Chances are you’ve heard the prediction that interactive marketing will change more in the next five years than it has in the last 50. Digital is grabbing an ever-expanding piece of the pie. Social has put customers in the catbird seat. And the lines between strategy, creative and technology are shifting dramatically, if not vanishing completely.
Creating successful B2B marketing in this new era requires a more collaborative way of approaching the work. In his excellent post “The Agency of the Future,” Mitch Joel (@mitchjoel) describes a kind of post-integrated model where multiple disciplines work side by side. It’s not about being big or small, integrated or specialized, but about having the core skills to handle diverse and rapidly changing needs. Technology, he says, is the “critical link in the chain.”
Technology has always been an essential component of our work here at BNJ. Without data, programming and analytics, our creative cannot succeed, no matter how smart, beautiful or engaging it happens to be.
However, until very recently, the BNJ technical and creative teams worked on different floors—some might say different planes—of 711 SW Alder. The physical distance ensured that we got daily exercise running up and down the stairs, but it created an unnecessary divide between our left and right brains.
So we did the only thing that made sense: We moved in together.
The new arrangement isn’t exactly freaks and geeks (since really, we’re all kind of geeky), but it is a bit like Oscar and Felix.
For example, my new “next-cube neighbor” Ben (@unquabain) moved in with eight monitors, a veritable jungle of plants, a “happy lamp” (which I hope casts some happy light waves over the wall), and an entire army of sword-wielding toy knights. He also speaks Latin and is working on a beer robot built on the Roomba platform in his spare time.
My New Next-Cube Neighbor
And it’s all good. Having uber-smart guys like Ben nearby makes the rest of us smarter too. As social media strategist and blogger Tac Anderson (@tacanderson) advised at a recent Social Media Club gathering, you need to surround yourself with people who are good at the things you’re not.
Adam Richardson echoes this perspective in his Harvard Business Review post saying collaboration is a team sport, and you need to warm up:
“…the problems we have to solve—whether deciding company strategy or bringing an innovative offering to market—are more complex than they have ever been. They require a variety of skillsets, perspectives, and approaches to solve them, and need a lot of pieces to come together smoothly to be successful…. Make it easy for people to absorb others’ perspectives just by walking around…. We need people around us to fill in the skills and knowledge gaps, and to tell us when we’re full of crap.”
Similarly, in this Fast Company article, Frog Design’s Robert Fabricant argues that creativity is between us, (not within us): “Creativity emerges out of relationships; it’s the tension between different ideas and perspectives.”
Lorem ipsum dolor
Lorem ipsum may be the closest the creative team gets to Latin, but even if we don’t always speak the same language as our tech colleagues, at least now we can chat across the fence. Welcome to the second floor, guys. Varietas delectate (variety is the spice of life). We just hope the creative chatter isn’t too distracting for you and that Ben doesn’t know the Latin for “full of crap.”
What are you doing to foster closer collaboration among your teams?
“plenus sterci” would be the term you are searching for.
Marsha… eh… Ben, Ben, Ben. I’m the one actually in the photo.
Sorry, Lyle. It was difficult to discern the top of your head through all the foliage
Great post! I often crave the connections made in a work atmosphere where everyone is “together”, but what about when you work for a global, decentralized marketing organization? Are we sacrificing the elements of tech and creativity, or are we just forced to use more tech to combine tech and creative?
Hi Mark, thanks so much for your comment. The situation you describe is increasingly common, not only for large global companies with multiple sites, but also for smaller “virtual” organizations that may not even have one office. I think teams have to take advantage of both technology and our creativity to connect from afar: Skype is an obvious example, but in-house social channels such as Yammer can also enable real-time collaboration and even more casual “over the wall” conversations. I often have as many meaningful interactions with people on Twitter and Facebook (who I may not even know in real life) as I do with people who work in the same room. Thanks again for commenting.