Reinvention

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Journal Archive

Select A Category BrandingBusiness StrategiesConsumer Behavior / MarketsCreating New MarketsEmerging Business ModelsEntrepreneurship & Game of BusinessGo-to-Market StrategiesHigh-Tech Case StudiesInnovationLearningMarketingRandom IdeasStrategy as a ProcessTweetsValues and All things Good

High-Tech Case Studies

Standing Apart: How a Blender Creates Affinity

The central goal of online marketing isn’t awareness, it’s engagement. And the five key tools to produce engagement are affinity, personality, community, co-creation, and advocacy. Engagement at the broadest level is getting the customer involved with your company, with your products and often, with your people. You want your customers to get to know your organization, its values and services. When customers like what they see and experience, the relationship deepens and it leads to affinity. Thus what was once a distant relationship becomes personal. Another way to same thing perhaps is to say that “Personality replaces traditional brand marketing”
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In a bar fight, what are you prepared to do?

Competition in the tech industry is a fundamental. Without it, we would never have seen the innovations and incredibly cool stuff that have informed, transformed, and improved our daily lives. Think about search and how much we use it to…
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The boxing match begins: Amazon, Google, and Paypal

This is one getting seats for: Reported here, but summarized with this starting point: Amazon, in its bid to become the underlying utility of the new web world, today confirmed what had been rumored earlier: a payment service that will…
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CMOs: Align Yourself to the C-suite

Is Marketing considered a a Corporate Performance Contributor? From conversations I’m having around the Valley, I’ve come to realize that marketing and its relevancy to the C-Suite is (in cleaned up language) not-so-good. Marketing is no longer considered contributing to…
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RIM’s Blackberry Campaign Commentary

Blackberry’s been running a great campaign. It started with a banner ad. The banner asked you to share with Blackberry “why you loved it”. From there, you could read other stories of why people loved their blackberry. There are lots…
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CMOs: Lead a Revolution!

A CEO I was working with at a Fortune 500 asked if I could leave my company and join his exec team as their (latest) CMO. I loved the company, its customers, and the team so I was seriously tempted….
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Some good reads …

I’d like to simply point you to some good articles with little commentary that I think are worth noting. Here, a great visual of every product Apple ever made since 1976. I became a customer in 1984, worked there from…
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Execute revenue growth, or not

I was just reading Double Digit Growth by Michael Treacy. Yes, during work hours. Call it my version of eating bon-bons. I needed a break. And his book is one of many in my recent pile of acquisitions. Recent being…
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Mobile Users non Loyal … Explained

Is anyone surprised by this content: Loyalty To Wireless Carriers Is Hard To Come By. By Antone Gonsalves TechWeb.com Two-thirds of U.S. adult mobile phone users comparison shop for wireless carriers, with more than two out of five doing so…
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The Holy Grail of the SMB Market

I’ve been working with many a new client who wants to reach the SMB market. These are traditional enterprise companies who want to expand. And they the SMB market as a viable one to pursue for growth. But this market…
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Dinosaur Defense Strategy / Consumer Software Companies

A colleague who works within one of my company’s clients writes this email to me about a month ago: “I still find myself scratching my head at how to apply this line of advice (referring to a white paper…
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Symbiotic Relationships in Play

One of the fundamental truths about the high technology market today, is that consumers have tremendous power. Market power used to be much like a big castle surrounded by high walls and a moat to control access — Dell, Intel,…
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Technorati: Measuring Volume not Value

Technorati recently published a state of the blogosphere about 2 weeks ago. And I’ve wanted to write on it ever since as an example of being clear on what you are intending to measure and what you are actually measuring….
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Here’s a tip on Silicon Valley insults

I didn’t know I could go to a technology conference and see an insult on stage. But only if you knew the background would you feel a gasp welling inside you. Here’s a tip you won’t find inside the bathroom…
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Where does this leave Palm?

So Moto bought Good. While the press release says Good will continue to develop multi-platform solutions, I can’t imagine how Palm can ultimately create a truly differentiated strategy. Maybe Palm’s business is in harvest mode? There’s a strong enough installed…
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Product Management are really Super Heros in Disguise!

In my opinion, there are two really hard jobs inside a company. One is being a CEO, and the other being a product manager. A few reasons why I believe this. Both the CEO and Product Managers are expected to be the most flexible acrobatic kind of leaders — adjusting to people’s styles, making sure to communicate with clarity the requirements of what is needed, translating vision into specifics and constantly at the beck and call of many constituents. It’s a wonder someone would take the job. Either one.
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What is it you believe?

