March 22, 2006

SF Bags - The Art of the Upsell

I love SFBags or Waterfield Design. They have the best most versitile laptop computer bags.

I also love some things they do in their site. Especially the build-your-own section. They ask you a bunch of questions to customize your bag, the fun friendly language of these upsells is great:

• 3 Add a Flap for $15: No sir, I don't like to/Yes indeed
• 4 Add a Shoulder Strap for $12: Not into the strap/Give me the strap
• 5 Add a Piggybak: No I'll Just Suffer/Got to Have the Piggyback

I wish more sites had this kind of personality.

Posted by johnza at 11:08 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 8, 2006

Complexity in Motion/MSFT Repackaging: It's all my fault!!

Once again simplicity is shown to be both so powerful and so easy to stray from.

By now many of you have seen the recent spoof video that shows how Microsoft would transform the simple, powerful, elegant packaging of the iPod. It is all very innocent and well thought out but step by step turns into the equivalent of an in flight catalogue.

If you haven't check it out here. It is one of the funniest things ever on YouTube.

I have to say, this used to be one of my areas back at the big M and I totally know each step that took packaging down this path. And everyone was logical, well thought out and reasonable to the many committees of very smart people that looked at it.

Beyond the box, Engadget highlighted the wonderful array of versions of Windows Vista coming:

• Vista Starter
• Vista Home Basic
• Vista Home Premium
• Vista Business
• Vista Enterprise
• Vista Ultimate

Will be interesting to see the product selector application that ships with them.

Simple products should lead to simple messaging to simple packaging to simple offers to a simple purchase decision.

So remember:

• "Life is simple, but we insist on making it complicated,” Confusius
• Don't try to do too much. Less is more (thanks Simplessity, a really nice site on simplicity)
• Too many cooks ruins the soup (esp. in marketing, thanks Seth)

Posted by johnza at 1:25 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

September 28, 2005

Business Blog Book Tour #10: Darren Rovell’s “First In Thirst”

I’ve been reading a lot of biographies lately of fascinating, dramatic figures, like George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, TE Lawrence and have really loved being transported into their time and their story. Well, I just had a fascinating telephone conversation with Darren Rovell, author another such an interesting, dramatic and compelling biography, but this time it’s about, get this, a beverage – Gatorade. The book is called FIRST IN THIRST: How Gatorade Turned the Science of Sweat into a Cultural Phenomenon. But before I go into the discussion we had – which serves as stop number three in the Business Blog Book Tour #10 – let me say a few words about the book.

First, I was incredibly surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. I am not much of an athlete or a sports fan (don’t chuckle too much, given that we wrote our own book heavily laden with sports metaphors) and the most I have used Gatorade for is to avoid dehydration after getting a parasite traveling in Asia, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. But I wasn’t kidding when I called this book a biography, and a damn good one at that. The story of the inventors, the sports teams, and the business people behind this amazing branding and cultural phenomenon had all the drama, characters and movement of a great biography, all the more compelling because it is so unconventional and unexpected. It is also very readable, you can tell that Mr. Rovell has had a lot of practice in his role at ESPN, capturing the action in punchy words that keep the reader turning the pages.

So go out and get a copy – click here or here. Also check out his blog.

Here’s is a quick summary of our conversation:

Marketing Playbook (MPB):
Darren, you know I really liked your book a lot but you have to admit is a bit unusual. What possessed you to write it in the first place?

Darren Rovell (DR):
You know I’m a brand history junky. I really love learning about how these things that we see and experience everyday in our loves came to be there in the first place. I am especially fascinated by what enters kids’ psyches, why and how. The battle for Kid’s heads fascinates me. And if you think about long term brands that have really hit kids’ radar and have stuck there successfully in this battle, three come to mind:

• McDonalds
• Nike
• And Gatorade.

