When I started Concep 5 years ago we decided to target Marketing Directors within B2B, if we ever heard the words “IT Director” it would send shivers down our spines and a common question to us would be: “Can we avoid IT?”.

Is this still the case?

Like Marketing Directors, historically IT Directors and CIOs were not strategic roles within the corporate structure and neither were involved in developing the organizations business strategy.  However, it does seem that this is where both their roles are heading as they strive for their seats on the board.

One of the most insightful comments from a fortune 100 CIO I met recently was his encouragement to colleagues “not to fall in love with the technology”. He was talking about individuals who fought any new ideas because they had signed off on technology, which had now become outdated and no longer delivered the functionality that the business needed. Consequently, there is a fear of a black mark against someone’s name and rather than look at new technologies, they fight for reasons to keep the current solutions in place. More often than not this scenario exists where something was developed internally so the emotional tie-in is even stronger.

The IT Directors role is admittedly being made more difficult by the masses of legislations which are being forced on organisations and IT are being seen as the guardians, or dare I say, watch dogs, to ensure this legislation is being implemented in an automated way. This, however, needs to be balanced with how marketing want to deliver their business goals.

Personally and from experience, when Marketing and IT are collaborating at the beginning of a project, projects tend to run smoother and get implemented quicker.  When IT and Marketing don’t get along we continue to see projects being snuck through the back door and/or delays on critical marketing opportunities.

A fine addition to the list of great British Ideas that didn’t quite work on day one, which currently includes the Millennium Bridge, the River of Fire and the Princess Diana fountain. Not to mention Portsmouth’s Spinnaker Tower, which opened five years late and promptly celebrated by trapping the project manager 100 feet up for an hour.

Back in 2007, a press release stated that the ‘highly sophisticated T5 baggage system had been designed for performance and reliability… there would be minimal queuing at every stage’. Which turned out to be quite an overclaim.

B2C, of course, is rife with promises that aren’t lived up to. Take the case of a March ASA adjudication; a shopping channel overstated product details, pricing and technical facts (pretty much a full house of errors, I’d have thought).

B2B, however, is relatively clean, as a quick check back through the annals of the ASA shows. The only semi-B2B ad in the annual top ten complaints since 1994 was a mono printer whose features included a nude woman.

But clean though we are, we’re going to have to be even more careful in future. The new Business Protection from Misleading Marketing and Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading regulations may be little more than a consolidation of existing law, but they’ll have an impact on what we can and can’t say about our products and services. No more ‘offer applies while stocks last’ if the product’s unlimited. No more product descriptions which include things we legally have to offer. Maybe even no more advertorials.

In short, from now on, the onus will be on us to be spot on. Hard facts, not weasel words are now the order of the day. And unlike Heathrow, no more flights of fancy.