In one of the more unusual appearances that I've been a part of, here is a "fireside chat" with Steve Ballmer at Mix 2008. (He sidestepped by question about Vista twice, so if you want the latest news about Windows, you'll have to go here.)
Incidentally, he tossed my Air on the (carpeted) ground! It's a good thing I have the SSD version. Do you think I should tell him that he broke it and ask him to buy me another one? (Photo credit: Nathan Mook, Betanews)
Mark Messier’s jersey was retired last night during this ceremony in Edmonton.
While we’re on the subject of hockey, a friend’s son is blogging about attending all the San Jose Sharks regular-season games (home and away). Apparently, this is part of his “education” because he’s studying sports journalism. Now I’ve heard everything...
In what other blog in the world will you find Mark Messier next to George Orwell? “All bloggers are equal; but some bloggers are more equal than others.”
By popular demand, here are the top ten lies of marketers. Actually, it was too hard to stop at ten, so this list is a dirty dozen. As my mother used to say, "How can you tell if a marketer is lying? His lips are moving."
1. "Our PR firm says it can get Walt Mossberg to review our product." It's not clear who is dumber: your PR firm for saying this or your marketers for believing it. Walt reviews about fifty products a year, so the odds are not good that yours will be one of them. Certainly, no PR firm can guarantee a review.
2. "If we can finish the product we'll be invited to demo at Demo." Let's say that your engineers are running behind schedule. (It's not their fault, of course--it's the marketers for not specing the product properly, but I digress...) A marketer rushes into the engineering department to announces that if the engineers could finish, then your CEO can demo the product at this premier technology showcase.
If the person who runs Demo, Chris Shipley, would schedule more Demos, there would be a lot more innovative products in the world because marketers would have more opportunities to tell this lie to engineers.
3. "We have a really good strategy to get A-list bloggers to write about our product." Yeah, as if it's that easy and as if all A-listers are alike. Why some A-listers even claim that you don't need to suck up to them and ply them with freebies like wine. The best strategy has two elements: (a) a great product and (b) sucking up. How convenient: one role for engineers and another for marketers.
4. "We're confident that our product is extremely viral." Steve Jurvetson best defined virality as "the involuntary adoption of a product." The key word is involuntary--for example, in the early days of instant messaging, ICQ was a viral product because if you wanted to instant message, you had no choice but to install ICQ. Any decent product can generate word of mouth advertising, but very few products are truly viral.
Anti-example: Have you ever wanted to post a comment to an MSN-hosted blog only to be confronted with the message that you have to sign in with a Microsoft .NET Passport? That's not virality--that's innoculation.
5. "Conservatively assuming that each user only tells three additional people, we will have an installed base of five million by the end of the first year." Do you know why we've heard about MySpace and FaceBook? It's not because it's easy and commonplace to amass millions of users. It's because it hardly ever happens. Whenever a marketer makes a forecast like this, add one year to the timeline and divide the installed base by 100.
6. "BigNameCompany is really excited about partnering with us." As long as you understand that the most realistic definition of "partnering" is "a relationship that lacks a business model," this lie can't hurt you too much. Especially because it's unlikely that Big Name Company is really excited, so nothing will happen at all. (See next lie)
7. "Jane Doe, vice president of biz dev of Big Name Company, isn't returning my phone calls or emails." Actually, this isn't a lie. It's the truth. It's just that this nugget of truth follows weeks of lies about how excited Big Name Company is to partner with you. Now, all of a sudden, it's not the marketer's fault that nothing is happening--it's simply that Jane Doe isn't returning his calls or emails.
8. "Conservatively, the total addressable market for our product is $50 billion." In seven years of dealing with venture capitalists including four years of being one, I've never met an entrepreneur who wasn't addressing a $50 billion total addressable market. Suppose you are starting a sushi restaurant. Is the total addressable market the grand total of what Americans spending eating out per year? I don't think so.
9. "This is how we are going to position the product." This is a lie of naivete that indicates a lack of real-worldliness and experience. You might try to position your product in a certain way, but ultimately customers, not you, position your product. You take your best shot and then you see how customers react--if, frankly, they react at all. But, at the end of the day, you're hardly in total control of positioning.
10. "We need outside consultants because we don't have the bandwidth to do all the marketing ourselves." What Bangalore is to engineering, "outside consultants" is to marketing. Much as most engineers hate to hear this, the two professions have lots in common including this fallacy of outsourcing. Nine marketers can't produce a baby in one month any more than nine engineers can.
11. "The PR firm (ad agency, whatever) that we interviewed really loves what we're doing." Not to put too negative a spin on this, but prostitutes tell customers that they'll love them "a long, long time"--which is about as true as this lie. The severity of this lie depends on what phase of the bubble you're in. If it's a frothy time, then you might have to convince a PR firm to take you on as a client. If it's a down cycle, then getting someone to love you isn't that hard.
