Category archive: Marketing

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Pizza Phone v. Mashup: Incubating the Unintended Consequence

A couple of days ago, I wrote about what I’m now calling the Pizza Phone--a great product idea, executed too narrowly to be broadly useful (as useless, say, as would be a cell phone that could only be used to dial up for pizza delivery). That post was prompted by Dan Bricklin’s essay on the Long Tail, and how a major product’s robustness is determined in part by its adaptability to different uses--especially the unexpected.

Today I was reading Danah Boyd, on Many 2 Many, on how MySpace evolved from being an 18+ site to one almost monopolized by teenagers--without interference or assistance on the part of the site’s developers. Why? Because the kids were able to adapt the site’s tools to meet their needs: “Unlike adults, youth are not invested in email; their primary peer-to-peer communication occurs synchronously over IM. Their use of MySpace is complementing that practice.” The decision to incorporate IM into MySpace was probably not one of the design team’s top priorities, but has turned out to be their making.

Then a bit later, I was reading about mashups, and how the same principles of broad, adaptable utility come into play when developers mix and sample programs the way DJs do music. Dion Hinchcliffe has a particularly succinct description of the principle on ZD Net’s Enterprise Web 2.0 blog:

...let’s focus for a minute on the underlying reasons for the mashup phenomenon.  An important one is the advent of Web 2.0 concepts that encourage software creators to expose their applications as sets of reusable services.  The theory is that you can be much more valuable to the rest of the world if your software can be reused in unintended ways.  In other words, don’t just provide a fully created end-product for one pre-intended use.  Encourage others use the good pieces of what you provide in new and innovative ways.

If you’ve never seen a mashup, look at The Windmap, a devastatingly clean and useful (if unadorned) site that uses google maps spliced with a wiki.

Hackers have long been entrepreneurial souls. But now the software they write is itself entrepreneurial. We’ve established that markets are conversations, and a couple of months ago, Cluetrain co-author Doc Searls went so far as to suggest that code is conversation. But I along with everyone else always assumed that meant that markets were places where people talked to each other, whether through words or code. But more significantly, I think our marketplaces are also places where our encoded offspring can continue to interact long after we’re abed.

In part, this has happened because we have loosened the definition of ownership in this environment.

A lot of the discussion over who “owns” this kind of open source code is misguided (i.e., arguments for or against ownership, capitalist vs. communist models, etc). Setting politics aside, I’d describe the difference between old-style ownership and the new model for ownership as being very much like that between owning a car and having a child. If you own a car, it doesn’t move until you put the key in and turn it, and when you aren’t present, it hibernates.  Your child, on the other hand, needs more attention investment from you up front, and less and less as it matures. If you either neglect or attempt to overcontrol it, it will grow up to be impaired and dysfunctional. It needs to get out there and live, make its own mistakes. And if you treat it well, giving it nurturance and freedom in good measures, it may just take care of you in your dotage.

By that token, modern entrepreneurs would probably be far better served by boning up on Dr. Spock than on Sun Tzu.

There is a key difference, though: unlike human reproduction, where two individuals’ DNA sequences get put into a Cuisinart and come out as a randomly generated genetic pattern, our virtual children are designed with fewer rules and more intention. It’s like a biological process, but with more leeway and room for creativity. Like being able to breed a camel with a can opener--if you decide you want to, and if doing so produces something new and useful.

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Cultivating trust, online and off

I’m the head of marketing for Latitude, the UK’s market leading search engine marketing company. In that role, I’ve organised several events - some exclusively for clients, some open to the public - in which I try to bring new, innovative, or merely interesting ideas in business, marketing, and customer service to the people attending. Trust is a theme that keeps emerging at those events. From a previous post:

Apart from aims specific to certain types of e-commerce sites - such as getting basic subscribers to convert to customers with funded accounts - any company that sells online needs to cultivate trust if they are to enjoy long term success. This goes beyond considerations such as the language used in landing pages and right to the core of how a business works…

The issue of trust is not going away. If anything, it is becoming even more important as people grow increasingly information-rich and technically-savvy. Those people are your customers and potential customers. Search can put you in contact with them...

Cultivating trust - and creating value for the customer and your company at the same time - is an art that many businesses would love to master. But it needn’t be that difficult. Marketing guru Seth Godin gives a very good example, in his post Bits are free, of how much better companies could be handling their customers, fostering trust, and improving the bottom line at the same time. Read the compare-and-contrast on offer and then ask yourself: Which way will our business go?

Monday, February 20, 2006

When the Long Tail Wags the Dog

VisiCalc founder Dan Bricklin has just published a long, splendid essay on this topic. It’s one of those explaining-the-meaning-of-life bits of thinking that anyone who is in the process of developing or selling a product should read.

"When the Long Tail Wags the Dog" continued...

Saturday, February 18, 2006

Swiss Cottage Cabs, Shari's Berries, and responsibility evasion

Duck responsibility, enrage a customer. As Seth Godin explains, it really is that simple. He publishes an email sent to a customer of Shari’s Berries, about a $65+ order for chocolate covered strawberries that they guaranteed would be delivered on Valentine’s Day:

Dear XXXXXXXXXXXXX,

We are writing to inform you that your order for delivery February 14th was not shipped yesterday as requested.

We are prepared to ship your order on February 14th for arrival on the 15th ..  Alternatively, you do have the option of canceling your order, but we’d
rather you did not.

We regret that your order did not ship as requested and in consideration of this delay, if you wish us to still ship the order, we will provide a discount of 40% off the normal product price.

Please choose which course of action you wish that we take by replying to this email or by sending an email to service@berries.com.

Sincerely,

Shari’s Berries Customer Service Team

If this seems to you like a reasonable way to serve a disappointed customer, listen to Seth.

"Swiss Cottage Cabs, Shari's Berries, and responsibility evasion" continued...

Thursday, February 16, 2006

How to write a marketing story that sticks

Dave Gray, CEO of Xplane, boils it down:

Your story must be

1. Relevant: People care about things that are relevant to them and their situation. To make a story relevant you need to get inside your audience’s heads. The more you understand how they see the world and what they care about, the more relevant your story will become.

2. Unique: The benefits you describe need to be unique to you and available nowhere else. If your benefits aren’t unique, you will become commoditized, and people won’t why they should come to you. You might have a great story that gets great results for someone else!

3. Memorable: The story must not only hold people’s attention, it’s got to be easy to remember. You can’t always control the timing, so you need to be sure people can recall the essentials at a later date. You also want a story that’s interesting enough to pass on to others, and easy enough to tell that people tell it consistently.

A story that meets these criteria will get results for you more often than not.

Seems pretty simple, doesn’t it? Nevertheless, every day we are faced with marketing stories that make us think, “So what?” - if they register enough to make us think at all. Perhaps turning a fresh eye to the stories you’re telling with your marketing, armed with Gray’s advice, could reveal some surprises. (If you’re not telling any stories in your marketing, . I’d love to speak to you.)