Category: articles

I’ll bet no one picks this as their first A-Z peruse. They are always too much of the marketing mix, always getting replaced by something new (direct, emktg, social…..) and all best practices are known and have been experienced first-hand too many times. Yet events always seem to get a third or more of the budget and then systematically ignored by everyone until it’s too late and time to move on to ignoring the next event. What a shame. Events are arguably the most important part of the mix. They are where you get customer, analyst, press, partner, employee and[…]

I’ll try to be direct and brief upfront here and then provide some commentary for the few and the bored. A formula that works is to get the right: List Vehicle Creative Content Timing Call to action Follow up (or nurture actions) Commentary: Goof any of those up and you diminish your investment considerably. In my advertising blog post, I addressed some of these issues so I will focus here on the list, vehicle, creative, timing and follow up. Partner with the right media company to get access to the right lists and cull your database carefully. You’ll need to[…]

Warning: do not attempt this unless you REALLY need to as there are many other lower risk things that you can do to effectively position the company and create a consistent messaging platform. OK–you still want to do it?  Then I’ll give several first-hand examples of category creation strategies with some background context. 1. Avoid the category. Enigma, Inc. (yes I regret that I didn’t push to rename the company) creation of the Support Chain. i2 does supply chain, Enigma does support chain was our pre IPO pitch. That’s what you do with a unique vertical solution when you don’t[…]

Most discussions about business models don’t involve branding and vice a versa.  This is a shame because a well defined brand reinforces a well defined business model.  Most technology organizations haven’t spent enough time defining either and the predictable result is that neither scales. A well defined business model tells you what not to do and what to do better than anything else.  This is true of brands as well.  These definitions are the guide posts and rails that tell the company how much to stretch or evolve. So what’s the point?  Connect your unique value propositions or identity with[…]

Bottom line: there is a clear formula that can help you improve responses rates to your marketing programs. My formula is: Naked + Swahili + Enemy + Last-one-left = a Response. Now if you understand that, skip what’s below and if not, bear with me. CEOs and Boards always ask CMOs some version of ‘what is your definition of marketing?’ as a way to deduce skill set and vision alignment. My answer is broad (to organize the dialog) to reflect the big M multi-dimensional aspects of marketing but when most people think about good marketing, they envision good advertising. Advertising[…]