Drawing digital pathways on the new trade maps.
Trade drives the way people interact. People, products, money, and ideas follow the trade routes and impact everything in their path. Keeping pace with the way trade routes are changing is essential to success or even survival. New Trade Routes is working to better understand the changes so we can help our clients, investees, and grantees improve their chances of success.
The most popular stories in the media are not necessarily the ones to spend time reading. Often they are just trolling for clicks by rehashing the same story from yesterday. Fortunately, we have careful, hard working writers doing important work serving up stories we may otherwise have missed.
Read MoreBack around the turn of the century I had a start up in the business process outsourcing sector. We did marketing projects for big technology companies and like many outsourcers and professional services firms, we billed for our time.
Read MoreThe other day I riffed a bit about the currently popular word “Modernization” in this blog post. In the data biz we also regularly talk about The Journey. There is the data journey, the journey to the cloud, even the journey to modernity.
Read MoreWhere are you on the email is dead vs email is not dead continuum? We are launching an email newsletter and sharing the experience here. Please add to the conversation!
Read MoreEvery day we learn about another company in our industry. Some are competitors, some partners, some both (frienemies). I use this great landscape graphic created by Matt Turck to help me remember how big the universe is and not to get hung up about any one dot on the map.
Read MoreSome time ago I wrote a post about the Apple Brand Promise where I proposed that the magic of Steve Jobs was making his customers feel cool for buying his products. I still think people buy Apple products because of the way it changes how others view them. People feel cool when holding an Apple device and not because it makes them more productive or smarter and clearly not richer, but because the Apple brand promise says cool people buy Apple devices.
Cool is almost impossible to fake, and there is no formula for becoming cool. Just ask any rock band, super model, or San Francisco restaurant owner -- cool is as impossible to predict as stock price.
Cool is also impossible to copy. Fake Rolex watches will never be cool. No one is going to remember the band that tried to be like A Flock of Seagulls.
Those who have been touched by the ferry godmother of cool all know down deep that the chances of becoming cool are about the same as winning the lottery. Feel lucky if you win, but don't start thinking it was because you deserved it.
Which brings us to Microsoft. Microsoft makes people productive and enables them to keep more of their money in their pockets. It is rare that one feels cool with a Microsoft product, but who cares! I will take smart over cool any day. Smart matters, smart is lasting, people who are smart got there on more than the luck of the draw. The Microsoft brand promise should be associated with smart -- not cool.
I think many of us have lost track of what the Microsoft Brand Promise is. If you know, feel free to post a reply.
When using W8 the other day (I mostly use W7), I did not feel smart or cool!
“I love money. I love everything about it. I bought some pretty good stuff. Got me a $300 pair of socks. Got a fur sink. An electric dog polisher. A gasoline powered turtleneck sweater. And, of course, I bought some dumb stuff, too.”
-Steve Martin
I try to make these posts positive. The world has enough negativity without me adding to the stinking pile. However, not long ago I got the most unbelievably dumb direct mail piece from American Express. Not wanting to go negative, I held my tongue.
Today, I got an equally rediculous piece from HP, and here I am -- joining the screaming hoard!
That is right, American Express sent me a 30 inch long remote control speedboat! To buy an equivalent item on Amazon? $30+!
Any company doing a direct mail campaign where the item shipped is over $30 must have over $50 invested by the time it hits my door -- particularly with the custom box, shipping... Any company spending that kind of money per item, must have done their targetting homework... right?
WRONG!
I am already an American Express customer! One would think that before sending this list off to the mailing house, Amex would have done a quick compare to the current customer list.
Hmmm... maybe they were targetting current customers specifically. After all, the name and address matches exactly to my statement. Why would anyone spend that kind of money to reach out to their current customers? I have no idea. American Express must have one talented advertising agency.
According to AdAge, Ogilvy and Mather New York is the agency of record for American Express, who is the 9th largest advertiser in the country with an annual budget of over $2 Billion. These guys must be super smart -- do you think this campaign could possibly work?
HP and BBDO - Just Keeping Up
Not to be left out, HP sent me a remote control Ferari. Now this is a bit more modest, less that a foot long, and probably in the under $20 price range. Also, we are an on again, off again HP customer and partner, so getting in front of us could make a difference in our purchasing habits. Lower cost, more upside... but I still have a hard time believing that this campaign could even pay for itself. Incidentally, HP's ad budget is only $1 Billion.
I didn't respond to either and my kids looked at the plastic crap and shrugged.
What on earth will the big spenders think of next?
It seems that just about every week I see something that reinforces how IBM is way out front in the customer centric-ness of big data. Here is a great video they posted on YouTube showing what they are talking about when they say Smarter Marketing:
If you want a bit more of the IBM Smarter Marketing juice, they have a whole bunch of great content on this web site:IBM Smarter Planet: Marketing
When the rental car web site says Ford Taurus or equivalent I just groan. Anyone who has done any traveling at all knows the feeling. Just as fun as finding out your hotel room is next to the elevator winch room, or that your toothpaste blew up in your bag.
Ford has been making a big push into the tech business. Advertising on all of the geek sites and pulling out all of the stops at CES. The revival of the Mustang has been well executed too. I have rented a few Mustang convertibles while on vacation and really loved them.
Getting your product in front of potential new customers in a real life trial is risky because it produces both potential new customers but if the product is not well matched to the customer, it can easily eliminate potential customers.
In the last two weeks I have been dealt the Taurus card twice and I have to say they have been great. What a surprise! Stylish, well put together, and fun to drive. The rental introduction certainly worked for me with Ford.
Not so lucky with Microsoft and Sync. I was eager to try out Sync and it is a disaster. I got it to connect to my phone by bluetooth, but it would sometimes work and other times not work. The user interface is not intuitive and any of the voice activation stuff will require half a day spent with the manual.
This is just one more situation where Microsoft shows up on the consumer radar as a company that just cannot make products that work -- let alone that are fashionable. Lucky for Ford, I have not found other auto computer systems to be all that easy to use either. So maybe Microsoft Sync will not prevent people from buying Fords. But Microsoft Sync will turn people off to other Microsoft products.