Addressing an audience of senior business leaders at The IoD’s Annual Convention taking place at London’s 02 earlier today, Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide, claimed that in today’s crazy world strategy is dead, the big idea is dead, management is dead and marketing, as we know, is also dead.
Surprisingly above observation was not followed by another saying that we can all go home now.
I wish I would not ignore this talk's message.
Handshakes, a few pleasantries, good hot coffee, and then, well, then I got an Apple press event for one. Keynote slides that would have looked perfect had they been projected on stage at Moscone West or the Yerba Buena Center, but instead were shown on a big iMac on a coffee table in front of us.
Apple enters a “new territory” and it starts with an unusual way of announcing their brand new operating system.
Initially I'd been asking myself if it's not degrading for Apple to approach “a blogger”. But then I read what John Gruber wrote and realized that his account of the story may be more important than a generic article from the “real journalists”. And it's almost surely more insightful.
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.
Few years ago I knew parameters of every part of my computer. Today I don't even know what graphic card it has.
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 you can't just put a “game!” sticker on your boring product. Via @helen_off_troy.
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.”
How easy is to cheat us, people, all of whom claim to be immune to cheap marketing tricks.
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).
On two-sided markets.
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.
On cheap trick of being cheap.
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.
On elevator pitches.
Yet another “dynamic” and “eye-opening” marketing presentation with the author trying to appeal to the audience by being offensive.
