Kevin LaHaise

Conan's Farewell... belated commentary

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 00:41:48 -0600

Sometimes you get a nugget of good advice in an very unexpected place.

Regardless of the spectacle going on around him, Conan managed to deliver a “speech” that I assume made a lot of politicians envious. There wasn’t a person watching that wasn’t moved by his words, or at the very least reminded that we have all become much too arrogant about where we find wisdom.

A late-night host delivered some of the best advice we could hear right now. It applies to our political climate, our economy, and the tone of far too many conversations these days.

Hell, cynicism is running rampant in my generation. We’re trying to build careers and lives in an economic, political, corporate and business environment being defined by rampant greed, diminished ethics, and profoundly short-term thinking.

And a late-night host shared a few words, putting his own plight in perspective, culminating in a piece of advice that is well-worth revisiting:

“Please don’t be cynical.”

I didn’t expect to get a sense of perspective from Conan O’Brien. But I’m damn well gonna take it.

It’s easy to sit back and complain about the people running the banks, and easier to bitch about our politicians… taking a page from John Mayer and declaring that the “fight ain’t fair.”

But cynicism has permeated so much of our culture that it’s just starting to look like activism for the lazy. And it’s leading to a lot of dead-ends.

If I learned anything after years of watching this late-night host, it’s that I’m far too cynical, far too often.

So… if those evil, greedy, miserable network lawyers don’t get YouTube to pull down this clip, I’ll be revisiting it from time to time to get an attitude adjustment. ;)

Conan O’Brien says goodbye and thanks to NBC and his fans

PC Delivered, No Remorse

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 00:37:21 -0600

Less than a week removed from the iPad frenzy, I received my new laptop today. Nothing special, but for the sake of the forthcoming comparison, here are the basic specs:

Dell Inspiron 1464 (14 inch)
Intel Core i3 330m processor
500GB hard drive
4GB ram (installed)
HD display (integrated graphics)
HDMI Port
Windows 7 Home Premium

I un-boxed it and had it set up and running within 10 minutes. It’s fast - really fast. Windows 7 is excellent - a huge improvement over Vista and XP. (I have 2 other PCs, one running Vista, and a large netbook running XP)

Overall, I can’t really complain about anything other than the battery life. It’s terrilble, but that’s easily remedied if I were to have sprung for the battery upgrade.

So I’m thrilled with my purchase - have found the laptop to be exceedingly competent for work and play, relatively portable, and overall a good primary computer.

What I’m most happy about is the one thing I didn’t get with this purchase - buyers remorse. I could have bought a MacBook Pro, and it would have been an excellent choice. The machine is near flawless, the OS is top-notch, the performance is among the best in its market.

But I have no such remorse, and no fanciful dreams of a MacBook right now. That’s right - I’m happier with the Dell freaking Inspiron. And scrolling through Techmeme throughout the day, my decision was validated. So, without further delay, here are some of the popular fanboy talking points about Macs and some of the articles I stumbled on throughout the day:

“It Just Works”

27-inch iMac delays continue as production halt is rumored

“It’s More Secure”

In their words: Experts weigh in on Mac vs. PC Security

“Mac’s OS is vastly superior…”

Windows 7 adoption swells, as XP suffers record drop

“Just Look at customer satisfaction surveys - these aren’t just talking points”

Microsoft Outpaces Apple in Customer Satisfaction: Chart of Day

“How can you stand to look at a hideous PC all day? The design is terrible…”

No argument there - my Inspiron isn’t going to win a beauty contest. But hey, based on the above links, you just paid about three, maybe four times as much as me for a computer that was prettier - and had disturbingly similar specs.

That’s right - the Dell was $599.00 plus tax. Free shipping.

I couldn’t justify buying a $1,300+ machine that in reality, has none of the CONCRETE benefits that Mac fans have been talking about. It’s mostly a subjective thing, but I’m a firm believer that you get what you pay for with laptops.

When you buy a MB Pro, you get a machine that’s worth the price: quality components, excellent software and tremendous design.

When you buy a similarly configured PC, you also get what you pay for: quality components, excellent software, and in my case… ugly design.

But swapping out the appearance for savings put, at minimum, an extra $800 in my pocket at the end of the day.

Hell - I can get a fully-loaded iPad with the cash!

E2.0 - What the heck is going on?

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:26:49 -0600

Do you remember “show and tell” day back in the 1st grade? I’m pretty sure that many children who went on to find marketing careers were out sick during those sessions.

Dennis Howlett gave the whole E2.0 world a piece of his mind recently, and some well-respected E2.0 rock stars struggled to react last week during an apparently well-attended session at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference (and it was specifically intended to be a rebuttal of Dennis’ thoughts!)

