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March 31, 2005

Jobster Launched

Here's a company that really did their customer ABCs/gap analysis. They found a big hole for corporate recruiters between Monster.com and expensive head hunters.

Well now they launched the offering to fill that gap. Check out the news from their launch. And also check out how they think of themselves as a company. Been talking a lot about mission/vision stuff lately, well here's a company that put a lot of thought into that and into the operating values that implies.

(Note, this is an Ignition company, so we cannot claim to be objective)

Posted by johnza at 07:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

What's your destination?

Any marketing, any business starts with where you are, where you want to be and how you are going to get there. Here's a company that seems to have embraced these simple ideas in a very intriguing way.

Have you seen the billboards for Point B around in airports lately? Black and white scenes of empty hotel rooms. Clearly the place you are currently looking at going to (with not a lot of relish). With headlines about how their consultants get you there without lots of travel. The implication that they will take you to the Point B of that state (rather than the point B of another drab hotel room). Pretty provocative.

They say they are the "first professional services firm entirely dedicated to our clients' success through the power of project leadership. We keep things moving in the right direction."

I'm not exactly sure what that means but I really have to tip my hat to them, for three reasons:

• Their name: I love naming and they have done a great job. Ever since Jerry Weissman taught us that it is the place our audiences want to be and that we need to take them there we have been huge believers in the power of PointB, . And of course we believe that it really is the core motivator of any gap analysis. We often tell folks to think of their names as reflections of their mission or vision of the future. That it should imply to customers the state the company will take them to. So what a terrific, open, mission/vision-oriented name Point B is, for just about any destinatiion - you the customer define it. Here, here!
• Their imagery: think they could be a little more explicit in their website but boy those billboard do get you wondering as you tramp around from airport hotel to airport hotel. Very nice branding from a relatively small company.
• Their discipline: Hey, we're venture capitalists, so our job is to invest in companies. But we have often told folks that if they don't need financing, they shouldn't take it. Well, according to Evan Carmichael the company is profitable, had sales of $31 million, and employs 185 people, all with no VC money just a $200 investment from the three founders.

What an accomplishment. Look forward to learning more about this mysterious company.

Posted by johnza at 05:04 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 30, 2005

Business Blogs We Like

You can look here to see our whole list of business blogs, but here is a list of recent discoveries. Boy, there is so much good stuff out there, it is awfully hard to keep up.

• Contact Factor: a weblog about how businesses should and shouldn't communicate.
• Marketing Catalyst: legal marketing
• Marketonomy: "Unforgetting the Laws of Marketing"
• Brand Recall: a collaborative blog about information-age marketing
• Josh Kaufman (inside his bald head)
• Troy Angrignon - Adventure Capitalist
• Marcom Blog: PR/Marcom mentoring
• Context Rules: about how context should guide our efforts.
• Marketing Roadmaps from Susan Getgood
• Hypocritical from Rick Turoczy

Posted by johnza at 06:27 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Recent web mentions

Here's a bit of a round-up of stuff folks have said about the book (and the blog) on the web lately.

• 800CEORead Blog: Jack Covert says, "not only a great first read, but also a book that you will return to again and again"
• Brad Feld of Mobius normally fights the urge to read any book with the word

  “marketing” in the title but put us on his vacation reading list and said, This one belongs on every entrepreneur’s bookshelf"

  Thanks Brad - and, yeah we'll try to resist the urge to inject "marketing blather" in the future (but it will be hard).
• Susan Getgood

  "highly recommended it, even for experienced marketers. It is quite simply the book I wish had been written when I was starting out... The authors put a new spin on some of our old tactics, and the worksheets are super. In fact, I intend to use them in some upcoming client work as they are better than what I used to use."

  Thanks much Susan. Sorry that you've been having problems leaving comments on our site, we're working on it but the spammers have found us.
• Josh Kaufman included us in his very cool "personal MBA" program. One of 5 marketing resouces (82 total across disciplines)

  "for expanding your mind without paying a fortune in tuition costs."

  It is a very cool list.
• Craig Howe, the Pointed Pundit calls the book "a useful resource for marketers at both large and small companies." He gives it 5 stars.
• Marketing Tom recently posted a little interview we did about the book and the blog. Fun to reflect on how the two have intersected.

