Organize For The Always Addressable Customer

This report in the interactive marketing agency and organization playbook lays out Forrester's vision for how you should organize internally and in relation to your agency partners: Move from a traditional management hierarchy to an adaptive marketing confederation. Digital media, channels, and tools are integral to customers' lives, but companies have consistently lagged customers' rapid pace of change. Traditional marketing organizations that employ top-down decision-making and channel-siloed structures simply can't adapt to a world with myriad channels and devices, where consumers expect a seamless experience across all touchpoints and where customized, responsive relationships replace static brand images. Interactive marketers must help their colleagues construct a new confederation among three key functional areas. This confederation must work fluidly, push authority to the customer interface, and carve out a place for customers in marketing strategy, management, and operations.