Left Brain Marketing Requires Right Brain Technology

In a joint think tank session with former Forrester analyst Eric Schmitt, the author of Left Brain Marketing, I argued that even with the move toward more analytic rigor, i.e. left-brain dominance, marketing tools still needed to be right-brain driven. Why?

The nature of marketing is to change the status quo: New markets, new products, and new customers. Moving the needle on proverbial dashboard means trying, experimenting, and testing new things which in turn requires extremely flexible tools. There just aren't that many out there that support the style of analysis and questioning that marketing needs to do.

Marketing must be able to define its requirements at the time the question arises, not six months earlier. So when evaluating tools, do it live with real data and real, unplanned questions.