Brutus, on the other hand, wants none of that—he’s thinks the time is right, now , when he and his men are at the ready. This leads to these famous words:

There is a tide in the affairs of men.

As we move toward the dog days of 2017, I believe we are witnessing a tide in the affairs of C-level marketing and technology executives that must be taken seriously. Though many enterprises have managed to stay afloat, up to now, cobbling together various marketing point tools, anyone paying attention can plainly see those days are over.

As Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen told the company’s Summit audience last week: “Digital technology is changing life like never before, which is creating fear and a mandate for companies to transform themselves.”

The tide that’s rising, of course, is digital marketing technology, in the form of cloud, platform, and infrastructure. And while this tech tide is just beginning to rise, wise CMOs, CIOs, CTOs, and CDOs will see that their, and their companies’, fortune is at stake, and it should not be “omitted”—Brutus-speak for “ignored.” Marketing technology is quickly transforming into enterprise technology, and it will forever change the business shoreline.

Brutus so eloquently made it clear that some choices must be made, some actions must be taken, because the time is right for them. The time is now right to invest in digital technology on a grand scale, for technology forms the basis of the “experience business.” It is not the total of what an experience business is all about (as these “Think Tank” participants made clear at another Summit session), but it is the place to start.

It seems clear, then, that marketing automation is beginning to turn into enterprise IT and will continue to do so as we move into the future. While C-level executives might not be in danger of actually being “bound in shallows and in miseries” should this tech tide be missed, it certainly would be savvy to seize the “full sea” and “take the current where it serves” when it comes to digital transformation. No doubt, business ventures will be lost, going forward, by missing the tide—and there will be no going back.

Now, some of you more cynical readers might note that things did not exactly work out for Brutus. Well, I think it was clear from Act I, Scene I, that he and the conspirators were doomed no matter what. This is a Shakespearean tragedy, after all, and Brutus is a tragic hero. What he said about acting when the time is right remains good advice regardless, and there will never be a better time to act about marketing technology than now. Be a real hero. Remember, Brutus, despite dying by falling on his sword, spoke the truth. After all, he was “the noblest Roman of them all.”