12. "We found a rock star to join our marketing team." There's nothing like setting a person up for failure by creating excessive expectations. I've spoken to event managers, and they tell me that rock stars make all kinds of ridiculous demands like painting the backstage walls purple for Prince or punching a hole in a wall so that another performer could walk directly to the stage. Forget the rock star: Hire good, bright people who want to prove themselves, not live off the past.
Addendum:
"All we need is a 1% market share to make this work." (Peter Kim). How could I forget this one? Perhaps because I try to block this very common lie out of my consciousness.
"Our product is so unique that it has no competition." (Maura Welch). It has no competition for two possible reasons: (a) You're clueless and don't know how to use Google; (b) there's no market for it so no one else is dumb enough to do the same thing.
Here's a good counter balance by Alain Thys called, "The Top Ten Truths of Real Marketers"
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Many people requested more examples of companies driving their competition crazy. I found six more for you.
1. When Security Pacific Bank merged with Bank of America many Security Pacific branches were closed. First Interstate Bank rented trucks and parked them in the lots of the branches that were closing. Then First Interstate employees in those trucks then helped people open new accounts as there were leaving the banks.
2. In 1986 British Airways ran a promotion to give away 5,200 seats for travel on June 10th. Virgin Atlantic Airways ran ads that said, “ It has always been Virgin's policy to encourage you to fly to London for as little as possible. So on June 10 we encourage you to fly British Airways.” The British Airways promotion generated a lot of news coverage, but most of the news coverage also included a mention Virgin's funny ad. It cost British Airways a lot more than Virgin to get this coverage.
3. A research company surveyed 750 white-collar worker around the United States. The research showed that 81 percent of the people believed that casual dress improved morale; 47 percent believed that it increased productivity; 46 percent said they considered casual dress as a attraction to work for a company that permitted it, and only 4 percent thought a casual-dress standard would have a negative impact. When Levi Strauss found out about the study, it let thousands of publications know about it. The company also even put in a toll-free hotline to help companies implement a casual dress standard. Guess who was sure to benefit from greater knowledge of this study? Levi Strauss, of course, because of its Dockers line of clothing.
4. A Goodyear store in Chattanooga, Tennessee faced a predicament: it wanted to put up two Goodyear signs. However, the local law stipulated a one-sign limit. Undaunted, the store manager spelled out Goodyear in marigolds in a flower bed. The city inspector considered this a violation, but the public supported the store, so the city government backed off.
5. An electrician with only one truck was constantly razzed by his competition because his company was so small. To fake them out, he finally painted three different truck numbers on the right, left, and rear of the truck.
6. International Harvester couldn't get steel to its factory in Melrose Park, Illinois because of a truckdriver's union strike. The company couldn't use non-union labor because of snipers on the freeway. Finally, the company rented school buses and dressed drivers as nuns, loaded the buses with steel, and made the deliveries. No one would shoot at school buses driven by nuns, right?
Technorati Tags: competition
This is the flip side to The Art of Driving Your Competition Crazy. It's meant to help you avoid being driven crazy by your competition. This isn't a top ten--it's only a top five because the key to maintaining your sanity is to keep things simple.
1. Delight your customer. As the old saying goes, “The best defense is a good offense.” If you continue to delight your customer, it's unlikely that your competition can get to you. There are two reasons this is true. First, you'll be successful at driving your competition crazy, and not vice versa. Second, you'll be so busy that you won't have the time to worry about the mundanity (mundane + insanity) of what your competition is trying to do to you.
2. Don't assume that “perfect information” exists. It was bad enough before Google alerts and other news gathering services, but companies have begun to assume a world of perfect information as a result of such technology. They think that the minute the competition announces a new feature, service, or partnership the entire marketplace is aware of it--and buy it. In reality, only you, your competition, and Google know what was announced. By overreacting, you may inadvertently increase awareness and exacerbate the problem.
3. Take a chill pill. Never let your competition see you sweat. Instead, keep focusing on delighting your customer. Certainly you shouldn't lash out and inflame hostilities because you'll probably do something stupid. In the story of Sinbad, there is an episode where his sailors threw stones at monkeys in coconut trees in order to provoke the monkeys into throwing coconuts back at them. That's exactly what the hungry and thirsty sailors wanted the monkeys to do.
Of course, this doesn't mean that you should ignore your competition. You should know as much you can about them. If your competition beats you to the punch, you should take it personally and then furiously out-innovate and out-implement them. You just shouldn't let your competition see you sweat because they will gain strength and confidence from your nervousness. I also believe noticing that you're sweating will make you sweat more.
There is one more case when you should take a chill pill: when your competition has beaten you to the punch, and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. In this case, as my mother often told me, “Don't worry about things you can't change. Focus on things that you can.”
