What is Martec’s Law?

At its core, Martec’s Law observes that technological progress follows an exponential curve—think Moore’s Law, where computing power doubles roughly every two years, or Metcalfe’s Law, which shows how network value grows exponentially with connections. Social media’s rapid evolution is another prime example: what started as simple platforms has exploded into complex ecosystems that reshape how we communicate and market.

In contrast, organizations evolve much more slowly, on a logarithmic scale. This isn’t just about size or bureaucracy; it’s rooted in human factors like established processes, cultural inertia, incentives, and the sheer effort required to shift behaviors. Larger teams amplify this resistance, making change feel like pushing a boulder uphill. Without strong leadership, stagnation becomes the norm.

Brinker calls this dynamic “the great management dilemma of the 21st century”.

Implications for Marketing and Beyond

For marketers, this law is especially relevant in the martech space, where tools and platforms multiply at a dizzying rate. It’s not just about adopting the latest AI-driven analytics or automation software—it’s about integrating them into your team’s workflow without causing disruption. The risk? Overwhelmed employees, half-baked implementations, and missed opportunities as competitors who bridge the gap pull ahead.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Brinker emphasizes that even the best-led organizations can’t match technology’s pace outright. Instead, the key is strategic selection: consciously choosing which changes to embrace and which to ignore, aligning them with your broader business goals. As he draws from A.G. Lafley’s Playing to Win, strategy is about making tough choices—what’s “in” (the red area) and what’s “out” (the blue).

How to Bridge the Gap

To make Martec’s Law work for you, focus on absorption as much as adoption. This means:

• Strategic Prioritization: Evaluate tech changes against your organization’s mission. Not every shiny new tool deserves a spot in your stack.
• Cultural Integration: Go beyond installation—invest in coaching, training, and inspiring your team. Educate on why the change matters, nurture buy-in, and elevate those who champion it. A experienced consultant once recommended to myself that for every $1 committed to software licensing/subscribing, $3 should be allocated to training and change management.
• Proactive Leadership: Anticipate the gap and plan for it. In marketing, this could involve piloting martech tools in small teams before scaling, ensuring they enhance rather than hinder creativity.

I’ve seen businesses thrive by applying these principles. For instance, a mid-sized firm might skip the hype around every new AI platform and instead double down on data privacy tech that aligns with their customer trust strategy.

If you’re grappling with martech overload, Martec’s Law offers a roadmap. It’s a reminder that thoughtful adaptation beats frantic chasing. Check out Brinker’s original article for a deeper dive, and let’s discuss how this applies to your organization—drop a comment below or reach out via the contact form.

Originally inspired by Scott Brinker’s article on chiefmartec.com.

Key Highlights from Forrester’s 2026 Predictions

Forrester outlines five pivotal trends that will shape B2B operations this year, all centered on “The Race to Trust and Value.” Here’s a what they mean for marketing, sales, and product teams:

• Governed AI for Smarter Outcomes: While ungoverned generative AI could lead to significant costs, proactive governance opens doors to efficiency. With 75% of sales reps already using AI tools, empowering your team with AI literacy can prevent pitfalls and value through better decision-making.
• Human Expertise as a Competitive Edge: Buyers are craving deeper validation beyond AI—30% viewed genAI as meaningful in 2025, but human interactions with product experts top the list for trust. This shift highlights the power of upskilling your teams to deliver personalized insights, fostering stronger buyer relationships from early stages to post-sale success.
• Influencer Relations as Growth Levers: A huge 75% of B2B enterprises plan to boost budgets here. As buying networks expand, influencers like analysts and experts become key to building trust. Integrating them into your go-to-market (GTM) strategy—via social amplification and endorsements—can elevate proof-of-success over brand reputation, driving measurable impact.
• AI Agents Revolutionizing Payments: Expect AI agents in one-third of B2B payments, streamlining complex workflows like invoicing and trade credit. Vendors like Basware and Coupa are leading the charge, promising higher automation and efficiency—perfect for Australian firms dealing with diverse supply chains.
• Agent-Led Negotiations for Dynamic Deals: 20% of sellers will engage AI buyer agents in quotes, turning negotiations into data-driven, compliant opportunities. This evolution from static pricing to agile interfaces means suppliers with strong AI partners can protect margins while adapting to buyer demands.

