innovation marketing

IT innovation can be imitated, great brands can’t. Discuss.

Seen in a marketing presentation “IT innovation can be imitated, great brands can’t“. It’s a great statement that begs to be turned into an exam question with the suffix “discuss”.

What strikes me is this is how a senior marketeer perceives IT; as a commodity with little creative flare and talent. What it ignores is the fact that in truly great brands, IT is oxygen by which they breathe. Facebook, Google, Microsoft.  These are great brands that are IT.

Indeed it is this thinking that that destroys great brands.  Think photography; Kodak (great brand) and Flickr (IT innovation). Think vacuum cleaners; Hoover (great brand) and Dyson (technology innovation).

Enterprise IT has to drag itself out the depths of the organisational cesspool; be recognised not as an enabler, whose customer is the business, but as an innovator and a brand builder. And marketeers need to recognise that without IT, without the ability to execute, their brand will ultimately wither and die.