Here’s our look back at the big news, trends and topics the attendees of the recent MarTech Conference held in San Francisco, CA May 9-11th.

1. The “Martech 5000” Landscape graphic was really overwhelming

Scott Brinker’s opening keynote unveiled the annual update to the now infamous Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic, which was met with an audible gasp from the audience. Over 5000 vendors and technology platforms are now represented in the martech ecosystem, up from just 150 in 2011, when the first graphic was produced.

2. Marketers are legitimately frightened by the state of modern marketing

Joe Staples, CMO at Workfront, and Jennifer Johnson, Senior Marketing Program Manager, Informatica, kicked off the breakfast keynote with a lighthearted approach to the seriousness of the challenges marketers face today.

As Kris Schulze, Executive Editor of B2B News Network put it:

“Is there anyone in Marketing that hasn’t faced this before? Everyone thinks they’re a marketer, so it’s no wonder that 47% of marketers say their biggest challenge is gaining the respect of internal clients.”

3. Marketing needs ‘someone to orchestrate the symphony’

The eternal debate “is marketing more of an art or science?” continued on the keynote stage with a discussion between Scott Brinker and Spotify VP of Growth & Marketing, Mayur Gupta.

“There’s so much happening in each channel — things like artificial intelligence and machine learning are really big now,” Gupta said. “But in the middle you need experience planners — I like to call them growth planners. These are the people who orchestrate the symphony, the person who knows what instrument needs to come up and which one needs to quiet down at each point during the customer journey.”

Read the full coverage over at MarTech Today.

4. Building a successful marketing stack is hard

But maybe you just need a little help from your friends in the marketing community.

As James Thomas, CMO of Allocadia told AdAge just hours before accepting a MarTech Conference “Stackie Award” for sharing which technologies they use in their own marketing, building a seamless stack is “chaos” in the current landscape. (See #1 above for more proof.)

The “Stackie Awards” are Scott Brinker’s brainchild to allow the industry to collectively learn from each other by sharing visualizations of how marketing stacks help dozens of organizations manage the customer journey.

5. Today’s marketing technologists need a little comic relief

By the start of the second day of the conference, the attendees were grateful for someone who truly understood their plight, but offered a light-hearted approach to tackling the best practices of marketing today.

“There have never been more opportunities, but marketers are often jumping at the shiny new thing without understanding what it is all about,” said Tom Fishburne, CEO, founder and creative mind behind Marketoonist, a content studio that uses cartoons to see the lighter side of the marketing landscape.

Worth the quick read, ChiefMarketer.com covered Fishburne’s multiple examples of how marketers try hard, but sometimes miss the mark.

You can also see the Top 10 suggestions for our marketoonist caption contest here.

Read up on more coverage of the conference from around the web below.

MarTech Today

• Infographic: The 2017 ‘Martech 5000’ Marketing Technology Landscape
• MarTech Conference: The 2017 Stackies and Hackies winners
• Mayur Gupta: Marketing needs ‘someone to orchestrate the symphony’ (MarTech Conference)

ChiefMartec.com 

• 600+ marketers report on the blend of art and science in marketing

• 57 marketing stacks and 21 essays from the 2017 Stackies & Hackies

• Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic (2017): Martech 5000

• Top 10 entries from the MarTech cartoon caption contest

AdAge

• Scott Brinker Explains WTF this Martech Graphic Means
• What exactly is a martech stack? 

B2B News Network

• Avoiding the Horrors of Modern Day Marketing
• Orchestrating an ABM Campaign With Advertising, Content & Direct Mail
• Adopting a Marketing Mindset for the Modern Digital World

ChiefMarketer.com

• Sprint, Microsoft, Experian See Opportunities in AI
• Centralized Data Hub puts Dr. Martens in Step
• Coffee perks up Domo’s ABM strategy

If any of these trends and topics resonate with you and how hard your job is as a marketer trying to navigate the complex world of marketing management and technology, then you should join us at the next MarTech Conference in Boston, October 2-4, 2017.