Wow…talk about viral. Tide has hit a home run here for sure. At mytalkingstain.com you get to create your own talking stain video and have a bunch of downloads. Guess it does not hurt that they ran their $2.7 million dollar spot at a good point in the game. As soon as I saw it, I said to myself…”this will stick” “what viral potential”.
So with out further adieu…I give you the one and the only……”The Scrappy Software Marketer” as THE talking stain. Look closely…
I dropped my son off at school this morning like any other morning. However, instead of taking the same route back to my home office I decided to branch out and take a scenic route. Sure I went totally out of my way and burned more gas than usual, but it was refreshing. I was able to crank some music, chill, feel the road and enter a different but relaxed state of mind. It was a change and it was great.
If you are a software marketer or just a marketer in general and have taken the same path home with your prospects or customers each and every time, a change can sometimes be refreshing. It could backfire and people will get freaked out, but sometimes branching out and doing something different even if its minuscule can make a world of difference. So change your newsletter up a bit. Market that white paper using non traditional media. Make a vidcast or a podcast series to reinforce brand. Do something goofy to get the sales folks engaged with marketing.
Think about this….can you imagine the person over at ad agency that introduced the whopperfreakout? At first pass you would think that is stupid…pretend you are not having your biggest product anymore and secretly tape peoples reactions. How would that ever push brand and Burger King? Sometimes new ideas and change work and sometimes they don’t. I would rather try and fail than not try at all.
So go ahead….take a different road today…let me know how it goes.
Brian Suda over at Sitepoint has a great article on the future of the web and what we can expect in 2008. He goes on to list 10 things and I think the thing that excites me the most is #3 in which he states that Pull is dead and that Push is the new king. You will have to read all about it, but Brian gives some great insight into the future.
Here is my prediction for the web in the next 4-6 years. A microchip or tiny PC which you will be able to embed in your head which you can switch on and off via brainwaves and surf the net in your head. Basically you have the abilityy to be the internet and view things but just staring off in space. Ok, I know is sounds a bit nutty, but how cool would it be to wake up at 2 am, turn on the net in your head and see if their are any breaking news stories or check overseas markets without turning on a light or even using electricity to power anything.
Is 2008 going to be more of the same for you in marketing?
Is the lure of communities and new media marketing speaking to you in a special way?
Are you going to continue down the same path as you have for the last several years of rinse and repeat marketing?
As the new year has come and you begin to solidify your 08 marketing plans, try to think a little bit outside the box and talk to those folks who can bring in a fresh perspective to perhaps your stale ways. Don’t get caught in a marketing rut and don’t think for a moment that what you did in 2007 or 2006 will work again in 2008.
As you know, I don’t like to plug stuff on my blog, but I just started a Facebook Group for email marketing professionals. If you work in the area of email marketing, are associated with email marketing or just want to learn more, I encourage you to join and see where it takes us. I want all who join to gain value and contribute any expertise you may have.
If Santa were a company he would be the biggest company in the world. He would have the most significant distribution and CRM system known to man. His sales would be more than Walmart and most of the retailers combined. He would be a giant in the industry of childhood merriment.
Santa’s CRM would have to be the most accurate database in the world. He would need to have preferences for every child he delivered to and it would have to be constantly updated and upgraded. He would need at least 99.999999% up-time and would require several hundred full time elves just updating the thing.
I am an RSS junkie. I have used only 2 news readers in the past: Feedreader and Sharpreader. I have used Google reader for some other feeds/reputation monitoring purposes, but sometimes find it a bit clunky and unreliable in terms of handling lots and lots feeds. I am talking ALOT of feeds. Currently have hundreds and hundreds of feeds tracking hundreds of keywords, blogs and general news stuff. At times, I have over 30,000 items in my reader that I look through. Up until now, I have used Sharpreader and really liked it. Sharpreader did its thing and I went along my merry way.
