vicodin
January 2, 2012
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Avoiding bad markets is half the battle.
Annually I see multiple software vendors pitching products designed to improve the performance of computers, databases or networks. With few exceptions, these tools disappear within two years because the underlying commodity (computer server, network connection or DBMS) becomes faster and cheaper. One of the most common technology and marketing mistakes is to create a product for an industry that will inevitably correct the problem.
 Take home Internet connections (please, take mine and bring me FttP). Long, long ago – about 20 years back – having a 4,800 baud modem for connecting to the Internet was considered state of the art and painfully slow (recent college CS graduates may have to look-up archaic words like ‘baud’ and ‘modem’). Without fail, once every quarter, someone pitched a software solution for raising the data transfer rate across antiquated telephone technologies. The following quarter a faster modem would become the new standard and obviate the software solution. Modems were eventually replaced with cable, then by 3G wireless, then fiber to the premises, then 4G wireless … well, you get the picture. The providers of personal network connections knew what people disliked most about their service (namely having to wait for anything) and kept advancing the product while simultaneously eliminating software speed-ups.
Hence, the classic marketing mistake is to create a product destined for rapid obsolescence. Riding a commodity wave is a fine way to make money, but trying to sell patches to limitations of a commodity that can be fixed by the providers is fast fiscal suicide.
Understanding this method of mistake leads to understanding innovation and value, which brings us around nicely to marketing and where it fits into the process. “Innovation” is, by etymology, something new (from Latin innovatus, from in- “into” + novus “new.”). Software accelerators and their crippled cousins are by definition something old. To be new requires being something unanticipated by the market. This still is a rather broad notion. Early iPods were not new given that MP3 players had been around for quite some time, and the notion of portable music had existed since transistor radios. But Apple marketed iPods as fonts of spiritual liberation, and that was new (along with white ear bugs, slicker case design, etc). Marketing cannot by itself innovate, since innovations requires the unique human insight that aggregates what is possible (engineering) with what people want to achieve. Marketing contributes by assessing what people want to achieve, and then validating product concepts before build commitments are made.
No amount of survey triangulation will create inspiration.
Inbound marketing adds to the base of knowledge that feeds inspiration and innovation. Though Steve Jobs was not a fan of focus groups during product development, they remain great vehicles for discovering what people are frustrated about or wish to achieve, which can lead to innovation moments. More directly, market research can unmask gaps between competitor offerings and the expected outcomes of buyers. Such investigations lead to +1 value points that decide what company dominates their segment or market.
Most important though is knowing where not to go. Since the probability of success equals one minus the probability of failure [ P(s) = 1 - P(f) ] not failing is always your first mission and not entering doomed markets eliminates a lot of potential failure.
December 27, 2011
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Don’t try this at work.
A discussion recently erupted within an online marketing mavens’ forum. Someone wondered if Do It Yourself (DIY) market research using social media would eliminate more traditional forms of research and many of its freelance practitioners. I responded that amateur efforts create amateur results, and that SMBs would thus find new and exotic ways to stay small through inappropriate research.
Oddly, everyone agreed with me, which is surely a sign of the End Times.
 Services like Survey Monkey have created a great deal of poor research because research is a scientific pursuit and Survey Monkey is a digital chemistry set for DIY researchers. The internet is now littered with invitations to participate in surveys, and as a result people have grown numb to these invites (which makes our research work here at Silicon Strategies Marketing more difficult). Sadly, the results obtained by ad hoc surveys and trolling through social media forums ranges from useless to endangering. Poor insight from poor research produces poor decisions, which in turn produce longer unemployment lines.
Though the list is extensive, there are several common areas where DIY market research fails:
Lack of scientific approach: All research processes, and especially surveys, have rich and deep scientific histories. There exist very wrong ways of conducting surveys, which lead to skewed information and inappropriate analysis. Since product or corporate decisions are based on research, having solid methodology, sound survey question design and statistically valid analysis are essential and never achieved by junior marketing staff using rent-a-survey suites.
Unstructured everything: The question is all important, because if you ask the wrong question you never get the right answer. DIY researchers often initiate projects that lack defined goals or even structured approaches to finding answers. The fuzzier the focus and source of input, the less structured and more opinion-influenced are the results.
Social shouting: Social media has its place in market research, but suffers from presenting the opinions of people with the loudest voices. Akin to self-selecting surveys (and all surveys are self-selecting to some degree), spelunking social media to ascertain market metrics is nonsensical and dangerous to your paycheck’s health.
Strategic decisions require strategic thinking, which requires good data, which eliminates DIY and unmanaged, qualitative ingestions. DIY research is not unacceptable, but presents many potholes that, at best, take your revenue growth for a rough ride, and at worst will wreck your company’s shocks, bend your frame and trash your tranny. As grating as spending money on market research is, it remains better to invest in sound data than risk DIY disasters.
November 7, 2011
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A local Sprint store sale punk demonstrated Siri on the new Apple iPhone 4S by saying “Siri, I’m drunk” to which Siri relied “There are 15 taxis in the vicinity …”
This demo would kill Steve Jobs.
 Other customers on the sales floor were a mixture of amused and offended, though before the demo all had come cash-in-hand to see the new iGizmo. Each now wore a creepy expression on their mugs – similar to the ones they likely wore upon discovering the Santa Myth (which is not to be confused with the Santana Myth which claims that Carlos can sing). The iPhone’s image had been tarnished by a frat boy stunt in a place trying to sell iPhones.
Apple’s G-rated brand was slammed with an R-rated demo, and nobody left that Sprint store with a 4S.