These predictions underscore a market where clarity, accountability, and human-AI synergy win big. In volatile times, they’re your roadmap to turning rapid change into sustainable advantage.

Activation guidance

Ready to put Forrester’s insights into action? Here’s practical advice for B2B leaders in Tasmania and beyond:

1. Build AI Governance from the Ground Up: Democratize AI education—train teams to spot bad outputs and integrate governance into commercial apps. Start small: Audit your current tools and invest in “AI intelligence quotient” workshops to boost confidence and reduce risks.
2. Elevate Human Touchpoints: Prioritize product experts and customer success teams early in the buyer journey. Upskill them to handle complex queries, ensuring your offerings meet real needs. This not only validates AI insights but builds lasting trust.
3. Strategize Influencer Engagement: Shift from tactical PR to integrated GTM. Expand your signals to include influencer activity—track commentary and endorsements. Align budgets with performance metrics to see ROI in buyer discovery and conversions.
4. Embrace AI Agents in Workflows: For payments and negotiations, partner with agentic AI vendors. Assess your invoicing and procurement processes for automation potential, starting with pilot programs to scale efficiencies without disrupting operations.
5. Prepare for Buyer Evolution: Equip sales teams with AI agents for counteroffers, focusing on margin protection and compliance. Collaborate with in-house engineers or trusted partners to stay agile in a market where 61% of buyers use genAI for purchasing.

By prioritizing trust and value—as Forrester advises—you’ll position your business for growth in a buyer-empowered world.

For more on how digital marketing can amplify these strategies, from AI-optimized content to influencer campaigns, let’s chat. Connect via mitchellmackey.com.au/contact. Here’s to a prosperous, high-impact 2026!

Mitchell Mackey | Digital Marketing Strategist | Hobart, Tasmania Driving B2B Success in the AI Era

The YouTube channel Connecting the Dots reports that CARIAD was intended to future-proof the VW Group, but, so far, it has been an expensive disaster handicapped by institutional resistance.

In 2020 former CEO Herbert Diess established CARIAD with a significant budget, army of coders and a mandate to make VW Germany’s biggest tech company after SAP, with the software engineering smarts to digitize the core vehicle business and catch up to Tesla and the leading Chinese auto firms.

On October 14 2021 Diess even had Elon Musk appear as a “surprise guest” in an attempt to energise 200 of his most senior executives at a VW conference in Austria.

However, VW’s rigid culture and myriad internal divisions resulted in disappointing progress, duplicative efforts, financial losses, delayed vehicle launches and corporate embarrassment.

In large part because of CARIAD’s failures, Diess was exited by the VW Board in August 2022 . Porsche CEO Oliver Blume then had his remit extended to the entire group.

Blume claims to be committed to turning around CARIAD’s fortunes, refactoring the organisation’s objectives with fewer people and resources. Progress has reportedly been made, but the technical and financial challenges remain imposing.

In the Connecting the Dots YouTube video, a standout comment, from my personal perspective, is the remark by an anonymous CARIAD staffer that work-life balance was an excellent and that “weekends start at 11am on Fridays”.

However, it was also acknowledged that this is “not how you win” against Tesla and the Chinese competitors.

This was also my experience of German corporate culture during four years at Daimler’s Mercedes-Benz HQ in Stuttgart. The quickest way to make oneself unpopular was to schedule a Friday afternoon meeting.

The Marketoonist Tom Fishburne highlights this assertion. Fishburne, in his commentary on the cartoon, quotes the B2B Institute’s Peter Weinberg and Jon Lombardo as saying the 95-5 rule means your marketing must ensure that your product or service is remembered when a buyer does activate.