Sure there is Coke and tons of books have been written about Coke and Nike and McDonalds, but I just could not figure out why no one had ever done this for Gatorade before.
And the more I dug into it the more I fell in love with the story. These guys are interesting. If they were boring it would have been harder, but they are actually true “characters” so it was fun. And they deserved to have their story out there as well.

MPB: Who did you write this book for?

DR:
Of course I wrote it for athletes who would like the story, love Gatorade and will like the story of the teams and players. And of course I wrote it for the business person who would love to deconstruct how such a powerful brand was built in such an obscure category. But I also wrote the book for regular folks who might just plain wonder how the heck their four year old kid knows about and asks for a strange colored, salty sports drink.

MPB:
You know my six year old is always demanding those little six packs of purple Gatorade. He thinks they’re cool.

DR:
It's funny, I got an email recently from a 45 year old mom who picked up the book. She is not a business person, not a sports fan, but she was just plain wondering why every male member of her family is drinking the stuff. I love that.

MPB:
As we discussed on of the things we are hung up on over here is what kind of play a company is running and how well they are doing at it. What would you say is, or has been, the Gatorade play?

DR:
In some ways this is a hard play to call. Internally, one of the things I admire is how much the Gatorade team acts like they are always in a life or death dragrace. They worry all the time about Powerade. They see them as the enemy and always want to make sure they are ahead. At the same time how can you really be in a dragrace when you have nearly "illegal" market share?

So in another way, they are acting like they are in a platform play, rising above the noise and continuing to grow the overall sports drink category.

Finally, at the same time, you could say they began by executing on a stealth strategy, focusing on an underserved, un-noticed subsegment of the market - non carbonated sports drinks and staying way under Coke's and others' radar for some time. Until now where the whole category of alternative, non carbonated beverages is a huge growth category of it's own - vitamin waters, bottled teas, and yeah, the giant business of bottled water. And yet somehow amidst all this Gatorade keeps growing.

MPB:
I want to talk about how they have pulled that off shortly, but one more second on the plays. You mentioned Powerade. How do they fit into this playing field?

DR:
That's pretty interesting. Powerade only recently got to 15% market share. And you can't really dragrace someone until you have at least that level of momentum behind you. But Powerade goes right after Gatorade all the time. They launched their new brand Option as a direct attack on Gatorade. "Not for jocks" and "80% fewer calories than Gatorade". Well, first, why tell people they aren't jocks in such a bald way, and second, while it may be 80% fewer calories than Gatorade, Option actually has 85% fewer calories than regular Powerade. Hmmm...

MPB: How is Gatorade responding/executing in all this?

DR:
This is one the things I really admire about the company. They are being smart. Although they may have a dragrace mentality internally, they are wise enough to know that taking such bait would only help their opponents. They are the leader. They never compare themselves. They do want to be the first in everything. But they will copy something if it makes sense and they have to.

MPB: An example?

DR:
Powerade was the first to come out with small containers for kids and Gatorade followed.

MPB:
You know Gatorade has come a long way. It was a salty drink for southern football players and now it's something my 6 year old begs me for. What's the secret? How'd did they do it?

DR:
It's almost a paradox. On the one hand, these guys are very disciplined, conservative and old fashioned. Unlike a lot of brands that try to change what they stand for all the time, Gatorade really wants to stick to its roots and keep continuity with what it has always stood for. They have always been about the aspiration that athletes can provide to all of us. They always will be. They have never varied this, they have never emphasized other benefits (like Doctors recommending it) or tried to shift their image to other hip, popular icons. They are adamant that there has never been any change to the formula (unlike Coke which faced all the problems of its back and forth shifts).

Yet at the same time, they have changed a ton and been incredibly creative. First, whatever they say about the formula, it does taste better. They only had 2 flavors until 1983 and now they have tons. In the last 5-7 years they have grown the variety of packaging options dramatically. Back when I was coming up, all you ever had was one big jug, one flavor in the house. Now there are tons of households with lots of bottles stacked in the pantry. Also, they have been great at exploiting the convenience store channel. They have more sales in convenience stores than in super markets. Brilliantly executed.