Growing or preserving a brand through channels is slightly more difficult than balancing the federal budget. Not impossible, but prone to failure because channel managers do not exercise the same degree of care vis-à-vis branding that your sales force does. Yet the channel is your differently-paid sales force and needs to communicate your brand with approximate fidelity. Scraggly bearded Sprint sales drones shouting “I’m drunk” into a handset was never part of Apple’s branding strategy.
Key to channel marketing and branding is to educate your channel as well as you would your own sales teams. This takes resources, though in our wired world it is increasing cost effective. Only after everyone in a partner organization knows your brand can you even attempt to enforce their individual behaviors. Given how the other Sprint store clerks responded, they had not received Apple brand training either.
If your go-to-market strategy relies on channels, then assure those partners are appropriate brand ambassadors. Otherwise your brand will be slowly chiseled away.
April 12, 2011
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Cisco CEO and Cheerleader John Chambers has a gift for understatement.
 In a recent mea culpa of insight, Chambers declared that Cisco had “disappointed investors and confused employees.” This is akin to saying nuclear bombs annoyed some Japanese during World War II. As evidenced by the chart on stage right (click to enlarge), Juniper Networks has been soaring, the tech heavy NASDAQ has been rising, and even the leadership spasmodic Hewlett Packard has been doing better than Cisco in terms of share price.
And with little wonder. Cisco, the once (and maybe future) king of network plumbing did what many large companies do, namely make the erroneous decision to diversify. Diversification is not inherently incorrect, but it makes sense mainly for consumer products, markets where brand consciousness requires different brands for different products or price points, or where the primary market is completely tapped. Cisco did not face a saturated network hardware market (if anything is growing out of control, it is data and its transmission). Their brand was largely elastic throughout business networking, and perhaps even into consumer gear.
Which is why they decided to make servers (and compete against their former partners) and pocket video cameras.
Old adages exist for a reason, and such is the case with “stick to your knitting.” Every company and most humans need a narrow scope of things with which to deal, be it products lines or children. Too many of either leads to overload, confusion, a lack of focus and occasional temper tantrums. Companies that successfully diversify are those who do it incrementally into adjoining segments or markets, where they can leverage their expertise and brands to completely conquer said markets.
The largest maker of high-speed, enterprise-grade networking gear did not need to make consumer video cameras (which Cisco now won’t).
Diversification is a C-suite decision, but marketing is always involved. Sometimes marketing is the instigator, though their proper role should be the voice of reservation. When a CEO begins mismanaging their minions with Bonaparte-style bravado about diversifying, marketing should question how this impacts the brand, how a marketing team will serve multiple markets and masters, and what this takes away from their core business and vision. CEOs who can’t address those question in advance need bridles attached, and no organization in an enterprise is better at breaking horses than the marketing cowboys.
The burning branding iron of unemployment likely keeps them from objecting loudly … or at all.
The marketing lesson herein is that CEOs, determined to ever grow shareholder wealth, occasionally take the wrong road. Cisco could have edged into adjacent markets (especially into the ever expanding mobile markets) instead of extremes such as consumer cameras and home print servers (I have one by Cisco … it rarely works right). Marketing is the best speed bump available and needs to keep such mistakes from tanking share price.
March 29, 2011
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Microsoft has lost it’s marketing mojo.
Perhaps I should not base this analysis so heavily on their mobile offering, but having just returned from the massive CTIA event and witnessed Gates’ Goombahs slake Microsoft shareholder wealth into oblivion, I’m none too charitable. Sure, Microsoft continues to milk the desktop cow, and the garner some gaming coin by Xboxing, but the world is rushing toward mobile and Microsoft is nowhere to be found.
Literally. Microsoft was so artfully concealed behind the Sybase booth (Sybase for cryin’ out loud) they were all but unlocatable. It did not help that Microsoft’s booth manager squandered precious vertical real estate, apparently choosing a black funeral shroud for their flying buttress. The booth itself was the Japanese/Swedish version of death décor – white and hard, modern, lifeless lines. For an event soaked in the radical, consumer-focused “joy” of being wirelessly wired at all waking hours, Microsoft appeared to be in mourning.
Keep in mind that with the exception of Apple – who deigns to sully their brand via industry participation – CTIA is one of the largest mobile madhouses. Every vendor attends, and one can shop for cell phones, cell towers and antennas, developer software, and faux jewel cases for handsets. Even CNBC, the 24X7 business news network, owned a healthy chunk of show-floor real estate and was broadcasting live. For Microsoft to exhibit and make such a sad showing was not a demonstration of calculated error but an admission that Microsoft has lost the mobile market so badly that even their marketing teams – people normally known for being colorful, loud and pushy – were bland, quiet and subservient.
It was a non-booth, for a non-contender. Even their new-found partner Nokia did not display a Microsoft logo.
This combined with Apple’s absence accelerated Android’s dominance. Walk into any handset booth, and the little green android icon was visible. Talk to handset software vendors and they would say “We support Android, and of course Apple,” as if Apple were an afterthought. There was even a surreal moment when CNBC’s Michelle Caruso-Cabrera was live on air and in the aisle behind her danced a tiny human wearing a rubber Android costume.
Talk about cost-effective product placement.
The marketing lesson, such as it is, falls into near cliché. In any market, you have to lead, follow or fail. Microsoft had the chance to lead and didn’t. They can’t follow because they are a software company and thus compete with Apple and Android. That left them the option of failure.
The stench of failure now haunts both Microsoft mobile employees and Microsoft Mobile 7 (or whatever the Sam Hell it is called this week). When I slid into the Microsoft booth, no human asked to help (unlike at HTC, Samsung, Sony, etc). So I played with Windows on cell phones solo, and was mightily unimpressed. Whereas Apple innovated, and Android echoed Apple innovations without Apple rigidity, Microsoft only phoned it in (much like investors are calling in their sell orders).
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