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May 27, 2004

AdTech Forum - Is the bubble back?

Just got back from AdTech Forum. Was supposedly much bigger, hypier and more well funded, and attended than before. But hey, at least I brought home some nice tchotchkes. My kids especially liked the flashing bouncing ball from Who’s Calliing, the weird belt clip light from Atlas Search and the frisbee thing from Digital Envoy. The little flashing light thingee from Google was cool but too sharp for play. And honestly the little sticky-note book from AOL was not good enough, they should do better. Oh, yeah, and I didn’t win ANY of the many raffles for free iPods and TiVos. What a rip. (Strange, I got much better swag from an insurance industry conference I went to recently) Oh, but I guess that was not what I was there for. Sorry. I’ll get to the actual content now. Who was there? Tons of vendors like DoubleClick, Revenue Science, GoToast, CasaleMedia, Atlas DMT. Consultants and agencies like SBI Razorfish and Advertising.com. Media owners, aggregators, brokers etc like Claria, Tribal Fusion, Fastclick, and Kanoodle, and of course, the company everyone wanted to be like, Google. Just to name a very few. The Big themes: accountability, integration, the death of TV, contextual vs. behaviorial targeting, pay for performance, measurement, measurement, measurement - CPA vs. CPM vs. ROI vs. eieio, other stuff like promotional and other marketing vehicles. And most importantly, why is online still such a small % of the total ad spend? What’s Hot supposedly: analytics, consulting $, SMS marketing, DVRs shaking up the world, metrics, mixed media schedules and planning, broad-reach/interactive integration and planning, local, email, search and more search What’s Not supposedly: interactive TV, streaming ads, promotions. See the VC discussion for more on this. Everyone of course wanted to know what Mark Kvamme of Sequoia (Yahoo and Google of course) had to say. Which was really good, but the other panelists had a bunch of other observations. Like deal prices are starting to get scarey again, also that we've really only seen the beginning of the shift to online ad spend, about how important local is but how high the cost/advertiser acquired. About how wireless is super cool and could leapfrog PC/internet for streaming video. Biggest Gap: strangest thing to me at least was how little attention blogging as a business opportunity got, even after all the Billg talk. Most pooh poohed it as not investable, needing an ad model, and needing editorial quality control. Humph. Well, at least Mary Hodder found some enthusiasm about blogs there. Other, final impressions: Lots of buzz words like “new information economy” “hyper-changing” “leverage.” Lot's more optomism and excitement but I sensed an undertone of Vienna before the Anschluss, waiting to see if the shoe drops. Really nice to see a guy like Mike Windsor take the whammy out of a bunch of the claptrapier stuff said. Favorite quotes are from him. "It's about money. Remember that. So then we have to go where the money is. The billion dollar not million dollar budgets. And they are with broad reach clients not interactive clients. Until interactive is a significant and regular part of the ad program we will always be fighting an uphill battle." Also "Online represents less than 10% of the budget but more than 90% of the analysis. Why, because it can be analysed. Not because the analysis really tells you any more about the true ROI of the effort or how it performs relative to anything else."

Posted by johnza at 06:32 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

More on Billg's blog talk

A bunch more folks have been talking about Microsoft, Billg and blogging (see previous entry on Whether MSFT is late to the blog party). Here are some of them: Bill on Blogs :: jr conlin's Ink Stained Banana Ink stained banana wonders if this is a harbinger of more boring things to come. He wishes that companies would take blogs seriously as real tools, but is concerned that all we will get is corporate blogs “where anonymous corporate mouthpieces shill out the same sort of stuff that goes to Business Wire.” The unsanctioned blogs will always be more interesting and reflective of the reality of companies. Portention's entry has a pretty contentious discussion. To billg’s comments "What blogging and these notifications are about is that you make it very easy to communicate... The ultimate idea is that you should get the information you want when you want it." Neil Art basically say’s “Duh.” He also wonders whether Microsoft is going to build or buy blog-related software, and if so from whom? Trevor Cook basically notes that despite the kinda obvious stuff Billg said, it really does seem that something can't be taken seriously on the Internet as a business topic until the guy from Redmond signals his interest. Marcie Robillard (aka Datagrid Girl) wonders why Steveb and Billg still don’t have blogs of their own. “Even to pull an Eric Rudder and only post once per quarter would be HUGE coming from these two guys.” She notes that we really want to hear what they have to say “At a minimum, please consider offering the speech transcripts as an RSS feed... Why not put your billions where your mouth is?” Finally Dadblog is actually happy that Bill Gates is explaining "in language CEOs understand why blogging and RSS could equal a cool information dissemination tool." Again, late to the party maybe, but interesting to watch for sure. If if makes blogging more accessable to more people, then all the better. In my humble opinion.

