The Wonderful World of Marketing, Episode 28: The Modern Marketing Department

There’s a strange and wonderful room in the Salvador Dali Museum in Figueres, Catalonia, Spain (actually, they’re all strange, but this one is even more so). The room consists of a wooden floor, some unusual artwork hanging on the wall, a puffy red sofa, an oddly-curtained archway and a globular sculpture. It’s a quirky mess of shape, color and texture; in other words, it’s typical Dali.

The true genius of the room, however, reveals itself when the visitor walks to the far end, climbs a short staircase, and looks through a small window. From this new vantage point, the room transforms into a wonderfully-imaginative, 3-D sculpture of Mae West.

It’s unexpected and brilliant, and an excellent (and literal) example of a shift in perspective.

Our marketing departments could use a similar shift. We’ve traditionally organized our marketing teams by function, but that simply doesn’t work anymore. Marketing is no longer about awareness and reach. We’re in the middle of a shift to revenue marketing, and it’s well past time to shift our perspective and look at our organizations in a new way, one that organizes by outcome, not function.

In this Wonderful World of Marketing episode I’ll give you a quick overview of the four pillars of the modern marketing department and, hopefully, encourage you to move to the other end of the room and discover your own Mae West. I promise it will be worth the walk.

And, next up: Wonderful World of Marketing, Episode 29: The Modern Marketing Department (part 2)