Martech, explained · Buying and running · 2:00
Martec's Law in two minutes
Martec's Law, Scott Brinker's (2013): technology outruns the organization
The short answer
Martec's Law, coined by Scott Brinker in 2013, says technology changes exponentially while organizations change logarithmically, so the two pull apart. The gap is everything your tools can do that your team hasn't absorbed yet. AI pushes on both lines, so the lever stays the same: treat keeping up as work, with a budget and an owner.
Questions this answers
What is Martec's Law?
Scott Brinker's observation from 2013: technology changes exponentially, organizations change logarithmically, and the gap between the two keeps widening.
How much of a martech stack is actually used?
Gartner's surveys put the share of stack capability in use at 58% in 2020 and 33% in 2023; a later reading came back near half under a different question, so read it as a direction.
What does keeping up with martech cost?
Even standing still: twenty tools that each ship one big feature and four small ones a quarter add up to four hundred releases a year that someone has to read and judge.
Will AI close the gap in Martec's Law?
It pushes on both lines. It raises the ceiling, because vendors ship more, and it can lift the floor, because an agent can run a feature nobody learned. The winner isn't decided yet.
Transcript
Every chapter as text. Click a time to play the film from there.
0:00 A process you can't pause
Frank Herbert wrote that a process cannot be understood by stopping it.
Martech is that kind of process, and you learn it by working inside it.
In 2013, Scott Brinker drew why it never holds still, as two lines on one chart.
He called it Martec's Law, without an h, and most martech teams work in the space between those lines.
0:25 The law
The first line is technology, and it changes exponentially, faster every year.
The second line is your organization.
It changes logarithmically: it keeps learning, but every year a little more slowly.
Put the two on one chart and they pull apart.
0:44 What lives in the gap
The gap is everything your tools can do that your team hasn't absorbed yet.
Gartner's surveys put the share of stack capability in use at fifty-eight percent in 2020, and thirty-three percent in 2023.
A later reading came back near half, under a different question, so read it as a direction, not a precise number.
1:06 Keeping up has a cost
Even standing still costs something.
Twenty tools, each shipping one big feature and four small ones a quarter, add up to four hundred releases a year that someone has to read and judge.
1:20 Where AI pushes
AI pushes on both lines.
It raises the ceiling, because features are cheaper to build, so vendors ship more of them.
And it can lift the floor, because an agent can run a feature nobody on the team ever learned.
The winner isn't decided yet.
1:38 What it asks of you
What does Martec's Law ask of you, then?
Not to buy faster, but to absorb faster.
Keeping up is work, so give it a budget and an owner, instead of hoping it happens in the cracks of everyone's week.
Learn more at Martech Stack Builder, or build your own.
Read more
The articles this film is drawn from.