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May 26, 2004

Small sample but interesting

Frog Blog: Is the blog world audience interesting to you? Who are bloggers? Who are blog readers. Check out these stats from Blogads. This was from a sample of 17K blog readers (21% of which are bloggers themselves): 61% are over 30. 79% are male (vs. 56% of NYT’s readers). 75% make more than $45,000 a year. 54% of their news consumption is online, but they also read: • 21% subscribe to the New Yorker magazine • 15% to the Economist • 15% to Newsweek • 14% to the Atlantic Monthly. In the last six months: • 50% have spent more than $50 online on books. • 47% have spent more than $500 online for plane tickets. • 50% have contributed more than $50 to a cause or candidate, and 5% have contributed more than $1000. (Only 25% of NYTimes.com readers have contributed anything online in the last year.) One thing is clear, they/we are media junkies, does that make us a good target for ad dollars and investment. Not yet according to most at AdTech Forum. More on that later.

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May 24, 2004

Simplicity in email

Boy, everyone is on the simplicity/brevity soapbox. It makes sense given all that we are bombarded with. See John Porcaro: mktg@msft: Don't Make Me Read for a good discussion of the importance of brevity in email. Actually, this is the origin of our Marketing ABCs(tm) formula. We had to figure out a simple, standard way to keep our emails to Microsoft execs and teams short, simple and effective. And this was before spam. It became a really simple equation. Three lines only: A = the situation (quick explaination/assessment) B = what's the issue with A (why it's urgent) C = is what action you require of the reader (approval, resources, input, etc.) Because it was simple it worked. This has now become a technique we and tons of others we know use to simplify the process of thinking about and communicating tons of things from market analysis, to your vision and mission to your investor pitch.

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Brevity is the soul of wit

Apropos given the simplicity topic. And actually it's "Since brevity is the soul of wit... I will be brief..." Of course, it's by Shakespeare and it's from Hamlet, Act II Scene ii, spoken by Polonius.

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More on simplicity

Frog Blog: Simplicity. And another article on Maeda's Simplicity Workshop. Nice to see someone else with a simplicity soapbox.

Posted by johnza at 06:41 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Advertising Trends

Lots of interesting changes happening in advertising right now:

• Advertising is everywhere. Great points about how folks are moving beyond traditional media to naming, Internet, product placements, etc.
• Forecasters see strong growth in ad spend. A good overview of how much rebound there's been. 5% in 2003 and 7% in 2004
• Promotions growing rapidly. Promotion budgets are growing more rapidly brand advertising in traditional markets gets stale.
• "Advertisers are not where the consumers are":
• Kagan Says. A great researcher of media trends. Their reports cost a forturne, but they have one place where you can see their quotes and news releases.

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May 23, 2004

Advertising Trends

Lots of interesting changes happening in advertising right now:

• Advertising is everywhere. Great points about how folks are moving beyond traditional media to naming, Internet, product placements, etc.
• Forecasters see strong growth in ad spend. A good overview of how much rebound there's been. 5% in 2003 and 7% in 2004

Posted by rich at 10:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

In defense of simplicity

Keep It Simple Redux (Signal vs. Noise) Nice note and discussion here from Signal vs. Noise. The kick off is from Dr. John Maeda, from M.I.T. Media Lab, and his one-word vision of the future: simplicity. How to get there? 1. Heed cultural patterns. (don't fight them) 2. Be transparent. (easy to understand) 3. Edit. (get rid of feature clutter) 4. Prototype. (make sure it works) One great point was "what works best is an outer simplicity coupled with access to inner complexity." No matter how much complex stuff is going on under the hood, the outside has to be clear and simple. Now most of the discussion in the SvN entry is around web and software design, but this point is totally true when it comes to marketing. Too much is overcomplicated. As a marketer, planning is hard, research is hard, campaigns are hard, creative is hard. All of these are supposedly the private realm of "experts." I say bunk. At least as far as your own judgement goes. At the end of the day, if you can't figure it out with some simple ABCs and XYZs then it's not going to work. No matter how sophisticated all your experts are, if you can't keep it simple, the team won't execute and the target audience won't get it. I'll get off my soapbox now.

Posted by johnza at 06:50 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Gates/MSFT late to the blogging party?

