Yet another reason why tech-marketing is such an oxymoron

The bottom line of corporate marketing -- the function most often associated with the care and feeding of brands -- is to have the same gravitas as the product and sales functions. In theory, there should be no problem here since corporate marketing guys are supposed to perform a fundamental role: a focus on customers over products, applications over technology and of ensuring that the external data, not just internal, drive decisions. In theory, this is how it is s'posed to be. In practice, it just doesn't work that way. Why not? Because typical tech companies believe the way to "strengthen" marketing is to simply spend more money on it. I ran across an old memo the other day sent to me by one of the best marketing minds I've ever worked with, Rene White. Now a managing director at the Chasm Group, Rene was my PR consultant/marketing guru/shaman back in the day when I ran the corporate marketing group at Network Equipment Technologies (NET). Rene lobbied hard for NET to find out what products, markets and customers would increase margins for the company and then get R&D and sales focused on those opportunities. He believed, correctly, that corporate marketing should find customers most responsive to NET's pitch on cost/payback. As he saw it, the problem was, and is, that you can't spend your way to success if you're not integrating marketing into the essence of corporate strategy. Which is exactly what he was advocating. Most tech outfits are product-and-technology driven organizations -- culturally and operationally. Even the companies having a relatively outside-in customer orientation come at it from an inside-out product perspective. Their comfort in seeing the world through the lens of their products trumps the clarity gained from looking at things through the eyes of their customers. Result: more corporate marketing money spent on the wrong product marketing strategy. And you wonder why your budget's getting smaller?