I say all this now with the HP spying amongst the board and reports controversy recently in our midst. If the HP scandal has an underlying belief, it’s that Dunn and the board believed that finding the “truth” overrode basic ethics of disclosure, integrity between people, and the ability to see that the way in which we do things speaks loads about what we hold true. I feel sad for those that work in that culture.
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Churn and Burn or Ways to Go?

It is true that, over time, strong technology consumer companies will win market share from weak companies. However, there’s one nearly surefire way to make sure you don’t fail. Focus. You got know enough to know if you’re going to…
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Go-to-market Mix in the Web 2.0 Era

It’s been 40+ years since E. Jerome McCarthy published Basic Marketing, the business book that introduced the “4 Ps” (product, price, place/distribution and promotion) to the world. While the categories still hold true, what was once considered the leading edge…
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Do you know what drives purchase?

Consumer goods like P&G have always invested in knowing how their sales and marketing activities drive purchase. See this article from July 10th, by Ellen Byron featuring James Stengel who is the Global Marketing Officer for P&G. In it, Mr….
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Developer Programs Key to Upward Cycle

In grade school, one of the key determinants of popularity on the playground was how quickly you were selected when the time came to choose up sides for basketball, baseball or soccer. In the same way, the developing business model…
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Scandals rock the Valley; need for an ethical check up

Just when we thought the technology “depression” was over, we face another scandal that, if I’m right, will rock the general investor confidence in technology investments. You know what I’m talking about. Options backdating. This is a time for an ethical check up and discernment training.
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Basic Marketing 101: Don’t make the customer mad

I couldn’t believe this story ; I thought for sure it had to be a hoax. After all, Microsoft has the economics, savvy, and operating experience to do marketing right. But apparently not. Here’s what happened: Microsoft wanted to raise…
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Strategic Defense Moves: Get Closer to your Customer

You know the best way to build a competitive position? By knowing your customer face-to-face, voice-to-voice. Not some abstract idea of who your customer is, but being able to interchange ideas with them. In a career that seems a lifetime…
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Hype vs. Real Emerging Models for High-Tech Industry

I’ve been home sick a lot lately. First a cold that needed steroids to knock out, later a stomach flu which the whole family bonded over, and now a fever my son and I are sharing. (Let that explain…
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Is Adobe going to get crushed by the Big Guy?

The Journal reported today that talks between MSFT and Adobe broke down earlier this week. The issue is whether PDF will become a built-in feature of Microsoft’s office. This is not a one way assault on Adobe, but a fundamental tension on who will innovate the platform and UI of the industry. Adobe has plans of it’s own that will make Microsoft the equivalent of plumbing. Needed but not discussed.
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HP redefines their value proposition for PCs!

Do you know what you are selling to the user? Is it a thing (a unit, a box, a software package) or does that thing get associated with a solution, or feeling or a belief? In this day and age…
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Fighting with 4 Swords: The Art of Competitive Play

Rubicon has a defense practice, which we would love to call “Fighting With 4 Swords: The Art of Competitive Play”. Unfortunately, that’s too long to put on our business card along with our other 3 practices (define, design, optimize). So…
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Sales model is critical go-to-market piece

Getting caught up on reading as I nurse a cold today. An article worth highlighting. On page B10 of this (3/28/06) Tuesday’s WSJ, there was an article on marketing strategy that made loads of sense. Two audiences might want to…
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What makes a good Sales Comp Plan?

Last week, I worked with a CEO on designing / redesigning his comp plan. He has a set up where the business sells subscriptions and the sales rep gets paid a flat % for first year, as well as a…
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Sweat the small stuff, sweat it all

Last week, I attended a roundtable of CEOs. And one CEO of a well-known and privately held firm provided a showcase of his upcoming rebranding effort. Interestingly, the consumer company had done focus groups and figured out what they needed…
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Community is what we all seek

Just finished a book, Plainsong, that my stepdaughter lent me. It’s an interesting story of 2 brother farmers, a pregnant high-schooler, two young boys deserted by their mother, and so on. Good book and well written. The richness of the…
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Hey what’s that in the corner?

I had another late night meeting last week, where my firm was involved in helping a company evaluate a decision to an upcoming product launch. Sorry for not being able to provide details; maybe one day. While we presented…
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Cinching creates more value

I’m always worried about the Valley companies that have too much funding, too much venture capital, too much valuation. In this day of American ‘more is better’ philosophy, you might think me contra-culture (or, worse, old-school) to even mention it….
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