Joi Ito's Web: Bill Gates talks about blogging Joi Ito's blog is one of a lot of discussions arising from Billg's recent little tutorial on blogging at his big CEO summit (see full transcript, and see Reuters story). One perspective, that a friend just posed to me: isn't Gates late to the party? I wonder. Microsoft is often late to the party, and those have usually been its biggest successes (word processing, spreadsheets, browsers). To mangle metaphors nicely: fast followers who are late to the party often make better dragracers because they are still sober while the other guys are getting drunk on their early success. Heck, Ford was late to the sports car party and they created the ultimate dragracer for the masses. The mustang. Now Joi wonders whether this means that the whole blogging thing is going to turn into another war/dragrace between Google/Atom and Microsoft/RSS. Robert Scoble at Microsoft thinks not. But it still leaves you wondering. Meanwhile, Hugh Hacleod at gapingvoid seems just fine with all this. He basically feels like getting a big gorrilla like MSFT in there indicates that blogging and blog publishing tools are going mainstream. And that's OK. Especailly if it means he gets more free space to publish and push sales of his blogcards. For some further thought on this topic check out: - Joe Wilcox of Microsoft Monitor/Jupiter Research. He thinks Billg gets it. That he understand blogging as outside the Windows OS world and in need of bringing in. - Mary Jo Foley of Microsoft Watch. Sees Gates as doing a nice job of being a blogging spokesperson for normal business people. (more from her on other MSFT blogging thoughts, announcements, etc.) - Ben McConnell of Church of the Customer, also has been noting Microsoft's Blog March. Whatever your perspective, this will be interesting to watch.

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May 21, 2004

Ultimate ABCs and XYZs, an example

PR Communications: Finding an unmet need Here's an entry about a company marketing a product in a category we will all face eventually - death. What simple gap analysis ABCs and positioning XYZs. A. Yes, you die (everyone does, ultimately). Away from home. B. But, you want your ashes back where you belong, and your urn won't make it past airport security X-rays. C. So, you need a better way (FedEx just might not seem appropriate). Now, a company has come up with a new product that can address this unmet need, and a simple, compelling positioning. X funeral urns for Y loved ones coming home that Z don't have to go into checked luggage.

Posted by johnza at 06:44 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

3 Ways to Breakthrough in the Future

Brand Autopsy: Commercial Messages of the Future??? Interesting entry on the continuing quest for bridging the gap of effectivly reaching/connecting with people in their ever changing behavior, tastes and media consumption habits. Paraphrased here: 1. Get them where they work, not just where they live (Bob Flood, Publicis) 2. Let the advertisers become the producers/or product placement = the movie (Ty Montague, Weiden+Kennedy) 3. Stay simple so that single images you create become iconic and work everywhere (Michael Patti, Y&R) It seems to me that 1 and 2 are already happening and are - depending on your POV - unfortunately inevitable. And that 3 should be happening now but few are brave enough, patient enough or instinctive enough to keep it interesting, relevant, constant, clear and simple.

Posted by johnza at 06:23 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 20, 2004

Calls to action - the fun way

Seth's Blog: Why can't it be fun? I love this "Polka Dot" And hey, I went to school in Milwaukee and I'm Polish-American. It's fun, it's tempting and, as the Brave Combo knows, Polka's make you happy. Also reminds me of a bunch of early kid's PC games by Living Books that told simple stories, no action but whenever you clicked on a picture totally goofy things happened. Even though they are totally out of date, my kids still love to play them. If only more marketing messages had that kind of call to action.

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May 19, 2004

Creative has at least something to do with it

gapingvoid: the best advertising strategy is one that gives a damn Here's super, super creative Hugh Macleod's take at his super, super cool blog Gaping Void. We've talked a lot about media issues etc. contributing to the decline of standard advertising. Maybe the the value proposition is just off? But clearly creative has something to do with it. Too much is just plain boring, repetitive, pandering, forced, vapid, cloned from someone else's efforts, or just bad. If you never notice an ad, it's pretty hard to be effective no matter where it's placed.

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May 18, 2004

Stealth Play for Office in China

Techdirt:Chinese Competitor Now Ready To Take On Microsoft Office. While Office globally has great share. In Korea, it is a locally grown suite that is the winner. A great example of a stealth play. Who cares about Korea when the targets are the Americas and Europe. Well, some folks are doing special versions for the Chinese market. That's a different kettle of fish entirely. Evermore is doing a suite focused there. But, they are pricing at the same rate as Office. Interesting to see how that drag race goes in China.

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Broadband Drag Race Final Plays

Techdirt:Broadband Tiering Based On Intended Use?. Well, in the US you don't see it yet as everyone is beating each other over the head to get broadband into homes. A classic drag race. If I'm 10MB to the home then I must be 10x better than that cruddy 1MB stuff. BT is going to move to a tiered price scheme. A good example of what happens towards the end of a drag race. You start segmenting and differentiating when shares get tight. Remember when every PC was beige with a monitor on top. Segments happen at the end of drag races is the lesson.

Posted by rich at 10:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Confused about AT&T

The New York Times > Business > AT&T in Deal to Return to Wireless Market . Well actually the reverse of cool marketing, I have to say that I just can't understand what the AT&T playbook is. You sell all the growing parts of your business like the RBOCs and their digital access so they are your biggest competitors. Then, you buy a huge cable operation and then sell it at a loss just at a time when cable leads in broadband. Then, you buy McCaw Cellular take it from #1 to last in the market, sell it for a loss. Now all you have is the dying long distance business that VOIP is going to just trash. So, what's the next move, take the dead last carriers network and beging reselling that. I have to say, I'm not sure I understand the play here.