Dennis closed out his (excellent) post by asking where the use cases were:

“Yet none of that thinking has a credible use case you can generalize back to business types - except: knowledge based businesses such as legal, accounting, architects etc. Even then - where are the use cases? I’d like to know. In the meantime, don’t be surprised by the ‘fail’ lists that Mike Krigsman will undoubtedly trot out - that’s easy.”

Dennis obviously has a great point here. If this stuff is so great - why the heck hasn’t anyone seen any tangible proof in the form of success stories, case studies, metrics, properly measured ROI, etc?

To be clear - I’m a big supporter of E2.0. So this post is meant to be more of a critique of the situation from a marketing perspective.

Some would say that the products don’t necessarily do what they are claiming they can. I’m not so sure about that. Frankly - the critique of E2.0 could apply to almost any emerging or relatively new software category right now. And a big reason for this?

It’s us marketing people. What ever happened to having a BEEFY case study section on your site? What ever happened to 3rd party validation of some of those case studies? What the heck happened to “show and tell?” Okay - some vendors are doing this well - but it remains to be seen if the case studies page on their sites translates into the way that they’re actually talking about their product to customers, potential customers and the market.

This is a fundamental part of enterprise software marketing - and I would go so far as to argue that it could be THE most important part. When it comes to emerging technology categories there’s a LOT of hype floating around. That hype makes it a lot easier to land a few pieces of coverage in the press, or get a ton of traffic to your site… and marketers might have a tendency to get a bit too comfortable when hype is providing them with this much air cover.

The bottom line is that hype won’t sustain any market. It can feasibly jump-start one, but eventually you have to get practical and start doing the less glamorous stuff like developing copious amounts of case studies, commissioning some research and yes - measuring anything and everything you can about your customers’ success with your product.

The case studies and success stories are only part of it - you also need to highlight failures and use them to acknowledge a weakness and provide some advice to potential buyers in the form of cautionary tales. This inspires trust - something that software vendors are having trouble doing of late. Dennis points to Michael Krigsman so often for a reason - and if you don’t read his blog frequently you will probably be surprised to see that it’s really not all that “negative.” Rarely, if ever, do the stories suggest that a product is just a piece of junk. Typically - it’s people that made mistakes, or vendors that over-promised, or project managers that didn’t notice the glaring warning signs. But the posts rarely focus on product features falling flat - remember, it’s “IT PROJECT Failures,” not PRODUCT failures! Don’t be afraid!

The point here is that the E2.0 world has to stop being defensive and really needs to stop relying on hype. It’s time to turn the corner, leave the hype behind, and start doing the things that SHOW that you’re invested in your customers and how successful they are with your product. Again - this isn’t to say that there aren’t a bunch of E2.0 vendors doing amazing marketing work right now - but it seems to me that this topic is becoming a big debate because there’s a disconnect causing a problem somewhere along the line.

Much of this really does come down to a marketing problem - not a software problem. If the vendors shift some focus to showing (case studies) instead of telling (hype) then I would bet that this issue will go away pretty quickly.

The case studies are out there - but the marketing world needs to start thinking back to what they learned in the first grade.

I bet this conversation is obliterated by June of next year. I can only imagine that the vendors are being much more diligent about more pragmatic messaging now, and there are probably a whole bunch of very busy writers at work on some seriously good case studies at this very moment.

Looking Back: The Motorola Droid Launch

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:18:00 -0600

When doing a scan of the headlines about the Droid launch, you’ll find fairly consistent reviews across the board. When it is reviewed with regard only for the features, functionality and usability of the device itself, it seems to do very, very well. When compared to the iPhone - it takes the back seat 9 times out of 10.

A lot of what I’m reading is that it’s just not quite as good as the iPhone experience, that it was over-hyped to begin with - that it will do well, but can’t really “kill” the iPhone because some people will only be happy if their kick-butt device is called “iPhone.”

Some would see that as a failure. But I suspect that they’re looking at it solely from the perspective of the marketing and branding - and the emotional attachment that people have to the iPhone and Apple. They’re not looking at it from the perspective of the quality of the device and the feature-by-feature comparison.

I’m not saying that branding and marketing isn’t important - because it’s a huge contributor to the success of any company and product. But in order for someone to start challenging the iPhone and making Steve Jobs nervous, a device first had to come out that was at least a feature-by-feature challenger to the iPhone.

The Droid clearly and definitively accomplishes that. Just take a look at WIRED’s comparison of the features. The only question that remains is if Motorola and Google can somehow get the marketing and community building just right. Yes - there are Google loyalists that are as passionate as Apple fanatics. But throw Motorola into the mix while they have been struggling for so long, and the emotional attachment just isn’t there.

And it gets even tougher - the noise the Droid makes on startup is a love-it-or-hate-it touch. It’s tough to build the same meaningful relationship that people have with Apple when the product has such a cold, harsh and robotic conceit. Look what it’s competing with in the Apple commercials - I feel like Robert DeNiro in “Analyze This” when I see those commercials… I just want to cry (but out of happiness in this case).