4. Hang a negative on your competition. Here's an illustrative story. When F. W. Woolworth opened his first store, a competitor that had served the community for years hung out a sign that said: “This same spot for fifty years.” Nice shot, huh? Except Woolworth then put up a sign that said, “A week old. No old stock.” The lesson is to try to find a crucial negative that you can hang onto your competition. Maybe they will leave you alone next time.
5. Act like a maniac. Yes, this is an apparent contradiction to taking a chill pill. What can I say? I'm a complex person. To continue the theme of making your competition leave you alone, one effective strategy is to convince the competition not to attack you because you might do something really crazy. Virgin Airlines personifies this behavior. Who would want to get in a battle with an airline that offers free motorcycle and limousine rides to the airport, in-flight massages and manicures, and accepts the frequent-flyer miles of its competition? Most rational companies would conclude that it's smart to not engage a maniacal competitor.
The bottom line on remaining sane is that it you don't let your competition play with your mind. All this takes is mental toughness and a focus on the customer:
“My way of fighting the competition is the positive approach. Stress your own strengths, emphasize quality, service, cleanliness, and value, and the competition will wear itself out trying to keep up.” Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald's
Technorati Tags: competition, guy kawasaki
“The purpose of competition is not to beat someone down, but to bring out the best in every player.” Walter Wheeler
One of the signs of boom--or at least a boomlet--is that companies start wanting to drive their competition crazy. This occurs when “survival” is no longer an issue and optimization or maximization can become a corporate goal. However, the desire to do things to the competition can lead a company astray--or drive it to even greater heights.
Companies go astray when defeating the competition becomes more important than taking care of customers. When companies become obsessed with the pursuit of excellence, by contrast, they often reach new levels of greatness. Here's how to avoid the former and achieve the latter.
1. Know thyself. Before you can drive your competition crazy, you have to understand what your company stands for. Otherwise, you'll only succeed in driving yourself crazy. For example, Apple stands for cool technology. It will never represent a CIO's safe bet, an “enterprise software company,” or service and support. If it decided it wanted to drive Microsoft crazy by sucking up to CIOs, it would drive itself crazy--that is, if it didn't perish trying.
2. Know thy customer. The second step is to truly understand what your customer wants from you--and, for that matter, what it doesn't want from you. One thing that your customer seldom wants to do is to help you drive your competition crazy. That's in your head, not your customer's. One more thing: a good company listens to what a customer says it wants. A great company anticipates what a customer needs--even before she knows she wants it.
3. Know thy enemy. The third step is to truly understand your competition. You cannot drive your competition crazy unless you understand their strengths and weaknesses. You should become your competition's customer by buying their products and services. I never truly understood what it was like to be a customer of Microsoft until I bought a Sony Vaio and used Windows. Sure, I had read many comparisons and competitive analyses, but they were nothing compared to hands-on usage.
4. Focus on the customer. Here's what most people find surprising: the best way to drive your competition crazy is not to do anything to it. Rather, the best way is for you to succeed because your success, more than any action, will drive your competition crazy. And the way you become successful is not by figuring out what you can do to the competition but for the customer.
You succeed at doing things for the customer by using the knowledge that you've gained in the first three steps: understanding what you do, what your customer wants and needs, and what your competition doesn't do. At the intersection of these three factors lies the holy grail of driving your competition crazy. For most companies, the key to driving the competition crazy is out-innovating, out-servicing, or out-pricing it.
5. Turn customers into evangelists. There are few things that drive a competitor more crazy than an unpaid, thunderlizard group of customers who become evangelists for a company. I covered this topic in detail in The Art of Evangelism, but the gist is this: create a great product or service, put it out there (“let a hundred flowers blossom”), see who falls in love with it, open up your arms to them (they will come running to you), and then take care of them. It's that simple.
6. Make good by doing good. Doing good has its own, very sufficient rewards, but sometimes you can make good and do good at the same time. For example, if you own a chain of hardware stores, you can help rebuild a community after a natural disaster. You're bound to get a lot of publicity and create bonds with the community--this will drive your competition crazy. And you'll be doing something good!
7. Turn the competition into allies. One way to get rid of your competition is to drive it out of business. I suppose this might be attractive to you, but a better way is to turn your competition into allies. My favorite author of children's books is Tomie DePaola. My favorite DePaola book is The Knight and the Dragon. This is the story of a knight and a dragon who train to slay each other. They are smashingly unsuccessful at doing battle and eventually decide to go into business together. Using the dragon's firebreathing ability and the knight's salesmanship, they create the K & D Bar-B-Q. For example, if a Home Depot opens up next to your hardware store, let it sell the gas barbecues, and you refill people's propane tanks.
8. Play with their minds. If you're doing all this positive, good stuff, then it's okay to have some fun with your competition--that is, to intentionally play with their minds. Here are some examples to inspire you:
If you like this topic, let me know, and I'll try to write a posting about how to avoid being driven crazy.
Technorati Tags: competition, entrepreneurship
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