Monthly Archives: August 2009

Cool Smarts

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Who would have thought Microsoft could be cool? Not Microsoft the company, the product line or substandard tech support. No, Microsoft marketing is cool because they engineered a reverse promotion campaign that leveraged a competitor’s positioning, used it to attack their weakness and amplify a Microsoft strength all in one sweep. That’s cool. Anyone with a pulse is familiar with the great ad campaign designed by Apple, pitting a dowdy looking actor as a generic PC, and a young hipster (Justin Long in real life) as a Mac. Justin played the Mac role as low key, friendly, effective, peaceable and, in a sub dude way, cool. Justin was also the voice of Alvin in Alvin and the Chipmunks, so we have to subtract three ‘cool points’. For a company built primarily on image and vendor lock-in, Apple did a great job. Their ads were memorable and also provided a method … Continue reading →

Plateau Predicaments

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Many clients have come to me complaining that they hit a plateau – that sales and profits had quit growing. We have helped many of our clients identify the barriers they faced and navigate to new levels of success. Others remained stuck, mainly because they were too stubborn to listen. It is common for start-ups to hit seemingly invisible plateaus. Like a rock climber on a virgin cliff, they cannot see their way around outcroppings and boulders, and they aren’t agile enough to dodge eagle droppings hurtling in their direction. In nearly every case, these plateaus are artificial and solvable, though the very genius that launched the company is often the plateau itself. I offer as example one client we initially engaged six years ago. Silicon Strategies Marketing performed some primary (and I dare say groundbreaking) research into the psychology of their targeted buyers. Throughout the research, one variable was … Continue reading →

VC Vigilance

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Agriculture is not a fad. That is what I said to the CEO of a company who is applying high tech to crop yield management, and who just landed a healthy round of VC money to grow an already proven business model. Agriculture is not a fad and thus it is a market in which to invest if risk reduction is part of your planning. VCs are much more risk adverse then they used to be. After the dot com bust many VC partners left the field and started working in the fields themselves (seriously, the number of former VCs who are now vintners is disturbing, and I suspect many are drinking their profits). I scanned a dozen recently reported VC deals from the Sandhill.com web site. What I wanted to see was if VCs were chasing fads (as they did in the late 1990’s), were following trends (as they … Continue reading →

Miserably Misaligned

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Legendary are the disturbances between marketing and sales. Within the narrow geography of Silicon Valley, such interoffice disputes between the two camps have crippled businesses, caused collateral causalities and brought down small third-world governments. And for no good reason. I recently saw such a conflict up-close. With all my years in the game, this occurrence was nothing new and I could see the waters boiling long before other people did. The actors and stage setting were different, but the plot was the same as always. Groundhog Day with different dialogue. To understand sales/marketing skirmishes, one has to understand the attitudes, perspectives and psychoses of either camp. Nobody is without sin, but there ain’t no saints either. Perspective of importance Though not unique, the sales director in the latest episode proclaimed in a mass inter-company email “Marketing exists to support sales.” Ignoring the utter arrogance of the individual, we can say … Continue reading →