So… it comes down to the brand and the community - and that’s where the iPhone is competing. Apple got most of the features right on the first try, and they’ve been focusing almost entirely on the branding and user experience while developers grow the AppStore to nearly 100,000 apps in just a couple of years.

Can Droid compete on that level? I suppose so - but going head-to-head with the iPhone in the marketing right away is skipping a few very important steps. Why not focus on finding and building your army of users first? Let them fight the fight with Apple - and Motorola, Google and Verizon don’t have to do anything other than foster and cultivate the community from there.

Oh yeah, they also need to keep delivering products with a feature set and user experience that makes them competitive - and that means no more crappy phones. Because those other devices they put out there are inevitably going to impact the overall sentiment around the Droid.

Think about it like cars - you can’t possibly argue that the Cube doesn’t (for some people) affect the perception of other Nissan products, can you? What about Blackberry and the first generation Storm? Did it not diminish some confidence in RIM and ultimately harm the overall perception of other products such as the Curve?

And so it goes - another quality smartphone that has game, but needs to get the marketing just right in order to truly compete with the iPhone. I’m pulling for this one - not because I have anything against the iPhone - but because it has been a few years and it’s about time that someone at least delivers a competitive product on a feature-by-feature level. Some stiff competition in the smartphone market is only going to benefit consumers.

The bottom line is that this “war” is not being talked about enough on a product and feature level. The Droid launch strategy tried to push the conversation towards features - but it made a mistake to do that in such a way that it was immediately juxtaposed with the iPhone. That’s part of the reason why almost every review I have read has started and finished with some comparison to the iPhone.

I, for one, want to get my hands on the Droid. I’m stuck with Verizon for a while anyway - so why not give it a shot? And there’s an iPhone user in my home, too! So we can do our own comparison, and provide more feedback here when (and if) I’m able to purchase the Droid.

Austin - Land of the Business Model?

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 11:05:00 -0500

I had a good conversation about Austin start-ups recently. Specifically, we were talking about the differences between Austin start-ups and those in Silicon Valley.

My point in the conversation was that I was in love with the Austin start-up scene because “Austin start-ups have these really cool things called business models.”

Now, I know that there are plenty of exceptions to this claim, and I haven’t done any official research to prove the point. But I’m basing my claim on a lot of conversations with companies in town, during SXSWi, etc.

This is really a cultural strength of the entrepreneurial community in Austin, I think. Our start-ups talk about changing the world, just like in the Valley. But the difference seems to be that Austin start-ups really do their homework on business models and identifying several possible revenue streams right from the get-go. In contrast, the Valley seems to embrace a different approach:

Hype the crap out of the product
Get other people who love the new shiny object to hype the crap out of your product
Hope some investor falls in love with your product and gives you money to hype the crap out of it even more
Start talking about how you have awesome plans to make money, but you’re focused on improving the product right now
Keep saying that for a few years
Get another investor to give you MORE money to hype your product even further
Get acquired at a ho-hum valuation by a company that has a business model, and has been able to find a way to use you to drive revenue

And so it goes… over and over again. I’m not saying there’s something wrong with that model. And I’m certainly not saying that every start-up in the valley follows that model. But it’s becoming increasingly visible that this is happening with alarming frequency now that acquisitions have sped up as the economy shows signs of recovery.

Frankly - an exit strategy is always good. But I’m always a bit disappointed when a really cool start-up didn’t find a revenue stream so they could keep changing the world, etc. These companies do awesome things, but I want them to stay alive, independent and full of the same fire that disappears far too quickly when they’re absorbed into a large, purely money-driven organization.

Austin seems to embrace that sentiment within the start-up community. There’s strength to our start-ups because they don’t necessarily put all their hopes into an exit strategy. Perhaps there’s some bravery there that doesn’t exist in a region that isn’t trying desperately to maintain its weirdness…

I don’t really know what it is, but I would be interested to hear if other folks in Austin get this same impression, the opposite, or something else entirely.

Tom Watson and Generations

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 10:37:35 -0500

Tom Watson pulled off one of the most unexpected performances in the history of golf this weekend. Yeah, so he didn’t quite get the job done on the 18th, but I think the performance as a whole teaches a valuable lesson - particularly to marketers and corporate management around the world.

A 59 year-old almost won one of the most difficult tournaments in all of golf. How is that possible? Why was he able to pull it off? He’s too old to hit irons into 200+ yard par threes! When PGA tour players were hitting 5 or 4 irons, Watson was hitting hybrids and 3-woods! It’s an enormous disadvantage!

