Author Archives: admin

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 →

MiSFiT

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Microsoft has lost it’s marketing mojo. Perhaps I should not base this analysis so heavily on their mobile offering, but having just returned from the massive CTIA event and witnessed Gates’ Goombahs slake Microsoft shareholder wealth into oblivion, I’m none too charitable.  Sure, Microsoft continues to milk the desktop cow, and the garner some gaming coin by Xboxing, but the world is rushing toward mobile and Microsoft is nowhere to be found. Literally.  Microsoft was so artfully concealed behind the Sybase booth (Sybase for cryin’ out loud) they were all but unlocatable.  It did not help that Microsoft’s booth manager squandered precious vertical real estate, apparently choosing a black funeral shroud for their flying buttress.  The booth itself was the Japanese/Swedish version of death décor — white and hard, modern, lifeless lines.  For an event soaked in the radical, consumer-focused “joy” of being wirelessly wired at all waking hours, Microsoft … Continue reading →

Darwin Wins

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I have a dear friend who drives me nuts. He is an iPhone fan in part because he makes a dime chronicling that industry.  Of late I have been predicting that Android will dominate the mobile device market (and in full disclosure I own nothing Apple or Google based). He responds with glorious tales of how Apple does everything better, the iPad is perfection, and how he wants to have Steve Job’s love child. Sadly for him it looks like I’m right and that Steve won’t be sending him flowers in the morning. In any market, Darwin wins.  The market could be baboons, and that their irrepressible multi-partner mating habits that spread the better DNA faster than politicians spread manure.  It could also be the mobile device market, where several hundred vendors dabble in genetic modifications.  Whereas the iPhone is like a purebred dog, beautiful but also loaded with inbred … Continue reading →

Event Vitality

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Tradeshows are too stubborn to die. I pondered this situation while helping a client with some tradeshow communications.  Granted, this client is in the ever changing and event heavy mobile application market space, and received a major boost due to iPads and other digital slabs (if Moses had owned an iPad, the other five commandments might have not been lost, though he would have to tithe 30% of synagogue receipts to Steve Jobs). Yet the fact that tradeshows persist and that marketing budgets for them are not rapidly declining seemed odd in this modern Internet age … at first. Without question, the core of marketing has shifted toward online, with search optimization, banners and buzz lighting paths back to your web properties.  When well executed, the entire promotion and sales cycle can be completed without any two humans ever exchanging as much as a “good morning.”  What can be done … Continue reading →

Free Thinking

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One of my favorite stolen lines is that customers should never be allowed to engage in unsupervised thinking. Unsupervised thinking is dangerous as any deposed despot will attest. Outbound marketing is entirely about communications.  It involves guiding the thinking of different people (buyer genotypes) at different times (sales cycle, product/market lifecycle) and for different reasons (aid discovery, educate, motivate, close).  Enterprise buyers engage in thinking throughout a sales process, unlike consumers who can often be sold through pure emotions. This came to light recently while coaching a client on a thought leadership paper, and one member of their team viewed the developing collateral as a sales piece, bemoaning the lack of mention about their product features and benefits.  I explained that buyers were an ornery lot, prone to cynical (and typically correct) suspicions. Adding product details not only distracts the reader from cementing their knowledge, but also raises alarms about … Continue reading →