Am I a Hybrid?
I had the pleasure of attending the 14th Annual Forum on Customer-Based Marketing Strategies this week, and among the more interesting presentations was one by Elizabeth Scott of New Maven Marketing on what she termed “The New Marketing Hybrid.” She defined that as somebody with expertise in both new and traditional media.
She made it sound like these people are hard to find, because if you know traditional media really well, odds are you are too old to be sufficiently steeped in new media to be one of these new marketing hybrids.
Later that same day I ran into Janet Guptill of the executive search firm Witt/Keiffer on the exhibit floor, and she’s starting to specialize in finding the same kind of professional. She didn’t call it a “new marketing hybrid” but her description was the same as Elizabeth’s. And she made it sound like they are not easy to find.
Hello. I’m right here (note to my colleagues at Greystone: That’s a joke for effect).
While the mix at this conference is definitely different, when I walk the hallways of the Healthcare Internet Conference Greystone.Net holds every fall, I can’t help but bump into all kinds of people who appear to me to qualify as a hybrid. I apologize when I bump into them, to be sure, but they are all over the place.
Or are they? Client after client we visit have very bright, hardworking people, but in my fairly short tenure with Greystone.Net, finding that ideal combination of skills is the exception, not the rule.
As we look at “best in class” sites in healthcare, most of them are led by individuals with a good balance of technical knowledge, marketing and communications background, and the sense and sensitivity to put it to work effectively on the Web. Since, with all due modesty, I think I see one in the mirror every morning, I never realized that these “hybrids” were such a scarce commodity.
So I guess I am a hybrid. Where do I plug in?
You are definitely a hybrid – sporty, yet practical. I\’d consider myself one as well, I suppose.