This posting is a comment I added to Eric Kintz’s Marketing Excellence blog posting, Is process a bad word in marketing?
As marketing starts to use more of the left-side of the brain, process is a critical component and gives you the power to be more creative. A lot of times, creative concepts are squashed in a conference room because people say they are too creative or risqué, but if you can test and measure to prove the creative works, then you are allowed to more creative.
Marketing is also more fragment, there are countless options for reaching consumers and more coming online everyday. Process is needed to test new marketing vehicles and to optimize budget allocation, especially as non-linear (VOD, IPTV, Third-Screen) become more prevalent.
Another argument for process is the fact marketing is a siloed organization is most cases. Direct, Alt Media, Mass Media and Interactive tend to operate in their own world within a point solution. Process is needed to unify and provide visibility across the entire marketing spectrum to optimize budget allocation. Process and data-driven measurement takes out the politics among the different departments. It is hard to argue with facts.
There is myth out there that marketing already does process and measurement is automated but you would be surprised to find out the number of companies and agencies that use Excel for marketing plan management and measurement. I am referencing companies that marketing budgets are large enough to put them on AdAge’s Top 100 Marketers list.