Browsing Tag

Marketing and Advertising

Product Launches Don’t need to suck…

Prior to leaving for my latest business trip, I had the opportunity to preview David Daniels‘s eBoook, “Is your product launch doomed?” and I was fairly thankful for that opportunity. David’s ebook was fairly timely and provided a needed reality check for the effort which I was engaged in, a product launch. The piece provides 10 key items for consideration during a launch – all of which are valid. My most recent launch did so well since the launch focused on ensured that item 10 from david’s book – the team was paramount. The initial launch roadshow which just wrapped up garnered reasonable international press, initial interest and customer excitement. So basically – the mechanics and the emotional parts went very well, so now on to the crazy profit and revenue part. So that’s kept me just a little busy this summer, but I look forward to posting more over the coming months. Considerably more, wow have I learned a bunch in the last 90 days.

Looks like David has been busy too – here is a presentation I found which David did at ProductCamp Austin, it appears that his launch plan for the eBook included a roadshow of sorts as well. Without the sound track and if you haven’t read the eBook you should still be able to get most of the parts, but I would read the long version too.

10 Ways To Identify Launch Disaster (Pca)

View more presentations from Pragmatic Marketing.

Bacon Scented Air Spray. Need we say more? (inquisitr.com)

September 7, 2009 by Jon Gatrell

Recycling: A Mid-Summers Night’s Writers Block (aka Strategic Planning) – 1 of 3

: Image via Wikipedia

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.

July 12, 2009 by Jon Gatrell

Really? Kinda has a social media revival feel to it

This has been a fairly hectic month – new job, looking for a new house, scurrying around for mountain social and but I was lucky enough to be on the CRMA panel which turned out to be a great event. The panel included super talented folks like Brent Leary and Cassandra Jeyaram which made the discussion very engaging. The event had like 50 folks and it does seem that this social media thing is just at the edge of significant economic impact. Intercontinental has launched a friends and family program which effectively turns everyone in the company into lead gen ambassadors. Interesting stuff is afoot in the marketplace. Brands are engaging in social markets, but by the questions and general interest in the room it appears that many are just starting. I’m definitely thankful for the opportunity to have been there.

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.

NOT ANOTHER SOCIAL MEDIA PRES – THE INTERNET & BRANDING

View more Microsoft Word documents from James Denman.

Old School Marketing for Social Media Type Stuff

So I went to check the mail the other day and yet again some random person put something in my “please pick my mail, OH Mr. Attentive Postman Person flag”. Normally all of the unwanted hang tags and cards go straight to the trash. The main driver is these are typically for services I already have a vendor of choice for or I don’t need any trees trimmed, wouldn’t even imagine why painting my walls with toddlers/kids and I am pretty sure I don’t need any more Pampered Chef items, but this one was different – it was for a blog (http://www.theredneckreview.com/). So I didn’t throw it away instead I took a photo and decided to write a little.

Promotion is Hard Work

Who WOULDN’T give this sorry little cartoon character a minute and turn over the card, so I did on the way to the garbage can – stop not a service provider, a writer! Come to find out it is a blogger, trying to sell his wares sorta door-to-door in a bad economy. How bad? Well apparently beef jerky bad.

photo.jpg by you.

In the end, social media isn’t killing old ways of doing things it is only changing how/where we do it. As marketers, we will continue to create content, continue to advertise and we will continue to be challenged to covert interest into motivation to buy. Buyers are people and the more you can touch them the better, so integrating your online channels with the real-world marketing is an imperative for your brand. I know this is pretty self-evident, but I’m always a little amazed at how hard it is find a product’s website on their advertising and packaging, but Brent Basham gets it – no single channel is independent or works in today’s marketplace.

So a brand managers, find a way to get your online identity on packaging and all advertising. As product owners we need to find a way to get your product’s story integrated into as many of the online activities/channels as possible.

April 9, 2009 by Jon Gatrell

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