Watson’s performance broke down a lot of mental barriers for a lot of Champions Tour players, I bet. And I think that’s the lasting memory that many pro golfers will take away form this year’s championship. Old, young, veteran, rookie - they all have a chance of winning, so long as the skills are sufficient and they’re able to break through mental barriers to allow themselves to succeed. It’s an individual thing - the golfer has to be able to believe that they can do it, and they need to put the hours in on the range to perfect their skills.

But hold on - this isn’t necessarily what management experts are saying! They’re all caught up with broad-sweeping generalizations about Gen X, Gen Y, millennials, boomers, etc. And they recommend strategies for managing each generation in the workplace - frequently ignoring the fact that the workplace is comprised of individuals, not sets of employees with inherent generational characteristics.

Tom Watson was an exception to the “rule” at the Open Championship - he didn’t perform in the way that he was supposed to based upon his age and generation. His generation isn’t tooled to compete on the golf courses of the current generation - meticulously groomed greens and 600-yard par-fives!

But he almost won.

And that’s what concerns me about all this posturing going on about how to manage millennials, or why Gen X is going to do something extraordinary in our organizations.

Sure, there’s good research that identifies trends in behavior, and trends in common characteristics. But common sense should suggest that if you’re not providing an employee with an INDIVIDUAL experience, with individual goals and a management style that acknowledges that each person in the organization is unique, then you’re going to have serious problems.

With regards to my specific generation - Gen Y - I think a lot of the research misses the point. The reason why a millennial might seem like they “expect the world” from the company is not because they were spoiled by mommy and daddy - it’s because they feel as though they are a square peg in the organization, and their managers are used to having “circles”, so it all feels weird when they’re being forced into the circle hole.

And frankly, if you are being forced to morph into something you’re not just so that you can be lumped in with the rest of the cattle, then you’re going to expect your company to give you something in return for that sort of Transformer act. Otherwise, you’re just not going to be happy at work.

I think it’s a good reminder, having watched the Open Championship, that we need to be more careful with the segmentation as marketers, or the “Gen whatever needs to be managed in x,y,z ways” stuff as managers. People respond pretty darn well, regardless of generation, when they are able to be themselves and to use their strengths. From a PR perspective, people respond pretty well when you have a 2-way conversation with them and truly consider their perspective.

Tom Watson wasn’t a freak exception to a rule - we just built up this expectation in our heads that a 59-year-old couldn’t even come close to winning a major. Let’s take that lesson to the workplace - being a member of a particular generation doesn’t mean someone inherited any or all of the traits that are identified in the research. Just like Tom didn’t inherit a crappy golf swing after his hip was replaced 9 months ago.

Either way - I bet you can save a lot of money by not buying the research or consulting services and, instead, just committing some time towards listening to and conversing with your employees on a 1-to-1 level.

I bet one of the best feelings Tom felt all week was when people stopped expecting his fake hip to give out, and started thinking “darn, this guy is actually capable of doing this!”

Had to post - just because…

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 11:45:59 -0500

Had to post - just because…

Dog Training and Good PR

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 09:21:00 -0500

It has been a very interesting week here in Austin. On Thursday, we adopted a second dog. This one wasn’t so much adopted, as it was inherited from extended family that didn’t really want to deal with the little bugger anymore.

Derby, the mini poodle, is not quite the second dog that I had been dreaming of. For starters, he’s about 100 pounds smaller than the dog I had envisioned bringing into the home. Second, he’s got some noticeable and challenging behavioral issues. He’s possessive of food, doesn’t like to be picked up, never was properly socialized with people or other dogs, and frankly - just seems to be a bit “slower” than your average dog.

What I’m realizing is that Derby is much harder to train than my first dog, Haley, was. I’m also thinking a lot about how training a dog is about proving your credibility to the dog - establishing that you, the human, are the leader of the pack. If you aren’t consistently reacting to behaviors and actions in the same way, then the dog will continue to confused about who the pack leader is.

In that sense - I would argue that training a dog can teach us some lessons about PR:

Credibility (alpha dog positioning) is the primary goal
Consistency is critical - coming and going only confuses the stakeholders (dogs, customers, investors, etc.)
You absolutely have to be firm - but never too aggressive. This is like the difference between bickering with your competitors and simply asserting yourself and your opinion (in a credible way!)
You can teach an old dog new tricks - it just takes a long time! Patience is critical with training dogs, as it is with getting your company’s PR from 0-60. Sure - with the right press relationships you can get a lot of buzz in a very short period of time, but you’re not getting the credibility unless you’re carefully looking at your business and determining what type of initiatives are best for you. That’s a whole different level of PR, and it’s the stuff that you slowly build with precision, over time.

So, I’ll be practicing “PR” at home this weekend. And I really do have to run, as the dogs need a little, ahem, firm attention right now.