Another paradox is, despite the focus on athletes, the fact that most people drink Gatorade on a sedentary basis. Heck, only 15% of US households have a health club membership. And Gatorade sells way to much to only be targetting them.

MPB: When did this shift happen?

DR:
Well, back in the 80s, Gatorade was still a bit wierd, just for athletes. And you took pride in chugging it down after working up a sweat. It was sometime in the mid 1990's that the majority of people really started just drinking it, not when they were working out but because they liked it.

MPB:
Isn't this all a bit like Nike. That brand - which really is all about something, just as mundane - shoes - came to mean all these aspirational things to people. It started out as performance footwear and became an icon of cool. How would you compare the two?

DR:
No one has asked that before, but if you think about it the diffference goes back to that basic conservatism that I talked about.

Nike is constantly evolving it's technology. Yes Nike is still about athletes and stars. But it is always trying to be cutting edge and cooler and cooler. And it has done a lot more to stretch the brand into extentions and other apparel etc. You can argue whether all this has been great or not. Heck, for all the cool new technology, a lot of kids really just want their plain white Air Force Ones.

In constrast, for all the changes at Gatorade, from colors, to flavors, to sizes, to packaging (heck even to having a Gatorade Sports Science Institute to add some thought leadership and reinforce the "secret sauce"), Gatorade remains one of the few brands still truly rooted in its past. They don't want to change the basics.

MPB: And that sure seems to be working.

DR: Sure it. And I think it will keep doing so.

MPB: Thanks so much for your time. And good luck with your fascinating book.

DR: Thank you

Be sure to check out the other stops on the Business Blog Book Tour:

• Stop number 1 was Learned on Women.
• Stop number 2 was Brand Autopsy that even has a podcast.
• Stop number 4 is Slacker Manager
• And the last stop will be Josh Kaufman at the Personal MBA

Posted by johnza at 9:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

SWik - A Wiki as a Marketplace

Here is a very cool thing. It's called SWik. It's a Wiki for open source projects from SourceLabs (one of our portfolio companies). You can put any open source projects you want up there, tagged, searchable, rss'ed, browsable. Open place for Opensource.

Lot's of folks love it:

• O'Reilly really likes it's "wiki-ness"
• Dana Blankenhorn calls it "a sweet new open source search engine "
• Darryl K. Taft gives a nice review.
• Phil Hochmuth highlights that you can find opensoruce projects galore there.

It really does seem to reinforce the idea of the internet being kind of a fourth place and the other ideas about how the web and open source close the gap between people and the places/people they buy stuff from:
* Cluetrain = markets are conversations between sellers and buyers
* Hughtrain = products are conversations between providers and consumers
* Starbucks = a store can a place to be not just to buy things; a 3rd place (beyond home and work)
* The 4th Place = your service/the internet itself could be a place; not just to find/buy stuff; but a place to go, a place where these conversations happen

We all know Wikipedia as a marketplace of information, but I really like what these guys are doing to make a Wiki an open marketplace of work.

And yes, I'm biased.

Posted by johnza at 10:11 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 11, 2005

Soy Milk for President

As I was eating my cereal (at the office) for breakfast recently, I started reading the carton of my Silk Soymilk - and I was blown away.

It read like a stump speach for the Organic Party of America's 2008 Primary Convention:

"America Was Built with Achievement and Energy, Determination and Will. And It all Began with One Thing: BREAKFAST.

Yes, breakfast. Can you cross icy mountains without fuel? Can you build railroads, cities and bridges without physical energy? We fed dreams with breakfast and soon they developed into reality.

But as America grew up, things happened faster. Our lives got busier. Breakfast - the most important meal of the day - became the last thing we grabbed as we ran out the door. Well, it's time to take breakfast back.

