Emmanuel Obadia was brought in to Oracle from Salesforce to lead and refresh the marketing of their SAAS offerings. 

His message to the team on arrival:

1. The web (and by that social) is your number one sales channel and you must 'get to know your customer and, more important, get to know their pain'.

2. Content is your key asset. You should be 'content starving'. 'It's about building all your content from the customer out. What is the thing that is keeping the CFO, for example, up at night? What is the No1 obsession they would have? And try to address that.'

3. Agility and Speed is crucial. You need to be able to spot a trend and react to it in days not months, and you need sales to help you with that. 'They are your partners in crime.'

To steal a line from Andrea Clatworthy of Fujitsu, when the aim of modern marketing is to 'shift left', to engage the customer earlier in the sales cycle, you must be where your customers are: online. And you must be relevant, using both the expertise of your best people and the customer insights from your sales team, so that you can deliver that timely content right to the pain point.