Going Long on the Economy

A launch failure?

2011-04-20T12:50:00.000-07:00

Based on the day 1 feedback on the playbook, it is another product launch strategy which doesn't work. Show up to market late with less capabilities. Here is a market reality for day one sales from Wired:

"Technology observers typically view a product launch as a strong indicator of how well they’ll perform over their shelf life, because Day One tends to generate the highest number of sales from enthusiastic early adopters."

Perhaps it was technical debt which made them late.

Social Marketing is about people, me thinks

2010-12-16T04:14:00.000-08:00

Brands, companies and products, but where do people fit in the equation?

There is no doubt that brands are investing big time in social media based on some articles of late. Here are just a few of the articles which have gotten me thinking about the influence of companies/brands in social....

No matter what markets you service, the same old stuff isn’t working anymore and there is this really hyped up thing called social media, but what is the best approach for you, your products and your company? While to many of us in the trenches, it is obvious that marketing is changing it would be hard to see that based on the brands and the brand centric approaches many companies are taking with social.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to be a millionaire

2009-09-07T06:57:00.000-07:00

So tech people have all kinds of crazy ideas about how much their businesses are worth. From JCM over at a product management and marketing blog:

Enterprise value is a financial concept that describes the amount of money the market believes your business to be worth. It is often referred to as the ‘takeover value’ — the amount of money required for an acquirer to buy your company at it’s current market price. Enterprise value is different that market capitalization or market cap. A public company’s market capitalization is equal to the number of shares outstanding multipled by the current share price. Enterprise value is a more comprehensive measure of a company’s value since it also includes the amount of cash, debt, and other items associated with a business.

Scobel Drug Test Required

2009-09-07T06:55:00.000-07:00

I had to chuckle the other day when I read a post entitled “Why Twitter is underhyped and is probably worth five to 10 billion dollars” by the infamous Robert Scoble. I am somewhat of a student of technology company valuations. While Twitter may someday be worth $5 billion, it’s not going to be any time soon. If Mr. Scoble thinks they are worth $5 billion then perhaps he might need to take a drug test since there is no way that Twitter is worth $5 billion today or even next year.

The best way to gauge the value of a company is to look at what how the markets value a company’s stock. For private, venture backed companies like Twitter there is no daily market for their stock, but we can look at publicly traded technology companies to get a feel for how the real world values them. Later in this post we’ll take a look at how the market values technology companies and see how Twitter stacks up. First, let’s take a look at Mr. Scoble’s ideas about why Twitter is worth $5 to $10 billion.

Mountain Social 2009 LAUNCHES!

2009-03-22T05:50:00.000-07:00

The Atlanta social media community has come together to launch a national event for 250 leaders in the industry. The event, Mountain Social 2009, is being held September 11, 2009 to the 13th in an North Georgia Mountain enclave, just north of the city. The event is equi-distant from Atlanta, Chattanooga, TN and Greenville, SC. It also is a reasonable drive from the triangle in North Carolina.

The organizers chose this locations for numerous reasons - the beauty, the ability for significant others to have things to do and the location from key populations. Flights into any of the 4 cities work (Atlanta, Greenville, Chattanooga and Charlotte) for national and international attendees. The event has several internationally known speakers with customer relationship thought leader Chris Carfi and the creative Sarah Dopp. Regional leaders Sherry Heyl, Jon Gatrell and San Francisco's Mark Resch are also speaking at the event. The group is holding a "contest" for the last speaker and per Leti Machado "We have significant interest in adding a green tract by a potential sponsor, but this is on hold until mid-May at least until we can justify".

The last 3 conferences in the region all sold out and the group is taking it on the road to SOBCon09 in May to talk it up a little. This is an encouraging thing in the economy - people are traveling, sharing ideas and investing in new ideas. If only this positive economic sentiment was contagious.

Are You Going to Submit Your Abstract, Attend or Sponsor?

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http://www.geo-jobe.com
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pepperandpetey
Kneed Deep in the Hooah
Charleston Chow
Art Sails
SCIWay
SCforGreen

What does a Product Manager Make?

2009-01-18T04:41:00.000-08:00

Each year Pragmatic Marketing conducts a survey of product managers and marketing professionals. Here’s a link to the 2008 survey results - 2008 Annual Product Management and Marketing Survey.

