I have had the great opportunity to spend the past two months interviewing many of the top CIOs and CMOs in the world. The purpose of each interview was to develop a cross-perception analysis of how each felt about the other's organization as related to marketing technology initiatives. In essence, to what extent is marketing poaching the sexy stuff from IT and setting up their own technology organization? While very cordial about their personal feelings about their respective 'C-peer', an organizational anxiety clearly exists. This raises some interesting questions about the pace of co-evolution of marketing and IT as marketing deliverables become almost entirely technology driven.

The details will be released in our upcoming research report entitled: Socially Awkward – Preparing for the Co-evolution of Marketing and IT.

However, some consistent themes have arisen:

• Finding a common definition of 'agility' between marketing and IT.
• 'Fail fast' processes in testing new marketing technologies.
• Increasing challenges of finding IT staff possessing 'double deep' skills (marketing and IT).
• Marketing's use of technology enabled business services (TEBS) and SaaS applications to the exclusion of IT.
• New risk/reward compensation structures that incentivize IT to be more agile and innovative.
• Growth of organizationally independent 'centres of excellence and innovation' where IT and marketing staff converge and are incentivized for risk taking.
• The evolution of the Chief Marketing Information Officer that morphs marketing and IT.
• Subtle shifts in the centre of gravity between IT and marketing resulting in what I call a new 'Core Body Strength' strategy.

My research interviews continue and new organizational models that greater leverage the combined expertise of marketing and IT have been unearthed. As organizations experiment with this centre of gravity between IT and marketing, some very compelling best (and worst) practices are coming to light.

To learn more on these trends, join us at our US Executive Forum on 8 March 2012, where I will be presenting the strategies and practices that our clients are adopting as they seek to become more market aware and data-driven.

Please complete our Marketing and IT Harmony Assessment which is designed to assess the relationship between marketing and central IT in large organizations. The survey will take less than 10 minutes to complete and all respondents will receive a copy of the survey results.