By Francis Moran
No sane person setting out on a long journey of indefinite length would wait until they had arrived before filling up the gas tank.
And yet technology companies tell me all the time that they’re going to do exactly that.
“We’ll start marketing as soon as we have some customers,” is a variation of a line I’ve heard often but that still pains me deeply every time I hear it.
I heard it again just the other day from an amazing company I’ve been watching for a while. Like most promising technology companies, this one has developed a new way of doing something that creates massive value for users. Their product costs less money to use than the alternative, saves huge amounts of incredibly expensive time at a critical juncture for its potential customers, and avoids the considerable environmental damage wrought by existing approaches.
Like many compelling technological advances, however, the adoption of this company’s product requires significant changes in behaviour in a risk-averse industry.
In short, this company needs marketing, and lots of it.
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By Francis Moran
When I launched this blog a little over six weeks ago, I said that I wanted to overturn the myths that surround the marketing of new technology products and services. I acknowledged at the time that many engineering-focused executive teams at technology ventures are leery of what they see as the black art of marketing. I also said I can forgive them for their skepticism — after all, as I wrote then, we marketers don’t do a good enough job of demonstrating just how marketing works and why they should invest in it — but I have a tougher time forgiving others who have weighed in over the past couple of weeks with simplistic and downright erroneous comments against marketing.
The worst part is, many of these insults were self-inflicted injuries inflicted on the marketing profession by some of its own.
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By Francis Moran
The Capital Angel Network, a new angel organization whose launch we covered about a year ago, is stepping up its activity levels in support of what organizer Laurie Davis said this morning is an effort “to make Ottawa a more vibrant (investment) community and a better place to start a company.” The first step in that process was this morning’s first of what the network intends to be regular monthly meetings of people who are, or who are interested in becoming, angel investors.
Intended primarily as a networking event to allow angels and prospective angels to get to know each other better, the breakfast meetings, scheduled for the first Thursday of every month, will also include a presentation by a company or two. This morning’s presenting companies were What Wins, an online tool that helps horse racing bettors pick their bets both more easily and, the company claims, with better odds of winning, and JetstreamHD, a consumer appliance from Ottawa’s Nuvyyo that can stream to an iPad any media — movies, photos, music files, home videos and more — from wherever you keep it in your home network. (JetstreamHD executives have just returned from launching their product at Demo Spring 2011 conference that wrapped up yesterday. They were quite chuffed by the response they got, including some boffo media coverage.)
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By Francis Moran
Although I am utterly persuaded of the efficacy of new and social media as potent marketing, communications, outreach and customer service channels, I am also utterly persuaded that far too many so-called social media marketers are, quite simply, drowning in the Kool-Aid.
An early indication of this social media myopia became apparent in a conversation I had a year or so back with one of these self-styled new media gurus. She and I got into a discussion one evening about the value of social media channels. Her argument was that any and every new media channel trumped any and every so-called old media channel; that this new media model had completely disrupted the old media model.
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By Francis Moran
One day last week, I tweeted the message you see to the right because I was tickled by the email that came in. In my haste, however, I added a snappy hashtag and thereby made the same common mistake I often accuse marketers — even branding experts — of making.
The prospect who sent me that email remembered how I look. I will be the first to admit that a red — okay, rapidly greying — pony tail, full-but-tidy beard and what used to be a curly moustache do tend to set me apart from the average corporate consultant, even in the less-buttoned-down realm of marketing. Based on how I look, he was able to easily remember who I am.
He wasn’t, however, looking for a pony-tailed, bearded guy; he was, in fact, looking for a PR firm. And, because of whatever impression about my abilities as a PR guy that I had left with him during a past engagement, he immediately thought of me.
In that nutshell, then, you have the difference between branding and visual identity, something that, as I said at the opening, many marketers and not a few so-called branding experts often confuse.
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