• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, September 23, 2013

How are brands addressing what everyone agrees is a serious shortage of technical talent? Gilt Groupe, for one, is doing some serious in-house grooming to fill its quota of quantitatively-minded marketers and engineers -- the latter of whom have become as important to marketing as marketers themselves. So Alexis Maybank, founder and chief strategy officer at Gilt, told OMMA Global attendees on Monday morning. "It's the most difficult challenge," Maybank said. And, the challenge is hardly specific to Gilt, according to Nancy Hill, President and CEO of the AAAA. Regarding young entrants into the agency world, Hill said: "They think they know [about real-time marketing and other techie practices] because they grew up with it, but they don't really understand it from a marketing perspective." The test, according to Lisa Shalett, head of brand marketing and digital strategy at Goldman Sachs, is, "how to find people who understand client services... but also have the technical abilities to weed through so much data." Havas Media North America, has a training program to get employees up on the latest technology and marketing services -- and, according to CEO Lori Hiltz, it's never been more critical to the future of the business. "The future of our business has to be very much rooted in ... analytics."