When Engineers Become Marketers

Overcoming the “Field of Dreams” approach

2011-08-16T10:26:00.000-07:00

Through-out my 17 years of business development, I have seen many promising start-ups with great products fail. From my personal observations, I have determined that they fail most often due to lack of persistent sales. They assumed that if they built it, customers would come. Most of them ran their bank accounts dry before any significant business came their way.

I am now working with a new start-up accelerator in the Dallas - Fort Worth area. This motivated me to put my thoughts down in writing as I seek to save others from this common fate. Here are my thoughts.

Owners were busy developing the product and gave little thought as to how to reach a decision maker. They thought that simply being visible was going to generate business. People do not naturally assimilate general information and turn it into an understanding of how that will benefit them. They must be guided to this understanding and then encouraged to make a decision to buy.

Once start-ups realized that no one was seeking them out, they increased their visibility. They went to where the decision makers were looking for information. That was usually trade shows and conferences. After initial failure to attract adequate attention, they “idiot proofed” their message so it could not be missed.

Once a decision maker was reached and interest generated, there was too little follow up. They waited for the person to contact them. If they did go the extra step and tried to contact the decision maker, they failed to persist long enough to close the deal.

Seven Failures in the sales process of start-ups:

1) Expecting people to understand the significance of their product. Product developers were so excited about their product, they thought the benefits of it were clearly visible to others.

2) Failing to understand how far a prospect needs to be led before they understand enough to make a purchase decision. Being simply “interested” may mean that they were only entertained. Sometimes it requires more to bring them to the point where they decide to take further action.

3) “Further action” is not necessarily a decision to purchase. It is often an awareness that more information is required.

4) Failing to follow up. Both parties return to the office and get back into their routine. Unless “closing the deal” is part of someone's routine, chances are, nothing new will happen. You will go back to doing your day job and your prospect will go back to doing his day job.

5) Failing to be persistent. If you follow up, chances are, you will not get through the first time. You will have to repeatedly follow up. There is a sticking point beyond which you will need to progress before you develop a smooth working relationship which generates income. Most people fail to be persistent enough to get past the sticking point.

6) Failing to persist through a lengthy purchase process. Multiple additional meetings at the customer's location may be required before they have all the justification they need to make the decision to buy. Additional people may need to be brought into the process who may have different criteria which need to be addressed. Most or all of the people you will meet will need to be satisfied before you close the deal. You must continue to persist because you are still in that sticky period.

7) Failing to persist when another prospect expresses interest. It is so easy to lose confidence that the deal is ever going to close. When that next great opportunity emerges, it is so hard to not chase it. I have seen this in myself. To continue calling a prospect and never getting through or to continue having conference calls were everyone seems to be finding reasons to not close the deal; it just seems like wasted effort. When another promising opportunity emerges, it feels so logical to put all your effort into making that new deal happen only to end up down the road 6 weeks later at the same point in the sales process.

I suggest new entrepreneurs form accountability groups with other new entrepreneurs. Your accountability partners need to hold you accountable to persist until you close a deal. And on the flip side, they should be able to help you see when a promising deal is never going to materialize. They are not as close to it as you are. It will be easier for them to remain logical.

James Snider is the Business Development Director for Accelerant Marketing Alliance, LLC of Grapevine, Texas. www.accelerantmktg.com “Corporate Marketing Department ... one hour at a time.”

What You Can Learn from the Penny

2011-08-11T10:34:00.000-07:00

I heard a discussion on NPR last December concerning the new “penny.” I was amused to hear that a penny actually costs 1.7 cents to make and that, officially, there is no US unit of money called a “penny.” The correct term is “one cent piece.” The original “one cent piece” was about the size of the British half-penny. Our forefathers, being familiar with British coins, dubbed the “one cent piece” the “penny.” The name stuck. Once “penny” came into common use, there was no way the US Treasury was going to get people to switch over to using “one cent piece.” The proper name of this coin was essentially lost.

When it comes to building your brand, make sure you are consistent from the start. If you’re not, your brand will get lost.

I have a client who could not pick his favorite logo, so he uses both of them. You can go to his web site and see one logo and to a retail outlet and see a different logo on his product packaging. Not only does this reduce the “critical mass” required to make a logo recognizable, but the customer is left wondering if one is the real product and the other is a knock-off. What will that do to your sales?

In another scenario, I worked with an engineering company who would alternate “The Multimedia Experts” with “The Multimedia Connection” depending on who was creating the marketing material. If you have so little logic behind your branding statement, if you can just substitute words, then you will not create a solid brand image. Your marketing materials are not going to work consistently towards your goals.

It is not hard to imagine that there are search engine optimization (SEO) benefits for being consistent but I am going to share an SEO tip that I have only seen once in my two years of research. You can significantly improve your ranking on Google if you will create three social media sites using the same name as your Web page. This is something that should be considered when creating your Web page. For many of you, this could be a problem because your Web page is already locked in and matching names on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter may have already been taken. If your company name or URL (web page address) is fairly unique, however, you have a great opportunity to increase you visibility on the Internet.

Here is an example of what I mean. When we created Accelerant Marketing Alliance, we knew that name was way too long for a URL. We created a unique abbreviated name for our URL: accelerantmktg.com. When we created our Twitter account, we made it match the web page: twitter.com/accelerantmktg. With Facebook: Facebook.com/accelerantmktg. The YouTube channel is in the works and it will be called YouTube.com/user/accelerantmktg. If you have been reluctant to start social media marketing, here is one more reason to do so. You now know a secret SEO tactic that most of your competition does not know.

In your brand planning, you need to take a variety of things into consideration. For example, how do you manage your success? Most of us are aware of the failure Kleenex had in regaining exclusive use of their brand name once it became generic. Before that, Bayer lost exclusive use of the brand name “Aspirin” and had to build brand awareness of the Bayer name. Some of us will remember when Xerox started promoting the term “photocopies” to prevent the lost of their brand name. Once everyone from your six year old to your grandmother calls “photocopies” a “Xerox,” the brand name is probably gone.

Most of us will never be fortunate enough to achieve the level of success where our company becomes a household name. For the rest of us, the first battle will be “uniqueness.” “Accelerant” is not a unique name for a marketing agency. When you throw in the different variants such as “Accelerator” and “Accelerate,” you have some branding issues. You can play with the spelling or add content to the name. We considered, “Excellerant” but decided that this might opened up some confusion with “Excel spreadsheets.” We are not accountants. We could have become “Accelerant Marketing of North Texas” but we did not want to limit our reach to just north Texas. We are worldwide. One of our oldest customers is a semiconductor company in Shanghai. In the end, we focused on our objective to form an alliance with our customers in making their success, our success. This gave us the unique name we needed to start building our brand.

At Accelerant, we are serious about our brand. We use a consistent font on all our materials. Even our meeting minutes are done in this font. We use our company slogan on both sides of our business cards. We are consistent with the punctuation for our slogan: “Corporate Marketing Department ... one hour at a time.” The first part must use caps like a department sign in a major corporation. We do “big corporation” marketing. The last part must be in all lower case because that is a conversation between the two of us. We are bringing “big corporation” marketing to the people. Due to this attention to detail, we know who we are, what we offer and how to present our value in as few words as possible.

Make your brand marketing follow a plan or you will be all over the place, spreading a little bit of marketing here and there but not enough anywhere to make a difference. Be consistent with your brand. Use the same name, same logo, same slogan...same colors and font on all your printed materials (business cards, stationary, brochures), ads, Web page, social media, etc. If you do not, then you may end up like the “one cent piece”; everywhere but still unknown.

James Snider is the Business Development Director for Accelerant Marketing Alliance, LLC of Grapevine, Texas. www.accelerantmktg.com “Corporate Marketing Department ... one hour at a time.”

What I learned from working in a nuclear power plant...road warriors

2011-07-01T19:39:00.000-07:00

I left Dallas for Rochester on one of those tiny United Express Jets. We connected through Chicago, with delays along the way. What should have taken 8 hours, door-to-door, took 12. I have done a lot of business travel and know that this is the norm. DFW and ORD are particularly bad airports for delays.

During the layover at O'Hare, I got to meet one of the “guys.” I was not sure what to expect, but he was very good natured and talkative. He even seemed a bit excited. He'd just finished another “outage” and was glad to have back-to-back jobs. I learned later that the men who rewire generators do not make very much money. They fly all over the country, working primarily at power plants. When times are good, they rarely go home. They are true road warriors. When times are bad, they have to worry about making rent. Right now, times are good.

“Outage” is a term I was going to hear over and over for the next several days. This made reference to the planned “power outage” that the Ginna Nuclear Power Plant was going to undergo. This was a time when every employee was reassigned to new duties while maintenance was being done on the major equipment. The turbines, generator and nuclear reactor would all have maintenance done during this outage. It occurs every 18 months and, as I would soon find out, disrupts the lives of everyone working at the power plant. You can just image. You do something every day based on the fact that electricity is being produced. When electricity stops being produced, your job stops and you start doing something else.

I said that these generator rewiring workers are true road warriors. Most people who call themselves “Road Warriors” are very pampered professionals who travel a lot. They earn millions of miles on major airlines and millions of points at major hotels...and, therefore, get plenty of upgrades and perks. I see these traveling professionals at first class check-in, every time I go to the airport. They are getting the ticket agent to give them some sort of extra concession. These “Road Warriors” are premium class travelers who get the first class seats, access to the airline lounges, upgrades to nice rooms at nice hotels and eat dinner on fat expense accounts.

The guys I would soon meet are true road warriors. They fly on dozens of cheap, cramped airlines and stay at dozens of cheap hotels. If they are organized enough to keep track of the sundry customer loyalty programs, it will take them years to earn enough miles on any one airline to get multiple free tickets for a family vacation. It is true that they will stay a month at a hotel, but that is enough to earn them a night or two. Next outage, a different chain and a different frequent guest program. They have all the pain of travel with none of the rewards. They are not treated as one of the privileged premier travelers. Why in the world would they want to travel when they get a week off? And how would they afford the vacation once they got there? The money they make has to go for basic necessities.

Upon arriving at Rochester airport, Joe, my traveling companion, kept pointing to guys and saying “He is one of our guys...” I was never sure, exactly, to whom he was pointing. In a few minutes, I would see the whole crowd at the hotel and get my next glimpse at what I was up against.

What I learned from working in a nuclear power plant...work boots

2011-04-27T10:32:00.000-07:00

Now, I thought I knew what work boots were. I have a pair of sturdy hiking boots I wear all the time. However, a friend of mine, who used to work for the BNSF railroad, offered to lend me his work boots. I will be required to wear steel toed boots on this job. I will be working on the "turbine deck" where everyone is required to wear steel toed boots, a hard hat, safety glasses and ear plugs.

