Marketing Profs

In the beginning, the IT department created the Web server and the server log. And darkness was upon the face of the marketing department. And the spirit of the home page moved upon the face of the marketing department, and the marketing department said, "Let there be reports." And the marketing department saw the reports. And it was good.

And the marketing department divided the hits from the visits and called the hits page views, and the visits sessions.

And the marketing department said, "Let the reports be gathered together unto one place, and let the PowerPoint graphs appear that we may know the full power and glory of our Web site." And it was so.

Or so they thought.

For over a span of time the statistics poured forth, the results were displayed, and kaleidoscopic charts were abundant, resplendent in their brilliance and reassuring in that all lines proceeded in their inexorable elevation up and to the right. And the marketing department dwelt in peaceful indolence.

Improvements to the Web site came there none.

For lo, the reports and graphs were generated not from lights in the firmament yielding a font of wisdom, but from the rote recording of Web server transactions which conveyed neither insight nor enlightenment.

And Senior Executives came among them and asked what knowledge they had gleaned from their reports, charts and graphs. And after a prolonged silence the eyes of the marketing department were opened.

There was heard a wailing and the gnashing of teeth. And they knew that they were naked; and they sewed inkjet printouts together and made themselves coverings.

The marketing department wandered from the dessert of ignorance to the wellspring of IT asking, "Hi-tech, hi-tech, why hast thou forsaken me?"