Not to the big breakfast of the past, but to a better breakfast: a leaner, simpler foundation for your day. With less cholesterol and more laughter. Less fat, more idealism. And more time to think about what the day might bring - and what you might bring to the day.

This better breakfast exists right now, fueling the days, the hopes and the achievements of millions of Americans.

It's Breakfast Again in America. Silk. Rise and Shine."

Wow. Pretty inspiring - and over the top - stuff (watch out Karl Rove and James Carville these Soy foklks are hot). And it doesn't stop there.

Elsewhere on the carton they cover Foreign Policy (reaching out a double edged olive branch);

"Legend tells us soy was discovered in China by two bandits who survived in the desert by eating soybeans."

Energy Policy:

The whole thing is powered by Wind Power

Social Security, Taxes and the Deficit:

"It's Free! Silk Soymilk is free of lactose, dairy, cholesterol, gluten, eggs, casein, peanuts, MSG and worries. You still have to pay for it though."

And they seem to understand Get out the vote - Chicago Style:

"Shake Well and Buy Often"

Not sure how much more Soy this sells but it sure is fun reading.

Posted by johnza at 11:36 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 3, 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!!

Posted by johnza at 5:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 3, 2005

Marketing Fish Tales

Recently heard a great marketing "fish tale". Supposedly at the turn of the century a cannery got stuck with a large amount of white salmon. At the time, canned Salmon was the rage rather than tuna, and pink was it. (Although being in Seattle, I get and love white salmon). It seems that this white salmon was unsellable because it wasn't pink.

So some great marketing person (some say it was PT Barnum) made lemonade out of lemons with the new slogan "guaranteed not go turn pink in the can."

Wow. What a great inversion. Any attribute can become a feature can become a benefit if you go at it from the right angle.

Note: The story has many versions - tuna versus tuna, tuna versus salmon, and salmon versus salmon. (There's even a lobster version out there.)

Posted by johnza at 11:04 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 19, 2005

Ta-da Lists - Keeping is simple.

Wow. I am already addicted. This thing is great. Check out the latest from 37 Signals - Ta-Da Lists. Great way to keep the zillion lists you loose all the time in one place, share them with others etc.

Simple is good.

Posted by johnza at 5:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 17, 2005

New Blog on Product Management

Here's a new blog on one of the positioins that we find often most important in early stage tech companies, product management. Nice definition of the position. While a critical position, there seems to be a scarcity of great product managers out there - those who combine both creativity and analytics, insight and instinct, objectivity and passion and energy. Here's to the world's great high tech product managers, wherever you are.

Posted by johnza at 5:16 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 13, 2005

Google: Could I interest you in a light-up umbrella, beach towel, onesie, or maybe you fancy... an information retrieval appliance

Who said Google wasn't trying to take over the world. Fun looking at the google store. Amidst all the logo chotchke here you find their newest entry - The Google enterprise mini, a search appliance for your business. Hmm... Kinda like using Apple branding and simplicity to make just about anything look sexy.

Search engine watch says it's pretty darn good too, even though it, not surprisingly says it still has some security and other kinks. Webfoot loves it because "it's yellow (i see blue), it's fast, and it's Google in a box!"

Posted by johnza at 2:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 15, 2004

Basecamp - Eating Dogfood, Part II

Here's part two of our discussion with Jason Fried of BaseCamp, 37Signals and Signal vs. Noise (click here for part I) about his business, his playing field, his play and his marketing secrets....

Marketing Playbook:
What about target customers? How did you think about the market for
Basecamp?

Jason Fried:
We started out thinking of the market as other folks like us. If we needed a tool like this, surely plenty of others did as well. We talked with our colleagues, clients, and friends in the industry and they confirmed our assumptions.

Small firms like ours are often stuck with subpar software solutions because 1. The big expensive mature products that exist aren't tailored for their needs, 2. They couldn't afford a mature product anyway, and 3. They don't have the time to build their own tool. So, they were pretty psyched when we (one of their own) built a product for them. And so far the response has proven everyone right.

