When Charles Dickens wrote the immortal line, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” I suspect he might have been living through a time of digital disruption much like the one marketers are experiencing now.
Ok, maybe it wasn’t the rapid evolution of the Victorian publishing industry that inspired those words, but Dickens was onto something nonetheless.
When something amazing and transformative happens, it can feel like both a blessing and curse.
For marketers, navigating our profession in the twenty-first century can feel that way.
We have more opportunities than ever to make a huge impact on our audiences and our businesses. Our budgets are growing rapidly as we become real players in larger organizational strategy. And we have marketing technology stacks that are full of exciting new toys.
But these same conditions that are creating exciting possibilities are also driving us a little bit nuts.
We have too many balls in the air, our days consist of one four-alarm fire drill after another, and we spend our leisure time responding to tweets and answering email.
The good news is that this best/worst dichotomy has happened before, and the industry that went through it came out stronger, more effective, and more fun to work in. Software development experienced serious digital pains early this century, and what marketers are going through now is eerily similar.
What worked for them -- agility -- can work for us too.
For those eager to get more of the best of times, and little bit less of the worst, I encourage you to go ahead and make the jump to agile marketing. The conditions of modern marketing are more than compatible with it, so much so that soon it will be a mandatory transition.
[click here to read the full article on the Talking Work Blog]
