Why Agile Marketing is Here to Stay
I was at an event in San Francisco last night put on by VentureBeat, and one of the panelists made a comment that I feel compels a response. Hiten Shah, one of the co-founders of Crazy Egg, KissMetrics and QuickSprout, and a very smart guy, said that he thought the term Agile Marketing would go away, because, he argued, all marketing would be agile. Market Darwinism will simply eliminate marketers who aren’t agile, and so we will just say Marketing, rather than Agile Marketing.
This is a very smart approach to take at a panel, as it immediately raises the hackles of some of us who’ve invested a lot of time and energy in Agile Marketing, and every audience likes a good fight. I suspect Hiten knows this, although he makes a valid point. If all marketing is agile, do we need to use the term? I think we do, particularly at this stage of its adoption curve, and I also think Agile Marketing is here to stay, just as Agile Software development is here to stay.