The survey covers topics such as demographic profiles of typical product managers, reporting structures, who has P&L responsibility, ratio of product managers to other roles in the organization (development, sales, etc.) The report also does a deep dive on compensation levels and the impact of geography and gender on product management compensation. Get the info

Get a Brand Check - A Basline of Posts

2009-01-18T04:28:00.000-08:00

Marketing is fairly straight forward, its about stories, belief and goals. One of the biggest challenges/rat holes many marketers get into is being unwilling to make something up or to look at your product/market in a different way. The challenge is how can you deconstruct and repackage something most everyone already has and make it differentiated. Is there a opportunity to create a position on something or highlight capabilities which in an average day might just be something you expect out of a product and call it something new?

Our stories as marketers continues to be key deliverable, whether it’s understanding how YOUR history and biases impact your stories and now from Seth, how your EXECUTION is central to the story/brand experience. Below is an excerpt which asserts lack of a story can impact consistency of the brand:

But what if you haven’t figured out a story yet?

Then the work is random. Then the story is confused or bland or indifferent and it doesn’t spread. On the other hand, if you decide what the story is, you can do work that matches the story. Your decisions will match the story. The story will become true because you’re living it.
Does Starbucks tell a different story from McDonald’s?

No matter what you are marketing, it represents some type of story which highlights a single theme or idea. How to save money, how to improve your effectiveness, how to improve your quality of life - all them threads which position a product

Need a Job - Get Social

2009-01-04T03:40:00.000-08:00

There a lot of good folks with talent, experience and education competing for jobs so ya gotta do something. Resumes, experience and skills are abundant and alone won’t do the job in a competitive marketplace. The marketplace is getting more competitive everyday!

Activism, thanks and kindness

2008-11-28T05:45:00.001-08:00

Spent the last couple of days brushing up on my reading. The happy activist is an interesting blog here at blogger, a funny post on giggle quotes and a list of things to be thankful for. It appears to be the second list of 100 things, not so funny and funny things to be thankful for.

I hope you had a great holiday and you have a fun packed weekend of things that will make you giggle. Everyone needs a laugh and a little love!

Cheers!

Music Therapy and input

2008-10-24T12:16:00.000-07:00

Get involved in this conversation, what does music make YOU do? Let Alexis know and join the discussion.

Another $3 Trillion Dollars Please

2008-10-11T05:43:00.000-07:00

Not sure where this falling knife is goind to stop. The $700B bailout is just the beginning and doesn’t make a real dent. There has to be at least another $1.5-2.25 trillion in excess in the market and this weeks performance seems to validate that, so why not invest in people, the environment and preparation for the next economies requirements - access, information and sustainability. The new deal helped unify the country and bring new skills to the general population, that just might be what we need. It's just math, more on this can be found here, but the abridged version is below:

The New Green Deal: A Growth Grid

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: bailout politics)

ode to culinary cuts

2007-10-21T10:08:00.000-07:00

Pork Chop - Style de Italy

I'm still amazed at how more interesting cooking is now that I have to write a book report on my experience. The recipe below can be seasoned to taste, ... Read more..

Crispy BBQ Chicken Dinner

This recipe has been a staple in our house over time and it has recently gotten better with the addition of CulinaryPrep process and is the first meal I ever ... Read more..

Home 2.0: a Bloggery Introduction

This is my first foray into the whole online sharing experience. I've been collating recipes for a couple of weeks, mainly because I like it and in a minor ... Read more..

Crazy Butters - did you know you could season?

So we had a dinner party with 2 friends of ours - say six months ago. Dave and Claire come over, bring a dessert and they brought their own butter ... Read more..

It tumbles…

So the whole thing is really a balance of health, choice and taste. Typical diet concerns - however; CulinaryPrep (CP), delivers on all three components. Basically - ... Read more..

Kickin it off

2007-10-21T10:05:00.000-07:00

There are only three kinds of people in the world:

Those that like audio books
Those that don't
(and by far the largest) those that have never tried one

The reason for the market failure is historic. Audio books traditionally generate very little revenue to the author. She gets a royalty on a royalty on a small sales base. Not worth the time to promote. Add to that the huge hassle of keeping a large number of titles in stock at a retailer and throw in the high price required by producing many CDs or cassette tapes per title, and you see the problem.

