I actually do have some marketing stuff to talk about…
but not today.
Kev-E-Kev serves up this video that killed me this morning:
[youtube]nIiI3Gxti_8[/youtube]
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Rule of 2
Seeing as I’m all Rock-ifiied tonight, I’m also publishing my Rule of 2, I will join no social network until I get a second invite or a second person talks about it. There’s just too many out there that I sign up for and then never hear from again. More and more of my life becomes finding ways to filter out things that have nothing to do with my goals. Maybe one day I’ll come up with a rule that will stop me from making moronic blog posts and try to stick to marketing…
So I had a good news/bad news thing happen today. A competitor came out with a webinar campaign that is a dead copy for one that we did about 3 months ago. They’re using an analyst we’ve used in the past, a topic we have done multiple webinars on with the same title, and better yet they are even picking on the king of the hill (codename: Large Azure, aka HAL), a strategy we started and now they want to get on our bandwagon.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and yet my first instinct is to rent a billboard across the street from their home office with an obnoxious message on it – perhaps something about turning it sideways, or better yet send over a tray of Ex-Lax brownies (never mind I said that, I wouldn’t do that).
The second instinct was to put them in the crosshairs, but they work with some open source stuff and as soon as you pick on that all these tree-hugging freaks and eastern bloc terrorists start trying to bring down your severs, and the people that go that route tend to not have budget anyway, so that’s pointless.
So I just have to laugh and say mission accomplished, the bar has been raised so now it’s time to turn it up another notch, just when things seemed to be getting rock solid. I say “My stuff” but it’s really the work of the whole group, I just take it rather personally, but I know they do too, they just don’t want to be associated with my brownie campaign.
But it’s no problem, I have no doubt we will be able to serve up another hot, fresh, piping serving of “shut the hell up”, that they’ll try to copy 5 months later.
Editor’s note: time to switch to decaf.
Editor’s note 2: For more info on the greatest wrestler since Hulk Hogan, click here.
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Wall’s Paradox
This is something that I have been working on and haven’t completely fleshed out. The bottom line is this – the better the product and company you work for, the less important it is to be a great marketeer. At first I thought this to be a great revelation, now I’m thinking it’s just depressing to the talented, or perhaps an attempt to call out the lottery winning pretenders.
Rather than marinate on that, check out this weeks Marketing Over Coffee, the best marketing podcast.
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All about the Awards (Pt. 2)
About a month ago I mentioned the importance of awards. The main point was that you should be more interested in the judges that the award itself. Will knew what I was talking about and said that it might be good to write a bit more about it, so here we go…
Top 10 reasons you should apply for awards besides giving an acceptance speech and being able to dance around in a circle with your co-workers chanting “We are great!”
- The Judges – You may be paying thousands a month to get your message in front of certain editors or experts, the cost of applying for an award is a small fraction of that and it’s a much softer sell to a judge reviewing your application versus someone you are trying to persuade after having begged for a meeting. You’re getting access to the Judge’s network at a fraction of the cost.
- Strengthen The Message – Most applications are a good opportunity to work on your written message (copy). Many times I’ve re-used paragraphs from applications for future powerpoints and brochures.
- Add to The Message – This is big on the consumer side, look at car companies bragging about JD Power. Who is he anyway?
- Publicity – Frequently awards are sponsored, or even run entirely by trade publications. They usually write up the results as an article, often many times. Again, the application is far cheaper than the price of an ad.
- Motivation – Pursuing an award makes an excellent milestone to push a team forward, even better if they are a runner up pushing for a victory the next year.
- The Competition – This is another opportunity to showcase the weakness of your competitors to industry luminaries (again, the judges).
- Networking – Awards dinners are a good chance to get some fresh business cards from outside of your normal fishbowl.
- Resume Boost – Scoring an award is a badge that everyone can add to their list of accomplishments.
- Thrill of Victory, Agony of Defeat – Victory can be bragged about for a year, defeat gives you a chance to figure out what you might have to change to make your message more palatable.
- Free chicken dinner – well, maybe that’s not a benefit, rubber fowl gets tired quickly.
Any more points? Best of luck to all the future award winners out there!
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Now in HD DVD!
My HD DVD drive arrived today. Here’s a deal where you can get 5 free movies when you buy one. The player was about $160 thanks to NewEgg and a secret code from my new favorite shopping promotional code site. I figure that I should be able to unload at least 3 of the movies on Amazon (King Kong came with the player making it a total of 6 movies), so that means I’m upgrading for about $100.
The other cool thing is that Netflix automatically updates my queue so that we will be sent HD DVDs if they are available at no extra charge.
It’s funny, it does look really good, but you don’t really notice it until you go back to a regular DVD and are thinking “Why is this picture so crappy?”. I’ve heard Hot Fuzz is actually a very good HD DVD and I’m looking forward to checking out some concerts. And speaking of concerts, let me get all 80’s on you and brag about the return of Van Halen.