I was warned to not get those cheap steel toed boots from Walmart. My shift will be from 6:00 PM to 6:00 AM. Twelve hours, 6 nights a week (with the potential of going to a full 7 day week) on a concrete floor. This is not a place for $70 boots. I was encouraged to spend the extra $100 for a good pair.

$170 for a pair of boots that I will wear for 6 weeks, then probably never wear again?

I called my friend from the railroad and asked if he could lend me his boots ASAP. I figured, twelve hours on a concrete floor is no place to be breaking in a pair of boots either.

Once my friend handed over his work boots to me, I was full of wonder and intimidation. These things must weigh 10 pounds each. They laced about half way up my shin and felt like Frankenstein shoes. Hard to walk in ....clump ....clump ....clump.... But they said "Red Wings" on them and from what I've read on-line, these are the best.

Suddenly, my years of experience in marketing were failing me. This was no place for a marketing, white collar guy. I was entering the world of the working men. Men who had tattoos back when men had tattoos, not musicians and drama majors. These were guys who were missing digits and called them "fingers" and "toes" not "digits." These were men who wore boots that weighed as much as a spare tire.

Next lesson? Learn to walk in steel toed boots and to look like you've done it all your life.

James Snider is the business development director for Accelerant Marketing Alliance, a full-service marketing start-up providing a corporate marketing department....one hour at a time
For more information on Accelerant: http://accelerantmktg.com
For more information on James: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

What I learned from working in a nuclear power plant

2011-04-26T14:02:00.000-07:00

As a consultant, sometimes you are called upon to perform duties outside your normal scope. If someone knows you are available and they need anyone who is not a complete idiot, sometimes they will call.

I had just such a call recently. Seeing as business is slow right now and the caller is a friend, I accepted the job.

In about a week, I will start a 6 week stint as a safety supervisor at a nuclear power plant. I will be leaving the great state of Texas to join a team that performs maintenance on a wide variety of power plant equipment. It will be my job to make sure they are following all the safety rules, all the time.

I have started reading endless safety manuals so I will know things like “4) Wear Kevlar gloves when using utility knives, and scrappers.” Honestly, I did not know that there was such a thing as “Kevlar gloves.” But then, the writer of the manual did not know that the comma before “and” was not necessary, so I guess that makes us even.

I am not sure what I will learn about “marketing” from this experience, but I tend to find grist for the mill in just about every circumstance. This will be a unique experience for me, for sure. Whatever I learn, I will share with you on this blog.

Now, the most important thing for me to learn is how to say “nuclear.” Saying “nucaler” might be OK in Texas among Texans, but it will not do a lot for my credibility once I set foot on power plant property.

James Snider is the business development director for Accelerant Marketing Alliance, a full-service marketing start-up providing a corporate marketing department....one hour at a time
For more information on Accelerant: http://accelerantmktg.com
For more information on James: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

What I learned from Beer Marketing

2010-12-24T20:10:00.000-08:00

Back in 1971, beer marketing took a major turn. The problem with American beer was, it pretty much all tasted the same. That is before Sam Adams, pale ales or the other beers which are distinctly different than "old school" American beers like Bud and Miller.

These "mainstream" American beers were (and are) made from the same ingredients, using the same process, yielding the same results. Tastes test have consistently shown that beer drinkers who are fiercely loyal to one brand can not tell the difference in blind taste tests. How could marketing executives get the consumer to switch brands?

Most traditional beer ads promoted the superior taste of the beer. Other ads generated interest with a comely female actress or used a star to build a "cool" factor about the beer. The ads, as you would suspect, were all about the beer.

At one time, Miller beer promoted themselves as "The Champagne of Bottled Beer." This had something to do with the extra carbonation in Miller beer but it was also an attempt to promote the "superior taste." This helped them to carve out a niche with people who liked beer but found it socially beneath their status or preferred other alcoholic beverages.

What Miller discovered was that they were being successful with this niche market but that their target audience only drank a couple of beers from time to time. The real beer drinkers were the blue collar folks who drank beer all the time and in large quantities. If they could re-brand themselves to appeal to the working class "Joe 6-pack", they would increase sales significantly. The term "Joe 6-pack" was actually coined by the advertising industry as an reference (albeit an unflattering one) to this average beer drinker.

In 1971, Miller started showing TV commercials depicting guys leaving construction sites and using the tag line, "If you've got the time, we've got the beer" and "It's Miller Time!" These commercials were very successful. They focused on the beer drinker and not the beer. That was huge. Beer drinkers (who felt somewhat marginalized in general) started buying Miller. I remember when I was a carpenter, occasionally I would hear someone say, at the end of the day, "It's Miller Time" and everyone knew what he meant.

This was so successful, that Budweiser (the number one selling beer) started running ads that said "For all you do, this Bud's for you." A powerful new age dawned where the customer, not the product, was the focus.

James Snider is a marketing consultant, responsible for developing the 3.4 billion dollar 1394/FireWire market. James has over 16 years of marketing experience with 7 years working for Fortune 100 companies, 8 years as executive director of a non-profit and, since the summer of 2009, as a strategic business development consultant. www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

It's a tough call

2010-12-13T09:02:00.000-08:00

I was discussing a recent marketing project with an old friend. He is about as "black and white" a person as I've ever known. After attending law school and passing his bar exam, he practiced law for one year and quit. The whole legal system was too crooked for him. Judges were too influenced by whether a particular attorney threw good Christmas parties and had a good deer lease. He felt that preferential treatment was given to the attorneys who were good schmoozers.

In that respect, my friend is very much like the most technical engineers I've had the pleasure to work with or the misery of working for.

When I told my friend that I'd taken on a physician as a client, he was aghast. Back in his day as an attorney (one year), it was considered unethical to advertise. That would go double for a doctor! A person should not select a doctor based on good marketing but on whether or not they are a good doctor. If you read my post on engineers and social media, you will see similar logic.

I explained to my friend that what I was doing was helping this physician to communicate better with people who needed her services. I was determining what made this doctor unique and helping her to verbalize it clearly. She specialized in certain treatments and not others. As a result, she was building a practice devoted to being the best in a certain niche which other doctors were only treating as a sideline.

When we Googled the keywords a patient would use to find a specialist in this niche, she was not showing up on page one. Only Wikipedia entries, national organizations and other informational sites were showing up. No doctors and certainly no doctors in the city where she practiced.

And since she specialized in one area, she needed to communicate with doctors who could refer patients to her. She needed to develop a short brochure and do something to increase the likelihood that the doctor would read the brochure and not just throw it away.

There was nothing manipulative in what I was doing for the physician. It was all about coming up with clear, concise wording; adjusting her web page and writing a short brochure on her specialty.

The snag in my plan was in determining how to get a doctor to read a brochure. Chances were good that some gatekeeper would throw it away before the doctor saw it. You can't just set up an appointment to visit the doctor to talk shop. Getting the ear of a doctor is nearly impossible. Sales people, with nice fat expense accounts, take up their free (non-revenue generating) time.

What I did not tell my friend was that part of my marketing plan was to have my client throw a blowout summer party at the lake and a killer Christmas party with the intent of inviting a select group of physicians who would likely refer patients to my client. Is that manipulation? Schmoozing? Bribery? Or is that simply the most effective way to gain the attention of busy, affluent and influential people?

It's a tough call.

James Snider is a marketing consultant, responsible for developing the 3.4 billion dollar 1394/FireWire market. James has over 16 years of marketing experience with 7 years working for Fortune 100 companies, 8 years as executive director of a non-profit and, since the summer of 2009, as a strategic business development consultant. www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

Social Media and Fishing

2010-12-08T13:44:00.000-08:00

I lead weekly social media labs. I frequently find people who are stuck on some minor detail with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. and feel that they just can not move forward until they (for example) understand what they should enter into the "Location" field....do they enter "Grapevine" or "DFW, Texas" or "Dallas - Fort Worth"...do they spell out "Fort" in "Ft. Worth" and do they spell "Texas" or just enter "TX"...

I also find people who are ready to write off social media because "It does not work." What you find out is that they tried posting three or four things to Twitter and nothing much happened. They did not see their Twitter account show up on page one of Google search results. They did not pick up a dozen followers in their first week. No one reached out to them via Direct Message.

I find this to be a particular tendancy among engineers. Their expectations of cause and effect are perfect for product design but not very good for business development. I have seen brilliant engineers with exciting product designs collect some great leads from a conference or a trade show, send off an email as soon as they return to the office, then wait for a response. Maybe, if they are very aggressive, they will make a phone call...and leave voice mail. What more can they do? They emailed / called and nothing happened. Maybe they are lucky enough to get a face-to-face meeting, then they expect the potential customer to get back to them. When nothing happens, they become frustrated...and go out of business.

I feel like asking, "If you went fishing and the fish were not biting, would you say that fishing does not work? Of course not! You would change bait, change locations, come back on a different day or a different time of day. You would ask someone where to go and what lures or bait seem to work there."

You need to do the same thing with social media. Try different things. Be creative. Keep at it. It is not the key to overnight success. You must be persistent and build success slowly.

James Snider is a marketing consultant, responsible for developing the 3.4 billion dollar 1394/FireWire market. James has over 16 years of marketing experience with 7 years working for Fortune 100 companies, 8 years as executive director of a non-profit and, since the summer of 2009, as a strategic business development consultant. www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

It I'd Asked People What They Wanted...

2010-12-07T09:37:00.000-08:00

When it comes to the way most people approach social media marketing for the first time, I am reminded of a quote by Henry Ford. Ford said, "If I'd asked people what they wanted, they would have told me 'Faster Horses'."

When I see a steady Twitter stream of news releases, I think "How is this any different than the 'Recent News' section on your web page? " When I see an endless list of "this week's car deals," I wonder, "How is this any different than the classified section of the newspaper?" If social media is so hot and new and so revolutionary...why do you think you can derive any benefit by using it like an old marketing tool?

Social media is about attracting customers by being interesting. Talk about how you are being "green." Tell me about the great charities you support and how you arrange volunteer days so your employees contribute a day of work to Habitat for Humanity or the local food bank. Tell me a funny story about your product or service. Give me information on how to get the most from your product or service. Give me something interesting to keep me coming back for more.

Don't use social media to hawk your products day after day. Be the company talking about something interesting. What are you doing that someone might want to know about? Tweet about those things. Update your LinkedIn network with those things. Put that on your Facebook wall.

Tell me something interesting and I will want to know more. That will lead to sales.