I don’t know what it is - but for all the “similarities” between PR and dog training, I think I’m way better at what I do at the office than what I’m dealing with at the house right now! ;)

More Skills New PR Peeps Need

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 00:41:03 -0500

Sarah Evans has an great post on the Top 4 skills all new PR professionals must have. I really like the post - and every point rings true to me. But I do want to add my 4 favorite skills to the list. Yes - this is a far more snarky, sarcastic set of skills, but I think they have their validity. Perhaps they are not really skills - but I think all of them can be learned, and therefore I see them as skills. Here they are:

The ability to ignore everything you learned about PR or marketing in college. The tricky thing about this one is that you have to do it while at the same time beefing up your ability to embrace the most important thing that college taught you: that you should never stop learning, trying to learn, or questioning what you hear. Two things happen when you get into PR: you realize that it is nothing like what you thought it would be, and that you’ve landed in the real classroom for your profession. I’m not saying that your degree doesn’t matter, but you have to understand that the education you receive on the job is FAR more important than the basic foundation you received in college.
Killing your ego. The PR industry, for some reason, has and deals with a surprisingly large amount of egomaniacs. The PR ones can generally find some level of success because other people find it easier to deal with them by giving them what they want. But the egomaniacs, I imagine, will one day realize that they spent their lives in a career where they were given the opportunity to meet an enormous amount of really interesting, genuine, memorable people and they wasted all of it thinking about themselves. More importantly, your going to run into a lot of situations where your ego is not as important as doing the job right. You provide a service that is still hard to measure and easy to bash - so swallow your pride and choose your fights carefully. Also - client service will always be an important part of the service you provide, no matter how great you think your results are.
Ditch digging. Seriously - if you haven’t done any manual labor, you will be hard-pressed to understand PR. It is a strange, strange profession. Far more frequently than you would expect you will find yourself brainstorming some creative way to get a 300-pound buffet table from the car to your office lobby with minimal help, or building out a 300 page document at 2am with burning eyeballs and minimal help (because everyone else around you is doing the same exact thing). If you have experience doing something that could, at times, be a bit repetitive or back-breaking in nature then you’ll understand why my buddy Josh Dilworth says that “PR Is a Blue-Collar Job”. A lot of PR is about pure effort, and if you understand the jobs that require a strong back, then you will understand the unique way in which PR is “back-breaking.”
Honesty and Transparency. This is a big one and it’s not easy to discuss it briefly. But here’s the short version: Your client doesn’t want to be lied to, the media doesn’t want to be lied to and your colleagues don’t want to be lied to. In fact, nobody wants to be lied to! Yeah - this applies to every industry. The difference in PR? PR has a strange reputation - somewhat like lawyers - and people will, at first, assume you are a liar more often than they will assume that you will be truly honest. The easiest way to be honest is to be yourself - and that is a notoriously hard skill to learn (or hold onto) for people who are under pressure and trying desperately to succeed in their careers.

So my suggested skills are nowhere near as technology or social media-centric as Sarah’s - and there’s a reason for that. New PR, to me, is not only about the tools that are available to PR folks. It’s primarily, I think, about the underlying cultural purpose and applications of those tools. Maybe I’ll write a bit more on that for a post next week…

I Actually Look Forward to an Email Campaign...

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 00:15:47 -0500

Golf Galaxy (a golf equipment chain) started a pretty awesome e-mail campaign recently.

I created an account with them to save a few bucks here and there and to get updates about new products. It’s actually pretty useful considering how many golf balls I lose on the course and how many clubs I break over me knee after losing all the balls…

The cool thing is that they send me an e-mail every Monday which tells about the clubs that the previous day’s winner was using. Now - I have no need to recieve an email every week about a new driver or putter that I should buy. But I actually am interested in hearing about what clubs the pro’s are playing.

There used to be a section in every Golf Digest, I think, which showed you what a certain player had “in the bag”. It was a surprisingly sticky feature - for no reason other than to get some perspective on how much different players relied on their equipment.

Nonetheless - props to Golf Galaxy for putting together a pretty creative email campaign that I actually look forward to reading - and did I mention it has pretty much solidified my loyalty to buying my gear at their store?

Readers, Writers, and Beowulf

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 00:57:39 -0600

I think the idea of a “PR Major” is great. But I often wonder (mostly in ignorance) - does learning how to write a press release really prepare you for a career in PR?

I wouldn’t know - I was an English major. And by “English Major” I, of course, mean a college student that was fond of wine.

As it turns out - this job is made up of such a wide variety of odd tasks and completely random assignments that you can’t really be “prepared” for what you’re getting yourself into.

The thing that did provide me with, I think, a decent “preparation” for PR was an education in reading and writing. Seriously. I spend more time reading than I ever thought I would. I simply can’t do my job if I don’t have a feel for what’s happening today, what has been happening, and at least an educated guess of what might happen tomorrow.