For more narcissistic stuff about the book, blog and us look at the praise category and summary of reviews.

Posted by johnza at 05:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 28, 2005

Enterprise Software: Who's got the real platform?

Jeff Nolan has a great entry about all the consolodation in the enterprise software space.

First, he does a great job of industry landscape/gap analysis:

There are simply fewer enterprise software segments that are hitting good growth numbers, and even fewer that you can call 'whitespace' and grow into... The investment required to build a vertical from the ground up is too great, it's much more cost effective to acquire a dominant vendor and use the maintenance base to pay off the acquisition.

In addition he has a great observation about what it really takes to build a platform play:

"so many vendors want to claim the "platform vendor" title, and with it the underlying assumption that in order to be a platform player you need to have account control. I think this is a false assumption, witness Intel's use of partnerships to gain channel mastery without having absolute account control. Nonetheless, many enterprise software vendors believe that they have to own an account in order to reap future rewards from it, so consolidation is a natural strategy to employ in order to accomplish this goal."

Great long term platforms tend not to built by locking things up totally but by sharing the wealth and making it easy for others to make money because you exist. This does not always have to be through direct sales (in fact very, very often it means a strong channel).

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March 27, 2005

Talk is cheap, proof is powerful stuff

And worth the effort...

We have long talked about the value of proof over benefits over features. Nice to see Steve Neiderhauser talk about it applied to all kinds of things, like even you and your career. Even when it comes to hiring a demo is a lot more powerful (and reliable) than a resume full of features (went to this school, held this job, etc.)

Posted by johnza at 08:50 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

March 21, 2005

Making the world safe to dragrace again...

It sure is fun to see a real dragrace in action. This time courtesy of the platform that the iPod has made available for lots of new accessory and add-on players - a perfect dragstrip for others to pour gas into - all to the benefit of the iPod experience and ecosystem.

There's a truly classic dragrace taking place in the category of FM radio transmitters for iPods.

The incumbent is the iTrip from Griffin (have one and like it a lot). Enjoying the glow of praise and a first mover advantage Griffin extends it to a line of "iTrips" for different products and tastes.

Then along comes a challenger. The AirPlay from XtremeMac. And all the dragrace stops get pulled out. I have to hand it to these folks, they are using all the right tricks.

Price matching. Direct comparison. And leading with proof rather than claims (letting someone else with authority speak for you).

Keeping it simple with the rule of three (just three attributes).

And of course we all love to be spectators. This little dragrace already had a whole slew of pundits both professional and bloggers joining in on the debate.

What also great to see is the Griffin response. They are clearly aware of the challenge but not taking the bait and saying "NO. WE ARE STILL BETTER THAN THE AIRPLAY." Why give them any additional free publicity. But they are trying to reinforce the importance of being established without resorting to any comparisons.
As a fan of dragraces in general, I will have to buy both and compare. And keep my eyes out for more. Almost as much fun as they playoffs.

Posted by johnza at 02:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 18, 2005

Job Descriptions as Marketing/Positioning

I have long thought that doing a good job of articulating your play, positioning and values is not just for external targets but for your own employees. Well here is recent case where working on the job description of a key role - VP of Marketing of course - helped the company drive their overall positioning and messaging to a clearer, stronger place.

The company is an Ignition portfolio company (surprise, surprise), with a truly inspired mission and vision:

It should be easy for anyone to live the dream of running their own business.

Mpire's job is to bring together all the right technologies, services and resourses to make this dream not just possible but practical.

They are extremely passionate about this. And their job description reflects/and sheds light on this passion:

Chief Marketing Officer of the American Dream Ready to join a revolution? It’s the chance to make a real difference in the lives of small-business owners. We’re obsessed with helping anyone live the dream of running their own business. What is it that we do? We’re creating seriously amazing small-business software. We’re not talking about recycled enterprise software. Our stuff is user-intuitive small-business software that’s been constructed from the ground up to leverage Web services and a bunch of other cool technologies such as Linux, Apache, MySQL, Python, Flash, XML, software-as-a-service….you get the picture.

Why do our customers love it? It empowers them to finally manage their finances, keep track of their customers, oversee their inventory, sell their goods over the Internet and take care of anything else on the typical entrepreneur’s to-do list. It allows them to get control of their business. Do our users have to buy a new computer or download software? Nope. Why clutter their computer with a half-dozen clunky, one-trick-pony software packages! Our software is available in one easy-to-use, fully integrated hosted environment.

