Why – What is our vision?
Digitization has changed the world rapidly over the last 25 years, making marketing increasingly fast-paced and complex. But instead of facing up to this VUCA environment, marketing is often stuck with „classic“ methods: from our point of view, an endeavor characterized by resistance and robustness with a lot of energetic effort, without progressive effect.
At the same time, markets are disrupted. For example, start-ups with platform models and the courage to proceed iteratively are invading the domains and networks of well-known providers and large corporations. Is this just a form of redistribution? Or have the challengers come to stay and do things really differently, maybe even better?
On the demand side, consumers – enabled and empowered by the digital „Neuland“ – are becoming increasingly agile and self-determined. This agility – in thinking and acting – is refreshing in many places, but also revolutionary and irritating for the established and those who want to become so.
When we started to dive into agile frameworks and processes such as Design Thinking, Scrum, etc., we noticed that they have so far been applied almost exclusively to the areas of software and innovation development. But there is hardly any adaptation to the marketing world. Buzzwords or individual parts of agile systems are often used to say: „We work completely agile here“. But in our view, this is too easy, because agility is above all a question of attitude! And you don’t change that just by using fancy new apps.
We want to contribute to create a deeper understanding, confirming but also easing fears of change and thus make marketing more agile overall. For us, this means first and foremost making marketing more empathetic, more holistic, more diverse, more powerful, by focusing on the needs and benefits of consumers and raising the potential of thinking and trading in markets. Because as marketing professionals we all do „something with people“ or „something with communication“, and that only works from person to person.
How – What might the path look like?
The good news we have: The wheel does not have to be reinvented to achieve agile marketing! Because with OKR, Design Thinking, Kanban, Scrum etc. there are already quite a few Agile systems and frameworks that have already proven themselves in the area of product and software development. These are deliberately designed to be open and simple and can therefore be applied in other areas – including marketing.
But one should not be afraid to struggle. For example, about Scrum it is said to be: „easy to understand – but difficult to master“. Why is that?
Well, all these systems are not so easy to introduce and implement by strictly following the rules from a manual, and success will then happen by itself. What is needed first and foremost is openness and a new mindset. Above all, it is about the willingness to inspect a different and contemporary culture in a company or organisation every day and to redesign it a bit (True to the motto: Inspect & Adapt). This can be a headache. It is our experience: agile transformation means change and this sometimes also creates pain.
But if you commit to this path, there is the prospect of a truly agile and sustainable marketing ecosystem!
What – What does it take?
So what makes such an agile marketing ecosystem? We believe that we in marketing should learn from the software industry. That is why we have tried to apply the „Agile Software Development Manifesto“ (agilemanifesto.org) to marketing and bring this adaptation up to date for 2021.
Are we the first to try this? No, a group of marketing professionals from the USA started doing this back in 2012 (agilemarketingmanifesto.org). We came across it during our research and thought about how this first draft, which is now almost 10 years old, could be made more precise and improved. Especially with regard to cultural transfer: from IT to marketing, from the USA to Europe, from English to German.
Our suggestion follows in the next post – we look forward to your (constructive) feedback. Feel free to use the comment function. We want to take you along with us as a community!
Do you think, for example, that the Agile Marketing Manifesto needs a preamble?
Two more notes on our own behalf:
- We will publish further thoughts and backgrounds here in this blog in the future, but we are also happy about lively debates (please respect netiquette!).
- This is a private project / initiative, based on our professional experiences and is not connected to any companies, associations or other institutions.
Authors: Mirco Blut, Gunnar Michaelsen
Continue Reading > Agile Marketing Manifesto 2021