Communists, Engineers and Social Media (part one)

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.

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!

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

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

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

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

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