10 Signs Your Marketing Department Ain't Feeling The Love This Valentine's Day

These 10 signs will let you know if your marketing department is divided by silo thinking. You know the deal. You’re supposed to do “integrated marketing”, but the reality is less about joined-up thinking and more like shattered-into-smithereens. This Valentine’s Day, check if you’re suffering these silo symptoms. If you recognise all ten, your marketing team may be heading for a break up... or just an epic battle like Jon Snow and Ygritte from Game of Thrones...

1. You have budget battles with your own team.

Via buzzfeed.com

"That's a win for digital." "No, it's part of the print campaign". If people on the same team fight duels over where revenues are recognised, guess what: you're shouting from different silos.

2. Job titles seem a little too specialised.

Via blogger.com

Would a sandwich shop employ a Head of Bread-Slicing and a Chief Coleslaw-Shredding Officer? Don't have one Twitter Clipping Supremo and one Micro-Content Creative Director. True integrated marketing departments are "multilingual", with people competent in many functions.

3. You need fourteen approvals for one Tweet.

Via giphy.com

Control is good. Control freakery isn't. If you need a pyramid of signatures for every action, loosen up. You're not building for 5,000 years here.

4. Teamwork feels more like crowd work.

Via giphy.com

Sometimes, getting through a brief feels like the having to climb 'The Wall' with an army of Zombies and Wildlings on your tail. The surest sign of the silo is that everyone and their dog piles into every small project.

5. You ask “Who’s got access to it?” more often than “Who’s doing it?”

Via giphy.com

Ah, the great password pass-around. If you're constantly having to circumvent IT security to get things up on your website, you've got too many barriers between departmental functions. Guess what the password is Ygritte?

6. More people are critiquing than creating.

Via buzzfeed.com

When the work's ready to go, siloed departments often hold mass meetings to "keep everyone in the loop". Crushing enthusiasm. (No great campaign ever came out of a committee.) Hey, can we make the logo bigger on that?

7. Most of your clients are strangers.

Via giphy.com

There are 12 people on your key account to keep happy, yet your marketing functions know precisely one each. Treating each client like a separate account is a surefire way to lose the business when they switch jobs.

8. Your client gets marcomms from you... that aren’t from *you*.

"Hey, I had this from your company the other day." What? Your client's getting marketing communications you didn't authorise? How many times has that list been cut-and-pasted into Excel? Rage levels rising....

9. Your CC list is longer than your prospecting list.

Via giphy.com

When every internal email carries more names in the CC (or worse, in the BCC) than you recognise, guess what? You're buried by six feet of snow.

10. … and in the end, it’s all for nothing.

Via buzzfeed.com

So you've won every email flame war, survived the departmental politics. For what? The client - frustrated with the way your left hand never seems to know what your right is doing - cancelled the contract, and your bonus with it.

Via buzzfeed.com

Valentine's Day is the perfect time to pop open a bottle of wine and rekindle the flame between your marketing colleagues - before it's too late. Don't they say communication is the bedrock of any relationship? Let's get it on. Download our new eGuide "Modern Marketing Essentials Guide to Cross-Channel Marketing". Who knows what could happen....