Posted by rich at 10:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Google Moves Toward a Direct Confrontation With Microsoft

The New York Times > Technology > Google Moves Toward a Direct Confrontation With Microsoft. A great example of how plays can morph here: * We have Google first running a drag race in the search engine business against the likes of Inktomi. From the Microsoft point of view, this is a variant of stealth. That is, "heck, we are competing in some other tiny business, don't mind us." Note that Steve Ballmer doesn't take full notice and even MSN as a portal isn't clear on the threat. * After winning the search business, then line extension starts to happen, so you get froogle, you get google news, you get gmail. It's this kind of line extension that moves the company closer and closer. In this way, the play becomes portal (Yahoo/MSN) vs. Google. Still a stealth play as far as Microsoft can see fundamentally since it isn't attacking the core Windows and Office franchises. Of course, Microsoft sees where google is headed and launches a drag race on search and also lays in a platform play with Longhorn. * So now we are on the final phase, desktop search is now here. Very smart not to start here like so many others have. Instead, have lots of users and go after them. So, we'll finally get to the main event, a drag race for the user interface that people use everyday. Really great marketing plays have this kind of play-by-play series.

Posted by rich at 10:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

It don't amount to a hill of beans unless...

VentureBlog: Brand Follows User Experience All the positioning XYZs, market ABCs, great promotion, smart plays, guerilla marketing, cool names and snazzy branding - in the long run - just won't cut it if the product sucks. Lots of companies get big with products that aren't the absolute best, but as VentureBlog points out the value of the brand quickly declines if the user experience goes too far down hill. Frankly this is true not just in high tech but in any industry. And for start-ups your reputation and the product experience is all you have for a brand. The positive, hot brands of today have to keep it up to keep their brands as assets.

Posted by johnza at 08:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Beyond "your logo here." Way beyond.

Boing Boing: I, T-shirt: wearable movie trailers at NextFest Another really interesting forray into going beyond standard broadcast media for reaching grabbing people. Pretty darn cool, movies on T Shirts. Talk about positioning. I've heard of people wearning thier hearts on thier sleeves, but now how about running your demo on your, ahem, chest. What's next? Maybe instead of blogging or posting listing on the web, you'll create a cool flash movie promoing your stuff and post it to specific, targetted people's clothes.

Posted by johnza at 08:18 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Baidu vs. Google -taking a page from your competitor's playbook

Chinese Google, Baidu, eyes IPO - The Unofficial Google Weblog - google.weblogsinc.com We've seen a lot written about Google's new plays - Dragracing others on gmail and moving toward becoming more of a Platform. But here is an interesting development. In China, Google dragraced and lost. To a start up called Baidu that was built on only $11MM. Baidu's president has the right spirit for this play: "As a scientist by training, I am a little bit obstinate and I wanted to know how best I could use my talent... The most effective weapon for us is continuous upgrading of our technology and enrichment of our function. Then users will decide who is the winner." Reading directly from the Google book, Baidu began generating profits last year and 80 percent of the revenue came from paid listings.

Posted by johnza at 06:05 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Had lunch with Jason Fried

Of 37 Signals a week ago. How refreshing. Great candid, discussion on good design vs. bad design, blogging as a marketing vehicle, the pros and cons of VC, architecture and more. These guys do a great job on clean simple design. They have a great project management product, called Basecamp with nice, simple straightforward positioning XYZs. It, itself is a fine example of blogs as marketing. The thing is taking off with their promotion entirely on the web and mostly from the blogsphere.

Posted by johnza at 05:23 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 17, 2004

Great Analysis of Movable Type

Paul Musgrave Dot Com: MT makes a wrong turn. Paul Musgrave is _just_ a student, but boy is he insightful on the post mortem of the MovableType brouhaha Would only MovableType had someone like Paul on board. His lessons are great. A good read.

