Death of Auto-Schwag

Death of auto-schwag. Moment of silence.

Almost a year ago I wrote this article about brand and what it means, how to develop it, and where to find inspiration. I called into question the current state of tech marketing for datacenter companies. But let's be mindful; marketing is one of the most difficult jobs in any company, just behind being able to strategically position your solution and then ask for a PO.

It's difficult because the marketing professional has to be creative with a gun to their head every single day.

Creativity typically occurs in the spaces of the day, the gaps where the mind wanders, the moments when one visual creates a tangential thought that gives birth to a new idea. There's a reason a lot of the best creations at datacenter tech companies come from the field - they don't have to be creative for data's sake. Non-marketing employees can be creative for creativity's (and cool's) sake. The marketing employee, meanwhile, has to work with the boogeyman on their back of "how will this perform?," "how many clicks will this generate?," "how will this help our external relations?"

How do we bridge the rigid data-driven world of corporate marketing with the looser and faster moving field?

How do we bridge corporate marketing with other worlds, like fashion and design?

Take schwag, or giveaways, for example. Schwag is an extremely effective tool for marketing organizations to drive interest, and yet the process in which these giveaways are created highlights a much larger, industry-wide problem.

The process goes like this:

1. Look through a catalog of customizable crap.
2. Match the available colors as best you can to your corporate swatch.
3. Put your logo in one or many of the available locations for logo printing.

There's nothing unique being created here. Even great t-shirt printing companies like threadbird.com limit what you can create (eg through printing area). This is a big part of the problem. "Here! Be creative within this template that we've been using for a decade, but hey, this East Bay pullover has a new zipper design!"

So why haven't tech companies moved away from the employment of customizing through templates into actual creation? This applies not just to the world of giveaways but many facets of marketing. Ultimately, who's responsibility is it to be creative?

Let's start with the top, the Chief Marketing Officer. The CMO is responsible for lots of important facets of the business, including managing the data (eg contribution to pipeline), major events, and messaging input. When the CMO stands in front of his or her executive peers or in front of the board, they are often asked to present the data of how marketing is performing. With a role focused so much on analytics and data it seems difficult to explore truly creative outlets.

Should the creativity an organization typically looks for in a CMO be steered towards a new position, one that's free from the rigidness of campaign performance? Much like many executives have a Chief of Staff that helps execute as well as provide guidance and context, perhaps CMO's need a Chief Creative Officer who could focus more on the creative. A Chief Creative Officer wouldn't just be responsible for creating but more importantly also developing an environment where the marketing employees have an outlet for their own creativity. The CMO focuses on the business. The CCO focuses on the emotion and the environment.

Again, if we go back to the world of schwag, a CCO could create an environment where employees (and fashion interns!) are designing fabrics, deconstructing and reconstructing sneakers, origami sets, 3d print at home templates, all to help deliver a company's message or drive brand awareness. All in the spirit of creating.

Above is a high quality slub cutton t-shirt from Vince, a minimalist urban clothing brand. This shirt retails for $65 and is a great garment on its own. Here I took one of my favorite tweets from Sudheesh Nair (@sudheenair ) and screen-printed it on a Vince shirt. I wore it under a navy blazer at Nutanix .Next On Tour event earlier this week. Because of it's cost this would never be a high volume giveaway but because it's high quality, something unique, and scarce, the demand for it is very high.

A Chief Creative Officer could also look at unorthodox staffing like employing fashion design interns, art graduates, or even holding design competitions with participants coming from completely different worlds than that of datacenter tech.

Whether it's a Chief Creative Officer, expanding the expectations of a CMO, or a larger cultural shift, it's due time datacenter companies stopped handing out the forgettable and started creating the memorable. The first step is to better enable creativity.