Sunday, May 27, 2007

Facebook jumps into the internet marketing souk

Look at the brilliance of build it they will come.

The internet field of dreams represents the power of appealing to and talking with and selling to millions of people -- in a space, on a platform through a way that simply did not exist several years ago.

What do I mean? From Reuters, I saw that Facebook.com at f8 just announced this past week plans to allow it to become a software operating system for all sorts of Internet media and said it has signed up 65 partners, including Microsoft Corp. and Amazon.com Inc., to build Web applications within Facebook.

The company is transforming itself from a Web site into a "platform" that will allow developers to build services that work both inside Facebook's site and on their own independent sites.

"Until now, social networks have been closed platforms. Today, we're going to end that," Zuckerberg, Facebook's 23-year-old CEO, told a gathering of software developers. Half of Facebook users, or 12 million people daily check the site to see what their friends are saying and doing.

Facebook can become a central clearinghouse for software developers, borrowing a few pages from the decades-old strategy playbooks of Microsoft or IBM, while retaining the flexibility of the new generation of Web-delivered services.

The Palo Alto, California-based company has created a new Web programming language of its own called Facebook Markup, a variant of the basic Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) coding that underlies all Web pages, with a few special features. Independent developers can sell ads or incorporate tools for conducting online transactions and keep all the resulting revenue.


The marketing souk just got bigger. The ability to capture proprietary sales got deeper.

Also, clothing sales just surpassed electronic sales on the web.

When we talk about the power of word of mouth, Facebook just kicked this approach into hyper-drive for its partners and for people who talk to people they like and trust. That's real warp speed.

Sunday, May 20, 2007

Occam's Razor Cuts Through Marketing

Occam's razor (sometimes spelled Ockham's razor) is a principle attributed to the 14th-century English logician and Franciscan friar William of Ockham. The principle states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating, or "shaving off," those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory. The principle is often expressed in Latin as the lex parsimoniae ("law of parsimony" or "law of succinctness").

This is often paraphrased as "All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one." In other words, when multiple competing theories are equal in other respects, the principle recommends selecting the theory that introduces the fewest assumptions and postulates the fewest hypothetical entities. It is in this sense that Occam's razor is usually understood.


Now apply that to marketing complex products.

Roger Dooley reviews the research in this area on the Marketing and Strategy Innovation blog, and applies it to the purchase HDTV sets. Think about the complexity involved here. Evolving technologies, evolving features, a multitude of feature variables -- how can anyone begin to construct an internal conjoint analysis about what to buy.

As for me, I use CNET. Not necessarily the best source, but it helps. The same for my Ipod. I use ilounge.

The internet is a great resource for getting advice and direction. Mossberg does this for readers of the Wall Street Journal and Wildstrom does it at Business Week.

But this need goes begging everyday for marketers. The challenge is to distill down what consumers really want out of your product and get it into your advertising brief.

Sunday, May 06, 2007

The Elmer's Glue of Gumption

Dan Heath, the Director of Duke Corporation Education, lists out:

6 Principles of Sticky Ideas

  • Simplicity: Isolate your core message and convey it succinctly.
  • Unexpectedness: Surprise and intrigue with leaps of thought.
  • Concreteness: Make it real and recognizable.
  • Credibility: Use details that symbolize and support your core idea.
  • Emotions: Evoke feelings about what matters.
  • Stories: Connect the dots with proverb-like arcs.
How many times have you made a presentation and delivered an absolutely brilliant strategic observation -- but no one knows what to do with it?

How many times have you read a company's mission statement only to recognize the gobbledy-gook of corporate-speak slathered over a good idea that is meant to inspire people?

In many companies, I have been struck by what I saw on their walls. I saw offers to taste products in development, literature about the company's focus on diversity in the work force, pictures of global leaders meant to inspire and slogans meant to lead.

I wondered about how sincere these messages came across. They were placed in all good intention. But when you are having reductions in head count, watching products stuck in the middle of a market share battle that rivaled the World War One Battle of the Somme for casualties and futility and fielding more calls on the Employee Assistance Social Work Program than the switchboard can handle, you have to wonder about the best way of escaping the entropy of the maelstrom.

Great thoughts come easy.
Great expressions are tougher.
Implementation can be tougher still.

Taking those thoughts and making them sticky can go a look way to nailing the task to your wall of accomplishment.