Author Archives: admin

Not-so-great Expectations

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A rather Glassy lady said “I’d rather be pleasantly surprised than fatally disappointed.” She should have been in marketing. Marketers and brand managers are in the expectation business. Part of their job entails defining and setting the expectations of their customers or their market. Since expectations are the state of anticipating something, we marketing mavens create the customer’s state anticipation. When reality doesn’t match what is anticipated, odd and dangerous things occur. If you don’t understand this, just think back to your first blind date. When defining the expectations you want customers to have, you can aim too low, too high, just right or aim for something entirely different. Only the last two work and the latter is the trickiest, though often most profitable. Generally speaking, setting customer expectations a little low is a good strategy. Pleasantly surprised people become repeat customers. If their expectations are consistently exceeded, even by … Continue reading →

Departmental Detrimental

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Businesses should not resemble circular firing squads. While presenting to the Silicon Valley Forum’s Marketing SIG last night, one audience member noted her company’s marketing, product development and sales staffs were unaligned. Well, “unaligned” might be poor wording. They appear to be as completely disjointed as drawn and quartered traitors. This is not uncommon in tech companies where the three groups have come onboard at different phases of corporate growth, believe they own the customer and move ahead despite what other teams are doing. Circular firing squads are more efficient and less violent. In early phases, techies are product managers and interface with customers directly. They believe they listen to prospects though this is often self-delusion. Techies (and particularly techie founders) only listen to customer input that agrees with the original product vision. This form of founderitus is so prevalent in Silicon Valley that my audience was not surprised when … Continue reading →

ARMing Markets

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You have to admire AMD. They know when and how to be agile, mainly when decks are stacked against them. AMD recently announced they are teaming with a different chip designer – ARM, the current darling of mobile and energy efficient processors – to make ARM’s products 64-bit. Those with good memories will recall that AMD practically invented the modern 64-bit processor industry when they released their Opteron chip and caught Intel sitting on their laurels (which must have been uncomfortable). This eventually forced Intel to license AMD’s 64-bit instruction set (which must have been uncomfortable). I was leading SuSE Linux’s North American strategy at the time and saw Intel staff faces wince when SuSE and Microsoft took the stage at the Opteron release event (which was obviously uncomfortable). AMD didn’t keep their momentum and have had a number of setbacks. With desktops dwindling in numbers as consumers buy slabs … Continue reading →

November Talks

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I’ll be speaking at two different Silicon Valley events in November, covering some of the details in my new book the Start-up CEO’s Marketing Manual. The first event is this Saturday, November 3rd. It is an “un-conference” called Marketing Camp. The chat will be in room 8 at the civilized hour of 10AM. This show will be highly interactive and great gobs of free advice will be made available. Later in the month, November 12 to be exact, I’ll present the full-length version of my diatribe at the SV Forum marketing SIG.  It has been a decade since I last spoke to the SIG, back when the organization itself was called “SD Forum” (SD stood for “software developer”, which gives you an idea of how the organization has matured and expanded over time). All Silicon Valley founders, co-founders, CEOs and victims of epic failures should roll out to both events. Well, at … Continue reading →

Stupidly Simple

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Simple declarative statements communicate most effectively. Kinda like the one above. Marketing messages need to be simple, yet marketing “pros” routinely make them complicated. Nowhere is the situation worse than in tech marketing. Perhaps lingering “feeds and speeds” mindsets pervert messaging. Or worse yet, maybe marketing types are budding authors who use marcom materials to practice their literary skills (there is a novel in every marketing director, which is a damn good place to keep it). Weak marketers rely on buzz words when copywriting skills and product differentiation do not exist. Even I suffer from an alienating allegiance to alliteration. Complexity sucks, and sucks the life out of messaging. People don’t have time to think, and forcing them into unsupervised thinking is dangerous. Keeping messages simple, even sparse, leads buyers rapidly to cognition, self-qualification and motivated interest. Slowing them down with needless and distracting verbiage does the opposite. Yet tech … Continue reading →

Interviews and Lectures

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A busy month is ahead for me and my new book Start-up CEO’s Marketing Manual, with the fun kicking off this morning. Sandhill.com, the web site for Silicon Valley venture capital, has published their interview with me about the book. I have to admit to being flattered when they said I was a Silicon Valley legend, though given how legends typically die this may be more of an omen than advertisement. Aside from brightly spooky intros, the interview covers the groundwork for the book, relates some of the sadder aspects of start-up leadership, and sets the stage for November’s to-do. On the 12th I’ll speak to the Silicon Valley Forum’s Marketing SIG on the topic Start-up CEO’s Marketing Myopia – How to lead marketing without being a guru. Drawn from the book and mumble-mumble-mumble years of leading CEOs by the nose, this part-lecture, part-discussion, part-comedy act will help start-up CEOs and their marketing … Continue reading →

Mystique Mistakes

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An ounce of image is worth a pound of performance. This is sadly true, and for marketing mavens it is a cursed blessing. The fact is that people buy image. This occurs in faddish B2C markets and function-driven B2B sectors. Image is often the single most motivating factor in a purchase decision. From Louis Vuitton to Barack Obama to IBM, sales are made on the strength of image. Craft a certain image and people will lob lucre at you or elect you to high office. Fail that image and disaster is almost certain. Reliance on mystique is both the essence and the failure of branding. Mystique is defined as “an aura of mystical power … a framework of beliefs constructed around a person or object, endowing the person or object with enhanced value or profound meaning.” In no sense of the word does mystique equate with reality. Many Hollywood stars … Continue reading →