Look around you. See the guy over there checking his stocks and playing SongPop on Facebook, thinking no one can see? And the lady in the corner, whose been on the phone with the ad agency all day, trying to get the copy right on your new print campaign? And that new hire, the one who seemingly refreshes Mashable 5 times an hour, looking for the hottest new social trend that your brand can take advantage of? If you’ve ever wondered why folks with such radically different orientations have come together in one function – or wondered what the right mix of these personalities is – MLC’s major 2012 research project for B2Cs is right up your alley.

The menagerie of modern marketing has gotten even more complex in recent years, as the marketing functions of most B2C firms have grown and now often encompasses diverse fields like digital, social, mobile, customer service, and strategy. A lot of energy, in particular, has gone into hiring “agile” marketers – marketers who are digitally savvy, curious and comfortable with ambiguity, comfortable with fast decision-making and data, and who are strong networkers. The idea is that folks like this will be able to better-navigate the fast-moving consumer world, and just might drag the rest of their organizations with them into the bright, digital future.

We received so many questions around hiring – “how do we find agile marketers?” – that we decided to dedicate our research project into what kinds of marketers best drive performance. We did a survey of over 500 marketers in Fortune 500, B2C marketing functions, and we identified 5 distinct types of marketers living in organizations today:

• Adapters. Adapters are comfortable with change and ambiguity. They feature a strong learning posture and digital savvy, and they are among the most data-skilled marketers in your organization. They make up about 29% of all marketers in our sample.
• Connectors. Connectors are the life of the party. Their main feature is, as you’d expect, strong networking skills – they’re the folks who seemingly know everyone on the floor within a week of their start date. They’re digitally savvy, focus heavily on data, and are willing to learn. Connectors make up about 11% of the marketers in our sample.
• Doers. Doers are your workhorses. They like clear direction, are much more reliable than the average marketer, and their strengths come out when asked to execute an idea that someone else has developed. They make up about 43% of the marketers in our sample – the single largest group.
• Fast Movers. Fast Movers are similar to our Adapters, mentioned above, but with a few key differences. First, they focus much more on making fast decisions. They have a strong bias to action and, as opposed to simply being comfortable with change, tend to actively embrace it. They favor independent working environments more than anyone else in our sample. They make up about 8% of our sample.
• Focusers. Focusers are sort of like Doers, with a few additional qualities tacked on. They prefer depth of focus over breadth – they like to pick one thing and do it very well. They persevere despite setbacks and lack of feedback, think through issues thoroughly, and work independently. They’re the second-smallest group, and make up about 9% of our sample.

Read through the profiles again. Which do you think fits you best?

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Next week, we’re going to give you a better sense of which of these profiles were the best performers in today’s ambiguous, chaotic marketing world. (Or, of course, you can read ahead and learn for yourself!). But in the meantime, take the poll and let us know how you fit into the modern marketing menagerie.