Marketing Playbook:
You know the phrase "eating your own dogfood?" It sounds like you were both the proverbial dog and the dog food maker.

Jason Fried:
Definitely. We even used Basecamp to develop Basecamp. It really helped us refine the product, and I think people can sense that by the attention to detail. We would have never caught and improved the little annoyances and weak spots if we hadn't used the product during its development. Today we use the exact same version as everyone else so we know what everyone else is going through. I know some companies that develop software are always using their own latest beta or alpha, but that makes it easy to ignore the actual version's shortcomings. We want to stay as close to what our customers are experiencing as possible.

Marketing Playbook: What's happened since then?

Jason Fried:
Well, Basecamp has been widely adopted by all sorts of companies. Web design firms, advertising agencies, management consultants, schools, non-profits and government agencies. And, most surprising to us is the adoption by individuals to manage their own personal projects, their weddings, their home improvement projects, and their lives.

We've also been pleasantly surprised by the uptake from educators. Teachers are using Basecamp to manage their classrooms. They're posting homework assignments on Basecamp and students are even setting up accounts to manage group research projects. We're very pleased with the response so far. I'll leave it at that ;)

Marketing Playbook:
In terms of marketing, how would you describe your play?

Jason Fried:
Definitely not a dragrace. We didn't want to attack anyone. We targeted a different segment of the market and we built the buzz virally. I guess that would be a Stealth play. And we'll continue to keep it that way.

There are others out there now but we see them trying to one up each other on a feature-by-feature basis. I'm sure they will find appeal but for our customers we're keeping things simple.

Marketing Playbook:
How did you reach so many people? How did you execute on this play so successfully?

Jason Fried:
We were lucky -- we already had an audience. We've been building an audience with our Signal vs. Noise blog since 1999. We use the blog to talk about design, usability, simplicity, business and more. So, when we released a product that demonstrated we practiced what we preached, the audience was very receptive.

We also built in a lot of features that were interesting to a variety of vocal special interest groups. Basecamp allows you to subscribe to your projects with RSS feeds so the RSS community embraced it and promoted it. Basecamp uses CSS extensively for layout purposes so the heavily trafficked CSS gurus talked it up. You can also subscribe to your milestones with Apple iCal so the Mac folks just loved it and spread the word.

We have done some Google Adwords runs, but most of our business and traffic still comes from word of mouth.

Marketing Playbook:
Any other things important to your success that you want to share.

Jason Fried:
We're big believers in staying as close to your customers as you can. Use what they use. I answer all support emails personally -- mostly because I like to know what's right, what's wrong with Basecamp. I want to hear the praises and I want to read the reasons why people cancelled. Being so close to the customer, and building these personal relationships is what allows you to think like the people who keep you in business. And, if you don't think like they think, you'll be out of business quickly.

Another thing we believe in is open and honest communication. If we go down, we let people know we went down -- even if they'd never know about it since it was at 3am for 20 minutes. Be honest and clear at all costs.

Marketing Playbook:
Well thanks much Jason. This was great. Best of luck in all your future projects. We will be staying tuned.

Jason Fried:
Thanks so much, and best success with your book. I know a lot of people who can certainly use your advice ;)

Posted by johnza at 4:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Looks/Brains: skin deep or deep skins?

Check out Wildseed's Identity phone, where you get youth, beauty and brains with SmartSkins. The company just launched it's totally cool, totally new phone with Dobson and CellOne.

Marketing to the changing tastes of teens can be tough, unless you change with them. The folks at Wildseed have really done their playing field homework on this market and found that coolness, personality and the ability to change with changing tastes are key. Teens love to use mobile phones but find the phones themselves pretty boring. They also found this goes way beyond just cosmetics.

