Marketing in the Time of Cholera
Fundamentals For Thriving in a Toxic Economy
I’m a PC….. I’m Clueless
It must be great to have so much money coming in that you don’t have to have effective advertising. All over the BART station in San Francisco I use, Microsoft has advertisements that say “I’m a PC and Windows 7 was my idea”. Now I realize this advertising is meant to create awareness and Microsoft can certainly do that easily but what the heck are they thinking in Redmond? I have never been impressed with Microsoft’s marketing. They try to be so cutsie that you don’t even know what the intent is? My personal perspective is that this advertising campaign is horrid. Are they trying to say they listened to what people wanted and that’s what this release is about? Candidly, I don’t want the people in the ads to have created my operating system. I want a group of hyper intelligent forward thinking people who understand reliability and usability to have the idea for my next OS. Not a bunch of average schmoes (which I am one) to have the idea. I’m sure millions was spent analyzing what they should say and how to win back all the people who are disillusioned in Microsoft products. However, it’s the same as it ever was. If Microsoft spent has as much time over-delivering instead of overthinking, I think they would serve themselves well.
Not Freemium – Goldenrulesque
A friend and colleague, Dwyane Melancon, wrote a post on his blog about Marketing in the Time of Cholera. It’s interesting because he wonders why I don’t ask for email addresses on my book. The bottom line is that the goal of the book is not to make money….. but to just help people. Thus, I’m not trying to use a Freemium model or anything like that. I guess it’s more of a goldenrulesque approach. Help people out and good things will come your way…. and if not, who cares. 
Or put better by Mr Dickens a while ago:
“‘Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”
Mr Marley Giving Advice
Infectious
Someone downloaded the book and I asked them how it was and their response was “infectious”. Very cute.
Recession Going Away?
I had someone ask me if I am worried about my book coming out soon with the recession coming to an end. The first think I told them is that I think the fundamentals that the book is focusing on are still applicable during any economic time but are more useful in a recession. Second, I question whether we are coming out of the recession. Put another way, if we are coming out of the recession, I think everyone needs to brace for the recovery. Seems like many companies are still challenged by the economic times we are in and the need for good solid marketing is not going away anytime soon.
Website Comes Alive
Well the MITTOC website is starting to take form. Still needs a few functional things but the overall look is very attractive and simple. Greg Johnson at Bustatheme has done a great job, even if it took a while for us to get to this point.
Now if I can just practice what I preach in the book and keep the text simple and relevant……..
Does God Need Twitter?
I read this recent article.
http://tech.yahoo.com/news/nm/20090728/wr_nm/us_britain_tweet_life_2
It’s sort of interesting from a marketing perspective. What are they really trying to do? What’s the core issue?
Interesting to watch old school practices attempt to figure out what new technologies mean.
Edits, Edits and More Edits
Well I gave a draft of the book to Katie and she gave some great feedback. But wow, there’s a lot of work to be done with these great edits. Hopefully the book is becoming a little better each time an edit happens. We shall see. Proof is in the pudding……. but how will I know it’s good pudding?
My Final Edits
So I put my final edits into InDesign and sent the file off to my editor. Let’s see what happens. I’m hoping this will be the final set of edits before they go to Don. I also gave a draft to a close friend who is in the publishing business. We shall see what she has to say. Hmmmmmm.
Virtually Interesting…..
So we had a virtual event at Elastra today. I am curious what the final results will be. Overall it was strange to interact with people via chat who you are attempting to engage in a sales cycle. The key will be the results we see in the reporting. If lots of people downloaded content it could be a very successful event. If not, I wonder how it will rate as a lead gen activity. I don’t think I saw any chat conversations that seemed worth of going to pipeline one day……..
Taking the Lead in the War for Talent
Recently I bumped into a four color brochure that right on the front says “Taking the Lead in the War for Talent”. And the question I have is “do armies take leads in wars or do they win them”? I kept thinking wars get won and you take the lead in races…… but it just doesn’t seem like you take a lead in wars. Maybe I am being nitpicky but it seems like a mixed metaphor to me…………