James Snider is a marketing consultant, responsible for developing the 3.4 billion dollar 1394/FireWire market. James has over 16 years of marketing experience with 7 years working for Fortune 100 companies, 8 years as executive director of a non-profit and, since the summer of 2009, as a strategic business development consultant. www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

The Big Mistake so many Make

2010-12-06T09:18:00.000-08:00

One mistake I see being made by businesses using social media is that they think it can be all about them. Traditional marketing is all about getting your message in front of people... and your message is all about you, your company, your product or your service. We use traditional web sites in this way. Go to the TI, Ford, or Wal-Mart websites and you will see that almost all the information is about their products. The customer goes to their website when they want this sort of information.

However, social media is different. It serves a different purpose which is why it is so hot right now. Most corporate marketing types can not get their head around this. Social media is all about building relationships with your customer. You are not going to build much of a relationship if all you do is talk about yourself.

I am reminded of a person I met at a social event about 6 months ago. He looked lonely so I struck up a conversation. I quickly found out why he was lonely. He talked and talked about himself and never paused for me to get a word in edgewise. He talked about the railroad industry and why it is in trouble right now. At first, he was moderately interesting...until he started talking about the design work he'd done. He was able to reduce cross axial vibrations by 19% which reduced the damage to goods and the friction between the wheels and the rails. This permitted cars to carry 14% larger loads.... I introduced him to an unsuspecting person who just happened to be standing there and then I slipped quietly away.

Now, if I ever need information on cross axial vibrations, I will find that guy again and have the conversation, but chances are, I am going to avoid him in the future. He did not provide me with anything interesting or useful. He is a walking encyclopedia full of information I do not need.

What about you as a marketer? How are you using social media? Are you providing information which a potential customer might find useful or are you telling them too much about yourself and the products you want to sell to them? You can not just post anything on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn and expect it to generate interest in your product. You have to build interest in yourself by building a relationship with a group of people who will eventually be involved in purchasing your product.

Don't let your social media marketing be like the author about whom Moses Hadas said, " This book fills a much-needed gap."

More on what to write in the next post.

James Snider is a marketing consultant, responsible for developing the 3.4 billion dollar 1394/FireWire market. James has over 16 years of marketing experience with 7 years working for Fortune 100 companies, 8 years as executive director of a non-profit and, since the summer of 2009, as a strategic business development consultant. www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

Communists, Engineers and Social Media (part two)

2010-12-05T07:44:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/user/FireWireExpert

Before making the move to consulting, I worked for a non-profit comprised primarily of engineers with a few marketers and a few engineers who wanted to dabble in marketing. To be honest, some of the engineers had great ideas and brought a useful degree of discipline to most of our projects. But some engineers just could not make the jump from engineering to marketing.

One of my biggest on-going battles was with social media marketing. The marketing professionals on our team knew that social media marketing was the up-and-coming trend. They were all for funding social media marketing projects. The problem came from my board of directors, comprised almost entirely of engineers.

Knowing well the level of detail required to make my board comfortable with the success being achieved by marketing projects, I reported some pretty compelling metrics.

YouTube, in particular, was yielding some great results. Compared to similar videos (for example, the YouTube videos being posted by a Fortune 100 company on our board of directors), we were a "run away success." (In the interest of full disclosure, I am only talking about 1,500 hits a year, not a viral success in YouTube terms. However...) We were getting twice as many hits per month as the Fortune 100 company was getting in a whole quarter. Additionally, we were reaching people in over 40 countries and in almost every state in the USA. We were getting plenty of positive comments and even a few decent questions. Our long standing desire to reach out to the end consumer, and to educate them on the benefits of our technology, was being achieved.

I requested approval to start promoting the videos to drive traffic. To my astonishment, I was told to cease and desist. Even after reporting some very positive feedback from a respected marketing consultant, my board continued to discourage me from posting new content.

The reason? "No one should be going to YouTube for technical information."

OK, I laid the facts out. Engineers are supposed to be governed by facts. We were being successful by every metric. Still, it did not fit within a reality they could accept. Things were not supposed to work this way. Rather than seeing that we could go to where the people are looking and provide accurate information, they felt that we were encouraging people to look for information in the wrong place.

Just like facts were ineffective with the Romanian judge, facts are not going to be enough to win all your battles in the workplace. Engineers and C-level executives are supposed to be influenced by facts but if the facts make them uncomfortable, expect resistance. They are missing the point and you will need to help them see the validity and value of a new reality.

We will dig into that in future posts.

James Snider is a marketing consultant, responsible for developing the 3.4 billion dollar 1394/FireWire market. James has over 16 years of marketing experience with 7 years working for Fortune 100 companies, 8 years as executive director of a non-profit and, since the summer of 2009, as a strategic business development consultant. www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

Communists, Engineers and Social Media (part one)

2010-12-04T08:52:00.000-08:00

I have a friend who grew up in Romania during the rule of Communism. As is the case with others I have known who are familiar with life behind the Iron Curtain, he has plenty of stories that amuse and confuse me.

One came to mind the other day.

There was a man in my friend's home town who accused another man of stealing a significant number of potatoes from his field right around harvest time. On the date of his trial, the accused entered the court and when asked to present his case, the man simply said, "I could not have possibly committed this crime. There were no potatoes in the field on the day I supposedly stole them."

Of course, the accuser knew that there were potatoes in the field on the day the crime was committed. In this agrarian community, everyone (even the judge) knew when fields were harvested. This pathetic line of defense was surely going to land the accused man in jail.

However, the accused produced a copy of the official Communist newspaper for the region which stated that the harvest had been good that year and that the farmers had been efficient and had every potato in the barns two weeks early.

According to this official, state run, news source, the potatoes were in the barns a full week before the crime had supposedly been committed.

Whether it was sloppy reporting or if the government officials had seen some political advantage in exaggerating a story about the good potato harvest, this judge was not going to question the veracity of the local paper or the Communist officials quoted in it.

The man was declared innocent.

What does this have to do with engineers and marketing? I will cover that in my next post.

James Snider is a marketing consultant, responsible for developing the 3.4 billion dollar 1394/FireWire market. James has over 16 years of marketing experience with 7 years working for Fortune 100 companies, 8 years as executive director of a non-profit and, since the summer of 2009, as a strategic business development consultant. www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

Emotional marketing is powerful.

2010-10-20T17:19:00.000-07:00

In my last post, I talked about marketing to emotions or "emotional marketing." I have studied this for years and incorporated it into my most successful marketing campaigns. Recently, I ran across a good article on the topic.

Emotional marketing is the most powerful way to increase market share and create undying brand loyalty.

James Snider is a Global Marketing professional, responsible for developing the 3.4 billion dollar 1394/FireWire market. James spent 16 years in marketing with 7 years working at "for profit" companies, 8 years as executive director of a non-profit and the past year as an independent global business development consultant. www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

Emotions!

2010-08-17T15:06:00.000-07:00

When you talk about emotions to an engineer, you are treading on thin ice. There is nothing they hate more than to hear about your emotions. It is like throwing water on the witch. However, marketers know that the most effective sales method is one that appeals to both logic and emotion. You can convince someone that your product is the right choice, but an little emotional push will move them to make the purchase.

The problem is, "using emotions to sell a product" sounds manipulate to an engineer. They want to give their customer all the facts so they can make a logical decision. This would make sense, given the logical nature of engineers, however, any good marketing person knows how to sell his/her product to his/her customer. When left to pure logic, there is a lack of a sense of urgency to take action and the danger of "analysis paralysis."

Let's remove the word "emotion" and substitute "motivation." How do we motivate the engineering customer to stop analyzing and to select our product without extensive research? To do this, we need to determine what motivates them. About what are they passionate?

James Snider is a Global Marketing professional, responsible for developing the 3.4 billion dollar 1394/FireWire market. James spent 16 years in marketing with 7 years working at "for profit" companies, 8 years as executive director of a non-profit and the past year as an independent global business development consultant. www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

Digital Tonto

2010-08-10T23:50:00.000-07:00

If you are not reading Greg Satell‘s (Digital Tonto) blog, you are missing some of the best marketing content on the internet. He is always interesting and informative….and he always makes me wonder how I have gotten this far in life and know so little. Here is an excerpt from his most recent blog posting:
From “Marketing Memes”

Two Hunters
Memes can spread in lots of different ways for lots of different reasons. Susan Blackmore, in her book The Meme Machine, describes how altruism can spread memes through a story about two successful primitive hunters, Kev and Gav. Kev, is a nice guy who shares his meat while Gav is a bit more selfish and keeps the proceeds from his hunt to himself.
Blackmore notes that Kev will come into contact with more people and they will be more likely to copy his style of hunting (i.e. type of bow and quiver, etc.). Moreover, other memes of his will be transferred as well, such as the type of feathers he adorns himself with, songs he likes to sing, etc..
Gav’s memes won’t be as successful. He won’t spend as much time with others so, whatever his merits, he won’t get copied as much as Kev. As information gets passed down, future generations will be more likely to adopt Kev’s memes than Gav’s.

Greg then goes on to compare Google, Microsoft, and Apple to Kev and Gav and to discuss how ideas spread.
For the complete post (and all his other excellent articles) go to www.digitaltonto.com

James Snider is a Global Marketing professional, responsible for developing the 3.4 billion dollar 1394/FireWire market. James spent 16 years in marketing with 7 years working at "for profit" companies, 8 years as executive director of a non-profit and the past year as an independent global business development consultant. www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

Ignite! Dallas, June 2, 2010

2010-06-08T11:39:00.000-07:00

The Ignite! Dallas group is heavily populated with people who are active in the Social Media Club of Dallas. I was fortunate enough to be one of 16 people selected (from a pool of 46) to speak at this rowdy event. The topic of this blog was the topic of my presentation. Please take a look:

James Snider's presentation at Ignite Dallas 2

James Snider is a Global Marketing professional, responsible for developing the 3.4 billion dollar 1394/FireWire market. James spent 16 years in marketing with 7 years working at "for profit" companies, 8 years as executive director of a non-profit and the past year as an independent global business development consultant. www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

All that useful fluff

2010-06-01T06:13:00.000-07:00

To a marketer, features are "hooks" to help them get customers interested in their product. The more features, the more ways the product can be sold and the greater the opportunity to get more people to love the product.

Just look at the iPhone. It had more features than the average smart phone and engineers love it. It was those features that made people fall in love with it (and stand in crazy long lines to get the first one....and then again to get the updated version....and then again...) A significant portion of the people standing in line to get the new iPhone were engineers. That is because marketers did an effective job of marketing it.

But wait! There's more! The Droid has plenty of features, but it lacks the "cool factor" of the iPhone. There is nothing logical about standing in line all night long to get a new phone. This brings up the importance of "emotions" in selling a product.

More on that in my next post.