So their new phone technology, SmartSkins, allows you to do so much more to personalize your phone than change its' color. No need to be bored with your wireless phone ever again. Different SmartSkins deliver different themes, entertainment assets and styles. When you snap on your own SmartSkin over the phone it takes on a complete new personality to match your tastes from the including ringtones, games, screensavers and much more.

On top of that teens love to message each other so Wildseed built whta they think is the best messaging on any phone in the world. Since the features were designed for and by young consumers, the messaging on Identity looks a lot like IM on the desktop. Conversation boxes capture SMS, MMS and/or email all into one convenient spot. Your top ten friends can be assigned special Speed Lights status for a dedicated number and lights on the keypad tell you which of these friends is trying to contact you.

It is early days but we (and yes, we are investors in the company) think this lauch is very exciting. For additional news on the launch see Wireless Week.

Posted by johnza at 7:30 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

September 14, 2004

Basecamp: Eat your own dogfood for health, wealth, massive popularity

Just had a very illuminating conversation with Jason Fried. He's
behind Basecamp�, the growing project management phenomenon, the very cool and very respected web design firm 37Signals, the wide ranging and
widely read blog Signal vs. Noise and co-author of the new book, Defensive Design For the Web.

Their story is a strong example of how great marketing doesn't have to be some big mystery. It shows how following your instincts, listening to your customers (and being one) and sticking to principles while executing like crazy, actually go a heck of a long way. A couple of key principles really stuck in my mind:
� Don't just eat your own dogfood. Be the dog, make the dogfood you want, eat it, and then tell the other dogs like yourself.
� Build your audience first, then give them something to buy and sell. If you can gain respect and trust and interest first (e.g. in your blog) then you have not only a receptive initial audience for your product but a group of potential evangelists.
� Keep things simple. You don't always have to have the most features or options. Less really can be more. Let the competition try to beat you on complexity - see how their customers like it.

Here's the full text of our conversation, in two parts:

Marketing Playbook:
How did you decide to build and launch Basecamp? Did you look at what we call your "Marketing Playing Field?" Did you do a gap analysis on your customers, competition, and competencies? What did you find?

Jason Fried:
Whenever we decide to build a product/service we first make sure it's something that we'd actually use ourselves. Just as you should invest in what you know, we think you should build what you'll use. When you build something you are going to use yourself you'll build it better. So that's where we started.

The competitive analysis phase revolved around shopping, not competition. Originally we weren't looking for something to compete against -- rather we were looking for something we could buy and use to manage our clients and projects. Once we couldn't find anything that satisfied our needs we decided to go out on our own and build Basecamp.

We also knew that we weren't special -- if we needed something better there had to be tens of thousands of other companies just like ours that were equally fed up with the current options on the market. And while we felt the assumption was correct, we did ask a fair number of our colleagues what they used, what they needed, and what they wanted. Our assumptions were confirmed -- there was nothing simple enough, fast enough, elegant enough, and flexible enough for a small firm to trust, use, and expose their clients to.

We also discovered that in many ways the size of your firm is inversely proportional to your expectations. The smaller and tighter your team, the higher your expectations for the products you purchase with your limited resources (you really need to make your expenditures count). We
knew this market would take notice and be loyal to a quality product.
So, while we didn't perform a formal gap analysis, we did go through a
similar, albeit more organic process.

Marketing Playbook:
So you really started with your own needs as a company. How did you go from there? How did you think about the competition?

Jason Fried:
Yeah, we originally built Basecamp as our own internal project management tool. It wasn't until we started showing early beta versions to some colleagues and clients that we started hearing "wow, I need something just like this" or "can we use this too?" or "you read our mind," etc. So, after a couple of days of brainstorming, we decided that we would turn Basecamp into a full-fledged ASP-model product/service.

We checked out the competition a little more, but we didn't feel like we were trying to beat any specific product -- rather we were trying to beat the general level of clutter, complexity, and misplaced priorities that we felt existed in the marketplace. We saw a lot of project management apps focused on stats and charts and graphs. We knew from experience that projects don't fail from a lack of graphs and charts, they fail from a lack of communication. So we decided that Basecamp was going to be built around making internal and client communication as simple and effective as possible. One of our development mantras is "Project management is communication."

