Browsing Tag

Focus

The 4 P’s of blogging

So here are Steve Rubel’s version of the 4 P’s of blogging:

Passionate – Write about issues that are near and dear to your heart
Purposeful – Make sure you keep the end in mind; why are you blogging?
Present – Keep an eye on what’s topical today
Positional – Take a stand on an issue and follow it

I read it and thought – isn’t that just the big P product? So I figured I would look around a little on his [tag]blog[/tag] and he seems a little interesting:

Biography

[tag]Steve Rubel[/tag] is a senior marketing strategist with over 15 years experience. He currently serves as senior vice president in Edelman’s me2revolution practice. Edelman is the largest independent global PR firm.

He is charged with helping Edelman identify, test, incubate and champion new forms of communication. He also explores this on his well-read Micro Persuasion weblog and in a bi-weekly column for AdAge Digital.

Steve is often sought out as a speaker and appears frequently in the press. He has been named to several prestigious lists, including: Media Magazine’s Media 100, the AlwaysOn/Technorati Open Media 100 and the CNET News.com Blog 100. Prior to joining Edelman in 2006, Rubel spent five years at CooperKatz & Company.

Regardless of Steve’s curriculum vitae, the [tag]4 P’s[/tag] above are only attributes of the Product and how to find niche. At some levels, this is the YOU segment a theoretical concept which I have no experience in, but am currently executing in my [tag]blogging[/tag] efforts.

So know your [tag]affinity[/tag] attributes and blog away.

September 3, 2007 by
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The Product Management Dance

So, I was a little bored and ran with a sound bite I often use to explain [tag]product management[/tag]. The PM [tag]elevator pitch[/tag] is typically in response to a comment like “product management is easy” or “what is it you do?”.

“Product management is a good deal like [tag]dancing[/tag] – it looks easier than it is. The biggest challenge isn’t figuring out the steps of the many dances you need to do – it’s that you don’t know if your going to a mosh pit or a ballroom for the next meeting”

September 1, 2007 by
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Adam Smith: The Marketing Concept

Short post:

In 1776 in The Wealth of Nations, [tag]Adam Smith[/tag] wrote that the needs of producers should be considered only with regard to meeting the needs of consumers. While this philosophy is consistent with the [tag]marketing concept[/tag], it would not be adopted widely until nearly 200 years later.

http://www.netmba.com/marketing/concept

August 26, 2007 by
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The Death of Marketing? Mix it up.

Here is the deal – the 4 P’s “are what they are”, but perhaps they need a little revitalizing. The emergence of later market realities across industries are resulting in a need for a different approach. On the extreme, some have predicted the demise of marketing – specifically Piers Fawkes:

Certainly the conditions are right. I mean, if “marketing” were a brand, we would have redesigned and [tag]relaunched[/tag] it a long time ago. As it is, the idea stands for an extraordinary bundle of things. It is a very messy concept indeed, and the practice…well, the practice is even messier.

So I thought about it death? Probably not but it could be something else.  I centered on the following questions “is it a relaunch or brand extension?” So perhaps Marketing, as a discipline, is just a late stage market and requires a different approach.

So as with any late stage market, or in this case, a discipline, the first step is to look for innovation – find an emerging P. Various folks have indicated [tag]web 2.0[/tag] could be considered an innovation fulcrum, but continues to demonstrate an emergence of new channels which is changing the effort to impact change. These new channels require a portfolio based approach which focuses on optimizing revenue by channel and is effectively product agnostic and segment focused.

So we have the [tag]4 P’s[/tag] of today:

  • Product
  • Price
  • Placement (as a geographer I can’t use place, it’s too specific)
  • Promotion

The Marketing Mix

So if the 4 P’s represent the market mix, the 5 P is managing the mix against multiple channels – legacy, emerging and under development.   Marketing teams continue to be challenged with only so much capacity and budget.   With limited resources a ROI based strategy is required. To that end, the 5th P, portfolio management, requires you balance investment, expectations and the ability to execute in such a way that you don’t end up over invested in a channel which isn’t delivering the optimal return.

Not all products are good for all channels and not all channels perform the same for like/similar products so a detailed set of instrumented processes and metrics are required to drive a successful portfolio management strategy. So is the 5th P, Portfolio, is effectively a brand extension of marketing or is it more of an assortment extension?

 

August 23, 2007 by
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