Marketers, Technologists & Marketing Technologists: Q&A with Ben Samuel, Marketing Tech Director at PHD
Hybrid marketing and technology job roles at a senior level are on the up across many brands, as the business functions of marketing and technology continue to hurtle towards each other, ready for a head-on collision. But how does that role successfully exist within the environment of a media agency? Ben Samuel (pictured below), marketing technology director, PHD, tells ExchangeWire that it involves education, strategy, leadership, and a lot of client-agency trust.
ExchangeWire: You were recently appointed to the newly created role of marketing technology director at PHD. What is the role of a marketing technology director?
Ben Samuel: My overall goal is to help PHD’s clients, and PHD itself, improve knowledge levels in the emerging marketing technology and ad technology space. I work with PHD’s client-facing community to help them feel both comfortable with their understanding of existing and emerging marketing technology, and feel empowered and equipped to act as trusted advisors to clients – just as we currently recommend media channels. We also want to make sure clients feel comfortable in this space, so that we can go on a journey of innovation together.
It’s a complex role because no two markets are alike; no two PHD offices have exactly the same skill set, and no two clients have the same requirements. What does this mean in practice? It means that I work with all PHD markets to design a strategy that will increase the overall knowledge of, and confidence in, the benefits technology can bring to marketing execution. We maximise use and adoption of the fantastic technology capabilities that reside at the group level (within Omnicom Media Group), whilst maintaining the unique identity of PHD in how we approach the use of that technology.
We are also building and nurturing a global community of specialists in ad technology and marketing technology and to help create thinking frameworks that allow us to identify opportunities for clients to get better results through technology adoption.
How does the role differ from that of a marketing director, or technology director?
While it sounds like it might be an unholy combination of a marketing director with technology director, it not. It’s very similar to a technology director but with a focus on ad technology and marketing technology used by agencies or clients to deliver and measure their advertising and to enable them to achieve marketing goals. More data & analytics, DMPs, DSPs and ad servers, than thinking about how to market the agency.
Why and how has marketing as a business function become so dependent on technology?
If you’re reading ExchangeWire you’re probably already a convert to the idea that marketing is at least somewhat dependent on technology; or maybe this is your first visit to the site and you’re already in a confused rage about all the acronyms being used. My view is that we can track the rise of technology alongside the rise of digital.
Just as we’ve seen digital go from being a bit of an after-thought to being many clients’ core media channel (or at the very least far more important than an after-thought), so too has there been an increase in the importance of the technology required to measure effectively, drive efficiencies, and generally make sense of it all.
The more sophisticated you want to be as a marketer, the more sophisticated you need to be in your use of digital; use of technology is one way to achieve this, and differentiate your business from others.
Another observation I have is from my previous life, where I spent eight years working on the DoubleClick business. For the first few years after the acquisition by Google, Doubleclick was seen as the weird ad technology team. Most people at Google didn’t really understand what we did and, certainly didn’t want to talk about it to clients. However, once the army of Google salespeople (and more recently Facebook, Yahoo, AOL etc) started to understand the value of technology and wanted to talk about things other than media sales, it drove ad technology into the mainstream.
Is it easier for a marketer to become a technologist, or vice versa?
Some of the most impressive people I’ve worked with are those who have a broad view of marketing, and have taken it upon themselves to upskill on technology. They are able to see the big picture opportunities in marketing and then use an understanding of technology to conceive how they can achieve them. I think an understanding of technology can be more quickly picked up; however this does require access to people who can explain things simply and not turn it into an impenetrable mess. I feel clients should lean on their agencies to provide this sort of support. This is what we are looking to offer at PHD through the introduction of my role.
How can the role of a marketing technologist be of benefit to agencies?
It’s about having a strategy and being proactive. The major benefit should be to help ensure that an agency can keep pace with the evolution of technology and put itself in the best position to ensure the agency’s clients can seize all opportunities that technology provides.
Should advertisers follow suit with creating combined senior marketing and technology roles?
I think this will happen organically as the industry’s skill set evolves.
As we continue to see digital developing from an afterthought to being the principal marketing channel, the proliferation of technology to manage this continues unabated – acronym after acronym – and it becomes more and more important to have senior people who are able to understand the capabilities of technology and conceive how these can fit within the overall marketing strategy.
Another way to think about this is that every client has a unique approach to this space; some marketers are tempted to try to wrap their arms around as many technologies as possible (every tech vendor knows one marketer who can be trusted to buy every shiny new thing!); others take a more conservative approach, and try to get the best out of the technology they already have. Arguably, what clients should be doing in the first place is to define the technology strategy that will deliver against marketing goals.
Many marketers will invest in people who can do this, but if they don’t, they should be able to rely on their agency partners to take on the agnostic advisor role (assuming the agency has that skillset, which isn’t always the case).
Can the senior marketing technologists eventually replace the senior marketers and senior technologists, or are all three required as separate business functions?
I think we’ll see technology skills become a key part of any marketer’s toolbox. If you look at a marketing team, you’ll probably find the more junior members are the ones on the tools – using their analytics package, discussing tag implementation, but these guys aren’t going to stay junior forever. There are plenty of examples of marketers who have that background in technology, but even if it’s not the case today, it will be soon as digital grows in importance and as these experts become more valuable.
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