Who are you, exactly? You’re the Chief Marketing Officer of the American dream. You get PC’s. You get the Internet. You get marketing. You take a $1M budget and beat the pants off a company with a $100M budget, because you never – ever – give up and because you truly are that good. You’re an A player and recruit A players who will, in turn, attract millions of customers. You get people. You know how to talk to a 64 year old grandma about the Internet, and a 22 year old metro sexual programmer about podcasting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcasting). You’re a charismatic leader. You’re a Jack Welch in the making who tells the CEO a thing or too about business and marketing. You’re also ambitious, smart, entrepreneurial, and focused.

What would you do for us? You’d create and drive our overall marketing and customer-experience strategy – and when we say “strategy,” we aren’t talking about a PowerPoint presentation. It’s all about taking the right action at the right time. You’ll be creating, identifying, and raising awareness of what we’re doing as both a social and a technological experience. You’ll increase our market share exponentially by implementing an aggressive customer-acquisition strategy – focused on viral growth and on positive testimonials from our existing customers. You forge partnerships with leading small-business service providers – office-supply chains, educational channels, companies that provide high-speed Internet services, and the like. You’re a firm believer in the power of PR, and you know how to drive the large-scale awareness campaigns that will build our brand while boosting our reputation as a thought-leader throughout the industry. You’re even something of a viral-marketing whiz who knows how to generate buzz and to maximize the impact of it.

We’re Mpire (www.mpire.com) – a Seattle-based startup. We may be small, but we’re a team of A-level players that has been funded by other A-level players. Our people brought you eBay, Windows, and MS Office, just to name a few. We know about great software and top-notch Internet businesses.

There’s a reason our customers started their own businesses. Maybe they wanted the freedom to control their own destiny. Maybe they finally wanted to turn that dream into a reality. Maybe hey wanted to spend more quality time with their families while also being truly proud of how they spend their working hours. Whatever their motivation, Mpire is here to help anyone live the dream of running their own business. That’s our vision. Come join our revolution.

Sound like you? Contact them here. I wish more job descriptions were like this - no matter what the job title.

Posted by johnza at 02:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Business Blog Roundup - A Podcast

Posted by johnza at 11:54 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 17, 2005

Horse vs. Cart (bone before dog?)

Susan Getgood picks up an old saw of ours about strategy vs. tactics:

"so-so creative will still do all right if the fundamental strategy is sound. But the slickest promo campaign cannot save a crappy strategy. And you should always strive for excellence in both."

I sometimes hate to admit it, but as a former "marcom" guy at Microsoft, I found this statement to be totally true. Compared to many of our competitors we very seldom did more inspired creative. But because the core strategy, understanding of our market/segmentation, positioning and play was correct, we won with "so-so" creative.

Remember the Pets.com Dog sock puppet? Very cool creative, and memorable too. Where is he now?

That said, let's not knock marcom too hard. A lot of times it's the marcom folks who force a true strategic rethink, because they are trying to translate all the technical or business logic of others into a compelling communication that regular people can understand.

As Bruce DeBoer notes it's a balance between strategy and execution. Brains and the guts to follow through.

It's a balance, can't do one without the other:

"Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat."
- Sun Tzu (Chinese General, circa 500 BC)

Posted by johnza at 04:02 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

March 11, 2005

Who me? Not know what I'm talking about...

Just saw this great quote from Betrand Russell about math:

"Mathematics is the subject in which we do not know what we are talking about, not whether what we are saying is true."

Sounds just like marketing to me, with the difference that marketing people know that they don't know what they are talking about, don't care, and just keep on talking as if they were absolutely, passionately convinced (remember, all marketing people are liars ;-)

Via A Clear Eye.

Posted by johnza at 05:46 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Google Chase Scene

Is Google dragracing IMBD? Check out Google Movie. Their relatively new feature for searching movies. Just type in "Movie: Lord of" and you get a listing of movies with this, their reviews, coverage, etc. Type in "Movie:" and your zip and you get local movie showings and times.

Very cool. Note that Amazon's IMDB is a true database, allowing you to crosstab on all kinds of things and also to of course buy the moview on Amazon.