James Snider is a Global Marketing professional, responsible for developing the 3.4 billion dollar 1394/FireWire market. James spent 16 years in marketing with 7 years working at "for profit" companies, 8 years as executive director of a non-profit and the past year as an independent global business development consultant. www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

Bells and Whistles...from the Engineer's vantage point

2010-05-30T22:03:00.000-07:00

Ask just about any engineer and s/he will tell you that they do not like "bells and whistles." They are a bit disdainful when they use the term. Features on a product are seen as unnecessary "fluff" added by marketing for no good reason.

When you look at what engineers do really well, it is developing clean designs, making them as simple as possible. They want to design products that work well all the time with minimal downtime. Features add complexity and often bugs. Additionally, most people never use the features.

Example....When was the last time you used a microwave to do more than reheat a cup of coffee or pop a bag of popcorn, however, most microwaves have dozens of features. You can not sell one that only has two buttons: "Coffee" and "Popcorn."

Admittedly, most features are just "fluff" but to the marketer, they are very valuable. More on that in the next installment.

James Snider is a Global Marketing professional, responsible for developing the 3.4 billion dollar 1394/FireWire market. James spent 16 years in marketing with 7 years working at "for profit" companies, 8 years as executive director of a non-profit and the past year as an independent global business development consultant. www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

Left Brained...Right Brained

2010-05-26T12:05:00.000-07:00

Part of the problem for engineers who want to move into marketing is the old "Left Brained : Right Brained" dichotomy.

We are all a combination of left and right brained traits, but engineers tend to be more left brained. They are more detail oriented and logical. They reason through things in a step-by-step fashion. They see problems as a series of dots to be connected sequentially with a line between each dot. If they were a fisherman, they would bait one hook, drop one line in the water and catch one fish. They tend to play it safe and follow the rules. They are practical.

Marketers tend to be more right brained. They are big picture and intuitive. They gather random information together and weave it into a solution. If they were a fisherman, they would cast a net into the water and catch all sorts of fish. They tend to take chances and bend the rules. They are creative.

By now, you are probably thinking, "But we are talking about technical products. Engineers need to be able to talk to engineers. If the customer is left brained, shouldn't the salesman be left brained?" It is true that the technology marketer must have a good technical aptitude, but I assert that "marketing is marketing." A good marketer will know how to sell the product to the customer, whomever the customer may be.

A few examples will clarify this.

Let Marketers do the Marketing

2010-05-19T23:13:00.000-07:00

In two weeks, I will be giving a presentation at Ignite Dallas (June 2, 2010). If you are not familiar with this international phenomenon, 15 or so speakers are selected to speak to a sizable audience on any topic they are passionate about. They are restricted to 20 slides and 5 minutes. The Ignite motto is,"Enlighten us, but make it quick."

I will be speaking on the topic of this blog...When Engineers Become Marketers. Too often, marketing is relegated to the web guy, PR person, a salesman, or (today) the social media guru. Marketing should be done by marketers. Even with technical products which require considerable technical aptitude to be marketed well, the fundamental rules of marketing stay in effect and need to be followed.

Engineers who are not trained in marketing should not be marketing technical products. On most college campuses, you will see a building called "School of Business" and a different building called "School of Engineering." "Marketing" is taught in the school of business. That is because it is not "Engineering."

Marketing is not something you can pick up by reading Wikipedia over the weekend. It takes some aptitude, some training, and some experience to do it well. Let a trained marketer do it. After all, you wouldn't have your SQL programmer solder your thermal vias to your ground plane, would you? That's crazy talk...

Over the next few installments, I will talk about how Engineers are fundamentally different than Marketers.

James Snider is a Global Marketing professional, responsible for developing the 3.4 billion dollar 1394/FireWire market. James spent 16 years in marketing with 7 years working at "for profit" companies, 8 years as executive director of a non-profit and the past year as an independent global business development consultant. www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

Take a Look Around...and keep your eyes open!

2010-03-12T17:43:00.000-08:00

An incident came to mind recently which is applicable to more than high tech marketing. Anyone who markets to people in a different culture can benefit from a tip I posted on my travel blog. Essentially, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." I try to fit in whenever I travel. Obviously, when I am in Japan, I can never look Japanese, but I can look like I know the ropes. Learn some words in Japanese. Prepare for taxi drivers who do not speak English. Moderate your speaking style to be more consistent with those with whom you are talking. Walk on the correct side of the sidewalk (not always on the right.) Look both ways when crossing the street...that is something your mother always told you, but when you are in another country, it is particularly important because driving styles and rules of engagement are very different in other places.

I recall one time when I was crossing the street in Shanghai. The "Walk" light was indicating it was safe to cross. I was almost to the other side when the light changed to "Don't Walk." I'd seen a bus in the distance, but by my calculations, I would be out of the intersection before it would even get close to me. I heard the sound of heavy and rapid footsteps behind me, only to be passed by my business associate who was only two steps behind me. He was in a dead gallop and grabbed my shirt as he passed by. The bus, which had been nearly a half block away, was traveling at an outrageous speed and was timing it to hit the intersection just as soon as the light turned green...leaving no margin for error. Any slow pedestrian was going to be a fatality. I was expecting the bus driver to show some caution, similar to bus drivers in the USA. Not this guy. He was focused on speed, not safety and it was up to anyone in the street to stay out of his way.

Another example comes to mind which deals more with business etiquette than with safety. I had a boss one time who tended to wear sunglasses every time he stepped outside. This is not the norm in the USA, but not totally unusual. When he traveled to Japan, he noticed that the Japanese salesmen were suppressing laughter each time he put on his sunglasses. After a few incidents, he asked the most "American" of the Japanese salesmen about it. He was told that in Japan, no one wears sunglasses on the street. They only wear sunglasses under certain conditions, such as when they go to the beach. Each time he put on his sunglasses on city streets, the Japanese found it to be hilarious. This was all good clean fun until they approached the office building where they were to meet with an important customer. At this point, one of the Japanese salesmen turned to by boss and said, "Larry-san, please remove the sunglasses...it makes you a stranger."

If he'd been thinking about it, he would have realized that anything that made him standout as different should have been minimized when doing business in another culture. Keep your eyes open and follow the lead of those who live in the culture you are visiting.

Looking for the "Right" Solution

2010-01-22T21:22:00.000-08:00

The problem with marketing at high tech companies is that most of the marketers are engineers who think “marketing” sounds like fun. They are not genetic marketers. They were not "born to be marketers." In many cases, they do not even have a “recessive marketing gene.” These are the people who make up the marketing organizations at most technology companies (Apple being a notable exception) and the marketing working groups of most technology trade groups.

About three years ago, I was working with a sister organization who wanted to co-market 1394 with the 1394TA. They wanted to run an ad in the CES Show Daily to build traffic to their booth. I introduced them to one of the most creative people I know to help them create an ad that would "pop." If they were going to entice people to leave the Sony, Panasonic, and Samsung booths to see their demo, the ad would need to grab attention and create curiosity.

This sister organization looked at a bunch of concepts from the creative company and migrated as a body to the least interesting ads presented. Anything truly creative made them uncomfortable. Their “engineering mind” kept raising doubts. They were second-guessing themselves to death. In the end, they selected the one concept that looked the most like all other ads in the magazine. Literally, when I picked up the magazine at the show to look for the ad, I flipped past it twice before I found it. It looked so much like every other ad, it was almost camouflaged.

It was at that moment that I had an epiphany. One reason why engineers make such mediocre marketers is because they are looking for the “correct” solution. The solution cannot be one that just feels right. It cannot be something that you just know is right but cannot explain why it is right. That “correct” solution must be the one that everyone else is doing. That is the criteria by which print ads are so often measured.

With training, I have found that engineering marketers can be extremely creative, but this has to be nurtured. It will not emerge if they are left to their engineering training and logic.

Stretching the Creative Muscle

2010-01-16T22:29:00.000-08:00

After the "Cowboy" ad, I convinced the marketing group that what they had been doing was pure folly. They simply were not solving a single problem. They were spending money for no benefit...and to the contrary....they were spending money to hurt their cause by clogging up the voicemail of their sales team with customers who should be going to the distributors for samples.

Since we knew who our target audience was and since that target audience was fairly small, it made better sense to go directly to the customer with our promotion. Our sales staff kept asking for some sort of "leave behind" to build goodwill with their customers. Our competition was always bringing trinkets to the customer. We rarely did.

We went to work on developing a giveaway that would be unique, desirable, and used in the office. A frisbee or stress relief "desktop toy" is pretty boring and usually goes home with a customer (or in the trash a day or two later) and does not stay at the office. Our first effort was a "flashcard" flashlight which is essentially a flat flashlight about the size of a playing card but much thicker. This was a decent first effort. It was unique, not very expensive, useful (everyone needs a flashlight), and had plenty of surface area for a sales message. It was just not very popular.

The group was now starting to think creatively. We'd just not stretched the creative muscle adequately...yet.

James Snider is a Global Marketing professional, responsible for developing the 3.4 billion dollar 1394/FireWire market. James spent 16 years in marketing with 7 years working at "for profit" companies, 8 years as executive director of a non-profit and the past year as an independent global business development consultant. www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

The Cure was Worse than the Disease

2010-01-15T21:49:00.000-08:00

The “Be the Cowboy not the Cow” idea was not ground breaking. It was not brilliant, but it was a big step in the right direction. We did something that stood out. The message, however, was lost on almost everyone. Our Asian counterparts did not understand it at all. They changed the headline to “One World, One Cable.” To our European associates, the message came across as “Be a Redneck…” They shrugged their shoulders and swallowed their embarrassment.

Our competitors Photoshopped the ad and changed the headline to read, “Where there are cows and cowboys, there is always a lot of fertilizer…”

However, a larger problem surfaced.

After the ad hit EETimes, I received a phone call from one of the sales reps I knew pretty well. He complained that he hated it when we ran ads. "Every time an ad shows up in a magazine, my phone starts ringing off the wall. My voicemail fills up with requests for pricing and samples from garage shops who will probably not be in business next month. At best, they will buy a few samples to play with. I don't have time to mess around with these people! I meet my sales targets by serving the needs of my tier one customers. You guys in Dallas are killing me with these ads!"

I quickly took this information to the marketing group. Unimpressed, they responded, "Yeah. The sales people tell us that every time we run an ad."

They knew this already, but failed to see the problem. I was reminded of something one of my marketing professors told us, "No person should ever work as a marketer until they have worked in sales. You do not understand what the sales person is dealing with until you have done their job."

I finally succeeded in killing ads altogether and began to work with the group to come up with different promotion methods. "Be the Cowboy, Not the Cow" looked like a failure at first, but what happened over the next few weeks showed that it was actually a game changer for this group. It marked a turning point. The team started to get the idea that they did not have to go with the same old boring stuff. It was time to get creative. We turned our attention to some of the most creative marketing being done in the industry.

