Monthly Archives: April 2011

Slab Segments

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Cheap tables are a’plenty. Being a reformed gizmo glutton, I still receive a number of consumer electronics communiqués … hourly.  Most are for products I have no intention of buying, especially television sets that could cover my living room wall and still provide nothing considered entertaining.  Yet an occasional marketing lesson appears between engorged LED boob boxes and pocket cameras with more pixel resolution than the televisions. Today it was cheap tablet computers, or what I prefer to call slabs. Below those afore mentioned money wasters were a selection of slabs ranging from $129 to $320, and available with seven to ten inch screens.  This price range is a fair bit below the lowest end of the iPad 2 product line and the poorly marketed Xoom.  These slabs were not insufficient, sporting the same base memory, Wi-Fi and all the functionality of last year’s Android OS.  For customers lacking coolness … Continue reading →

Unextreme Exploring

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We can name many famous explorers, but can you name those that never returned from their expeditions? The unknown is the danger within every new territory. Venture into an unblazed forest and you may never find your way home.  The same goes for new markets, or even markets that are rapidly changing (the sense of panic is palpable in the book publishing market these days).  Yet marketing in virgin territories is not unlike exploring a new continent.  In each, testing is essential. When the pilgrims landed in what later became the United States, they did not make a mad Lewis and Clark dash across the continent.  They rarely ventured away from the shore and whatever rivers provided fresh water. In small steps, they set off in one direction for a short distance, blazed their trail and returned the way they came.  The next morning they would try a different direction.  … Continue reading →

Cisco Kids

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Cisco CEO and Cheerleader John Chambers has a gift for understatement. In a recent mea culpa of insight, Chambers declared that Cisco had “disappointed investors and confused employees.”  This is akin to saying nuclear bombs annoyed some Japanese during World War II.  As evidenced by the chart on stage right (click to enlarge), Juniper Networks has been soaring, the tech heavy NASDAQ has been rising, and even the leadership spasmodic Hewlett Packard has been doing better than Cisco in terms of share price. And with little wonder.  Cisco, the once (and maybe future) king of network plumbing did what many large companies do, namely make the erroneous decision to diversify.  Diversification is not inherently incorrect, but it makes sense mainly for consumer products, markets where brand consciousness requires different brands for different products or price points, or where the primary market is completely tapped.  Cisco did not face a saturated … Continue reading →

Research Riddle

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The client was slightly stunned to see our proposal for conducting a market research survey.  He blinked twice, signed the contract, and asked if the terms included surrendering his first born male child. The good news is that we had no use for his offspring, and thus Junior was not part of the transaction. CEOs from start-ups and billion dollar enterprises alike balk at market research.  There is always a cost, and unless the price is three digits or less, they often hesitate to commit … until I ask them what the cost of failure is, and the contract gets signed instantly. The cost of failure fits nicely with our formula concerning market success.  The formal is beautiful in its simplicity, and reads: P(s) = 1-P(f) Or stated in English for those of your who forgot your college statistics class work, the probability of success equals one minus the probability … Continue reading →