Then last night I downloaded the personal edition of the JetBrains Omea Reader and my RSS/feed addiction has been taken to a new level. Without question, this is the best free reader on the market. Its laid out well and has a ton of features nor normally found in many readers. I especially love the “subscribe to search feed” feature. If you are in the market to switch or just want to try out a new look and feel of your seemingly boring reader you need to check out JetBrains Omea Reader….as you will not be disappointed
I am a big Stars Wars nut these days because I got the great idea to introduce my 6 year old to it about 4 months ago. Needless to say its a Star Wars Christmas around our house this year.
Anyway here is an article from Gizmodo about some Star Wars Toys that didn’t make the cut. I love the “force”
Mark Over TechCrunch has a post today about how LinkedIn will be changing sometime soon. I cant wait as I do agree that sometimes that the interface is a little clunky and boring.
On page 174 of the book “The Big Moo” there is a great periodic table of functions in big company vs. start-up’s and one stood out to me. It was pitching. In the big company it was labeled at “60 slides, 120 minutes and fourteen point font” and in the start up it was “10 slides, 2o minutes and thirty point font”
I once was told this at my current organization. Wait….”XXXX only thinks in ppt, so you need to put together a presentation”. What? How can someone think about concepts in power point? What ever happened to just a pitch of a concept without a presentation? Why must everything be put into power point?
Perhaps I live on the edge…or perhaps I will never make it “big” in software business, but I promise that I will never become a person who only thinks in ppt. Heck…some of best concepts are written on cocktail napkins or on your arm….In my opinion, I don’t care who are….but you are never so far removed where you cannot think of things or concepts that are old school. People abuse ppt and people think the cannot live without it…..
Throughout the years I have been in marketing (and even when I was in sales) I have learned not to make to many promises that I could not keep. Here are some of the classics as I would like to call them in software marketing
10. Sure…lets add one more profile question…we can use that data
9. We absolutely can run this as a closed loop campaign
8. Targeting IT Managers is not a problem…not many people do anyway
7. You want to purchase a list of SAP install customers who didn’t buy Peoplesoft running Tomcat in a heterogeneous environment so long as they aren’t running Sybase….sure..let me look into that for you.
6. You want me to create an email with a video embedded so as it delivers it plays automatically and oh…you Mr. Salesperson want to sent it in outlook…hmmm..let me check into that
5. I can certainly look in switching our current email structure to send out all pdf files rather HTML
4. You want more “flare” on the webpage…can you describe “flare” and let me look into it
3. I can certainly look into creating buzz for your event (wish I knew what they were doing)
If you are involved in SQL Server in anyway, my current organization is asking for 2 minutes of your time to fill out a survey to shape the future of our SQL Server offerings.
Alas….if you fill out the survey you will be entered into a drawing for a BenQ 20 inch monitor. Please take the time if you are working with SQL Server to fill out the survey as I know that it will be valuable to our development teams.
Today marks my 7th anniversary with Quest Software. It’s not too often that you find someone in the technology space who has been with their organization for 7 years.
Here is a funny little stealth project that someone in my organization put together. As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to post it to the Quest account on YouTube. For those of you who watch Saturday Night Live, you will understand the parody. Its all about Archiving (the) box!
Wanted to share with all of you a piece of marketing goodness that my company produced. Our theme is that if you want to be a SQL Server Rock Star, use our tools which I think is pretty compelling as well as kinda uber-geek cool.
I am sitting in the Columbus OH airport waiting to board my flight and realized that today in 1977 the Atari 2600 was released. While my house in the 70’s was not an “Atari” house (we were intellivision) I do remember wasting a tremendous amount of time playing a ton of games on that 2600. In fact some of the games are still fun to play today. So for all your Atari heads out there, go and play one on me tonight.
We have been running at my current company a T-Shirt giveaway promotion in that we ask the user to download a whitepaper and in return, the first 2500 people will get a free T-Shirt. While it has been successful, I recently came across a T-Shirt that I think a technology company should experiment on a giveaway type basis.
So without further adieu, give away this THING and I will be first in line to download and try whatever you want me to try.