You know, it's not that the other products out there were bad, it's just that we felt they were overkill and confusing. We wanted to build something focused, simple, and clear. So, I guess you could say we were competing with a different point of view of what makes project management software useful.

Finally, we wanted to get the clients involved in the management of their projects. A lot of software project management apps (like Microsoft Project, for example) are one-sided -- the firm handles the entire project management process. We wanted to give the clients a tool that they could use as well. When they're involved in the management of their project they feel a greater sense of ownership, and that often leads to a better experience and product in the end. Plus, a great project management tool increases client loyalty.

Stay tuned for the second half of this discussion...

Posted by johnza at 11:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 31, 2004

Is it a bus or a modern ground transport?

I remember taking the bus home from college quite often (especially when I needed my mom to bake something or clean something). Not always the most pleasant experience - but always great social (or sociology) event.

Well, it appears that greyhound is running a new campaign to attract college kids.

Peter Davidson, points out that maybe they ought to be thinking about their product gaps first. Do they know what college students are like now? Maybe instead of big splashy ad dollars they should put in power outlets and wireless broadband. That might create some buzz and lasting loyalty instead.

Posted by johnza at 7:43 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 13, 2004

Features are great - if they yield something

.... like a benefit.

For every new feature you need to... (Signal vs. Noise)

Great post from Jsaon at 37 Signals on the importance of managing feature creap. Approach sounds similar to how you manage marketing campaign. Think first, don't do what you don't need to. And don't push until you know who you're pushing to with what and why they might go for it.

Good food for thought for our next book (The Product Playbook)

Posted by johnza at 5:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 5, 2004

More fun with packaging

Here are two fun recent entries on fun packaging
� Brand autopsy highlights hilarious Heinz labels submitted by customers like "For best results, eat."
� Wonderbranding found these really cool plastic shopping bag holders. Not only are they functional but they act as paid billboards. Talk about beyond broad reach.

Posted by johnza at 2:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 26, 2004

Packaging as Poetry

plastic bottle lovely attracting a waiting eye now wallet open OK, it's not very good, but the packaging of ITO En's new quietly delicious teas sure is. And each bottle comes with it's own Haiku, the results of a terrific contest with truly amazing prizes and real honors. Here's another terrible attempt: positive feelings conversations as products customers blissful

Posted by johnza at 9:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 14, 2004

Yep. Makes sense to me.

gapingvoid: all products are conversations Another great one from Hugh Macleod.

Posted by johnza at 9:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 11, 2004

Call to action - push my buttons

Several sites have been highlighting these cool doorbells by SpOre. BoingBoing of course posted them. And Peter Davidson wrote a nice note about the importance and work required for great design: "It's not enough to be well designed. These days to be remarkable for the right reasons you need to be fully designed and thought out." Great design and packaging are topics we are passionate about. They make a huge difference. They generate attention, they invite action. I know, we have this doorbell in green at home. We love it. At night it is like a little beacon for visitors. But we also hate it. It's also an irresistable beacon for our two young boys when they are tearing around the house. It says "Press me over and over one million times" to them. And believe me they do.

Posted by johnza at 6:29 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 8, 2004

Form, function, and a really straight-forward name

Apple does it again. They take something kinda complicated and boring (802.11g) and make it small, simple, and elegant. It's called Airport Express. It's for Mac and PC. Integrates with iTunes - now "Airtunes", acts as a wireless repeater, and more. It's white for now but look for the cool colors soon (?). And what a nice example of solid product naming. Simple, straightforward and cool. Strategize has a bunch of details. As do Signal vs. Noise and Gizmodo.

Posted by johnza at 4:44 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 27, 2004

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.

Posted by johnza at 4:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

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 6:44 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

May 18, 2004

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 8:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack