May 03, 2005
The Fourth Place?
(not me by the way)
- 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
What the heck do I mean? Let’s look at each element:
A. Clue-/Hugh-Train and how they make us think differently about providing our stuff
Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls, David Weinberger shook things but at the height of the internet bubble by challenging us to think differently about what the internet made possible. The Cluetrain Manefesto challenged business people to think of markets as conversations, between buyers and sellers, where there is real give and take and the opportunity for things to be two way. In markets like this accountability, openness and speed force a whole new level of interaction.
More recently the inimitable Hugh MacLeod, inciting us to take this intimate, accountable, participatory attitude down into the product and brand itself. The Hughtrain manifesto challenges us to think of products as conversations, that they are actually the “product” of both producer and consumer interacting. This can be a great, open, mutually beneficial interaction or a one-sided one. But if the latter, things like tons of brand advertising dollars and other marketing BS are not going to save you in the long run, expectations and information and choice have empowered your customers (and in many cases yoru competitors) too much for those things to be sufficient.
Both of these ideas are great ways of thinking, both in how to create something people want and of how to audit where you really are in delivering it.
B. The third place concept of how a business can help fulfill the deep need for calm and community
Case in point for thinking differently about a business. I wrote this piece during a momentary refuge from “vacationing” my mother in law in Florida (no offense to my wonderful mother-in law or my kids, but once in a while it is nice to get away from family for a bit of peace and quiet). Where? At a Starbucks of course. Why?
Well, Howard Schultz did not turn Starbucks into a global cultural phenomenon by thinking of it as just a coffee business. He clearly thought of his product and his market as a conversation with his customers, not just about coffee but about something much deeper. He thought about it as fulfilling people’s needs for a special place, a place to find refuge, unwind, meet, chat and connect in a more and more fast paced world. A third place.
A guy named Ray Oldenburg (an urban sociologist, oddly enough from Florida) wrote a book called The Great Good Place, in it, he writes about how informal public gathering places are essential to community and public life. He argues that most people have three places in their life that they feel define them: home, work and a third place. And that bars, coffee shops, general stores, and other "third places" are central to local democracy and community vitality. Such places are also called "social condensers" -- an important way in which the community developed and retained cohesion and a sense of identity. The third-place concept has become a buzzword for retailers as a place to aspire to become.
But whether or not Starbucks CEO, Howard Schultz coined this concept, he sure did pick it up and run with it. This means thinking about a lot more than the coffee provided but about all aspects of the experience and the surroundings. Thinking beyond just the product to the place where the product happens and making it a desirable place to be, being focused on keeping rather than turning tables, set Starbucks in whole different category from it’s competition and those elements have given the chain one of the highest "user frequencies" of any restaurant operation. Starbucks claims the "average customer" visits a Starbucks outlet more than a dozen times a month.
C. The Fourth Place: the internet and how it could create a different kind of refuge and community
As I sat at Starbucks jotting these ideas down, I also had a wireless internet connection and found myself going to other “places.” Places where I found what I needed or places that gave me a reliable laugh or perspective or places where I could connect with other people. Places on the internet. Some of these places were great, some were confusing and frustrating.
I know I have to go to the internet all the time to find stuff, to find people, to learn etc. But is it really up to the vision of a special, comforting, welcoming place – a la the 3rd place of Starbucks, etc.?
And it hit me. Why can’t the Internet become a 4th place. A place that we’ve never really had before, where we get many of the things that we get from the 1st, 2nd and 3rd places but without the physical limitations. A 4th place where we can feel happy, safe, relaxed and totally connected, on top of ALL the things, information and people we need, anywhere, anytime. This vision seems all the more tantalizing because we don’t quite have it yet. So many things give us a hint of this – search, blogging, shopping, media, gaming. But to what degree have of these things become “places” that we totally look forward to visiting and staying at? I think it’s a mixed bag. With the gigantic pile of stuff out there, the technical complexity, the spyware and viruses, sometimes the internet feels just as much like a place to escape from as a place to escape to.
What would happen if instead of just thinking yourself simply in terms of your product or service – no matter what product or service you offer - instead you were driven by the vision of the internet becoming this 4th place, if you saw your mission to help make the internet exactly that? What would you do, what would you need?
Well, here are a few things I guess I would take from both the Clue/Hugh-train and the Starbucks/3rd place handbook:
- Be easy to find
- Be easy to use
- Be simple to understand
- Be consistent
- Be responsive
- Be fun to work for
So why not aspire to make your business just such a refuge or place? Not a physical one (unless you are in bricks and mortar retail), but rather as a welcome but as a virtual, psychological place, where your customers feel a sense of relief at arriving, where they find exactly what they want, and where they feel a need to keep coming back.
I think we could all use a nice, cozy, 4th place to go to.
Posted by johnza at 01:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
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
December 18, 2004
The map is not the terrain
"The map, the map, the map. The map is not the terrain."
So says Sam (the grizzled, hard boiled ex-CIA operative played by Robert DeNiro in the movie Ronin), as he plans an ambush on his intended target. He likes the plan but needs to go directly to the places and people before he can feel confident about it.
How true. We often stress the importance of understanding your playing field before deciding on your strategy/play or before you go ahead and execute a bunch of tactics. By this we don't mean just asking the core questions in abstract or counting on market research or studys (although of course these things can help). To really understand the terrain you have to go to it.
If trying to understand the gaps/needs of your targets/customers - be one, use your products, talk to other users, spend a day with them (not just an hour in a focus group drugging them with M&Ms). If trying to understand your competition don't just read their website and read their reports - use their products, go to their trade-show booths, interview their customers, try to think like them, maybe even hire some of them. And if trying to understand your own strengths and vulnerabilities, don't rely on yourself - go back and ask those above. It's great to map all the gaps in your playing field, but remember the map is not the terrain.
Note - DeNiro has a bunch of other great quotes in this movie, such as
- In reponse to the question "have you ever killed anyone?" he replies "I hurt someone's feelings once."
- In response to the question if he is OK pulling out a bullet from his own side, he replies "No problem, I once took out a guy's appendix with a grapefruit spoon."
Posted by johnza at 08:28 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
December 02, 2004
The Right Play for the Right Field
Yesterday Ignition had one of it's regular portfolio company CEO offsites. One of the key themes for CEOs was the importance of making the complex simple. This time we introduced the playbook and used it as a means to driving that simplicity in reviewing and discussing each company's strategy (or play) and it's marketing. Really sparked some stimulating discussions. Great CEOs call clear, simple plays.
Anyway, amongst other things there were frequent requests for a summary of the best conditions, pros, cons, i.e. decision criteria for each play. It's in the book, but what the heck, here's a reprint:
Posted by johnza at 05:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 25, 2004
Interdependant Dragraces, Stealth Plays and Platforms
Marketing Tom: Search Engine Relationship Chart (updated) Very interesting chart on the topic of search engines. Take a look on how interdependant they are. Thanks to Marketing Tom.
Posted by johnza at 10:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 02, 2004
Some notes on the China Market
NW Venture Voice: September 2004 Archives More from our trip, with a bit of a focus on venture capital.
Posted by johnza at 04:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 07, 2004
Negotiating (or persuading/marketing) backward
Thought provoking HBS piece (via Emergic and Jeff Nolan) on Negotiating Backward. A really smart principle for any kind of planning, especially where you are trying to persuade people (kinda like marketing). Here's a quick paraphrase:
"When you map a negotiation [or selling effort] backward, you envision your preferred outcome and think in reverse about how to get there." Here are the basic steps:
1. Draw a "map" of the parties involved (the playing field).
2. Estimate the difficulty and cost of gaining agreement with each (gap assessment).
3. Identify key relationships among the parties (who influences them)
4. Focus on the most-difficult-to-persuade player (figure out how best to win them over first), win the skeptic (influential end user) and the others follow
5. Figure out how to get the right other players to negotiate (evangelize) for you
Map backward in this fashion until you have found the most promising path through the cloud of possibilities.
Posted by johnza at 08:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 27, 2004
Culture as a part of your playbook
Several really interesting posts and articles around the importance of CULTURE in business. No not yoghurt or throat culture, corporate culture - as a means and source of both strategy and insurance of its effective implementation.
It's one thing to pick a strategy and develop some kind of process, it's that much more lasting and impactful when such strategy is embedded in how people think and act naturally within the company. (Corporate culture is not just something that gets laminated and put on peoples desk along with corporate values, it is a conscious/unconsious, living thing, a set of beliefs and practical ethics that affects hiring, incentives, and all communications.)
There are obviously a wide range of corporate cultures but here are some thoughts and examples of cultures that really drive leadership and true, sustainable positioning.
Customer Service Cultures
Fouroboros, highlights Progressive insurance (a great "progressive" company that is shaking up its industry). They take the claims process after an auto accident personally. Someone hit their customer. They take care of the whole process personally, all the way down to getting the person in the accident a cup of coffee to calm them down. An example of a customer service culture that has got to go a long way in building life-time value.
Johnnie Moore highlights a great story about a hotel chain where culture beat "technology to the "CRM" punch of true touch customer relationships. We all like it when staff recognize us as return customers. Well, this chain made sure the front desk knew a repeat customer with no technology, just culture. Simple, the bellman asked if it was the guest's first visit and then deposited the luggage at the angle that told reception to say "Welcome back to the ..." It's amazing how many hotels with sophisticated databases fail to do that.
Continuous Improvement Cultures
Business 2.O recently profiled how culture radically improved results ... in manufacturing. The company is Toyota. The core tenets of the TPS (Toyota Production System) seem less about process than about culture, here are two of my favorites:
"Andon (Line Stopping). Any worker can halt the line to fix a problem. Workers shouldn't be afraid to do so." What a great way to incent a do it right of thinking, a culture of empowerment and personal responsibility.
Start Up Cultures
Business Pundit poinders the challenges of building and maintaing the right culture in a start-up, especially when bringing together a bunch of people from different backgrounds. As VCs we see this all the time with our companies. But frankly leadership is the key thing. How the leader acts and how much energy he/she puts into developing and staying true to a culture is critical. A great start-up culture can make all the difference in the world, in hiring the best talent, in driving product delivery, in hitting milestones, you name it.
One example we've seen is in a portfolio company. A new CEO came in and defined an agressive sales culture (appropriate to the company's situation) and drove and cemented this culture throughout the company. How? By incenting people, communicating and walking his own talk. Everyone (including receptionists) took salary cuts with the difference plus more to made up by bonuses based on company sales results. And the CEO started by cutting his own, freshly negotiated salary in half. Everyone, everyone became focused on meeting prospect and customer needs.
In our playbook system, we ask you to look at your playing field - the customers, competition and your own company's competencies. It's easy to focus on economics, technology etc. in such analysis. How about looking at the culture of each of these as a core part of the analysis? Seems like a good idea.
Posted by johnza at 09:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 24, 2004
Go ahead and ask!
Great entry from Beyond Bullets. Although written for PowerPoint presentations, these 6 Clarifying Questions are exactly what you need "When you're so far along you seem to have lost your way, sometimes it's easiest to map your way back to the beginning."
Whenever you get stuck, ask them. Just because they are obvious, doesn't mean they are critical and often overlooked. Apply them to your understanding your playing field, your play, your positioning, your communications (not just PPT):
- WHO: Who do you need to be thinking about? Who are your target customers, your competition, your partners, your constituents?
- WHAT: is your product, offering, category?
- WHY: should you exist in the first place? What is your vision and mission?
- WHERE: are you trying to go? What are your goals and objectives?
- HOW: are you going to achieve them? What is your core strategy or play, what bets are you making? What are the tactics your will deploy?
- WHEN: are you going to do what? What is the actual plan for rolling out these strategies over time? With what realistic milestones and expectations?
Good to keep in mind!
Posted by johnza at 07:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 03, 2004
Trade Pubs Ho!
Figuring out the playing field ain't easy. One way is to monitor all the many trade publications. Obviously, online is one way to do it, but another is to look at controlled circulation publications like Infoworld for instance.
Until now, getting on these lists has been a little bit hard. You have to go to someone's office. But with tracepub.com, its now easy and the publications get qualified people as well.
A great example of meeting a market gap cleverly. The market gap is that controlled circulation relies on a qualified audience to justify its ad rates and the more circulation, the higher the ad revenues.
The customer gap is that it is expensive to reach the right audience and folks who want the publications have a hard time reaching you.
The competitive gap is that there hasn't been a site dedicated just to this vertical. There are plenty of paid subscription sites (netmagazines.com is my current favorite), but not for controlled publications.
Posted by rich at 08:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 29, 2004
Aquantive buys Razorfish
MediaDailyNews 06-30-04. Another example of consolidation. Aquantive is really an ad agency plus a cookie pool. Now that ad business is growing, its time to buy other web development and design service firms.Posted by rich at 08:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Local Search
MediaDailyNews 06-30-04. Overture Local offers small advertisers a new local search product. Interesting to see how market gaps are getting filled in the online ad business. A classic thing that happens is a rush to get the big bang. That happened with google.com and overture.com getting contextual ads mainly for global products. You can ship anything anywhere, so it makes sense to get your books from across the world. Or your DVDs or your curios from eBay. Now th next step is going local. You can now buy "Chevrolet dealership" for just a local area (city, state, ZIP or even an IP address). Interesting to see how folks take advantage of this. This includes web hosting too of a page. Another company doing well here is "YP":http://yp.com. This is a yellow page listing service.Posted by rich at 08:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 13, 2004
Targeting goes deep - Neuromarketing
Behavioral targeting - trying to predict behavior based on your target's past behavior - is one thing. But now, how about trying to predict behavior based on how your target thinks? That's what Neuromarketing is aiming to do. The current Economist Technology Quarterly has a great review of this new "trend." Bascially, marketing mad scientists are trying to use the tools of neuroscientists, such as electroencephalogram (EEG) mapping and functional magnetic-resonance imaging (fMRI), to learn more about the mental processes behind purchasing decisions. Wild. Talk about Market Research. One company, BrightHouse Neurostrategies Group, claims to "integrate marketing expertise with the most advanced neuroscientific research capabilities and understanding of how the brain thinks, feels and motivates behavior... To offer clients: More confidence and accuracy in marketing decisions through a better understanding of how the brain mediates consumer preference and purchase behavior A new, powerful analytical approach & tool for learning what drives consumer behavior at a conscious and subconscious level Strategic insights and implications that will help establish the foundation for loyal, long-lasting consumer relationships not easily superseded by the competition. Pretty tempting. Lieberman Research is using the technique to test film trailers (which, by the way now show up on T-Shirts). And of course both parties are using it to work to figure out how different voters brains work (better not comment on this or I will get in trouble). This technique is not without controversy. Zack Lynch of Corante is generally positive. "As neurotechnology becomes more precise, all aspects of business, including the art of marketing, will be reinvented. Marketing firms will use brain imaging to understand how and why people buy different products... "neuromarketing" has a long way to go... but with billions of dollars at stake, the search for the brain's "buy button" will definitely be an area of heavy investment." Sean at Patternhunting is a bit spooked by the whole thing, like something out of a novel. Joshua Allen remains skeptical but intrigued. But according to Broken Engine, Neuroscientist Daniel Glaser, of University College, London wonders if Neuromarketing may not be terribly effective: "Lots of companies are seduced by the thought that if you can see into the heads of your consumers you can design products to target them. I think it's premature." I happen to agree with Tim Ambler, a neuromarketing researcher at the London Business School who says: A tool is a tool, and if the owner of the tool gets a decent rent for hiring it out, then that subsidises the cost of the equipment, and everybody wins. Marketing tools, no matter how wierd, are only as effective or as scarey as the people who use them.Posted by johnza at 09:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
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 NYTs 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.Posted by johnza at 07:11 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 12, 2004
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
May 08, 2004
Another Christopher fan...
John Porcaro: mktg@msft: Fresh Perpectives (and Fresh Lunch) with Christopher Very cool. John Porcaro (who is mktg@msft) has a very nice blog. He just had lunch with Christoper of Cheskin. Nice blog. Cool to see good thinking over in Redmond. Also see Christopher's own mention of this lunch. Fresh Perspectives: Blog vs Real LifePosted by johnza at 08:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 04, 2004
Top Ranked Marketing Blog and Sites
Online Marketing Blog - Internet Marketing & PR, Search Engine Optimization. If you can believe it, this is the top ranked site when you marketing blog. We sure can't let that stay that way.
It's a nice site by Lee Ogden that has lots on Internet marketing.
If you look at the top five marketing blogs, the #5 one gets 20 hits per day. Interesting...
Other interesting thing to see is what Google says when you ask for marketing in the top 10 by page rank are:
- American Marketing Association - www.marketingpower.com. It's the site for the American Marketing Association. I'm embarassed, I've been doing marketing for nearly 20 years and I've never heard of them. Wonder what that means :-)
- Direct Marketing Association. Well at least I've heard of these guys.
- Guerilla Marketing. Apparently some sort of trade publication for small business marketing.
- Clickz. This is an internet marketing thingy.
- Business Marketing Association. Yikes another trade organization.
- The Brand Republic. Another ttrade organization.
- Know This. A cool name for some sort of Internet marketing resource.
Posted by rich at 10:45 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