Posted by rich at 11:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Why Direct Response doesn't work all the time

GrabTheMic. Here's a great example. On this bloggers site are a bunch of comments about Iraq. The net result is that his Google Adsense bar is filled with things that are a little ridiculous when you consider what the Economist, Washington Post or other publication would carry next to a piece about the war there. * Iraq Revenue Watch. Monitor reconstruction funds. * Iraqi Reconstructions. Get the GSA contract data * Leave Iraq? Get a $50 gift card from captainbargains.com * Articles archived on Iraq from Keepmedia.com * Need help on Middle East JV legal creation So that's the different between DR and branding. The only data Adsense has is what's on the page, not about who is viewing the page. Here's what the economist carries as banners as a result of a query on Iraq articles that lead you to the latest "catastrophe":http://economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2683671: * Man Financial. Every future is personal * Chicago Merchantile Exchnage free seminar on investing * "Smith Barney":http://www.smithbarney.com/cgi-bin/ad/jump.cgi?page=brandsite&RedirectID=ECO_120&Creative=cs99br4b citigroup on getting a financial investor * "Tiffany & Co.":http://ad.doubleclick.net/click;h=v2|310f|0|0|%2a|b;7950626;0-0;1;7046742;237-250|250;5126934|5144830|1;;%3fhttp://www.t-57.com introducing a new watch. See the difference. Three brand ads and there is one direct response, but not for someone who wants a GSA contract contact for Iraq, but for trading hog futures. Net, net, knowing who is reading vs. what they are reading is pretty important in the world of advertising and promotion.

Posted by rich at 11:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

What's the Value of Brand Advertising?

John Battelle's Searchblog: What's the Value of Brand Advertising?. A great question. Most of the stuff on the Internet is all about direct response, but that's not the way lots of purchases work. It's not like you think I need Tide and then you click on it 90% of the time. More like, you see Tide a bunch of times (frequency) and lots of people see it (reach) and eventually when you buy a detergent, you see it and say, yup I like it. That would be like car guys blitzing people just in the 1 month they want to buy a car. It is often way too late by then. That's what image is all about. That's not to say direct response and brand don't live together. They just have different purposes. Depending on the play you are running and the playfield of course :-)

Posted by rich at 10:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Are all VCs bad?

Marc's Voice. Something I sometimes wonder about. A good post from Marc Cantor, the founder of Macromedia, about how Movable Type got ruined by VCs. Sigh. Maybe so. At least I'd like to hope our folks at Geekfishing would know how to grow a great community and make a few bucks at the same time. It really isn't that hard.

Posted by rich at 10:55 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Mark Pilgrim on Movable Type vs. WordPress

Freedom 0 [dive into mark]. Wow, this guy besides having an incredibly beautiful web site is sure articulate. He goes through why he switched from Movable Type to WordPress and why. Great points about GPL and not taking away the rights of folks on upgrade. Big lesson here about how consumers like to have long term expectations. Even if Movable Type fixes licensing, its a problem if guys like Mark Pilgrim move. Plus he's basically saying its easy to do.

Posted by rich at 10:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Just plain cool - packaging as art as packaging

Boing Boing: Soup imitates art: Warhol-style Campbell's tomato soup on sale Not sure I can figure out the targetting for this new packaging promotion - contemporary art afficiandos who love non organic tomato soup? But I think it is awesome that Campbell had the sense of humor to launch commemorative soup cans in the Warhol style. I am definately getting some, to keep, not to eat.

Posted by johnza at 09:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Beyond the Google Search Dragrace

filtered: Google steals from Starbucks' playbook Lots is being written about the Google, Yahoo, MSN etc. dragrace in search. As well as now its dragrace using Gmail. Filtered's Mark Jones gives another perspective on the emerging Google set of line extenstions that it's moving in the direction of ubiquity a la Starbucks. Two other entries follow this - including "GBay, GCommerce..." with the Industry Standard's guest blogger, Jen Muehlbauer. And indeed why not the Google OS See also Topix for a great full analysis. Is the direct truly for Google to evolve into a complete Platform? Who will it face then? Will it be up to it?

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May 15, 2004

Movable Type Allies

MT-Blacklist/Comment Spam Clearinghouse: Six Apart quells the fury. A good example of how having allies in the world helps when you make a mistake. Clearly having folks like Jay Allen, Brad Choate and other powerhouses in the community help quite a bit as do the changes. Still, it is sad to see that the folks at Movable Type didn't test this kind of stuff and still don't quite get the point that, having 50 blogs with 50 authors on a non-commercial site is terrific for them. If you could get that kind of PR, what would it cost. That's one reason why if you want a copy of Microsoft Office for academic purposes it cost $50 (and still does!) while the enterprise product is 5x more. And this is from a company with 99% plus share. Sometimes it pays to get distribution and happy folks. The lesson: The real money is in the enterprise, but the excitement is at the end-user non-commercial level.

Posted by rich at 08:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

MovableType Moves...

