Monthly Archives: February 2008

Marcom Meticulosity

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I feel a lecture coming on! I’m a bit anal retentive when it comes to marketing communications. This trait is constantly reinforced when I work with technology companies. As a species, they are the worst marcom machines on the face of Gawd’s gray world. So today I deviate from discussions of markets and strategy to communicate about communications. Specifically I’m going to give away some expertise about how to compose marketing prose. Rule #1 – don’t alliterate: It is really annoying. Rule #2 – know your audience: It is one thing to understand your audience, but another thing entirely to know them. “Knowing” means you are in their shoes, doing their job, and feeling their pain. It involves a deep connection that reveals their true motivations. For example, an IT executive might say he wants to reduce application development costs, but his true motivation is to spend that money on … Continue reading →

Flashback

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An alleged friend of mine reminded me of the TRS-80, the first computer I ever owned outright. He mentioned that old machine while I was talking to him on my cell phone. So I decided to look-up the specifications of the TRS-80 and my cell phone, and show how much computing technology has changed in 30 years.   TRS-80 HTC 8925 Delta Processor 1.7 Mhz 400 Mhz 5882% Memory 4 KB 125 MB 3125000% Video Rez 128 x 48 240 x 320 1250% Footprint 16" x 8" 4.4" x 2.3" 8% Price (1978 dollars) $599 $162 27% Datacom None GSM, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, USB Now imagine where we will be in 2038.

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Service Marketing

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“Sometimes you have to get their attention first,” said the old farmer, who had just whacked his mule in the forehead with a two-by-four. The mule, a little stunned, nonetheless quit being ornery and started pulling the plow. Perhaps Dell has some mule blood in it. Dell is discovering what green marketeers discover in about their forth year of their careers — namely that service is a product. Like all products, quality and suitability to the needs of the customers determines success. Given that technology is complex and that no technology user can last long without support, it becomes a critical differentiator for long-term financial success. (A snide aside: If you want a glaringly good example of lousy customer service, just talk to anyone that uses web hosting from 1and1.com, a company that routinely explores the depths of customer disregard. The horror stories about 1and1.com technical support would make Steven … Continue reading →

Micro-hoo?

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In the all business, and especially in technology, there are three ways to grow: you can innovate product, you can change the rules of the game (marketing), or you can buy your way up (cash). When I see a hyper-competitive company like Microsoft making a multi-billion dollar plays to buy their way up a market, then I know they failed to innovate or market. And that is the condition in which we find Balmer and Company with their mega bid for Yahoo. We’ll call the merged company-to-be Micro-hoo? Microsoft — despite making the Internet a consumer product by bolting a TCP/IP stack into Windows long ago — was slow to see that former Sun CEO Scott McNealy was right when he said “The network is the computer.” The Internet is the only infrastructure bigger than what Microsoft had already created. As such it is a glorious place to make some … Continue reading →