A growing number of CEOs have come to realize that innovative, cost-effective information management can be a source of competitive advantage. Similarly, a small but growing cadre of CIOs now recognize that innovative, cost-effective information management about IT (i.e., marketing) is a critical ingredient of career success.

In the past, IT executives would react with disdain at the thought of actually marketing IT to the rest of the organization. For these technologists, it likely conjured mental images of the most crass forms of culture gone wrong, from bad jingles to intrusive telemarketers. Engaging in marketing was viewed as somehow cheapening the craft. And for many other CIOs, marketing IT simply wasn't on the radar screen of critical tasks.