Monthly Archives: May 2012

The HP Wayward

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27,000 people can fill a modest football stadium, which may be where HP holds their next early retirement party. In another spasm of realignment, Hewlett Packard announced that they were cutting nearly thirty thousand jobs and reinvesting in R&D. This lurched follows the amazingly abbreviated tenure of their last CEO who pledged to make HP a software company, which isn’t remotely a core HP competency (OpenView has been their single shining exception). This follows the scandal-terminated run of their previous CEO, and the “It’s all about me” administration of the one before that. It is good that Bill and Dave are dead, for the sight of what their company has become would kill them. Having cut my technical eye teeth on HP gear mumble-mumble-mumble years ago, watching them flop about like a landed flounder is depressing. The HP brand was built primarily on solid engineering, high quality products and a … Continue reading →

Old School Social

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My dentist does social marketing. This should surprise nobody because social marketing has existed since the first two cavemen competed by selling left-over mastodon meat (“My mastodon steaks come with 30% fewer fatal microbes!”). Businesses have always used the power of social networking, long before social media became a reality. Social media changes nothing and thinking about primitive social marketing helps to clarify your social outreach. Social marketing is, in essence, assuring that people talk about you in positive terms. As an example, when you move to a new city, odds are you ask everyone about their recommendation for a good dentist. Some will warn you about bad jaw crackers, and others will wax poetic about how gentle and through is their dental doc. This is social promotions in its most basic form. The product (dental services) is referenced by customers based on the positioning criteria they most vale (money, … Continue reading →

Fiat Folly

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My dictionary defines fiat as “an arbitrary decree,” which makes redundant a recent Fiat motorcar advertising campaign. A stylish bimbette and a bubble car landed in my lap this morning, all combined in a ten panel fold-out mailer from Fiat that pimped their 500 series micro machine, which looks like the bastard child of a Mini Cooper and a Volkswagen Beetle. Therein Fiat attempts to differentiate this vehicle by linking various models of their rolling soap bubble with various luxury brand names (Note to Fiat: It isn’t a luxury vehicle if you drive with your knees in your chin). The Gucci edition was shown with the slinky blonde draped across the hood, her impossibly long legs escaping from abbreviated shorts and her top strategically unzipped. Ironically the photo caption read “European model shown” which could have applied to the vehicle or the vamp. I have no idea from what rented … Continue reading →

What is Expected

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I don’t expect much, and I usually get it. Expected outcomes are what buyers pay money for. Businesses and consumers lob lucre at vendors in order to achieve something, be it optimizing general ledger processes or smelling better. Expected outcomes, or expectations, are the foundation of all commercial relationships. I give you money and you make me smell good. If the cologne you sold me knocks buzzards off cesspool fencing, then my expectations have not been met. Microsoft and Hotels.com recently brought all this to light by failing to meet basic expected outcomes. When rudimentary requirements are not provided, customers become ornery. The soured relationship creates new friction to selling them more products and removes all incentive to recommend products to other customers (which in the long run is the cheapest and most effective promotional tool available). Knowing and delivering customer necessaries is so basic I find Microsoft’s and Hotels.com … Continue reading →

Marketing Band-aid

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Performing in a band might be fun if one didn’t have to work with musicians. Bands provide a serviceable metaphor for marketing, which is all too often viewed as one or another marketing function and not the tightly coordinated combination of each function/instrument and performer. Take any piece out of a band or marketing department, and you no longer have a professional outfit. I was recently reminded of a time long ago when I was young (during the Taft administration) and the bass player in my garage band quit, yet our front man wanted to do a signed gig without any bass. The audience was not impressed. Let’s stretch this metaphor some more and match aspects of running a marketing department with assembling a group of musicians into a working band. Start by depriving the members of each group of alcohol, then begin. Mapping: A band has several instruments, and … Continue reading →