Marketers have A LOT of stupid ideas. A lot of them.

Some of these ideas pan out FANTASTICALLY, but the majority end up wasting money, making an org look dumb, and in general distract from operations that are far more productive.

A Red Team, according to wikipedia, “is an independent group that challenges an organization to improve its effectiveness assuming an adversarial role or point of view.”  I’m not sure what the exact origin was, but it is a technique used prominently in the US military, journalism, and other professions.

I think a “Red Team” is something that all marketing teams should have…

This way, when someone says, “Let’s do a podcast! Podcasts are hot right now”, and everyone agrees despite the fact that the company produces ball bearings, has no prominent speakers, and absolutely nothing interesting to talk about, there is a group there to explore the idea and prove all the ways it’s not going to pan out before the company wastes a bunch of time, effort, and money on the idea.