I also can’t properly support my clients without the ability to write reasonably well. I don’t mean to say that I’m a rock-star writer (and this blog does, and should, suggest quite the opposite). But if you really struggle with writing, you’re really going to struggle with a lot of the stuff you’ll be doing in PR.

So what’s with the PR major? If reading and writing are so critical to the job, why do so few PR job descriptions mention English majors? And please don’t get me started on asking why none of the job descriptions in any industry mention English majors…ever.

But it’s worth pointing out - the “basics” of PR are pretty easy to learn. Executing on the standard tactics is just about as simple as it gets. So how does an education in PR take you beyond the stuff that you will learn, by default, in the first few months of your career?

I don’t mean to imply that the English major deserves more glory. Once you’ve read Beowulf, it’s not that you’re all of a sudden smart or an intellectual or “cultured”, rather, it’s a point of exposure to the bizarre, the zany, and the seemingly impossible that does something to the way that you think - it opens up your mind a bit, and helps you to ignore constraints and solve problems in strange, strange, but frequently effective ways.

This could go on forever - but it does get at the heart of the issue, which I believe is: The skills and traits and qualities of a really good PR person are really, REALLY hard to describe - and the job descriptions may never adequately reflect the actual type of talent you are looking for.

Unless you hire an English major to write them… ;)

Drinking the Bailout

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 22:48:38 -0600

I just finished a pretty interesting post-dinner discussion with my fiance, who is, suffice it to say, a bit disappointed in some of the “lavish” events that bailout companies have held in recent months.

I’m really not sure where I stand on all of this stuff - and to be honest, I desperately want to separate the political from the business-oriented stuff. I’m not really interested in discussing specific examples. What I am interested in is how the general public reaction may actually affect marketing people and the industry itself.

(For the record, my fiance delivered the quote of the week during our conversation - pointing out that people who attend parties that are sponsored by companies that have accepted bailout funds are, in fact, “drinking the bailout”.)

But what I pointed out, in all seriousness, was that a lot of these “sponsorship” opportunities, lavish parties, and corporate events might be legitimate marketing activities that benefit a company’s brand, visibility, or they might even deliver leads and drive customer acquisition.

This points to a bigger problem, though. The vast majority of the population reacts in outrage largely because they’re not willing to acknowledge that corporate events and general marketing shenanigans may actually have an ROI. Therein lies the problem: marketing still has not learned the language needed to explain the value of all of the seemingly excessive spending on their initiatives.

How do you explain to the general public that the sponsorship of a sporting event, and all the parties and affairs that your name is attached to during this event, is actually really important for building awareness for your products and services? And to make this even more frustrating - how do you explain this to the general public when you struggle to explain it to your CEO?

I think there’s something useful brewing here. If Congress, the general public, and a variety of other interested parties are persistent in pressuring these companies to explain themselves, we might just find a breakthrough in conveying the value of marketing in a concise and meaningful way.

That’s not to say that absolutely no marketing person out there can explain the value of marketing, but rather, the act of explaining it to the population at-large is a better litmus test for our ability to explain the value of what we do.

Yes, measurement and ROI is getting better and easier each day because of the growing set of quality tools and best practices made available to us, but that doesn’t mean that we’re measuring the right things. And to take that a step further - measurement is not the issue I’m interested in here. What I’m saying is that measurement and analytics is not the only thing you need if you’re trying to successfully demonstrate value - it only tells part of the story, and we may never be able to adequately measure engagement in the same way as traffic on your web site. This issue I care about is that many (or maybe most) marketing, PR and advertising people still stumble all over themselves when they are asked to demonstrate the value of what they do!

Enough for now - but I am eager to see how some of these companies react to accusations in future incidents - because there will certainly be a lot to learn from the most effective of these explanations - and I do expect the best of them to be hybrids of hard data and broader language.

Technology Review: TR10: Intelligent Software Assistant

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 16:57:32 -0600

Technology Review: TR10: Intelligent Software Assistant:

Congrats to the whole team at Siri - This is well-deserved recognition and beyond exciting.

(Siri is a client)

Facebooks API Stuff, Twitter, and what we should really be focusing on

Sun, 08 Feb 2009 09:31:09 -0600

Okay - so FB opened the API a bit to make it easier to share the news feed and status updates.

Of course - Techmeme has been flooded with ongoing discussion about other services dying. No, it’s not surprising that the reaction to the “new shiny thing” is really overblown, nor is it surprising that people are firmly defending Twitter and FriendFeed as if any of this was a real threat to our Twitter lives.

But I have to ask the question: Why do we have to overreact to every new product, feature, or service that comes out and either abuts or infringes upon Twitter’s domain? Seriously - if Twitter is as valuable and powerful as we all claim - then why is it that we get this knee-jerk reaction every time FB does something, or every time someone comes out with a new flavor of Twitter? (Yammer, etc.)