James Snider is a Global Marketing professional, responsible for developing the 3.4 billion dollar 1394/FireWire market. James spent 16 years in marketing with 7 years working at "for profit" companies, 8 years as executive director of a non-profit and the past year as an independent global business development consultant. www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

A Game Changer

2010-01-12T15:04:00.000-08:00

After several meetings with the ad agency, we finally convinced them that we wanted something more than the same boring ads. They were trying to be a little creative but were holding back. After showing us several ad concepts which were marginally better than previous efforts, they pulled out one last mock-up. It was an image of a 1394 cable lassoing the world. The headline was “Be the Cowboy, Not the Cow”.

The room was silent. A stunned silence.

I liked it. I did not love it, but I at least felt like we were doing something different. Something that would stand out. Something that would get attention. Something with some punch.

Be the leader not the led. Be the one making things happen, not the one to whom things are happening. You have a choice, you can lead and be at the top of the food chain or you can be passive, not make a decisive step to add 1394, become part of the herd and eventually get eaten.

The idea was growing on me. It was quirky and a little risky (the message was a little convoluted) but it was a far cry from “the same ol’ same ol’.” My boss and I said almost in unison, “I like that one.”

The ad agency responded, “We were not serious. You wanted something ‘out there’ so we brought this as a joke.”

But we wanted and we got it. It was not destined to go down as a major marketing success for my employer, but it was a game changer. What we learned with this ad campaign changed the way this group of "engineers turned marketers" would see promotion for the rest of our time together.

Determing the Problem

2009-12-07T14:25:00.000-08:00

After the ad agency left, I had a heart-to-heart with the marketing team. The best justification for running a print ad they could muster was "to build awareness."

"Awareness of what?" was my response. In the back of my mind, I was thinking two things. Everyone who is interested in FireWire is fully aware that TI is the leader in the 1394/FireWire silicon market. "Awareness" is not a problem there. However, there was a general lack of awareness of the benefits of FireWire, how it differs from USB, who is designing in FireWire, and what competitive advantages there are to having FireWire in a device. The response to my question was disappointing.

"Awareness that we are the leaders in 1394," was their response. This was not a good answer. It did not justify spending a bunch of dollars. It did not fix a problem.
Most of these "marketers" had taken "Introduction to Marketing" as an undergrad and one or two other random marketing classes. Some of them had general purpose M.B.A.s but I was the only person in the room with an M.B.A. in marketing and 4 years of experience. Here was an opportunity to train an eager team of marketing wannabes.

"Who does not know that TI is the leader in 1394 silicon?"

"Well...we want to reinforce that message."

"Are we in danger of someone taking that position away from us?"

It was becoming clear to everyone that we needed to talk a lot more before we were ready to invite the ad agency back in.
What I had to do was to take the team through the reasons for running an ad:
1) Build awareness
2) Correct misinformation
3) Build reputation/image
4) Damage control
and there were several more on my list.

None of these were an issue for TI. If they wanted to maintain our position, there were other more effective and less expensive ways to do it. But first, I was going to walk through the process with them and run one more ad.

Then we could do a postmortem.

A Solution without a Problem

2009-11-04T10:18:00.000-08:00

When I returned to TI as Worldwide Strategic Marketing Manager (after a two year round trip to Philips Semiconductors in Albuquerque) I found that the marketing organization had grown considerably. Attending marketing meetings were a fresh batch of new marketers who were engineers a year or two before. Most of them had no marketing training and certainly no experience. I found that their decisions were not based on sound marketing logic. All they knew about marketing was that they got to travel on company money, go to trade shows, and decide what cool give away to hand out this year. Marketing was fun and they were there to have fun.

While I'd been away, TI started running print ads in EETimes and other major tech magazines. The ads were pretty boring and did little more than state that TI was the undisputed leader in the world of 1394/FireWire silicon. The unstated goal (but clear to me) was to establish TI as the safe choice. This was similar to the old IBM ad which stated, "No one ever got fired for choosing IBM". Of course, most of you don't remember when IBM was in the computer business....so what does that tell you?

I attended a meeting to select the next ad from a stack of a dozen boring ideas. I did not like a thing I was being shown. I'd known advertising majors in the MBA program and knew them to be the most creative people on the planet. What we were being shown had clearly been "made safe for engineering consumption." I.E. they only brought to TI the sort of safe, boring ads that engineers could accept. These people were no fools. They knew what TI was like. However, I'd been entrusted with the task of creating an innovative marketing team. Business as usual was no longer acceptable.

I wanted to move the group in a better direction, but first of all I needed to know what direction they wanted to head in. I needed to know what they were trying to accomplish by spending tons of money on print ads. Being new to the group, I asked the obvious question, "What is your reason for running a print ad? What is it that you want to accomplish?" It was a "deer in the headlights" moment for these young marketers who'd never thought about why they were running an ad. They were "marketers" and "marketers" run ads. That is "marketing."

The answer surprised me but I was pretty sure I knew what needed to be done. The short discussion that followed set into motion a quick series of steps that changed the way this team did marketing forever.

James Snider is an global marketing professional with 15 years experience in the semiconductor and high-tech industry. He is currently working as a consultant while looking for a permanent position.

www.linkedIn.com/in/jamessnider

The Ying and Yang of Creativity in the Business World

2009-11-04T02:01:00.000-08:00

When I was working on my M.B.A., I took an Advertising class. From the first night, the room was divided into two types of people. “Business Major Types” and “Creative Types”. The M.B.A. people were dressed in Dockers or slacks with a starched cotton shirt; with or without a loosened silk tie. The Advertising Majors were dressed in shorts and t-shirts with visible tattoos and things pierced that your Grandparents never imagined could be pierced.

The professor commented that he could tell a person’s major by the focus of their term assignments. The business majors were focused on ROI, spreadsheets, how to measure success, and business justification…with very boring ad campaigns. The advertising majors spent almost no time on numbers and gave all their attention to outlandish, entertaining, and very creative ads.

That was my introduction to the Ying-and-Yang of the business world. “Creative” and “Business” will always be at odds. Each one contributing what is required to keep the company going but always in conflict. In the business world of technology, Ying-and-Yang are not in balance which leads to problems which are masked by growing markets.

James Snider is an International Marketing professional, responsible for developing the 3.4 billion dollar 1394/FireWire market. James spent 15 years in marketing with 7 years working at "for profit" companies and 8 years as executive director of a non-profit.

James is currently looking for employment: www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

Apple's use of Social Media

2009-11-02T11:23:00.001-08:00

Apple Bonus Round...this was not part of my original 10 blog series on Apple Marketing....

This comes from an article on Marketing Megatrends written by Adam Kleinberg

To read the full article "5 marketing megatrends you can't ignore"

The brand that gets it: Apple
It almost seems cliché to mention Apple in any article about great advertising. But this article isn't about what's great -- it's about massive change reshaping the future. And Apple's iPhone campaign is all about mass collaboration reshaping the future of Apple.

The campaign is in line with most Apple advertising. The product is the hero. The voice is friendly, clever, and straightforward. The ads simply state that whatever you want or need to do with your iPhone, "There's an app for that."

"There's an app for that" refers to the tens of thousands of applications built on the iPhone API that are available for download in the iTunes store. The vast majority of those apps were not built by Apple.

If you're familiar with the history of Apple, you know that relying on outside sources to fuel innovation just hasn't been the way things were done -- until now. You'd also know that Apple doesn't always do things first. (The iPod wasn't the first MP3 player.) But when it sees an opportunity, it goes after it in a bigger and better way than anyone else ever has.

Apple has seen that opportunity in mass collaboration.

Last year Apple announced it would dump Macworld and instead focus on WWDC, its Worldwide Developer Conference. Why? Because developers create apps.

This is where the driving force will come from that will maintain Apple's leadership in innovation in the years to come. This is a major strategic shift for Apple -- and the absolute right one.

James Snider is an global marketing professional with 15 years experience in the semiconductor and high-tech industry. He is currently working as a consultant while looking for a permanent position. www.linkedIn.com/in/jamessnider

Apple ... checkmate

2009-10-31T21:13:00.000-07:00

Apple shock and awe is totally different. It is like waking up one morning and suddenly everything has changed. It is like Marty McFly waking up back in the future to find his mother happy, his father a successful novelist, and Biff waxing the family car. One day you turn around and Apple is everywhere doing things that amaze and delight you.

The iMac appeared on the cover of the March 27, 2000 Time Magazine with Steven King peering out of the screen. The story inside was on video editing using FireWire. It had also been a two-page story in Time on December 20, 1999. An iMac connected to a camcorder was the climax of the Oprah Show on January 20, 2000. FireWire was on the cover of MacWorld. On the cover of the Dell Computer product guide. In-flight magazines were talking about FireWire. USA Today and every major daily were carrying stories on video editing using FireWire. Suddenly, Apple was on the front page of everything and FireWire was on page two. The Steve Jobs keynote speeches were lead stories around the world with CNN doing live updates from the convention center on their blog. Apple sales were growing 3X the rate of the PC market. Where could they go from there?

After Blue Dalmatian and Flower Power, Apple computers took a hard right turn. Gone were the wild candy colors. October 2001, the iPod was released with a new, classic, white look. A look that would be replicated in the iMac G4, released in January 2002. The new look was classy but still cool. Going forward, Apple computers took on a look of sophistication befitting a premium priced computer and more importantly, a look that would look right in a corporate environment. Now, the multi-year plan had reached the intended goal.

With the new Apple cool look, corporate sales started coming in. Keep in mind; home computer sales are only 30% of total PC sales. Apple had gone from near death to global trend setter in just a few years. They captured the attention of the computer industry with a bold new Mac (the iMac). They generated momentum in the home computer market. They showed everyone that they were here to stay. No more worries about Apple going out of business. Then they kept the momentum going with the iPod which introduced a sophisticated new look.

Financial analysts became virtual marketers for Apple, Inc. which increased corporate interest in Apple. Everyone had shares of AAPL in their portfolio. Apple then started promoting their computers as being better computers, not just fun computers. While a growing number of home computer users where starting to become Apple enthusiasts, corporations started hearing about the lack of problems with iMacs (no viruses, fewer crashes, better operating system). When employees started asking if they could use an Apple at work, a big thaw was underway in corporate America and more and more Apple's started showing up at work.

Ten years ago, the corporate status symbol was the tiny Sony Vaio 505GX notebook computer. Today, the corporate status symbol as a MacBook. The big target, from the introduction of the Bondi iMac, was to get Apple out of the niche market and into the big pond. The small fish in the small pond was now a big fish in a big pond.

Well played, Mr. Jobs.