The Sky is Not Falling (Jeremy Zawodny's blog). In a good example of how to respond when customers are mad at you, Ben and Mena were smart ot essentially come off of their big price increase. The subterfuge of pretending that it was just confusion about the license is smart and will get people back on board. It's better to be confusing than evil and they take good advantage of that. Of course as Allen points out in comments, the absolutely best course is to say, "heck, we're new to this, we made a mistake, this was not our intent, we continue to do what customers want." But, its a rare thing for a company to do that. BTW, the folks that think loyalty goes both ways, it shows that you can have a loyal base, but if you raise prices without warning or signalling (particularly when going from free then to $600, then to $150, then to $50 which is basically what they done), you can create a sense of mistrust. Also, I'm sure it is not lost on folks that MovableType can dramatically change licensing at a drop of a hat, so the smarter folks will realize llocking in with them is a one way street. That is once locked in, who knows what Sixapart will do. The lessons: # In a drag race, the loyalty of your customer is super important. Don't break their trust and they will love you. One test I used to run, was to insert the words, "Customers asked us..." in front of every sentence in a press release to see if it was true. If not, really wonder if you are doing the right thing. # Once you have made a mistake fix it fast. Best case is to apologize for confusion and say here is what we meant rather than just say we are stupid. # Disobey the standard price points at your peril. That is $49.95 for consumer stuff or $9.95/month. And for corporate, $495-$995 for small buisness/departmental or $49/user/month. And for big enterprises $4995-9995. # Be aggressive on upgrade policy (actually they still haven't done that). Reward your loyal users, they are the recommenders. That's the real sin of the Movable Type drag race, not to understand the standard price point and also to surprise your loyal customers

Posted by rich at 10:34 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Really Good Summary Article

ANA Marketing Musings: Great (Not Just Good) Times Are Ahead for Marketers About what is happening in the marketing and ad playing field. Again the ABCs of a. economy growing, marketing spend increasing but b. less and less tolerance of "half of my $ wasted, but which half?" and increasing need for accountability c. so see lots of upside for smart marketers, the internet and things like ad id, addressable TV, and outdoor.

Posted by johnza at 06:28 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Slippery slope? Google Banner Ads?

Adrants: Google to Offer Banner Ads What is the world coming to? Just when you thought Google was the last safe place on the web. Maybe they too expect to suffer from the same problems all the other media are suffering from?

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May 14, 2004

Whither Click Rates

Click Rates to Head Downward Again · MarketingVOX. I remember when click throughs were 5%. Now, people cheer at a 10 basis point increase. Interesting. Also someone told me that only 30% of people ever clickthrough on anything. What does that tell you?

Posted by rich at 08:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The master of Point B

Monkeymagic:: thoughts on thinking :: Write like you speak archives We've written alot about the ABCs and driving killer campaigns. But as Piers Young notes, Jerry Weissman is a master of teaching you how to tell your story compellingly. He is also the author of the concept PointB(tm) - the desired state you put out there to generate interest. Awesome guy. Awesome teacher. Author. Mentor. Friend. Here's what some other folks are saying too: Brendon Wilson: "Best of all, I managed to attend ... a seminar/workshop on "Pitching to Win" - complete with Jerry Weissman, the legendary pitchman who has helped numerous CEOs tune their IPO roadshows, giving tips from his new book, "Presenting to Win". Cool! Chris Anderson: "a book I recently read, and loved: Presenting to Win, by Jerry Weissman." Dennis Kennedy: "I've just finished the highly-praised Presenting to Win: The Art of Telling Your Story, by presentation guru Jerry Weissman. Add me to the list of fans." And FastCompany - which had a good article on 5 Ways to Talk to Money

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Positioning XYZs

The heart, soul and mind of any campaign, any persuasive communication is your positioning. It is also one of the most hotly discussed topics in marketing. For us though, it's simple. Your positioning statement is just the logic, the argument for choosing your offering over everyone else's. But believe it or not, in our little Marketing Playbook, we once again have a handy shortcut for this too. It's called the Positioning XYZs(tm). This is another little tool you will see us refer to all the time. It's a super simple logic. We are the only X that solves Y problem in Z unique way." Where... . X is the category of company, product, service or other offering you've chosen to win . Y is the unment need of your target audience, and . Z is the differentiation, advantage, or key positive distinction you have over your competition.

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May 13, 2004

Consumer Electronics: Here Comes Samsung

Techdirt:While Sony Tries To Become Apple, Samsung Tries To Become Sony. Consumer electronics is another one of those interesting markets where everyone is swapping and changing positions. Samsung is a classic case of a low-end entrant moving upstream. This is in the grand tradition of a stealth play. First, be at the low end of the consumer electronics market, make low-tier handsets that only could get sold for nothing or in many cases many dollars off. Build manufacturing capability to become the low-cost producer and also develop an in-house software base. You stay under the radar screen of a Sony doing high brow products or a Matsushita doing high volume. Also have a great home market where you can test ideas. Final step is to start innovating faster than anyone else, suddenly your phones go from low- to mid- to high-tier. And voila, you have the #4 phone manufacturer ready to become #2 in two years. That's Samsung. What are the lessons: # Unless you're Apple with a great existing brand name, you are unlikely to hit it big with a great new product like the iPod in one try. So, go for the low end where the big guys don't care. Gain experience. # Develop a great culture for shipping early and often. That's what its all about in terms of moving ahead. Also once you have low-end distribution in place, you can just let the products shine. # Finally, when you ready with a good base, convert the stealth play into a drag race and aim for the market leader. That is where Samsung is right now.

