http://www.siliconstrat.com/blog Technology Marketing from a Strategic Viewpoint Wed, 10 Mar 2010 01:02:56 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Short is sweet. No, this is not another diatribe on compact market messages, though that lesson is well worth repeating.  Where sweet and short nicely collide is in the sales cycle.  The shorter the cycle, the sooner the revenue, the happier the stockholder and the fatter your bonus check. Marketers know that ... http://www.siliconstrat.com/blog/2010/03/09/social-media-in-speeding-the-sales-cycle/ I’m hoping for antisocial media.  I can see how to make a buck off of that. Meanwhile, social media continues to gain dominance in marketing, and for good reason.  Humans, and even politicians, are social animals.  We commune for pleasure, profit and procreation (which pretty much describes a day in the ... http://www.siliconstrat.com/blog/2010/03/02/b2b-social-media-and-networking/ Growing your market in the modern age without knowing your positioning is like driving motorcycle down an Interstate while blindfolded.  You will lose and the resulting splatter will not be pretty. Positioning is simply establishing where on a competitive map your products are in the eyes of the market.  The concept ... http://www.siliconstrat.com/blog/2010/02/17/product-positioning-and-growth/ I’m starting an Internet wide office pool – pick the date and place a dollar ante on when antitrust will be filed against Oracle. Seriously, Larry is all but begging for it. With the integration of Sun into Oracle, many executives – including Ellison – said that Oracle was the IBM of ... http://www.siliconstrat.com/blog/2010/02/09/why-antitrust-is-inevitable-for-oracle/ Oracle, as always, has a good game plan, though they have not thought out everything under the Sun. I attended Oracle’s outbound communication extravaganza concerning the completed swallowing of Sun.  In the time from initial purchase to the final approvable by European Union regulators, Oracle has been busy deciding what parts ... http://www.siliconstrat.com/blog/2010/01/28/oracle-sun-merge-roadmap-strategy/ When does a brand become detrimental to a company? Ask Google. They are having a relatively rough time with their brand this week. Google encountered trouble during the corporate equivalent of a temper tantrum. When they discovered that someone in China (presumably the government) had hacked into Google’s network and ... http://www.siliconstrat.com/blog/2010/01/21/brand-authentisity-and-google/ BMW and Enzyte may have too much in common. While reviewing course materials for the CEO Marketing Boot Camp, I got a case of giggles. In the class we mention how BMW does branding. BMW has a legendary brand that was anything but accidental. In fact most readers ... http://www.siliconstrat.com/blog/2010/01/05/the-innovator-handicap-and-the-investor-patch/ Investor’s Business Daily had an interesting report from ABI Research showing that now, and through 2014, iPhones and gPhones will dominate the smart phone application platform market. Combined they will own about 60% of the market in the out years, with all other competitors in the ‘other’ category. That includes ... http://www.siliconstrat.com/blog/2009/12/25/microsoft-an-also-ran-in-smartphones/ Desperate times create desperate marketers. Such seems to be the case with Sequoia Voting Systems, a manufacturer of electronic voting machines (known among libertarians as ‘election hijacking devices’). Sequoia recently announced that they were opening the source code for their Frontier balloting systems. A wise move, aside from the fact that ... http://www.siliconstrat.com/blog/2009/12/08/how-open-source-can-change-market-rules/ It has been a bad week for brands, and it is only Tuesday. Between Tiger Woods' early morning mishap and certain global warming scientists being exposed as frauds, we have seen two well established brands bite bullets. Nobody believes that Tiger Woods was out for a 2AM joyride and happened ... http://www.siliconstrat.com/blog/2009/12/01/branded/