Twitter is here to stay - and Facebook announcements and competitive services that start to show signs that they’re going after Twitter are, indeed, a great opportunity to step back and reflect on how we got to where we are and what’s happening with Twitter from the technological, cultural and behavioral perspectives.

But let’s try to accept the fact that Twitter is here to stay (in some way shape or form) - and instead start to focus on what is a far more important discussion - how to we get to a point where we have more than a few million people on Twitter and a select few tools (Tweetdeck, etc.) to manage the enormous amount of information that’s coming in?

Lastly - let’s start thinking about something that is paramount to all of this: how Twitter and the vast selection of social media services/sites out there are going to make money. Seriously - we need to crowd source a successful revenue model, because, frankly, most of the people that are on Twitter, blogging, and using social media as a tool to make a living, are the ones who can’t afford to see this stuff “die”. The guys at Twitter can shut down shop and scoop up a sweet job at any of the Googles and Microsofts out there. But what about you?

I don’t really care if you subrscibe to Chris Anderson’s philosophy or Rupert Murdochs for biz models. Let’s just figure this one out - and stop wasting time going all Perez Hilton every time Facebook cramps Twitter’s style…

Mac sales: Undone by the calendar - Apple 2.0

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 12:22:24 -0600

Mac sales: Undone by the calendar - Apple 2.0:

This is really interesting to see. Also, BusinesWeek had an article on the growth in sales of netbooks recently. I have to say, the price-point on netbooks and affordable PC’s make them very attractive right now - and if you toss in HUGE discounts for the holidays, you’ve got yourself some pretty awesome options out there for some great gear. I’d love to see Apple make a smart move in reaction to this - or perhaps - they’ve anticpated this and they already had something in the works!

Walmart Is Set to Sell a $99 iPhone - Advertising Age - Digital

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 17:36:56 -0600

Walmart Is Set to Sell a $99 iPhone - Advertising Age - Digital:

These are exactly the kind of moves that many companies will need to make if they are going to keep the dollars coming in during the next year, or so. But as the article points out - it may not be the best move for their “brand.”

Either way - I can’t imagine someone not being interested in a $99 iPhone!

Readers React to David Pogue’s Review of the BlackBerry Storm - NYTimes.com

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 16:11:24 -0600

Readers React to David Pogue’s Review of the BlackBerry Storm - NYTimes.com:

Interesting that Pogue got such intense feedback. I didn’t really have any issues with his review and thought it was quite thorough - although I have not tried the Storm yet.

Perhaps the tide really is shifting, and this reader feedback is an indicator of consumers shifting some loyalty away from Apple?

Nonetheless - it’s nice to see that people can be passionate (maybe too much so) about something other than Apple products.

Black Friday, Apple and Selling "Cool"

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 15:00:19 -0600

I’ve been thinking about what makes people passionate about (or fall in love with) a company and its products this week. This is mostly because it’s “Black Friday” today and everybody knows that Apple products are making an appearance on almost every wish list in the country.

But this season always makes me ask: What makes people LOVE certain companies or products?

The simple answer, I think, would be that certain products are clearly superior to the other available alternatives. But, for one example, I can’t really say that a MacBook Pro is necessarily that much better than a PC for many people. In fact - how many people out there, outside of the techy crowd, even understand why an Apple computer might be superior to the equivalently priced PC?

Apple doesn’t really sell laptops, iPods and iPhones - they sell “cool.” And I think people love Apple in much the same way that they love a certain brand of car or a certain brand of clothing. There’s a lot of impractical bias involved - like the common assumption that a BMW is better than a Hyundai. On Black Friday we should be acutely aware of the fact that what we are going to the store to buy usually has little to do with a level-headed comparison of competing products, but rather an emotional impulse to have what is cool or trendy.

I’ve been running Vista on my HP Pavilion for over 1 year now, and I have not crashed once - but everyone seems to hate Vista. (It has glitches, but it’s really not bad at all) People hate Vista because they crave binaries: If Apple is cool then PC is lame. If Apple is stable then PC is unstable, and if Apple is user friendly then a PC simply has to be impossible to use.

Thus, Vista is only hated because it does not occupy the “cool” position in the market, and the public will naturally categorize it as the polar opposite of the “cool” option. Take a look at the Apple commercials and it should be abundantly clear that Apple is making sure that this binary is etched into our brains. Why else would the same ad campaign be running so long after the first commercial in the series ran?

Now, I love Apple. I think they make some of the best stuff out there, their products are always competitive and always have that signature Apple user experience that makes you enjoy the product more and more every time you touch it. But I’m willing to acknowledge that other products aren’t bad simply because they’re not Apple’s. In fact, other products are often better than Apple’s when you do a side-by-side comparison and take into account that certain users have different preferences than others.