James Snider is the Business Development Director for Accelerant Marketing Alliance, LLC == Marketing, Communications and Design. Corporate Marketing Department ... one hour at a time. www.linkedIn.com/in/jamessnider

Shock and Awe...the "Chipzilla" Way

2009-10-30T15:14:00.000-07:00

This second generation iMac contained FireWire and iMovie for video editing. We were already familiar with Apple’s marketing prowess with the “1984” commercial which still ranks as the best Super Bowl Ad of all time; but what Apple was about to do was well beyond anything we were expecting. Apple was reinventing marketing the way they reinvented the computer. This was “shock and awe.”

Before we cover the Apple version of shock and awe, let’s talk about the different version sometimes employed by an industry giant we will simply call "Chipzilla".

Chipzilla incorporates a more traditional “overwhelming force” version of marketing. This is similar to the military version (Iraq War) of "shock and awe". Chipzilla is a huge company and enormously influential with their customers. No one wants to irritate them.

They also have the unique distinction of focusing their resources on a very limited number of technologies. Once Chipzilla decides to promote a technology, they do so with single-minded determination and no mixed loyalties. Every other company in the industry has mixed loyalties. Sony uses both USB and FireWire in their computers, as does Apple. Texas Instruments sells USB, FireWire, DVI, and HDMI products, as does Molex. These companies will not take a bold stand in support of one technology or another. They are concerned about alienating customers if they are too aggressive in marketing a single technology.

Chipzilla, however, will put their considerable muscle behind one technology and nothing else. Their worldwide marketing/sales team goes into every major customer frequently, carrying the Chipzilla message. I have never visited a customer without them informing me that Chipzilla was in a few days earlier telling them something considerably different than what I was telling them.

Despite widespread skepticism about the rosy projections coming from Chipzilla, no one is willing to challenge them. They are simply too strong. Everyone needs access to Chipzilla's vast resources.

Apple, on the other hand, working from a weak position, was able to use raw marketing talent to overwhelm the competition.

In dealing with Chipzilla or Apple, the result is the same; Shock and Awe. It is like taking a stand against a hurricane. They are both wonders to behold.

"Shock and Awe" the Apple Way

2009-10-26T10:52:00.000-07:00

Henry Ford once said, "Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again; this time more intelligently."

Jobs and Apple had learned some hard lessons with products like the Apple III and the Lisa. During Job's absence from Apple, he'd certainly matured and took into account the things he should have done differently. Now, he had a chance to begin again more intelligently.

Apple had hit the market with a shocking new device which dominated the electronics headlines…. but they had more. They just needed to wait a little longer before they rolled out the next secret weapon. The Bondi Blue iMac had more than enough market sizzle to generate attention for the remainder of the year. New fruit colors came out in January 1999 which spawned a new look in everything from clock radios to electric grills. Apple was still getting front-page coverage and still changing markets beyond the computer.

Then, in late 1999 (October 2, 1999) it was time to hit the market again with a refreshed iMac. This time, it needed more than new colors to regain press headlines. This was a true second generation iMac and one designed to attract the traditional Apple user, not just the PC neophyte. Apple’s mainstay had been the professional graphic artist, photographer, and videographer.

The new iMac followed step two in “The Apple Way” perfectly: “find that one thing you do better and make that one thing matter.” Apple was going in for the kill and the weapon of choice was FireWire.

With FireWire, Apple made it easier to download video from a professional or prosumer (low-end professional, high-end consumer) camcorder into a computer. With iMovie shipping on the computers, it was possible for consumers to edit home movies with title slides, music, transitions between scenes, voice over and other professional touches. With Final Cut and a high-end Mac, professionals were creating digital movies much more easily than in the past.

CNN told the 1394 Trade Association that it was saving a million dollars a year by going digital. In the past, CNN had to ship cases of equipment to locations where news was unfolding. Huge cameras and video editing equipment were required to capture and process the analog video. With the advent of digital and the addition of FireWire to professional cameras and high-end notebook computers, all the equipment needed to record and edit a story was contained in the carry-on bags of the camera crew.

Now Apple had a story that everyone was interested in hearing. No longer did they need to rely on paid advertising to get their message in front of the consumer. In what became the most effective use of PR in the history of electronics, Apple started feeding their story to media outlets and the media outlets were eager to publish it. Time Magazine, USA Today, Oprah and many others became the marketing arm of Apple. This started in late 1999 and continues to this day. That is shock and awe as we have never seen it.

James Snider is the Business Development Director for Accelerant Marketing Alliance, LLC == Marketing, Communications and Design
Corporate Marketing Department ... one hour at a time.
AccelerantMktg.com

iMac part two

2009-10-20T21:32:00.000-07:00

In 1998, Apple had to overcome a huge barrier. As stated earlier, the people "in the know" were counting Apple to be as good as dead. It was risky to buy an Apple. Apple might not be around in a year or two. Apple was not going to succeed in selling to the computer savvy buyer. Apple had to target a computer buyer who did not know that Apple was a risky purchase. Apple had to go to the first time computer buyer; the home computer buyer. Not since the early days of Apple had they targeted the first time home computer buyer. This was a bold step backwards for a company that prided itself in being better than everyone else.

To reach this new market, Apple had to identify the reason why a person would finally breakdown and buy a computer? The answer was, "To get on the Internet." The "information super highway," as it was sometimes called, was getting a lot of attention and people were motivated to get a computer simply so they could get on the Internet.

Next question to answer was, "What is the first time buyer worried about?" The answer, "Computers are hard to use." Now Apple had the hook they needed to get this market segment. Apple ads stressed ease-of-use, “Three steps to the Internet”. They had the message, but was that going to be enough to entice buyers to buy an Apple instead of some brand that their tech smart friend recommended?

An average CEO would have played to "not lose" and would have developed another beige box. However, that is what got Apple into trouble in the inter-Jobs period of Sculley, Spindler, and Amelio; playing to "not lose". That was not Jobs' style because that was not going to generate any sizzle. Sizzle is Jobs' most effective weapon. He had to leap frog the competition. Small steps were not going to be adequate to save Apple.

Apple launched a Jetson’s futuristic, fun computer that got the kids pulling Mom and Dad over to the Apple display in the store. Apple put ads on TV with Rolling Stones music and computers tumbling and spinning. These computers were not acting like computers. Computers do not tumble and spin. These were fun electronics; fun and playful. Apple was not selling computers. They were selling fun. The Jetson's were part of the shared American childhood and these Jetson's looking computers were friendly, inviting, non-intimidating fun.

The commercials were so entertaining that people watched them over an over. When customers went to the store, they did not see a strange looking computer that looked nothing like all the other computers in the store. The different look of the iMac could have easily made customers shy away. What the customer saw, however, was that cool computer they saw on TV. Apple overcame the commercial fatigue and got their message into the minds of the consumer. This was fun. Joe Average was buying an Apple and entering the Apple cult.

For most companies, this would have been stellar success, far beyond expectations, but for Steve Jobs, this was just the beginning. The first step in a much larger plan.

With the release of the iMac, Apple revolutionized the PC industry with a new look and attitude. However, the iMac also delivered a second game changer. They removed all peripheral ports except for USB. No other computer maker dared to be that bold. However, Apple was targeting the first time computer buyer who had no peripherals. USB was the easiest way to connect peripherals.

Apple accomplished in one product release what Intel could not. Apple started the USB revolution. After three years of effort and the vast worldwide resources of Intel, USB was an unused port on 90% of the computers on store shelves. There were no peripherals to connect to the USB port. Intel makes chips for computers. They have total influence over PC makers. They have no influence over peripheral makers. USB was a flop and Intel was about to pull the plug on it.

Apple works closely with a limited number of peripheral makers. They make computers....the thing that drives the sales of peripherals. Apple influences their peripheral makers. Now there were USB peripherals entering the market and they were selling well. More peripherals followed. USB was saved.

But what about the people who already owned peripherals? There were virtually no USB peripherals in the market until Apple launched the Bondi Blue iMac. This new Apple computer was going to place a hardship on current Apple users as they would have to replace all their peripherals with ones that had USB ports on them. As it turned out, Apple loyalist were willing to accept a lot of inconvenience in order to move up to the next cool thing coming out of One Infinite Loop. Apple's bold move even attracted them.

The Bondi Blue iMac was only the first step in a series that would turn the world upside down. The next step would come in a matter of months and it involved FireWire.

James Snider is the Business Development Director for Accelerant Marketing Alliance, LLC == Marketing, Communications and Design.
Corporate Marketing Department ... one hour at a time.
AccelerantMktg.com

The Apple Way: Step 5 of 5 to Insanely Great Marketing

2009-10-14T16:57:00.000-07:00

The final component in "The Apple Way" is something that most companies intentionally decide against doing

Component 5) Surprise and delight your customers.

It is not that companies do not want to delight their customers. Every computer maker wants their computers to be exciting. Even the purchase of a cheap computer should be a fun event. Most computer makers feel that the excitement is in the product. The packaging is just a way of getting the product from the store to the home. The shopping experience can be utilitarian. However, Apple takes a different approach.

Apple is sometimes criticized for selling expensive computers. However, numerous reports have shown that Macs are only slightly more expensive than comparably equipped Wintel computers. Apple makes a premium product for the consumer who knows the difference. Apple never loses sight of that and they reinforce the premium experience by delighting the customer.

Apple stores feel more like a museum than a store. The product line is limited so there are no crowded racks of product. Each item is neatly on display with enough room for several people to gather around. Customers are encouraged to try the product for as long as they like with no one watching over their shoulder. The store design is elegant and contemporary. The employees are friendly, well spoken, and very knowledgeable. I can step into the local Apple store on any weekday morning and ask any store employee a quick question and always get a useful answer. Nights and weekends are a bit more difficult because the Apple store is packed with people. It has become a destination of choice for people of all age groups.

The local Circuit City (back when they were in business), was a different story. It was about the size of a super market (the Apple store is the size of a 7-11). It was packed with racks of products. If you tried a product, a sales rep was close by "to see if you had any questions", but his nervous body language communicated that he was there to keep you from breaking anything. Most of the products were not connected to power so you could not test drive them. A great deal of the information I got from the sales clerks was only moderately accurate or useful. Most of the time, they simply did not know the answer. The environment was more like a Costco than a museum and the store was virtually devoid of customers. No one wanted to come and stay. The experience was not delightful.

When I purchased my first MacBook, I notice that the box it came in was “super premium”. Rather than simply being corrugated cardboard, the box was made of material similar to “gift box” cardboard. The image on the outside of the box was an artistic photograph of the MacBook. Once the box was open, it was almost a crime to unwrap the product. It was so carefully wrapped in such excellent materials a person could not help the feeling that they were unwrapping something of great value.

The Dell notebook I was replacing had been an expensive, high end notebook in its day. It came in a brown corrugated cardboard box with “Dell" printed on the outside in blue ink. The packing materials were functional and gave the impression that "efficiency" was the chief criteria, not delighting the customer. The product was a very good product. The presentation was not.

