By Leo Valiquette
Do you remember that Knorr commercial about how it had reduced sodium in its packaged side dishes?
Global advertising agency DDB Worldwide took a clever approach to promote a relatively humdrum message by portraying the perspective of that one individual unhappy about sodium reduction. It came up with an ad that features a despondent little salt shaker neglected at the family dinner table who trudges out of the house into a cold dark world.
Such creativity, says Jeff Swystun, is the most powerful force in business, especially in today’s world where technology has fuelled social interaction between consumers and the brands they use like never before. In this new reality, advertisers and marketers can no longer afford to focus on connecting people to brands. They must instead focus on connecting people to people.
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This is the second article in a continuing series that examines the state of the ecosystem necessary to successfully bring technology to market. Based on dozens of interviews with entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, angel investors, business leaders, academics, tech-transfer experts and policy makers, this series looks at what is working and what can be improved in the go-to-market ecosystem in the United States, Canada and Britain. We invite your feedback.
By Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette
In a recent interview with the New York Times, Sean Parker, the entrepreneur behind Napster and Facebook and himself a venture capital investor, provided a rather gloomy assessment of the VC industry and the future of U.S. innovation in general.
“The risk-reward doesn’t work out in favor of putting money into venture capital anymore,” he said.
And yes, again, to confirm, Parker is himself a VC investor. He went on to say that the contraction of the U.S. VC market means that “innovation could gradually grind to a halt or at least become less effective,” a trend that could serve to erode the ambition and vision of entrepreneurs.
“Ten years ago, venture capitalists would ask the question: Do you want to build a company and flip it or do you want to build a company and IPO it? It’s a trick question. The correct answer was always, ‘I want to build an incredibly valuable stand-alone business and maybe we get bought, maybe we go public but we’re going to build an incredibly valuable company,’” Parker said. “Now it’s actually not clear that that’s the right answer. There’s a lot of venture firms that are clearly interested in building something and selling it either to Facebook, Google, Microsoft.”
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By Linda Forrest
A few weeks ago, as I trundled through a sparsely populated HMV, a retailer that’s rumoured to be on its way out of Canada (if not about to shuffle off this mortal coil altogether), I couldn’t help but wonder if its acronym still stood for His Master’s Voice or if its meaning had shifted and now accounts for the hats, mugs and videogames that have overtaken shelf space once devoted to recorded music.
Pair that with the intensive work we’ve been doing to launch our strategy practice and my mind turns to diversification as a marketing strategy. Wikipedia defines diversification in this usage, rather than its other recognized definition as a financial investment strategy, as “a form of corporate strategy for a company. It seeks to increase profitability through greater sales volume obtained from new products and new markets. Diversification can occur either at the business unit level or at the corporate level. At the business unit level, it is most likely to expand into a new segment of an industry which the business is already in. At the corporate level, it is generally…very interesting entering a promising business outside of the scope of the existing business unit.”
When does it make sense to branch out? How can your company go about determining if and when diversification is the right approach for you? Marketing experts like several of our Associates can provide you with strategic counsel on your particular scenario, but there are some tried and true considerations that must be truthfully answered to determine whether this is a successful evolution of your brand or a desperate move to increase revenues by trying to be all things to all people. Diversification is a risk, but it can be a calculated one.
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This is the first in a continuing series of articles that examine the state of the ecosystem necessary to successfully bring technology to market. Based on dozens of interviews with entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, angel investors, business leaders, academics, tech-transfer experts and policy makers, this series looks at what is working and what can be improved in the go-to-market ecosystem in the United States, Canada and Britain. We invite your feedback.
By Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette
“Companies that can’t clearly articulate their customer and market are not real serious companies, they are research projects … Engineering and marketing need to work together from the get go.”
So said Ronald Weissman in a recent interview. And Weissman should know. He is chair of the Software Special Industry Group at Band of Angels, Silicon Valley’s oldest angel investment organization. The Band has seeded over 200 companies in the past 16 years, yielding more than 40 profitable exits via acquisition and nine via initial public offerings on Nasdaq.
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By Francis Moran
For too long now, I have been painfully aware of just how dimly acquainted technology is with marketing.
I’ve heard all the usual reasons; hell, I’ve even subscribed to most of them myself at one time or another. But these excuses simply don’t hold up to scrutiny.
Technology companies tend to be engineering-driven and gears just don’t get marketing, goes perhaps the most common refrain. It’s true that most technology ventures are engineering ventures but I think marketers are letting themselves too easily off the hook by bleating that the engineers don’t understand what we do and that’s why they won’t support it. We’re supposed to be in the explanation and persuasion business; if we can’t explain ourselves to our own bosses and clients and persuade them why they should invest heavily in what we do, then we deserve the dim respect marketing so often seems to attract.
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By Leo Valiquette
