A simple way to boost your marketing and PR efforts

If there is one tactic, one method, one tip that could make the difference between wild success and dismal failure for marketers and PR professionals in 2014 that I’d advocate for, it would be this: the power of a simple beer.

What does this mean? Surely we’re not advocating that consuming alcoholic beverages is the solution to your marketing problems, are we?

If there’s one thing I’ve seen over the past year that has held back more companies, more brands, and more progress in marketing and PR, it’s the presence of departmental and organizational silos.

IT never talks to marketing. Marketing and PR are kept in separate departments. The PR agency doesn’t talk to the ad agency. The executives just want dashboards so they don’t have to herd the various stakeholders like cats.

As a result, IT works on projects that are delivered to product managers but are completely disconnected from market research. Marketers go off on crazy tangents and create PR disasters. Advertisers spend budgets on the wrong initiatives, on the things that don’t have legs because marketing doesn’t share its data.