Via Netflick Hacks.

Posted by johnza at 04:46 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 10, 2005

Liars, cheats, quacks, spies and other noble professions

What do you do for a living? How do you feel about it? Well, if you're a business person and you've been reading the blogsphere lately you might begin to wonder.

First, it's bad enough that all the job titles in the world are getting distorted with gobbledegook like a "Certified Hotel Specialist" or "Customer Experience Agent."

But now even the regular old careers that we thought we understood are under duress:

• Marketing: did you know that all marketers are liars? According to Seth Godin's new book, if they are any good they had better be. So much for the first part of my career.
• Venture capital. I guess it comes as no surprise that Venture Capitalists trying to buy shares in your start-up are cheats no better than those who bought Manhattan for $28 worth of beads and trinkets. So much for the current part of my career.
• Sales: it seems that great salespeople are quack doctors. Just met with a salesperson whom I truly respect and he said that his job was to "Comfort the Afflicted and Afflict the Comfortable."
• Market research: these folks that we all used to rely on so much are no better than spies and voyuers who now want to read our minds with Neuromarketing (heck, even the sweet, lovable, innocent folks at Google are at it with desktop search.)

Gee whiz. Makes you wonder if you should bother getting up in the morning ;-)

NOT ME. I want to say I am proud of being part of all this. I just met with a company putting together the job description for their open head of marketing position. And it was inspiring. They described it as VP of Marketing for the American Dream. Being the chief preacher for entitlement to a better way. More on this company later - but I think they are on to something. For all of the above, if your product or service really is valuable and really is beneficial work hard to find the people who could benefit the most, then sing out, strong loud and proud. And add fuel to the fire to make it happen!

Posted by johnza at 05:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Nice reference

800CEORead published a very good list of the most fundamental business books from Sun Tzu to Adam Smith to Drucker to Micheal Porter.

Posted by johnza at 05:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 09, 2005

DMA World, April 6

We will be giving the closing keynote at the Direct Marketing Association's DMA World on Wednesday, April 6, 2005 at the Washington Athletic Club in Seattle. As an old direct marketing junkie (before there was such a thing as CRM), I am pretty darn excited to talk to and learn from these folks.

Click here for details and registration.

Posted by johnza at 09:45 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 08, 2005

Short and sweet

Sound View Executive Book Summaries specializes in providing business leaders summaries of business books as a subscription service. Great idea for people who don't have that much time to read all the great books out there - and great URL too - www.summary.com.

Anyway, we are flattered that they highlighted our book and included it on their current reading list. They also wrote a nice review:

"Why We Like This Book: The Marketing Playbook offers a workable metaphor for making marketing work. Seen as a team sport that requires running plays to create a winning marketing campaign, the authors offer organizations succinct strategies for building teams, choosing tactics, calculating time horizons and planning the next move while outmaneuvering the competition. The authors' conversational tone and relevant experience make it a useful resource."

And of course a short summary of the summary (of a book that tried to be a summary too). For the summary and review, click here. To subscribe click here.

Posted by johnza at 05:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 07, 2005

Office Pre-Historic Marketing

Touchy subject (for me given my own pre-historic - 1995 - marketing of this product) but Steve Rubel has some good input for marketing this product that most of us use everyday. Much of what he suggests is a bloggy update of things we did back in 1995 to drive both competitive zeal and user enthusiasm. Worth considering.

(Note we too think that the nice humans at Microsoft doing their blogging are doing a lot for the image of the company)

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March 06, 2005

An "Action" Figure for Everyone

Highlighted in today's New York Times, Happy Worker makes these terrific figures of super heroes we can all relate to:

• Geekman: with superpowers such as "ungodly coding abilities; opposite sex repulsion; analytical reasoning; ability to create technical acronyms; less than ideal personal hygiene routine" and vulnerabilities such as "wedgies; dodge balls; unknown questions of existence; girls of the Internet"
• Moneyman: with superpowers such as "Unearthly financial dexterity; loophole creation; fuzzy math and figure fudging; money bunny attraction" and vulnerabilities such as "Social situations; irrational exuberance; due diligence; depreciation; natural sunlight" and
• Bossman: whose superpowers include, "management might; schmoozing; big picture vision & revision; yes man magnetism; power tie collection; adding value; deliverable delivery" and vulnerabilities are "shareholders; analysis paralysis; total quality management; employee empowerment; action itemitis"

Would love to see what they make of some others characters such as marketing dude, art director, sales star and maybe even, god forbid, venture capitalist - what do they think of their superpowers and vulnerabilities.

