CMG Blog - Advice & Observation

Being an effective Agile marketing organization is all about defining and communicating the right focus. As part of the Agile for Marketing Operating System™, focus includes two aspects. First, the ability to clearly articulate your organizational priorities and strategies. Second, communicating the problem you are solving for and defining the role Agile for Marketing will play within the organization.

CMG Associate Partner Barre Hardy (second from right) will be speaking today at the Digital Marketing for Financial Services Summit West in San Francisco today. Barre is pictured here with colleagues Camille Landau, Lindsey Gaydosh, Erin Hyatt, and Nicolina Miller.

These days, there’s no more time to waste, and with easy access to data, CMOs have a choice: Be agile—use data to inform quick test-and-learn activities and rapidly adjust to the market—OR follow the status quo and “wait for perfect.” Marketers who wait to deliver a big splash are not taking advantage of real-time ways to infuse market feedback into the development process.

At CMG, we talk about agile marketing as a new “operating system” for marketing. It seems to be the only phrase that really captures the totality of what agile marketing does to transform the way marketing teams get their work done, deliver on goals, and continually improve.

As a firm with more than three years experience researching and practicing Agile for Marketing (A4M), we have seen some common challenges emerge. We've found the overarching misunderstanding to be viewing A4M as a way to just "move work along" instead of a way to learn and improve your marketing performance.

People don't like failure. When we talk to marketers about Agile for Marketing and its benefits, we tout a key benefit as "Failing Fast". Considering the fear of failure in business culture, I feel this bears further explanation.