Posted by rich at 08:23 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

GMail Drag Race Ho!

Techdirt:Yahoo Finally Responds To Gmail, Boosts Email Storage. Gmail is in the middle of a classic drag race with market leaders hotmail and yahoo. Mail is where people spend lots and lots of their page views, so it inevitable that there would be a war here. The really smart thing Google has done has been to latch onto an iconic feature that makes it easy to explain why you should switch. Yes, you could talk for hours about the merits of this or that antispam filter. Or about their cool DHTML interface, but in a Drag Race, it is much easier to have one feature that stands out. In this case, turning the whole race into a number. If Google has 1GB, Yahoo has 100MB and MSN has 2MB who is the winner? Final point is that this is a wonderful strategy in a competitive sense because it pushed competitors in a way that is very hard for them to respond. The thrust is that we are better able to manage servers than anyone, so we can offer more storage than anyone. Means that for MSN and Yahoo to respond, they have a much higher cost structure and since they have huge installed bases, their marginal cost to add this is way worse than a new entrant. Another bravo for Google.

Posted by rich at 08:17 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Movable Type blows a Drag Race

Mena's Corner: Movable Type Developer Edition 3.0. Movable Type is probably the leader in the drag race for blogging tools. Like most classic early stage drag races, there are literally a hundred "competitors":http://www.lights.com/weblogs/tools.html. Yes, Still Movable Type did a great job early on by offering more features like multiple authors, etc. They were the darling of the early influential end users in this category. But, they just introduced pricing that is the classic mistake of early market leaders. They raised their price from essentially free to somewhere in the $100-600 range. That's just amazing given that 99.99% of all tools (that is except for Microsoft Office) aren't priced that high for average consumers. So, they are going to lose lots of good will even if they correct because they thought they had won the drag race and could just raise prices. Substitution is already happening 24 hours afterwards with folks on the Movable Type page actually recommending competitors! Hows that for free advertising. What's the lesson: # In a drag race, the point is to get to a high share and _only then_ look at differential pricing. Raising prices in face of competition is a good way to lose share. # In a drag race, doing anything that alienates your loyal base hurts. Pricing is a good way to hurt the base. For instance not having any upgrade pricing or preferential treatment for early users is a super typical sin amongst drag racers. For instance with Windows, pricing started at $10 and took two decades to get to $100 or so. # In a drag race that you want to convert to a platform, getting ubiquity is super important, so have the longer term view. And just that long to eliminate upgrade pricing on Office. # Even sadder is that they had a chance to move to a platform play which would feature distinguished pricing. That is, keep it free for the masses, but charge $50 for pro-sumer editions and $1,000 for departmental and $5,000 for enterprise editions. That would actually have gotten them much more revenue. You can charge for new features or new support, but going backwards is super hard, even for the biggest players.

Posted by rich at 08:06 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Ads may be boring but Blogs aren't

Marketing Tom: Blogs as PR and Marketing tools This blog entry from Tom seemed really timely in the ongoing discussion Rich and I are having about advertising. Interesting - we were complaining about how most of the advertising we see is boring, not memorable, all the same. And then Rich said, you know the most interesting advertising I've seen lately is Blogs. I read em, they're different. They are often irreverent and and fresh. And whether they intend to or not they have a big influence on what I buy (just look at his personal site if you want to buy bike parts, head phones or other wierd electronic equipment. If that isn't doing what advertising media are supposed to I guess I don't what they are supposed to do anyway.

Posted by johnza at 03:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 12, 2004

More on why broad reach is suffering

What's Your Brand Mantra?: Advertising Overload See the previous entries on this (ABCs of big media buyers, more on lost youth) decline in the power of mass media. But we can all agree that their power is declining and that advertising is becoming less effective. Why though? This entry on Brand Mantra is really intriguing. One simple view - or at least a contributing factor - is that ads are just too boring. They all look alike and they don't grab you with anything memorable... "I am one who believes that one of the greatest dangers of advertising is not that of misleading people, but that of boring them to death." - Leo Burnett "People screen out a lot of commercials because they open with something dull ... When you advertise fire-extinguishers, open with the fire." - David Ogilvy

Posted by johnza at 09:48 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Advertising is it that bad?