If you are in the market of selling inexpensive products to the cost conscious, then surprising the customer with a positive retail experience,unparalleled free advice, premium packing, eye popping product design, etc. will not be significant. But staying in the premium market, and doing it well, is what made it so Apple made money when other computer makers could not. Not to mention the fact that Apple has more cash on hand ($76 billion) than the Federal government ($74 billion). That is shocking to consider.

James Snider is Business Development Director at Accelerant Marketing Alliance, LLC == Marketing, Communications and Design
Corporate Market Department ... one hour at a time.
AccelerantMktg.com

The Apple Way: Step 4 of 5 to Insanely Great Marketing

2009-10-10T11:19:00.001-07:00

Component 4 is, once again, an area where Apple is second to none.

Component 4) Make your message memorable.

You have to think "bite sized morsels", not "entire meals". Make it easy to repeat. Make it interesting enough to be repeated.

Some older readers will remember Apple's slogan from the late 70's "Byte into an Apple." That sounds pretty lame by today's standard, but in the late 70's, the targeted user was the geek and the technophile. The use of the term "byte" connected with this crowd.

I already mentioned the iMac "Three steps to the Internet" slogan. For the iPod it was “1,000 songs in your pocket”. "The computer for the rest of us" was an effective slogan for the amazing 1984 introduction of the Macintosh.

However, the single greatest Apple slogan has to be "Think Different." That ad campaign, with the interesting assortment of cultural icons, was the longest running and most popular of the Apple campaigns. It succinctly stated the Apple culture and invited the uninitiated to join that culture. It also reestablished Apple as the "counter culture computer company" after losing that status during Jobs' absence.

But Apple did more than invite. They enticed people to join the Apple counter culture. For a company that once flew a pirate flag over their corporate headquarters in recognition of Steve Jobs' famous question, "Why join the Navy if you can be a pirate?" there was better gold than pirate gold to be had. That gold came from going mainstream. Apple's ability to slip quietly into the mainstream without losing the excitement of being part of the counter culture is nothing short of astonishing. I doubt it could have happened in other generations, but Mr. Jobs was part of the counter culture generation that went corporate and he was able to make that work for Apple.

More on that in a future blog.

An excellent article on how the "Think Different." ad campaigned turned around Apple: http://lowendmac.com/orchard/07/apple-think-different.html

James Snider is the Business Development Director for Accelerant Marketing Alliance, LLC == Marketing, Communications and Design

Corporate Marketing Department ... one hour at a time

AccelerantMktg.com

The Apple Way: Step 3 of 5 to Insanely Great Marketing

2009-10-10T11:11:00.001-07:00

Component number 3 of Apple marketing is fairly unique to Apple.

Component 3) Empower early adopters to help you get the word out.

Apple maintains that the early adopters want to promote you, so you should make your product stand out. Make your product look distinctive. A notable example is the Apple notebook computer. Apple did not launch a notebook in a plain plastic case. They introduced a notebook with a glossy white, black or aluminum case with a glowing Apple logo on the lid. They must have that glowing logo trademarked because it is clear from a great distance that a person is using an Apple notebook. No other company does that. Dell has the Dell Button on their notebooks but that is not nearly as distinctive. Nothing looks like an Apple notebook or Apple desktop.

With the iPod, which is normally hidden in the users' pocket, Apple included white earbuds. Not the traditional black earbuds. They even played up the swinging white wires on the earbuds in the iPod TV commercials. Now, every time I see someone with white earbuds, I assume they have an iPod.

Of course, Apple has a competitive advantage that is nearly impossible to earn. Apple is seen as "cool." People want you to know they are using an Apple notebook, iPod, or iPhone. That makes them a little bit cooler. If you have the "cool factor" working for you, then people will want to promote your products.

Additionally, Apple includes several Apple logo stickers with each Apple product purchased. You see those on rear windows of automobiles. I have heard of several instances where people who use Macs at home have covered over the Dell logo on their work notebook with the Apple logo sticker.

Related to this concept is the “halo effect” where the huge success of the iPod (and the iPhone) made Apple more successful in other endeavors. For example, once the iPod became a household name, iMac sales increased. A friend of mine told me recently that 90% of premium home computer sales are now Macs. That is great news, but the real plum is the business user. We will discuss that in a few blogs.

James Snider is the Business Development Director for Accelerant Marketing Alliance, LLC == Marketing, Communication and Design
Corporate Marketing Department ... one step at a time
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

The Apple Way: Step 2 of 5 to Insanely Great Marketing

2009-10-10T11:10:00.001-07:00

Component number one in the Apple approach to market success was "Do not sell the product, sell what the product does." That is a basic marketing concept that too many marketers lose sight of.

Component number two goes against traditional marketing as taught in universities and practiced in corporations.

Number 2) Never be first to market.
Most of us assume that it is best to be first to market with a brand new "break through" product, but anyone who has been in business for long is familiar with the dangers of being a little too early to market. I have seen dozens of start ups with excellent products fail because the market took 2 years too long to develop. It is very risky to be first to market.

The Apple 1 was not the first computer in the market. The Altair 8800 is widely acknowledged to have started the personal computer movement, but they were purchased by Pertec Computers in 1977 and the Altair name faded into history. There were other computers in the market before Apple entered, including a portable computer from IBM (5100).

The "Apple Way" involves entering a good market with a better product. It is difficult to get the consumer to understand a whole new product category. MP3 players, for example, had a difficult time displacing the portable CD player until Apple entered the market in October 2001 with the first iPod. The Diamond Multimedia "Rio" and the Compaq "Personal Jukebox" are just two examples of early MP3 players that were not market successes.

Rather than defining a new category, Apple would prefer to “occupy self space that already exists in the prospect’s mind”.

The thing that makes Apple so successful is their ability to find that one thing they do better and make that one thing important to people. This is a brilliant marketing approach. When Apple launched the new iMac, they were not differentiating their product as being "the best". They were not focused on being a lot better, just better somewhere and making that important. The iMac was not a superior computer. It was easy to use: “Three steps to the Internet” plug it in (to power); Connect it (to the phone jack), oops! No third step…you are on the Internet. That was their simple sales pitch.

The simplicity of this approach is what we would expect of a man with little formal marketing training. Sometimes our learning gets in the way of being effective.

James Snider is the Business Development Director for Accelerant Marketing Alliance, LLC == Marketing, Communications and Design

Corporate Marketing Department ... one hour at a time

http://www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

The Apple Way: Step 1 of 5 to Insanely Great Marketing

2009-10-09T06:00:00.000-07:00

I have heard the Apple formula for success reduced to 5 components. Component One: Don't sell a product...sell what the product does.

"Don’t sell a product….sell what the product does" means that the marketer does not sell an MP3 player by showing the menu and how easy it is to download songs from a computer, etc. Show cool people having a fantastic time using your product.

This is Basic Marketing but no one does it. I have stopped saying "This is Marketing 101" because that statement usually precedes an example of very rudimentary marketing. Nothing Apple does is rudimentary.

Marketers who think about it will agree that “No one goes to the hardware store because they want a quarter inch drill bit. They go to the hardware store because they want a quarter inch hole.” We understand that concept but we often forget about it and market the drill bit. It is easier.

Apple understood that people don’t want an MP3 player. They don’t even want music. You have to get more visceral to reach the Apple level of marketing genius. People want fun. If the purpose of your product is to provide fun, then show people having fun with your product. Apple did an amazing job of this. In the first iPod commercial, the viewer could barely see the product. The product name did not appear until the last 5 seconds of the commercial (and then, only for 2 seconds) and company name did not appear at all. Only the company logo for the final second of the commercial.

Most marketing managers would be furious with this ad, but then, most marketing managers have never harnessed the power of marketing to the emotion.

iMac

2009-10-08T10:10:00.000-07:00

In the first half of 1998, the coolest computer to own was anything made by Sony. They'd entered the computer market with the intent of shaking things up and they did. Gone were beige or black computers. The Vaio 505GX was the tiniest notebook computer most people had ever seen. It was a feminine shade of gray mixed with lavender. The color was similar to the chairs at Tokyo Narita Airport. This notebook was an overnight success. It was a sign of success to carry a 505GX notebook into a business meeting. Everyone was envious.

All of this ended in mid-August.

With the release of the Bondi Blue iMac (Aug 15, 1998), Apple was back on everyone’s radar. Jobs had done something that no one else could do and that was to make Apple relevant again. With the iMac, Apple topped Sony in setting the standard for “cool” when it came to technology... and Apple was only getting started.

In 1997, Apple was left for dead. A new rumor popped up every quarter about who was going to buy Apple. No one expected them to survive. Looking back on what Apple achieved over the next 10 years, one would have to assume that Jobs had a big plan. Apple was a forgotten computer company. No one thought about Apple when buying a new computer. The business buyer certainly would not buy an Apple. They needed to play it safe. They needed to buy from Dell or HP or someone who would be around for a long time. Apple was risky.

Apple had to overcome a huge barrier. They did this by going to someone who didn’t know any better. They targeted someone who was not afraid to buy an Apple. Their logic was counter-intuitive and brilliant.

James Snider is the Business Development Director of Accelerant Marketing Alliance, LLC == Marketing, Communications and Design.

Corporate Marketing Department ... one hour at a time. www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

Marketing to the Emotion

2009-10-06T17:15:00.000-07:00

YouTube "Daisy Girl" ad from 1964 Presidential Campaign

"FUD" is a marketing strategy that tries to get the customer to make a decision based on emotion rather than logic. Therefore, it is a particularly loathsome strategy to the engineer. It further advances the negative impression so many engineers have of marketers. However, not all emotion based marketing is FUD. There is a fine line between marketing to the emotions of the audience and outright manipulation. Showing an image of manly fighter pilots in a razor ad may have nothing to do with shaving, but you would never call that FUD. It elicits an emotion, but it does not deceive.

Marketing is more effective when it taps into the emotions rather than when it targets the mind alone. There is a real dark side that needs to be avoided. It does not matter how many pie charts a large corporation shows on television ads to convince the viewer that they are ecologically responsible. An image of a dirty river, rusting tanks oozing toxins or suffering wildlife will cause the public to demand action. Someone must be brought to justice. The public is convinced that corporations can not be telling the truth because the public has seen the images. Emotions win over logic and truth gets obscured.

Most marketing is manipulative. How many luxury cars are bought for their quality and safety? Can anyone tell the difference between one American beer and another? Tastes tests consistently say the consumer can not. MacDonald's is frequently called to task for the way they market their Happy Meals to children. Engineers have some justification when they criticize marketing for being underhanded. In the world of high tech sales and marketing, there is no appeal to emotions. Facts are presented about the product, pricing, availability and support. The customer is given the tools they need to make a rational decision.