Fishburne says, you can’t push B2B buyers down a funnel, but you can, to quote Dawes’ colleague Jenni Romaniuk, “catch buyers as they fall”.

Great marketing hinges on storytelling. It’s about connecting with your audience on an emotional level, weaving a tale that resonates with their aspirations and values. A product might catch the eye, but a compelling story captures the heart. Whether it’s the legacy of a sports icon or the journey of your brand, the story you tell transforms a simple sale into a memorable experience.

So, regardless of welling you are selling a physical product, a service or your mission for the team, ask yourself: what story am I telling? It’s the narrative that drives loyalty and leaves a lasting impression

Too few, according to CX guru and the Head of the Qualtrics XM Institute Bruce Temkin.

Bruce has recently revisited the case he originally made back in 2010 for organisations to focus on the value customers derive. He argues for a concept called Point of Value to be recognised as the next logical step after the traditional Point of Sale or transaction stage.

According to Bruce sales without customer value are like a Ponzi scheme. They feel good in the moment, but the long-term outcome is likely to be negative.

“Too many organizations overly focus on selling their products and services, keeping a tight eye on short term metrics like sales targets,” Bruce writes, “but sales are not necessarily an indication of long-term success. What’s missing from the picture? Value!”

“If customers don’t get value from their purchases, then they are likely to return them, stop using them, not renew them, and tell others to stay away. Does that sound like a sustainable blueprint?!? Of course not. However, most organizations have a hard time breaking their addiction to sales numbers.”

Bruce challenges companies to compare and contrast their focus on sales targets versus the usually secondary effort they devote to delivering value.

“It’s time for organizations to shift their focus from sales to value! If we see an economic downturn, then the focus on value will become even more critical as companies are pushed to target their limited resources at retaining customers.

According to Bruce a POV mindset would mean the following:

• A clear measure of customer value that’s used as a critical KPI for the entire business, driving everything from sales commissions to bonuses for the product development teams.
• Support for customers to help them envision and articulate their POV and match their purchases accordingly.
• Cross-functional journey teams with responsibility for driving success during the engagement phase for key customer segments, and continuously monitoring any changes in how customers perceive the POV.
• Product organizations adopting a focus on “designing for value” by prioritizing features and enablement that streamlines the path to POV over new capabilities. Rather than considering feature adoption as a customer success function, product teams are responsible for ensuring that it is as easy as possible for customers to reach the POV.

The imperative for B2B brands to deliver consumer-quality experiences as essential differentiators was a prominent theme at Salesforce’s Connections 2018 conference in Chicago earlier this month.

The consumerization of B2B companies is a building wave that will upset those who don’t embrace the transition. Salesforce itself is leveraging its recent B2B commerce platform CloudCraze.

Despite their traditional back-end complexity, B2B companies must attain UX simplicity. B2C consumers have long become accustomed to buying with once click and enjoying rich, engaging content. However, when they go to work they are confronted with legacy, green-screen ERP complexity, no engaging UI and no relevant communication and promotions.

Ok, B2B transactions can be complex, lengthy and involve a small army of stakeholders, influencers and decision makers, but successfully addressing this complexity must become an opportunity.

The consumerization of B2B means making the relationship as easy and as efficient as possible. It can typically mean going more direct, often by empowering the distribution channel with data.

It also means getting the so-called “middle office”, as distinct from the ERP back-end, better connected directly to the customer-facing front end so that configuring, pricing and quoting (CPQ) and contract life cycle management (CLM) flows far more smoothly and effectively than has been the norm for traditional B2B players.

I like the word flow. Are we, as a B2B organisation, flowing? Are we identifying and removing our internal, self-imposed and self-maintained legacy constraints? Are we acknowledging that the old B2B and B2C distinctions are less and less relevant as next-generation business tech mandates that we converge around H2H, Human-to-Human commerce?