Church of the Customer: They said it: George Orwell Liked this quote from George Orwell: "Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket." But what about these: "I honestly believe that advertising is the most fun you can have with your clothes on." - Jerry Della Famina "Advertising is the greatest art form of the twentieth century." - Marshall McLuhan "Advertising is the life of trade." - Calvin Coolidge "Ninety-nine percent of advertising doesn't sell much of anything." - David Ogilvy Advertising is "[a] ten billion dollar a year misunderstanding with the public." - Chester L. Posey, Senior V.P. & Creative Director, McCann Erickson

Posted by johnza at 08:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Back at You - Siebel High-Low

Never say die. Finally in an interesting response to Salesforce.com attacks, Siebel is going for a High-Low Play. Attacking at the high end with its enterprise offering and at the low end with its acquisition of Upshot, another hosted CRM solution. At first it seemed like they would totally downplay the Upshot brand and then the normal get-lost-in-big-company post acquisition thing would happen. But now they are out doing their own hard core comparison ads focused on how much better Upshot's dashboard is than Saleforce.com's The jury is of course still out. It will be interesting to see if they will both engage in a gruelling double drag race. But early signs are that Salesforce.com now has its sights rather on building its own Platform Play (see Reservoir Parnters , Infoworld, and mod-pubsub for comments).

Posted by johnza at 01:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Go ahead and pick on the Big Guy

Another typical Drag Race move, this time from the bottom up. Saleforce.com made much of its name by attacking the big guy in the category, Siebel. This put them on the map, and given their target and thier offering it was very hard for Siebel to respond, just when things were getting hard for them. How could they without just validating Salesforce.com in the process. Now that they are going public (see Jason Calacanis' and Steve Gillmor's comments) things may get tougher for them. Especially, as reported in the NYT, Marc Benioff continues to have trouble keeping his mouth shut during the quiet period.

Posted by johnza at 01:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Marketing Playing Field

This is the phrase we use to describe the terrain on which you run your Marketing Play. Understanding this terrain is critical. You have to keep it in mind everyday, but it doesn't have to involve tons of work and research dollars each time you do it. It consists of looking at (and doing your ABC assessment) of four dimensions: the overall industry dynamics and economics, the competition, your existing and target customers, and your own resources and competencies.

Posted by johnza at 09:32 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Marketing ABCs(tm)

Another term you'll see us use all the time is the Marketing ABCs or just plain ABCs. This is a shorthand formula for a simple situation or gap analysis, where A = Where we are today, or the current situation B = Why the heck aren't we there, or the challenge/frustration in not being in a better situation C = What we need to get there, or the proposed action required to cross the gap. The ABCs allow you to quickly assses all the dimensions of your Marketing Playing Field and understand what you are up against, where you want to be, and what you need to do to get there.

Posted by johnza at 09:11 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Marketing for Geeks

Eric.Weblog() Really worth taking a look at. An insightful entry from Erik Sink about marketing. Very good, simple reminders, e.g. the two phases of marketing - the strategic and communications phases, the importance of choosing your competition. Good stuff.

Posted by johnza at 08:34 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 11, 2004

Marvel - "Super" Platform

Brand Autopsy: Who'™s on First? Spider-Man? Even though they later canceled the deal, what an amazing example of the power of an extensible brand as a part of a platform play. And this tactic of advertising on baseball plates is yet another example of how traditional media might not be cutting it anymore.

Posted by johnza at 08:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Have to agree

WonderBranding: Marketing to Women: Free Prize Inside Has Arrived! I really love the Seth Godin quote "if you come up with a plan for world peace and prosperity, but it involves getting George W. and the Dalai Lama in the same room with you, it’s probably not worth pursuing." i.e. sometimes the extremes in a market are just too far apart to bring into a single best of both play. Here's Seth's own reference to this interview By the way, very nice blog on Marketing to Women.

Posted by johnza at 08:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The High-Low Play

This Marketing Play is basically the opposite of the Best of Both Play. Here, instead of offering a combination that collapses the extremes of a category, you emphasize the importance of choice. You offer both extremes, no compromises and a migration path between them.

Posted by johnza at 06:49 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Best of Both Play

Best of Both is an ambitious Marketing Play. Many product and services categories have both high and low end offerings - and never the twain shall meet. In Best of Both you aim to gain dominance the whole category by collapsing both high and low ends into a new more compelling offer. You winning by offering "your cake and eat it too."

Posted by johnza at 06:46 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Stealth Play

This Marketing Play is almost the opposite of the Drag Race. When you run stealth you are trying to avoid getting squished by the competition. Generally you focus on a specific niche where you can build your strength unnoticed. You often add-on, peacefully coexist and even draft behind the would-be biggest competitor(s), avoiding dragraces completely. Until you have what it takes to move onto another more open and larger play.

Posted by johnza at 06:37 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Platform Play

In this Marketing Play you rise above the competition, or even coopt them. Instead you win by becoming a Platform from which a whole industry can win too. You win by making it easy and profitable for others to ally with you and painful for them to let you loose.

Posted by johnza at 06:28 AM |