Here's a classic cartoon that I saved from business school. timeless


posted by steve guttman at 6:09 PM

Marketer Marc Gobe, author of Emotional Branding and principal of d/g worldwide, said Apple's brand is the key to its survival. It's got nothing to do with innovative products like the iMac or the iPod. "Without the brand, Apple would be dead," he said. "Absolutely. Completely. The brand is all they've got. The power of their branding is all that keeps them alive. It's got nothing to do with products."

Gobe, who hails from France, formulated this view while researching his book, in which he tells how brands have established deep, lasting bonds with their customers. Apple, of course, is the archetypal emotional brand. It's not just intimate with its customers; it is loved. Other examples are automaker Lexus, retailer Target and outdoor clothing line Patagonia.

"Apple is about imagination, design and innovation," Gobe said from his office in New York. "It goes beyond commerce. This business should have been dead 10 years ago, but people said we've got to support it."

This is a great example of why marketers get a bad name.

Here is a company (Apple) that has built its reputation and brand by providing innovative products that have an emotional appeal (high-touch, personalizable, innovative), and suddenly, "Its got nothing to do with the products?" A brand is the accumulation of everything a company stands for. That has only a little to do with advertising and the magnetism of steve jobs, and a lot to do with the quality and experience that people have with the products themselves.

Is it possible to believe that Apple would have even the small market share it does today without the compelling ipod and imac lines? I'm a
Windows user and I absolutely covet the iBooks--not because of Apple's brand--because they are gorgeous machines. Does this strong brand mean they can sell any crap they want? No! Does Gobe really believe that Apple hasn't gone out of business based mainly on the good will of its customers? Is that a credible statement?

Its time that we get away from this idea that there is something called, "brand," which can be created in a way that is separate from the products a company offers and the experience that customers have with those products. A sock puppet is not a brand, it is an awareness-building device. The brand is built when the company gets a good or bad reputation based on real people having positive or negative interactions with that company.
posted by steve guttman at 5:53 PM

Todd Kerr at A³ Solutions showed me some interesting stuff he did to help focus the Sales force on what it would take to win deals. He dissected the path to decision that a company would take in learning about, getting familiar with, and ultimately buying their Enterprise planning product. The path moves from lead, to confirmed lead, to qualified lead, to qualified prospect, to a sales win--with objective criteria moving the prospect along to each step of the path.

Sales materials, then, need to address the attitudes and needs of the prospect (or buying team) at each stage of this process. For example, to move a confirmed lead to a qualified lead, Sales needs to show the key decision maker how the value proposition threads to their personal and corporate objectives. By identifying who the prospect is (e.g. planning manager), and the issues they face really help orient the kinds of materials needs (e.g. powerpoint, data sheet, flash), and level of stuff those materials should address. For example, a planning manager is interested in features and benefits, but to the extent that they speak to issues like making the process efficient and making them successful. They aren't interested in the detailed mechanics of the program.
posted by steve guttman at 4:49 PM

I was impressed by a section out of The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell. Required reading for Marketers and others. Here, he writes about the Broken Window Theory. The Broken Window theory aregues that crime is the inevitable result of disorder. If a window is broken and left unrepaired, peple walking by will conclude that no one cares and no one is in charge. Soon, more windows will be broken, and the sense of anarchy will spread from the building to the street on which it faces, sending a signal that anything goes. In a city, relatively minor problems like graffitti, public disorder and aggressive panhandling, are all the equivalent of broken windows, invitations to more serious crime.

I find that pretty provocative: crime is the result of disorder. Thus, the way to combat crime is to establish order--to fix the broken windows, paint over the graffitti, etc.

Those who have worked for several companies have probably experienced something similar to the broken window theory on a corporate scale. There are companies that simply flail, trying to be effective, but releasing mediocre products in dragged-out product cycles. While its tempting to blame bad engineers, 2-bit product managers, it's my belief that these companies have established a gestalt that works against efficiency and incisiveness. When you have a culture that encourages 25+ hrs of meetings a week, none of which start on time, and none of which have an agenda--those meetings begin to feel like broken windows. They work against the kind of decision-making process a company needs to succeed.

Similar to broken windows, I think the way to combat this kind of culture is to do relatively "easy" things--enforce every meeting starting on time. Every meeting should have an agenda. Every meeting should be metered so that it doesn't run late, and a parking lot established for follow-up items. Being effective has everything to do with culture.
posted by steve guttman at 9:40 PM

Here's some advice I gave a potential client:

You may or may not be aware, but blogs have become a very trendy/happenin' thing. They are percieved as a new journalistic tool, and there are actually courses offered in blogs at schools and universities. I would suggest that you and people in your company start 5 - 10 blogs dealing with different aspects and/or personal views of the challenges of data integration. Each author should include the url in their email signatures; be sure and cross link to .com from the blog home pages (to boost your google ratings); make sure you get listed in the blog directories of whatever service you use (blooger/userland).; ask customers to share stories or submit questions...