Finally, one thing was noticably missing, women. Happy workers, bosses, moneypeople and geeks should come in female versions too, but also they should have some of their own unique characters (and not just Martha and Carly either).

Also, for some nice in action shots of geekman see here and a review of bossman click here.

Posted by johnza at 05:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The power of sorry

Humility is not only reality it is a great way to relate to people. John Jantsch points this out in a recent post about how powerful an apology when working your troubled or lost accounts. I think this is true everywhere.

But don't just apologize, fix it. The combination and result is both humanity and renewed customer intimacy and trust. When I worked at American Express we noted that the retention rate of customers who had had a customer service problem and had it successfully resolved was dramatically higher than that of customers who had never had a problem. (tempting to engineer fixable problems but remember the core lesson - humility and dedication). Relates to what Evelyn Rodriguez had to say recently - that marketing = love. When they fall in love with your service or product that is great, but to have a long lasting relatioship is more than just romance, it's trust. When you love someone you don't have to say sorry but you do. (via Dig Business)

Boy, given the last few posts I must having you know what on the brain. Signing off...

Posted by johnza at 10:18 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

And speaking of....

ahem, "relationships", Jon Strande recently posed the question of whether sex really sells anymore (and in fact how much image really matters).

Reminded me of an Economist Article from last year, "Sex doesn't sell" that actually shows evidence of how "though life may be increasingly
exciting for the sex-obsessed, in the wider population advertisers are
finding that sex no longer sells the way it used to."

"Commercial and academic research supports the thesis. Only 6% of
consumers surveyed by the CIM said they were positively influenced by
sexual images in advertising. D_Code, a study of young consumers by
HeadlightVision, another bit of WPP, concluded that they found
sexually explicit advertising boring and repellent."

Hmmm....

Posted by johnza at 10:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

A very basic platform play

Lycos recently launched Dating Search. A new service that tries to go above the fray of all the casual dating sites out there in an attempt at a classic platform play in this most "basic" of categories, scraping data from data come from iMatchup.com, LoveAccess.com, Tickle, True.com, and Lycos' own Matchmaker.com. Will be interesting if it can become a bit more "cross platform" than the rest out there.

Personally (and I am very happily married) I am biased toward PerfectMatch a more differentiated approach, not to finding the best photo for a date this Friday, but to finding the right long term relationship for you (and an Ignition portfolio company).

via Adverblog

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March 04, 2005

Playbook ABCs in the tech market

Nice article in Businessweek from collegue and internet industry pioneer, Brad Silverberg. Interesting how you can use the Playbook ABCs to help sort out what is going on today, whether Apple, Google, Salesforce or whatever.

Posted by johnza at 09:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 03, 2005

Free Prize Outside

Maybe it’s just nostalgia but I think things have gotten worse for kids – in terms of packaging at least. Have you ever noticed how the prizes inside a box of Cracker Jacks have just gone down hill. Or look at cereal boxes, it takes something like a zillion box tops (and then more than $2 in fine print) to get a SpongeBob watch. McDonalds, Burger King and Taco Time still have pretty good happy meal toys from time to time, but other than that, boy it sure seems like a lot of sound and fury for pretty disappointing prizes.

Well, not if you’re a kid and you like green tea (maybe not totally mainstream I admit). I've already talked about how much I like Ito En tea and it's packaging. They have taken the concept of free prizes and taken it further. In their recent Ito en Ochaken & Ochaneko (tea dog and tea cat) mascot promotion, they put the prize on the outside. Yeah, right on the outside of the tea bottle. And they’re cool prizes. Little dogs and cats with teal leaf ears and little teas snacks (a green tea dog with rice and scallions named Ryoku, and English tea dog with cake named Earl, or a Jasmine tea cat named Min with rice cakes). My kids think they are awesome and hang them from their backpacks. So they are rabid to collect them all and have me driving around to every Asian food market in town.

American kid's snack foods take note. Make cool prizes (that reinforce your offering) and make them obvious and easy!!

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