Super Volatile

Nov 15 / 11:34pm

The Death Of The Spec

And such comparisons show just how clueless Consumer Reports has become. Last year, they milked “Antennagate” for the pageviews, not realizing that it could actually undermine their own credibility if the device still sold well. “Sold well” ended up being a major understatement. So in effect, they themselves highlighted that no one cares about Consumer Reports anymore. And why not? Because they Consumer Reports largely cares about specs. And consumers do not anymore.

Gamification Is Bullshit

Gamification is easy. It offers simple, repeatable approaches in which benefit, honor, and aesthetics are less important than facility. For the consultants and the startups, that means selling the same bullshit in book, workshop, platform, or API form over and over again, at limited incremental cost. It ticks a box. Social media strategy? Check. Games strategy? Check.

Why cigarette packs matter

This is because brand packaging continues to peddle these lies. A street-interception survey from 2009 of 300 smokers and 300 non-smokers found that people think packages with “smooth” and “silver” in the names are safer, and that cigarettes in packaging with lighter colour, and a picture of a filter, were also safer.

Of course tobacco companies know this. As Philip Morris said in their internal document “Marketing New Products in a Restrictive Environment”: “Lower delivery products tend to be featured in blue packs. Indeed, as one moves down the delivery sector, then the closer to white a pack tends to become. This is because white is generally held to convey a clean healthy association.”

The “ladies’ night” strategy

Many singles bars have “ladies’ night” where women are offered price discounts. Singles bars do this for women but not for men because (heterosexually-focused) bars are what economists call two-sided markets – platforms that have two distinct user groups and that get more valuable to each group the more the other group joins the platform - and women are apparently harder to attract to singles bars than men.

Businesses that target two-sided markets are extremely hard to build but also extremely hard to compete against once they reach scale. Tech businesses that have created successful two-sided markets include Ebay (sellers and buyers), Google (advertisers and publishers), Paypal (buyers and merchants), and Microsoft (Windows users and developers).

Psychological manipulation - what I learned trying to save money on a sandwich

In commerce this is the psychology used to get people to keep adding upgrades onto their orders. You get someone to commit to an initial purchase at a simple/cheaper price, and then you ask them if they want more. It's easier now to get them to say yes.
This is what GoDaddy does in spades. Love or hate GoDaddy, they are kicking ass at it.

Turning on your Reality Distortion Field « Steve Blank

As I listened to him present the problems of matching lithium-ion battery packs to EV powertrains and direct drive motors, I realized that he had a built a product for a segment of the electric vehicle market that possibly could put his company on the right side of a major industry discontinuity.

But he was explaining it like it was his PhD dissertation defense.

via steveblank.com

On elevator pitches.

Filed under: marketing presentations

Mar 25 / 1:26am

Branding and Marketing Essentials for Your Web App by Alex Hunter

via vimeo.com

Yet another “dynamic” and “eye-opening” marketing presentation with the author trying to appeal to the audience by being offensive.

Filed under: marketing

Mar 25 / 1:17am

Attracting Normals

Early adopters are good for initial traction and launch buzz, but until you attract Normals, you'll never get past that first reaction. Early adopters are also fickle and will quickly jump ship when something "hotter" comes along.

Krzysztof Szafranek's link blog

marketing