A Public Relations Podcast: Smoke Signal - The Rise and Rise of Martech

06/18/23 • 23 min

Smoke Signal, A Public Relations Podcast

In this episode of Smoke Signal, I am joined by Scott Brinker, a.k.a Chief Martech, author of the Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic.
Scott is in the envious position where is hobby and passion has become his career and vice versa.
First launched in 2011 with 150 tools, the latest 2023 version, released last month, featured an unbelievable 11,038 tools and technologies.
This exponential rise in Martech is mirrored in Commtech.
“Everything that marketing does is now connected or driven or powered some way by something digital but that was not always the case,” Scott says. “Back in the day, even senior marketing executives we're highly dubious about tech.
“That is where the Martech Map was conceived, to show marketers the range of different software that was probably already being used in their organisation... and there’s a lot of them.”
Scott sees both supply and demand factors leading to this significant growth over the years.
“Technology has essentially have lowered the barriers to entry. If someone has an idea for what they believe is going be a valuable software tool for marketers, they can get into the market with it.
“But there's the other side of this too. I can't think of any other profession that has gone through so much change and so much expansion of scope over this past decade... So marketers as a result, are always open to technology that's going to help.
“There's this symbiosis where there are lots of Marchech startups a year to tackle these new challenges, and a lot of demand among marketers to figure out how do we how do we do this.
It is not a podcast in 2023 without speaking about AI. So what impact with AI have on this Martech Map?
“It is going to be incredibly disruptive to the existing Martech Map because I do think a lot of things are going to change. One of the things AI is doing in the software world is yet another thing to dramatically reduce the barrier to entry.
“Generally, I do not know. I am absolutely fascinated to see how this plays out. But I feel pretty confident it's going to be a lot of change in this industry.”

Previous Episode

A Public Relations Podcast: Smoke Signal - The tech-revolution in PR

PR Futurist Stuart Bruce features in this episode of Smoke Signal Podcast, sharing his insight on how tech is impacting the practice of public relations.
Regardless of what you call it - CommTech, CommsTech, PRTech, one thing is clear, technology is impacting the practice of public relations at an exponential rate. Whether it is to enhance, augment, make us more efficient, there seems to be an app, website or tool for every aspect of our role.
The challenge we face though, as Stuart points out, is that PR professionals are notoriously slow at embracing technology. There is a list of examples - blogs, social media, SEO – where we’ve been late to the party.
Referencing a quote from long-serving Microsoft communication professional Tom Murphy, at a conference at which Stuart was in the audience: “PR people don’t need to worry about big data because they haven’t even mastered small data yet.” That was circa 2005 and for Stuart believes it is still very much true today.
Stuart gives listeners a first exclusive insight into a yet-to-be-released global survey his firm Purposeful Relations has just completed into attitudes of PR people to tech. It finds around 40% of people are using excel to manage contacts = further evidence PR people don’t embrace tech.
Talk about CommTech naturally falls into discussing AI and the launch of ChatGPT which has brought the role of technology in PR to the fore. Stuart is astounded by the varying degree of different attitudes when it comes to AI with some at a peak of inflated expectations and others in a trough of disillusionment (citing the ICCO survey that found 25% of PR leaders say they will never use AI).
While ChatGPT has been grabbing the headlines, looking forward, Stuart is most excited about the launch of Microsoft Copilot – the integration of AI into the day-to-day tools we are all using presents a phenomenal opportunity for PR professionals... The flip side of that is if you look at how most people us Word, PowerPoint or Excel, they can’t even use the basic features.
The challenge (and opportunity) for PR professionals is two-fold: using CommTech and AI to improve what you are doing – make it faster, better, easier; and on the others side it is really understanding the ethical implications and being knowledgeable enough to advise your organisation on where and how to use AI. Here, Stuart suggests taking a look at the Aletheia Framework which was developed by Rolls Royce as an open-source toolkit for assessing ethical issues and trustworthiness in using AI within an organisation.
As a PR futurist, Stuart knows it is way too difficult to predict the future. Especially in the case of AI which, as Bill Gates says in this letter, is as big an innovation as the personal computer, the Internet, and the mobile phone. But what he does know is that as PR professionals we need to stay up to date, we have to experiment, and we must keep an open mind about doing things differently.

Next Episode

A Public Relations Podcast: Smoke Signal - Communicating your ESG narrative

In this episode I am joined by Dan Wilcock, Sustainability and Governance Manager for the UN Global Compact Network Australia.

The UN Global Compact Network may be the biggest movement you haven't heard of.

A special initiative initially set up by then UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, it is a call to companies everywhere to align their operations and strategies with 10 universal principles in the areas of human rights, labour, environment, and anti-corruption, and take action in support of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
With more than 18,000 companies across 160 countries, it is the world's largest corporate sustainability initiative.
In this discussion we take a dive into all the different terms out there - greenwashing, bluewashing, whitewashing, green hushing – and what they really mean for PR and comms professionals.
Dan wraps all these terms up into the neat package of ESG-washing and says the reason we are seeing more of this now is that there has been a real increase in appetite for ESG information and that is coming from every direction – customers, employees, boards, supply chain partners, finance providers – all these groups now have an active interest in what a business is doing on ESG.
This has been accompanied by a rise of misinformation. An online sweep or corporate websites by ACCC put it at more than half of businesses had made concerning claims about their environmental credentials. For Dan there’s a spectrum from puffery through to outright fabrication, with the majority being sloppiness and hyperbole – which doesn’t excuse it.

The UN Global Compact Network just completed a series of consultations with the Australian business community on ESG which found:

We’re in a transition period, there is a lot happening very fast. Businesses need to upskill and likely mistakes will be made.
Businesses are consumers too. A third of businesses they spoke to had also fallen victim to greenwashing
Reporting and disclosure is very much in flux – there’s a way to go for organisations to streamline data gathering, and delivery of the right narrative
93 percent of our respondents said green hushing had been considered as a potential approach as a result of the attention that it's getting right now.
The business community is looking for more detailed guidance from regulators. (Check this guidance from ACCC giving eight principles for trustworthy environmental and sustainability claims)

For Dan it is about developing a bit of confidence, closing the capacity gap and being informed - businesses should not fear regulatory action from making legitimate and truthful environmental and sustainability claims.

And why does all this matter? Because business will only get harder for companies that aren't aware of their impact and aren't transparent about their impact.