But we have a tendency to assume that something is a poor quality product simply because it doesn’t have the cooler company’s name on it, and this is really a shame. With all the options out there for personal technology, it’s difficult for the average consumer to determine which product is either the best, or the best for them personally. Smart brands like Apple make this seem like an easy decision for consumers who are struggling to make this choice - because the most popular choice couldn’t possibly be the wrong one, right?

That being said, with the economy tightening up I think we might see a shift to a mentality where an reasonably priced product that has some neat features will become “cool” again. And those expensive “cool” products will look a lot more like excessive luxuries.

The economy is a game changer for brands like Apple. Being the cool company is very much subject to trends in public opinion, and I don’t think that it’s very easy to stay cool when you sell the most expensive products in many of the categories that you compete in. I’m a huge fan of the way that Apple has smartly occupied the cool position in the market - particularly because they really do sell products that live up to the buzz. But I also want to point out that Apple isn’t really the most open or transparent company in the world, and I think a lot of people will increasingly feel skeptical of the expensive, cool products when the company that makes them continues to hide behind the curtain.

I think this skepticism is going to be sparked and fueled by a tough economy - where people have to reject the cool nature of Apple products as a way to cover the fact that they’re simply unable or unwilling to pay a premium price on a given piece of technology.

I’ll be interested to see how the company does during the coming year+ of anticipated economic hardship - perhaps they will slash some prices and try to combat that growing sense of skepticism… Because the only thing better than being cool is being cool for 30% off with the purchase of $150 or more.

Brainstorming and The Moderator

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:06:49 -0600

I’ve been having a lot of discussions lately about creative thinking and brainstorming - something that I think is critical in PR, but really critical to any job that involves “abstract thought”, “fresh ideas”, or requires that one be a “problem solver.”

I started looking into some of the research and science related to brainstorming and found that there are tons of resources available that would help individuals and organizations to hone their abilities to think creatively, as well as strategies to structure brainstorming sessions so that they can be as valuable and productive as possible.

Alex Osborn, of BBDO fame, has been credited with creating the “creativity technique named brainstorming,” In fact - he has published several intriguing books on the topic of brainstorming and creative thinking.

I haven’t yet had a chance to read his stuff, although I will be tracking down a copy of “Your Creative Power” this coming weekend. What interests me right now, without having read the formal research on this topic, is that there is, in fact, so much information available on brainstorming.

This leads me to wonder why we rarely hear about “creative thinking” skills being developed in a formalized way within organizations that rely on constant production of fresh ideas and unique counsel for clients. Of course, some would argue that the role of “Chief Innovation Officer” is just that - a creative thinking moderator, facilitator and advocate. But I would like to argue that every employee at these types of organizations should be familiar with the techniques that foster creative thinking - including how to successfully moderate a brainstorming session.

This skill-set is something that should permeate every rank within an organization. In fact, if you think about those Hollywood moments where an ad agency comes up with a breakthrough concept, the excitement is absolutely electric and it infects every employee in the room. I would also point out that this type of activity creates a synergy with and appreciation amongst, employees.

One of the age-old challenges of a brainstorm is that some individuals are often afraid to take the risk of saying something “stupid” and therefore isolate themselves from the conversation. This can be a real problem in a brainstorm situation, but I think it can easily be overcome by a moderator that is encouraging, trustworthy and proactively inclusive of everyone in the room. Thus, the fear to open up your mind to others is, in effect, not a good enough reason to dismiss the need for exercises in creative thinking.

Now, everyone wants to say that they are a creative thinker - and I really believe that most people are. I think the missing component in many organizations is the skilled moderator, and that’s where improvements should first be made so that you can start delivering some powerful results for your business, your client’s business, or even just improve the relationships within your workplace.

Once I finish doing some research on the topic, I’ll pull together a follow-up post to this one, with some of the techniques, strategies and ideas that I dig up. In particular, I’ll be looking to create a an evolving “profile” or job description of the moderator - which I think is an interesting role, personality, and character even outside of the workplace.

(As a side note - I’m also going to be thinking a lot about FriendFeed and how brainstorming happens almost organically there. When rhetorical questions are posed, the ensuing 75 comments frequently become a beautiful string of original thought, and in essence, a brainstorming session.)

The inventor behind CNN's election 'Magic Wall' - CNN.com

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 15:46:28 -0600

The inventor behind CNN's election 'Magic Wall' - CNN.com:

I was really happy to stumble across this story on CNN today. If you’ve seen any of John King’s segments in the past few weeks, you’ll know precisely how helpful Percpetive Pixel’s product has been in giving really clear, conscise and visual explanations of the Presidential race.

This is also a very welcome feel-good story to see about a tech startup during a rough economy. I, personally, think that there has been too much doom and gloom written about tech startups lately - at least enough to warrant some positive coverage to accurately reflect the reality of the situation for startups.

Good work CNN…