All businesses either will be digital platform businesses or they will be out of business. As we transition from transactions to conversations, we need to urgently consider the critical role our platform strategy must play.

Rather than making and selling products and services in a series of transactions with individual customers, we must view our customers as partners who should be integrated into a flow of value within the context of a connected, collaborative and scalable platform. In this environment, value creation is not linear. It is two-way and continuous.

MIT Digital Economy fellow and Boston University professor Marshall W. Van Alstyne in a recent Harvard Business Review interview said that with platforms, the rules of strategy change.

“Strategy shifts from controlling to orchestrating resources; from optimizing internal processes to facilitating external interactions; and from increasing customer value to maximizing the value of the ecosystem,” Van Alstyne said

“The failure to transition to a new approach explains the precarious situation that traditional businesses find themselves in. For traditional firms, the writing is on the wall: learn the new rules of strategy for a platform world, or begin planning your exit.”

What do we mean by platform? MIT Professor Michael Cusumano provides this definition: “A platform or complement strategy differs from a product strategy in that it requires an external ecosystem to generate complementary product or service innovations and build positive feedback between the complements and the platform. The effect is much greater potential for innovation and growth than a single product-oriented firm can generate alone.”

The importance of platforms is linked to the concept of network effects: The more products or services it offers, the more users it will attract. Scale increases the platform’s value, helping it attract more complementary offerings which in turn brings in more users, which then makes the platform even more valuable.

Accenture’s Tech Vision 2016 report makes it a point that a platform doesn’t just support the business, the platform is the business. The report also quotes Marshall Van Alstyne: “Products have features. Platforms have communities.”

The Accenture reports cite estimates from IDC, which predicts that within the next two years, a majority of large enterprises will create or partner with industry platforms. IDC also predicts that the number of industry clouds will reach 500 or more by 2018, up from today’s 100-­plus.

For marketers focused on ensuring that their customer experience is the decisive differentiator, they must start considering how best can they integrated their systems, processes and people into an integrated customer-facing marketing-and-sales front end, which must also be synchronised with the transactional front end.

For example, a website content management system, integrated with a marketing automation application and a CRM-ERP solution, plus a powerful analytics tool is a force multiplier of genuine significance. Operate those solutions individually with limited integration and their collective value to the business is inhibited and not the game changer it should be .

The study, by the firm which describes itself as a customer experience consultancy, tracks the cumulative total stock returns for two model portfolios _ comprised of the Top 10 (“Leaders”) and the Bottom 10 (“Laggards”) publically traded companies in Forrester Research’s annual Customer Experience Rankings.

According to the report’s latest edition, leaders outperform the broader market. They generated a total return that was 35 points higher than the S&P 500 Index. Laggards were far behind. Their total return was 45 points lower than the market.

Watermark states that “a great customer experience, and the internal ecosystem supporting it, can deliver tremendous strategic and economic value to a business, in a way that’s difficult for competitors to replicate”.

So why do the laggards “continue to subject their customers to complicated sales processes, cluttered websites, dizzying 800-line menus, long wait times, incompetent service, unintelligible correspondence, and products that are just plain difficult to use”?

Watermark says leaders embrace these basic tenets:

• They aim for more than customer satisfaction
• They nail the basics and then deliver pleasant surprises
• They understand that great experiences are intentional and emotional
• They shape customer impressions through cognitive science
• They recognize the link between the customer and employee experience

Download the report.

Good summary of the state of marketing in 50 slides from marketing management software company Percolate:

Here are my takeaways:

• Adults use their smart phones more than all other devices
• Vertical viewing is replacing horizontal viewing
• Mobile searches will soon replace desktops
• Millennials love their smart phone and cannot live without them
• Mobile is driving eCommerce
• Social’s share of Internet traffic is rising
• Lead generating is B2B’s biggest priority
• Blogging is B2B’s mmost important channel.