The difference between marketing to the emotion and manipulation is important to understand. I heard a former ad exec for Radio Shack claim that an ad should be nothing more than an invitation to buy. Show an image of the product, the name of the product, a few pertinent facts, and the price. Then let the consumer decide. No humor. No inspiring text. No hype. Just facts. That explained why I did not like Radio Shack ads. I did not know they were being boring on purpose. I thought they were boring because their products were boring. That approach does not manipulate but it is extreme and not very effective.

To market effectively, the marketing should inspire without deceiving. There is one obvious brand that does this effectively. They are so good at it that engineer, businessman, college student, and soccer mom all fall under their influence... and love it. Left for dead in the mid-90's, they reemerged and turned the world upside down. Most of the credit goes to their founder/CEO who left the company in shame in 1985 only to return to the company in 1996 and revolutionize multiple industries.

Over my next 10 blogs, I will discuss how marketing genius, Steve Jobs, and the talented folks at Apple did it.

Enter the FUDists

2009-10-05T15:40:00.000-07:00

I first heard the term "FUD" at a 1394 Trade Association meeting at Microsoft in 1996. "FUD" is an underhanded marketing strategy which involves spreading "Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt" about the competition. The term was used during a discussion in the "Marketing Working Group" which was comprised primarily of engineers with a sprinkling of marketers.

Saying something bad about a competitor is not FUD. It is a perfectly acceptable marketing practice to point out the deficiencies in a competitor's products. You know the competitor is not going to mention the problems, so you are giving a potential customer the benefit of additional accurate information. This enables a rational decision to be made.

FUD, on the other hand, is suggesting things that may not be entirely true with the goal of gaining an advantage based on emotion rather than facts. Engineers can understand the concept of FUD, but they can not embrace it. To provide inaccurate information for the purpose of encouraging an irrational decision goes against everything an engineer believes in. The world of engineering depends on precise truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

The use of FUD in the bare knuckled world of high tech marketing is common but it was a strategy that the 1394 Trade Association (being comprised of primarily engineers) could never embrace. The value engineers place on exactness can be frustrating but the value they place on truth is refreshing.

Unfortunately, FUD is effective. Management is motivated by fear as well as logic. Fear of a lawsuit. Fear of bad press. Fear of selecting a niche technology and ending up with a niche market when their projections were for a mainstream market.

Refuting FUD consumed a lot of 1394 marketing resources. For example, every two - three years, rumors would spread through the market that large companies were dropping 1394 en masse or that 1394 was in steep decline in Japan (a market where 1394 was extremely popular). I worked several years at Texas Instruments and we would find out about these rumors when customers started reducing orders for 1394 silicon. Marketing resources had to be used to research the truth and to document that 1394 was still on the rise. Spreading the truth to refute FUD was more time consuming than spreading the FUD had been. As Winston Churchill once said, "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."

Calls for striking back were rebuffed by 1394 leadership and 1394 continued on a somewhat quixotic journey. Eventually, 1394 succeeded despite bad odds and found a home in several hundred million products. The success that 1394 has achieved is due largely to a fiercely loyal following.

Those who leave 1394 generally leave it with great regret which is hard to identify. One of the early evangelists summed it up the best after he was redeployed from 1394 to promoting USB. In his words “USB is all about, 'sit down, listen, and make some money for your employer.' 1394 is all about changing the world and being a part of history. How can you not fall in love with that?”

Snider is an international marketing professional specializing in the high tech market. He has 15 years of marketing experience with 7 years in a "for profit" company and 8 years in a "non-profit."

Snider is currently looking for new opportunities: www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

"Fun" is Serious Business

2009-09-26T08:44:00.000-07:00

One of the most enduring images of "marketing" among engineers is that of people who play for a living. I have seen several Dilbert cartoons portraying the Marketing Department as a group of revelers partying like a frat house. When engineers move into marketing, there is a tendency to misunderstand the nature of "fun" as a marketer sees it. "Fun" is actually a pretty serious business. It is not free. It is not even cheap. Early in my marketing career, I was totally astonished at how much giveaway items cost. I made the half serious statement that it would be much cheaper to staple a product brochure to a dollar bill as a giveaway. I was obviously not the first person to think that because I was told that trade shows had rules prohibiting exactly that.

"Fun" is actually a marketing tool. There must be a strategy behind everything the marketing department does and there must be a measurable return on investment. The ROI can be hard to measure at times, but it must be defined, tracked, reported, and evaluated. It was always about this point in the discussion of trade show giveaways that I saw a new marketer start to get the idea that marketing is actually work. It may be fun work, but it is work all the same.

In the late 90s, I left TI for two years to work for Philips Semiconductors. About half way through my time at Philips, I was attending a 1394 developers conference to give a presentation and to work in the demo gallery. TI was also there, of course, and the marketing team I left behind had grown significantly. In the TI demo area, I saw a lot of new faces; people who'd been engineers when I worked there.

As I approached the TI demo area to say "Hello" to everyone, I could see they were eager to see me. It was more than eagerness to see an old friend. They were eager to show me something. There is always a strong sense of competition when meeting someone who has gone to work for the competition. They wanted to show me "the best giveaway ever." They were very pleased with themselves and they were sure I would feel very much bested. They certainly had my interest.

I was pretty pleased with my giveaway. It was a small water pistol with the Philips Logo and web page on it. Tied to it was a little note card with information on the Philips semiconductor products on the back side and on the front side were the words "We shoot straight. Others blow smoke." I knew that TI had been promising a 200 Megabit Phy for months and was unable to deliver it. They were having similar problems with one of their other 1394 chips. Promises made and broken. Philips, on the other hand, was quietly debugging their chips and waiting until they were ready for release before they publicized them. I was painting Philips as the dependable supplier.

TI fished a box out from under a table and produced a small, very colorful TI calculator. That was the giveaway. It was certainly fun (purple, green, orange...very colorful) and the sort of practical giveaway that everyone likes and will use. It would probably go back to the office, but it might go home. A giveaway that goes home (rather than to the office) is a second rate giveaway, in my opinion. You want the giveaway to go to the office and sell your product to others in the office. Certainly, TI's leadership in calculators was a nice selling point to reinforce the image of TI as a leader. This was a pretty great giveaway, but there was just one problem. There was nothing printed on the calculator about 1394 silicon. Once the calculator left the event, it was just a calculator. It was not a sales tool. Once it made it to home or office, there was nothing about the calculator to remind the recipient that they should buy TI 1394 silicon. It was just a calculator.

I asked them "You didn't put a URL and anything about 1394 silicon on the calculator?" Their faces registered the realization that they'd missed something important. They had focused entirely on what would be the coolest giveaway at the show without any thought as to why they were giving something away and how it could be a sales tool. This is a very common mistake among entry level marketers.

Concerning my giveaway (the water pistol), 99% of the people thought it was amusing. We were able to use the information on the back of the card as our talking points. However, there was that 1% who were offended by our giving any sort of gun away. One or two people tore off the tag and handed the gun back to us and one person would not even touch the gun but asked me to tear off the tag and give it to him.

I guess my plan was not bullet proof either.

Snider is an international marketing professional specializing in the high tech market. He has 15 years of marketing experience with 7 years in a "for profit" company and 8 years in a "non-profit."

Snider is currently looking for new opportunities: www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

Doing the Wrong Thing

2009-09-25T15:34:00.000-07:00

Once the "Be the Cowboy, Not the Cow" ad hit the magazines, the 1394 marketing team started getting phone calls from the tech sales people around the nation. They were not calling to congratulate the team on a creative ad. They were calling to complain. The ad was attracting 100s of phone calls from small companies that wanted to develop FireWire products and were not sure were to start. These were companies looking for free samples or looking to purchase a dozen chips. 99% of these companies would be out of business or out of the FireWire business in 12 months. No sales person worth his or her salt wanted to deal with these people. They wanted phone calls from AT&T, Sony, Boeing, Dell, and HP. Not Scooter Trash LLC.

During the next weekly marketing meeting it came out that this is what happened the last time TI ran a 1394 ad. The sales people complained that the ads were generating calls from companies that would never amount to significant business.

We'd generated awareness but among the wrong clientele.

I was reminded of what my B-to-B marketing professor had told the class years earlier. No person should ever go into marketing until he or she had spent some time in sales. Not only did the "engineers turned marketers" lack marketing experience but they lacked sales experience as well.

Suddenly, those dark months of my life I was not willing to share with anyone became valuable. I'd spent 9 months as a telemarketer, calling people at home during dinner every night, selling them something they didn't want and not taking "no" for an answer. Up to that moment, I was ashamed to let anyone know I'd been one of "those people." However, at the moment I learned that the 1394 marketing team had ignored the pleas of tech sales, I suddenly felt that I had yet one more advantage to help me in leading the group. I'd actually done sales and had been pretty good at it.

Moving forward from that day, we never ran another ad. We looked to more effective ways to get the message out. Moving forward, we targeted our promotional efforts to the right clientele.

James Snider is an International Marketing professional, responsible for developing the 3.4 billion dollar 1394/FireWire market. James spent 15 years in marketing with 7 years working at "for profit" companies and 8 years as executive director of a non-profit.

James is currently looking for employment: www.jamessnider.info

The Phone Call that Changed Everything

2009-09-10T17:24:00.000-07:00

In November of 1994, I was hidden away in TI Lewisville debugging a tough piece of test software intended to improve performance of the HARM missile. I had an MBA in Marketing which was growing stale in one of the worst job markets since the Great Depression. I was eager to progress from test engineering to my next career; marketing semiconductors. I made a fateful phone call to one of my fellow test engineers who also had a stale MBA. I was surprised by his news. He'd found a job. He was putting his MBA to use. I asked him to keep an eye open for me but his tone of voice let me know that he was not confident he could help. Marketing jobs were scarce for guys with degrees but no experience.

A week later, I received a phone call from another of my fellow test engineers. He'd made the move to marketing. This news was even more surprising. He didn't even have a marketing degree. I'd been looking for two years for a marketing job and he knew nothing about marketing.

It came down to networking. One of the software engineers all three of us had worked with was working in the semiconductor group. He was writing software but as marketing positions opened up in his group, he was asking friends if they were interested. I made the phone call and a week later I sent my resume. Three days later, I was packing my boxes in Lewisville, headed for the Center Buildings. I was now leaving the world of engineering. I was now a marketer.

For the next 15 years, I would work as a marketer in a world of engineers. To market a high-tech product, technical ability is necessary. Therefore, engineers are frequently employed as technology marketers. However, there is more to marketing than meets the eye of the pocket protector crowd. This can lead to costly mistakes. What follows are my observations.