I’m on a UK train and I just scanned the National Rail Museum at York to see if 60103 or 4472 was around (I can’t believe I’m admitting to train spotting!). Better known as the Flying Scotsman, which sported these numbers – among others – during its career, it is a bit special. It may not have been the fastest, biggest or oldest, but it is almost certainly the most famous. And, in its day, those who designed and built it were among the very best and brightest in the public eye as the halcyon days of steam saw the train companies race each other to new standards of speed, reliability and chic. Yes, chic! Can you imagine arriving at London’s King’s Cross station back in the day to travel in style to Edinburgh, perhaps, on arguably the most celebrated technology on the planet?
To many then, and indeed still today, those designers and engineers were heroes.
So, I’m a bit of a geek. OK. That’s fine these days. For a long time, I was a nerd and that’s not so cool. I’m just a curious soul at heart – I find things, well, interesting. I don’t need the detail, which sets me apart from some of my colleagues, but I do like to know how and why something is and does. In some weird ways, I’m a bit like TV’s Jeremy Clarkson! Easy to dislike at times, I just can’t deny that I liked how he and his pals (James May is surely a grand master of the order of Geek!) thought about not just cars but machines in general. This can be best summed up by a great Clarkson book, ‘I Know You Got Soul’, in which he takes a look at famous machines including the likes of Concorde, Rolls Royce, the Riva powerboat and, yes, the Flying Scotsman. Not only does Jeremy celebrate the machines, he celebrates those who made them; the likes of Brunel and Gresley.
Today, I work alongside analysts, architects, scientists; all prefixed with the word ‘data’. And they’re in demand, the very best being allowed out of the basement to lead major marketing projects, departments or, on the agency side, even meet clients! In the same way I wouldn’t trust a chap in a pinstripe suit to fix my car, but I would trust the increasingly geeky Dr Who to save the world, I’ve seen a change in what is wanted and trusted and it looks geek.
Geek to Geek marketing
Of course, I’m playing around with stereotypes and mean no insult to anyone, this is just my G2G (Geek to Geek) marketing. It’s hard to deny from watching my kids, through to the smart guys at work, that this segment of geek is increasingly mainstream and I like it. I like the combination of data and tech know-how alongside creativity and confidence. It’s always been one thing to be smart and quite another to be able to express, communicate and convince. Today’s new breed do that.
Recently, a survey in Campaign suggested that the impact of Brexit could hit digital marketing hardest in terms of skills shortages and this on the back of what I think many of us know is a market where data and tech skills are already in limited supply; just look at Econsultancy’s trends report for 2016 to see it listed as the biggest barrier to digital progress. The evidence continues with global recruiters Hays’ survey of 10,000 which revealed ‘65% of marketing employers [are] planning to increase headcount over the next 12 months [but] 82% of are already concerned that they will encounter a shortage of suitable candidates’.
There can be no doubt, data and technology are shaping not only the way we work but the way we live and, in these times, we need people who can help us master data and tech. Step forward those with a touch of geek in our make-up; no longer peripheral, now leading players, the modern day heroic engineers and visionaries are required to make our work and lives better.
Blessed are the geek, for they shall inherit the best marketing roles. If you can recruit them.
Read also:
The power of data – data may be the new oil, but it’s only valuable if you have a reliable engine
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Jed Mole is European marketing director at Acxiom. Since joining Acxiom in 1996, he has held various leadership roles and has worked directly with leading brands such as P&G, Sony, Dell and Hearst. Prior to Acxiom, Jed worked for Cable & Wireless, Ernst & Young and the Royal Navy.
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