Here's the thing, though: In my experience, audio book listeners are ten times more likely to drop me email or talk about what they heard than book readers. Part of it is the entertaining nature of the presentation, I think (I probably talk better than I write) and part of it is the nature of the experience--it's going into a different part of your brain.

Anyway, digital media, as in so many other areas, changes everything. First, authors are getting smarter about what rights they preserve. Second, digital media has no inventory problem. The Long Tail rules. If you've got an MP3 player, you probably have an iPod, which probably means you have access to the iTunes store. There's a ton of audiobooks there. And audible.com (among others) which pioneered the field, has a huge catalog.

How to make a PowerPoint chart

More data does not equal more information.

Sooner or later, you're going to be tempted to use actual data in a presentation. Powerpoint makes it easy, and it also tempts you to do it completely wrong. Here are some ideas to help.

The first question: What's the point?

Yes, there needs to be a point. The only reason to include statistics in a slide is to advance an argument. Unless you work for the National Institute of Health, the chances that you'll be asked to review raw data on a slide and try to figure out causation is slim indeed. (Though this is a really useful way to do research and analysis, most readers of this blog don't get invited to meetings like that very often).

In this slide from Garr, we see too much data, poorly presented. Does the relationship of internet connectivity via cell phone in the UK vs. France have anything to do with why we're here? I don't think it does. My guess is that the purpose of this slide is to persuade the viewer that an enormous percentage of those in South Korean have access. The rest of the stats are certainly nice, and they add credibility, but the details are not just irrelevant to the audience, they are actually distracting.

My version looks like this:

I've made an assumption--my audience is in the US. I'm trying to teach them that in South Korea, a vastly larger percentage of the market has access to the internet via their cell phone (perhaps I'm pitching a VC on a South Korean internet venture). While China and the UK offer me juicy relative stats, the audience is in the US and they are ethnocentric... they understand the state of their own market.

There are several other things going on here are that are a bit more subtle. The first is that left to right bar charts are silly. The audience takes a lot longer to 'get' the idea that something that extends further to the right is better. UP, on the other hand, is always better.

Second, when dealing with percentages, you need to communicate that getting closer to 100% is incrementally more difficult. In other words, 40% is not twice as good as 20%. It's actually ten times as good if you're talking about some sort of networked device like a fax machine. In this case, I do that by drawing a picture of a cell phone. As you can see, the closer you get to 100%, the happier your psyche is. The US phone is clearly broken, the other two are pretty close to great.

Next question: How do I make it a verb?

PowerPoint isn't a printout. It's a presentation. As a result, you get to create action. Instead of just showing the slide I just showed you, I'd show this slide instead. Why? Because I want to set the baseline. I'd say, "As you probably know, about a third of all the cell phones in the US have access to the Internet. As a result, there are relatively few useful services available, and most cell phone users rarely if ever go online. It's too slow, too clumsy and there's not enough to do."

Two things have happened. First, I've made a simple statement of fact that is easy to gut check and probably believe. It becomes your fact at that point, not mine.

The second thing I've done, by leaving the left side of the slide blank, is create a little itch. You're wondering what's on the left. You're waiting for the punchline. THEN I show you the slide with all three countries on it, and I can say, "When you have almost complete penetration, the entire game changes..."

And then we're in. We're on the same page, and you're ready to hear my story. Remember, you don't pay by the slide. I did a presentation yesterday... 154 slides in 54 minutes. And I didn't even break a sweat.

Last thought and then I'll let you go. You can also aggregate data. In fact, you're expected to. Pie charts are a great example of how people go wrong.

Here's a typical pie chart, showing traffic sources to a website:

It's accurate. It shows more than a half a dozen places that traffic come from. It's also useless. It's ungrokable. It doesn't have a point.

Here's the same data, grouped to make a point. "We get our traffic from three sources, one dominates the other two, but only one of them is under our control in terms of our ability to scale it directly. So let's talk about how we grow that slice."

By all means, give me the data. All of it. Just do it in a printout, and share it with us at the end of the presentation.