Like many people, I first registered for Second Life, cruised around for a couple of weeks and haven’t been back in a long time. There are a number of reasons why many users follow this path. Some find it confusing and difficult and give up. Others see a lot of empty space and end up not becoming part of the community and leave for more interesting online hobbies. As on online gamer I got on, said “Hmmm, not as much fun as a networked game from 10 years ago, and I can’t kill anybody or blow anything up.” Lags and crashes are not uncommon, especially if your machine is not up to snuff, so I wasn’t impressed with the overall experience. Lots of cool stuff to see, but limited in the ability to generate huge crowds.
My wife is at the wrong point on the hype cycle, she’s just tired of hearing about it and doesn’t want to hear about it any more (File under “Hater”).
So for all this complaining you’d think I would be laughing at companies such as Coca-Cola, Sears, American Outfitters, and IBM that are pouring resources into empty islands on SL. But I’m not. Granted that some organizations are spending more than is perhaps wise, and if you are looking for ROI in the next 3 years you will be disappointed.
The critical point is that 3D user environments are not going to go away. If you’ve ever been lost in an immersive experience such as a great multiplayer online game, online gambling, playing with simulations such as SimCity or the Sims, or even just watching an IMAX film you know that the face of entertainment and interaction with technology is continuing to evolve. It was obvious for a small group at PARC that saw the first graphical interface – they knew that there was an easier way to work with computers rather than just typing text commands. Second Life is the same thing, clunky, yes, but a look into new ways to interface with computers.
So now, everybody makes fun of the companies that jumped into SL in a big way, or what appears to be a big way. This is an important point, Coke is probably spending more than an entire 20-person company’s marketing budget, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they are spending less that 1% of their marketing budget. Here’s a Brain Buster – How much are you spending on Marketing R&D?
The risk averse are sitting around saying it’s too early to get in to SL. As I gaze into my crystal ball, it seems safe to bet on this:
A couple of years go by and suddenly Third Life shows up. Maybe Linden rolls out the next big version, maybe somebody steals all their good ideas improves the existing paradigm. I log on, now I can use a gamepad to drive around, and there’s a trusty flamethrower for only $2000L. Next time some bozo shows up to interfere with my conversation or do something perverse – WHOOSH! A huge helping of J-Funk BBQ.
The big crowd arrives. Now the nay-sayers say “We need to get a cross-functional tiger team to get into this virtual thingy” (I picture Dilbert’s boss doing this).
What happens next? Coca-Cola, American Outfitters etc. get their stuff ported and up in a week. The rest of the Fortune 500 put together a focus group to figure out what they need to do now that they want to get in. Lo and behold, there’s a list of problems a mile long:
- Who do we hire to build this?
- What budget takes the hit?
- Who is responsible for the upkeep? Marketing? Sales? IT? Support? Customer Service?
- How do we account for this?
- Can we add to this list by having an offsite focus group boondoggle that will take 1 week?
- Who do we hire to manage the people we hired to build this?
- What should this thing look like?
- What are we trying to accomplish?
- How will we know if we are doing it right?
- Why is Bob’s office 2.5 cubic feet bigger than mine? We’re both VPs! (These are Forture 500 animals, mind you)
- … continue list with 576 more items
This will be fodder for committees, focus groups, consultants, analysts, janitors, you name it. This could take years in many companies, and it will in some.
There will also be a small group that goes in and looks like the US Olympic Basketball Dream Team vs. St. Mary’s School for the Blind. They’re paying their dues now in Second Life.
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Hammer Time
The latest M show is up, and I am off to bed. I have a post brewing on why companies should be in Second Life (even though I’m a hater), talk to you tomorrow….J
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Friday Night Fights!
Robocop and Terminator continue to duke it out! (Did you miss Round 1?)
Who will win? Bahlactus will be done!
Check back next week for more!
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Great Marketing
Whenever I see some brilliant marketing I’m compelled to make a note and post it here.
I was getting my car washed yesterday and before you pull around to the entry there’s a self service kiosk where you can grab a trashbag or a heavy duty paper towel. There’s also a sort of gumball machine that has peanuts in it with a dopey slogan “We’re nuts about our customers!”. Don’t be fooled by the idiotic tagline. Easy marks (aka suckers) like myself grab some, soccer moms with kids in the minivan probably do the same to keep the kids quiet.
But what happens next? You start cracking open and peeling the peanuts. So unless you are compulsive like I am, eating right over your new free trashbag, you finish the carwash and look around the inside of your car, filled with peanut shells, and say “Damn, we should vacuum this mess out!”
And, lo and behold, there’s the vacuum right next to the exit.
Have a good weekend.