Technician, sell thyself!

Adtech firms need to ‘do brand’ like the brands they represent, argues RadiumOne’s Mark Middlemas.

Gartner’s famous announcement several years ago, that the CMO would soon spend more on technology than the CTO, sent shockwaves across the industry. We’ve since seen this evidence in the birth of an entirely new and highly disruptive sector.

However, the explosion and rapid growth in advertising and marketing tech has actually masked that we, on the supply side of the market, must urgently reconsider our position regarding the role of quality marketing and branding.

Growing pains

One observation shared by many pundits musing on the implications of the current ad-blocking crisis, is that our still-emerging sector is overdue for a sharp and profound consolidation/correction.

For adtech players who’ve, understandably, ignored their marketing strategies and their brand, this stark warning can no longer be ignored.

The job of brand marketing is not merely to support sales, to explain why a technology is better than others. It’s to carry a message of highly differentiated, competitive and simple to understand client value to all the many stakeholders.

Adtech firms need to ‘do brand’ like the brands they represent, and it’s clear to all that most fail quite miserably. One only has to wander around the halls of the great technology trade fair, Dmexco, to see the problems the adtech space faces.

You see the same generic words plastered over stands everywhere – customers, mobile, digital, connections, social. There’s no clear point of difference from within the hundreds of assembled firms, big or small.

What an opportunity that presents…

However, a little history

The relationship between technology and marketing has never been an easy one. Inside most companies, it’s one of the great divides, cutting through the culture and often right up to the boardroom.

Traditionally, the engineering culture has been suspicious, even dismissive, of marketing as a discipline. Words like ‘fluffy’ are used, and that’s the more benign end of the debate. Marketing has been underrated and, as a result, has under-invested in firms where technologists and accountants used to binary 1s and 0s determine direction, productivity and culture.

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As for branding, well isn’t that something to do with our logo?

On the marketing side, the trend has been an almost universal lack of understanding of technology, often combined with an equally naïve dismissal of brilliant, business-critical talents as ‘pointy-heads’.

It’s interesting, and a cause for alarm, that so few senior marketing technologists on the demand side – our clients – come into their roles with any basic engineering qualifications at all.

But digital marketing, and the underlying technologies so rapidly transforming it, are far from the same thing.

Are we there yet?

This branding challenge is far from unique to technology.

There comes a point in any journey of business growth when marketing comes to the fore. Not just for start-ups but also quite naturally for well-established players, when woken to the urgent need for a radical refresh. Whenever it arrives, it becomes the single most important task facing leadership.

There’s probably very little wrong with the product. This isn’t about the quality of the work or the prospects of the company. It’s not about marketing communications, or materials. It’s not about design, logos or straplines. This imperative is about aligning all of a company’s activities around growth.

It’s about capturing, or recapturing, the raison d’etre of the company, and projecting it into the marketplace and, equally, into the business, with credibility, logic, and impact. This work, when done right, sets the scene for the brand breakthrough that lifts one up to compete at an entirely new level.

There comes a time, in other words, to grow up and respect the power of marketing the brand and separating yourself from the competition. As author Simon Sinek advises, “Explain your ‘why’, not just the ‘what’ or the ‘how’.”

The rules of the game

It’s understandably hard for a technology leadership team to take on this new imperative of branding.

The scepticism in technology about the need for marketing often derives from the belief it’s an irritating cost, as opposed to what it should be – the value-adding key that opens the door to market impact and, thence, powerful growth.

But there are some hard facts that underpin growth. They equip us to make the necessary shift in attitude.

First of all, no one outside of an adtech company cares that much about what it does. They may, at some point, show a polite interest but in the end it’s the impact on their business that matters.

This cold realisation matters even more when technologists are obliged to address stakeholders – client marketers and their agencies, for example – who not only don’t share the passion for great engineering but demand results and success on purely business terms.

What difference do you make? This is the question. If you describe yourself like every other adtech co and do the same as they all do, how do you expect to stand out? Be brave and be different. Say why.

Second, engineers, to a fault, are in love with the technical problem. Marketers are looking for results, never more so than today. So we need to accept another hard fact. The value of the solution we offer is in direct proportion to the value of the problem we’re solving.

To fail to fully understand that problem – indeed to dismiss it as secondary, fluffy stuff – is to commit a fatal error. We must actively strive to understand the marketing and business problems we’re expected to solve, and then – equally important – to articulate that understanding back to the client in simple, powerful terms. In other words, in their language not ours.

Not to step up here is, simply, to leave good money on the table. We are underselling ourselves. Before you ask, generic white papers on programmatic or mobile are not enough…the brand work needed is more sophisticated. Invest in experts, not those who do the same as everyone else.

Towards the endgame

In the end, your customers, other stakeholders, journalists, investors and buyers of the business should all buy your brand. Their interest in what we all actually do comes later on, as it should.

The main concerns in adtech are what we mean, and why we matter. And above all, how we have grown and will grow in the future. We all know when we get to this point. There’s a feeling that while the product has never been better, existing clients are happy, sales volume is steady, there’s still a missing piece, one that’s holding us back.

This is to do with value, actual and perceived. And aligning these, along with the focus and priorities of the business, in order to convert that value into growth, is the true role of brand marketing. Anything else is communications: critical, but not strategic in the sense we mean here.

Branding is the key to focusing all our good hard work on the business outcomes we seek. The interesting paradox, given our predilection for scientific rigour, is how very logical this challenge appears, when we finally step out of the laboratory, to take on the world.

So winning in adtech means being brave, taking a risk, having a unique point of view and explaining why.