Additionally, there is a type of software that I'm aware of, but have not yet tried called a "news aggregator." A news aggregator is software that periodically reads a set of news sources, in one of several XML-based formats, finds the new bits, and displays them in reverse-chronological order on a single page. Every hour the aggregator reads the "feeds" you're subscribed to, as few as a half-dozen, or as many as you like. When you see an item that you want to amplify with your own comments, or pass on to others in your organization or interest group, with a couple of clicks you can "route" it to the home page of your weblog. Aggregators and weblog software are flip-sides of the same idea.

Weblogs are for writing, aggregators for reading, and at the intersection is routing. The amazing thing is that (I believe) the most prevalent web service are news headlines supplied in RSS (really simple syndication) format--an XML dialect. There are hundreds of these feeds including most news organizations (NYTimes, BBC and others). I wonder if it would makes sense to put together a news aggregator for , as a "community service" and make it accessible from either your site or a special url. The aggregator could subscribe to the appropriate data sources and scan the headlines for the appropriate keywords (to decide which to display). You could also publish postings from the blogs in this format and, thus, seed the aggregator with info relevant to your technology.

This would certainly be worth a press release, which would probably actually be picked up by a number of publications. It's newsworthy because it's something different...
posted by steve guttman at 7:02 PM

There are really 3 categories of outbound marketing stuff to worry about: 1) direct marketing, 2) tipping, and 3) blocking & tackling. If you have 7 "foreground" spots in your brain, reserve three of them for these (you'll need several more for inbound product mgmt).

Direct Marketing is Sales, pure and simple. When you know who the customer is--go to them directly. Give them a offer (a superior, differentiated product), and ask them for money--or time in the case of enterprise Sales. While this isn't quite as easy as shooting pigs in a barrel--it should be just as straightforward. And the Internet has made it considerably easier and cheaper than direct mail or telesales. Where people generally go wrong with Direct Marketing is where they get the strategy wrong. They target the wrong group with the wrong offer. For example, offering financial analysts a product that allows mutiple analysts to work together on the same spreadsheet sounde pretty cool. Too bad spreadsheet work is such an individual activity...

Tipping is stolen from the excellent book, The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. In this book Gladwell talks about how different social phenomenon (sales of hush puppies, flu epidemic, increase/drop in crime rate) can actually be drastically affected by the actions of a few people. Underlying the tipping phenomenon is the realization that these social issues are actually in an equilibrium that we don't percieve. The right catalyst will push these social cycles out of equilibrium, and cause an epidemic. I believe that product sales find an equilibrium as well, which is factored on awareness, need, etc. The savvy marketer understands there are some things that will push the product system out of equilibrium. So, one of our charges as marketers is to find the right people and/or right actions that will dramatically increase product success.

Let me give you an example. When I was at Macromedia, Flash was a $7 - 9 MM/yr business. It had gotten recognition as an outstanding technology, was used on a decent number of web sites (incl. MSN), but was in no way a breakout product. Macromedia later struck deals with Netscape and Microsoft to include the Flash player in the browser download (which cost them a decent amount of cash). The perception of "no longer being a download" (even though you still had to download new versions), really catalyzed the Flash market and propelled it to the $150 MM (guess) it is today.

Finally, blocking and tackling is really a catch-all for everything else. Basic PR, market segmentation, collateral, sales support and aids fall in this camp.
posted by steve guttman at 10:18 PM

It seems to me that in many ways, Marketing is not a single discipline, but at the intersection of 3 other disciplines: Product Development, Sales, and Internal management. And, in fact, Marketing's goal is to bring those arenas together.

Marketing needs to bring the voice of the customer from Sales, into the product development process, so that the product developed is the right product. Marketing needs to support the Sales effort with strategy, and tactics (ranging from development of collateral and demos to identifying the key decision makers and their pressure points).

Most importantly, Marketing needs to understand the internal machinations of the company to develop the "voice of the company/brand." Normally, I consider brand-related stuff to be utter bullshit. That word has been burned by the indulgences of "sock-puppet" marketers in the not-so-distant past. But, I think, the "voice of the brand" is a real thing. Just as you can get a sense for who someone is by sitting down with them and discussing anything for 30 min, you should also be able to understand the values of a company by looking at their web site, collateral materials, or speaking to a rep. Companies have personalities. They should recognize that and take advantage of it. Personality counts.
posted by steve guttman at 2:39 PM

I am still amazed that people (even marketers) continue to be skeptical of the effectiveness of Internet advertising. "Oh, I just ignore banners, and less than half of one percent of banners get clicked on, anyhow." I hear this all the time. This is basic math stuff. Not even trig.

If I pay $2 CPM (which is do-able), that means for every $2 I spend, I'll get 5 click-thrus. If I convert 2% of those click-thrus to action (downloading an app, buying something), my cost per action is $20. That seems like a lot (and it is for downloading an app), but it's pretty modest to get a paying customer. And it's pretty good, as well, to get a qualified lead for enterprise software. Furthermore, if you increase your efficiency by a factor of 4, the cost goes down to $5. The problem is that most ad agencies don't have an incentive to bargin with ad reps and end up paying $20+ CPM. At those rates, your starting cost per action is $200--big problem.

Remember too, that even when people don't click on ads, they start to build awareness (the first marketing hurdle).
posted by steve guttman at 1:45 PM