I can see the retort when question on the top line estimate:

Even after negotiations it is still a $600M pay day.  Add in some contingency legal fees and the net is like $400 or like a gabillion times more than current revenues.

So while ZL clearly admits a short coming in marketing, which is the reason they aren’t leaders, thus the law suite, they might want to spend some time reflecting on the Ability to Execute concept when this is all over.

Below is a simple overview how marketing and branding just might influence a given organization’s placement in any given magic quadrant.

Many thanks to Hub Spot Marketing for their grader tools.

Getting to be those lazy days of summer – ok, not really.  I’m in the process of packing up the house, coordinating all work and trying to find out how to get ready to be in Europe for the last half of August and into Sept.  No shortage of things to do in real life, so I thought it might be better to work on my focus here with a little research on what people are reading and not reading around here.

Ultimately it’s just looking at some content, stats and alike….  I’ve more or less made it an annual process to review the site, understand where it has been and what the trajectory looks like going forward – Strategic Planning more or less.

The Methodology

The process is fairly straight forward – review the content, identify content themes of personal interest and write, more acurately extend certain concepts.  The planning activity for me is psuedo-rigorous with a bunch of reading and thinking – no presentations to give, but a bunch of thinking and mindmapping.  The metrics and content themes are more or less directional and just make me understand a little more.

A Content Analysis

Over time the content and focused has changed, but there are two key areas of sustained interest for me, Branding & Product Management, which is where Spatially Relevant is listed by Alltop.   So as exercise I set out to  find out where and when did these themes started @ Spatially Relevant.  So I’m kicking off my market research for the 2010 strategic plan with a revisionist history on these two tags.

First Post on Each Tag

Product Management: First Post on Product Management was a slideshare preso on Product, which I can’t seem load, but more or less within the first thirty days of start.

Branding: Brand first appeared with an almost an incoherent post on pricing and promotion.  So the first 90 days of spinning up the blog.

Other Posts Over Time

• Brand as the Differentiator – Altschuler wrote this.
• What does a Product Manager do? – How is that different than a Project Manager?
• Target Markets and Segmentation – Brand and product targeting via content.
• Brogan on Marketing: Cultural change focused insights.

After reviewing the initial content here, I saw that it had a happy little randomness about it – sorta all lifestream like and stuff.  The site seems to be going back that way a little, last year I declared less fluff and more value as part of the strategic plan, not sure how that worked out in retrospect, but it was fun.

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So my kids have recently become inundated with Michael Jackson songs, my iTunes spend this month is a little higher than normal, but I do think I own every Top 20 song by MJ.  Last night I found myself singing along with Pretty Young Thing and just laughing at Prescott dancing his ass off in the family room.  I guess that’s what it’s about – sharing fun and good times. Good music can do that and that’s what we got from MJ during his life.

I don’t have any “I remember when my parents bought me Off the Wall” or the first time I saw the Thriller video.   After a Panic show like when I was 34,  the house music after encore was Can’t Stop Till You Get Enough, 20,000 sweaty folks after 3 hours of music basically refused to leave when the lights came on, until the song finished.

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Net-Net: The event surprised me by the number of new folk I had seen at this event and was able to meet.  It’s interesting it seems like there is a new wave of folks getting engaged in the conversation.   There was one odd thing, just kinda a vibe in the room that a bunch of folks seemed intimidated by the opportunity to hang out thier customers.  Perhaps the level of maturity of social media is a little nascent than I would have thought.  Not to go all Breaking Dawn on ya, but it seems social markets are transitioning brands into modern day economic vampires – you sorta need to be invited in.

Back to the preso, which is how the post started.  Despite the claim that it’s not just another social media presentation by a social media expert, it kinda is.  It does at time get a little evangelical, but it is definitely a fair piece walk through as a primer.

other posts:

• What Color is Your Kool-Aid?
• Who are these people and why are they following me?
• Product Plagiarism

Warren Haynes: Warren

Trey Anastasio: Did not suck

Buddy Guy: Killed it

Allman Brothers 3/12/09
Southbound
Beacon Theater NYC
Buddy Guy & Trey – ( Paige?)

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Watch National Lampoon presents Electric Apricot: Quest for Festeroo in Funny Videos |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Trivia: In 1994, they covered The Beatles’ White Album in its entirety.

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