Jim Cota's Page

The best way to read this article quoting Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg is out loud, with more than a little whine in your voice. Apparently, he's a little miffed that Apple created an outstanding product and that about 6 million people decided to buy. The design of the iPhone caused all manufacturers to stand up and take notice, and Apple orchestrated an unprecedented revenue sharing model that really caused a stir, but it still falls short of Seidenberg's notion of success.

When asked by the Financial Times about Apple's chances of reaching the masses with the next generation iPhone, which features a 3G network for faster Internet access, Seidenberg responded, "There goes the conspiracy again. You're declaring them a winner before they've earned it on the field." Uh... it sounded more like a question than a declaration, but okay.

According to CNET's Tom Krazit, "Seidenberg's main contention seems to be that the iPhone isn't a success because it has such a small share of the overall mobile phone market, which is sort of like arguing that GM is more successful than Ferrari because they sell more cars." This would, of course, mean that the iPod is a success and the iMac isn't. Brilliant. (Wait till Seth Godin hears that the only measure of success is selling a whole lot of something cheap.)

So, on the one hand, Seidenberg is peeved that the media is declaring the iPhone a success while implying that it hasn't been successful at all. Let's do a little exercise. Put yourself in his shoes, sit down at the boardroom table, and let's devise a strategy to address and compete with the media-declared "success" of the iPhone. What would you do?

Verizon, for their part, has adopted a novel strategy. "Steve Jobs eventually will get old...I like our chances," Seidenberg said.

[Read the CNET article]
[Read the Financial Times article]

Speaking in Washington last week, I encouraged the attendees to use the power of transactional emails as a viable means to improve their customer relationships. I noted that these messages tend to break through the clutter and are generally perceived as helpful tools for customers to remain current with the latest information regarding their orders.

To illustrate the point, I suggested that retailers send emails at the following times (as examples):

• Order Confirmation
• 
  
• Shipping Confirmation
• 
  
• Customer Service Messages (e.g., "By now, you should have rec'd your order..."
• 
  
• Requesting Feedback (e.g., "Please come back and write a review about your experience..."
• 
  
• Re-Order Reminders
• 
  
• RE-Engagement Efforts

Today I saw this chart from MarketingSherpa that speaks to this very issue. Customers pay attention to these messages, so they can be a valuable tool, but it's important that they are heavy on the information and light on offers.

I'm back in the office today after being out last week for the SIPA Conference in Washington, DC. I was asked by conference chairman Ed Coburn of Harvard Medical School to come and address the group on "Using the web to drive renewable revenue." I was told by a regular attendee that these members usually vote with their feet: "If they don't think you have anything worthwhile to say, they'll get up and walk out after 10 minutes." Yikes. I'm glad he told me that after I was finished and no one had left...

So there I was, sitting at lunch and talking with David Lee of Tufts University and a Paul Wollaston of Lancaster House, and we happened to be talking about the conference, most notably the willingness of the attendees to discuss – in detail – their successes and failures. I remarked that it was impressive and refreshing to see this sort of open dialogue, especially when some of these members might be sharing this information with direct competitors. "It's truly remarkable," said Wollaston, "and one of the unique things about this association and its' membership. About the only thing they won't share are details for upcoming product launches."

All of which reminded me of a story about a farmer and his strategy for sowing award-winning seeds.

More on the conference as time (and all of these spinning plates) allows.

For me, this paragraph in an AdWeek article about Coca-Cola's efforts with social networks and "Marketing 2.0" says it all:

"The Diet Coke-Mentos experience was only one of several missteps Coke made in its forays into the world of social media. Months earlier, its Coke Zero blog was discovered to be a fake (generated not by consumers, but in-house), while the remake of Coke.com into a YouTube-like site for consumer-generated content (dubbed The Coke Show), launched in July 2006, initially provoked brickbats from outsiders and failed to generate much in the way of submissions or traffic. Even Sprite Sips, Coke's first application on Facebook (the brand was a "landmark partner" on the social net's Social Ads platform) fell flat. Currently, it has just 12 daily active users -- and they're not afraid to voice their opinions. On the comment board, one user described Sips as 'crap to the power of suck.'"

Yes, you read that correctly. One of the world's largest and best-known brands is floundering around, tossing money in every which way, trying to figure out how to communicate with specific target markets. Which, as anyone can tell you, is both a powerful and dangerous affair... After all, no one wants to have their work summed up to be "crap to the power of suck."

Many people (including those in Coke's marketing department, no doubt) are giving themselves credit for trying. "The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat," says Coke's Senior Vice President of Marketing. (Or Theodore Roosevelt; I keep getting those guys confused.)

The truth, however, is probably much simpler: Give the people what they want. If you find yourself trying to figure out how to communicate with a particular target market or "get more engagement with the 20-somethings," I submit you may be thinking about things from the wrong perspective. You shouldn't be in the business of finding a market for your product. Instead, try creating a product the market wants. Toward the end of this article, there's a great (if not obvious) remark from John Battelle, CEO of Federated Media. Battelle says, "One of the principles crucial to this space is adding value to the conversation. It means oftentimes underwriting content or creating a service people actually want."

Imagine... creating something people actually want.

[Read the AdWeek article]

Still wondering if you should have a blog to help explain who you are, what your business is, how you help your customers? You may have heard that search engines like blogs and treat them like news, meaning that they index them fairly rapidly, especially if they find them to be relevant and actively. But you may not have known how rapidly this index takes place. Until now...

Anita Campbell writes in her Small Business Trends Blog that she witnessed an experiment while attending a conference called "Search Engine Marketing Made Simple". In this experiment, the facilitator, Geoff Karcher, wrote a post on his blog that included the phase "search engine marketing made simple". That post subsequently showed up in a Google search four minutes later.

Yes, you read that right. Not four days or even four hours. Four minutes. Suddenly, all of us have the potential to be as relevant as we choose to be and our messages can hit the market with blazing (prehaps frightening) speed.

Now, of course, you still need to decide whether you want to add your voice to the fray. Whether you have anything to say that's important to you, your customers, your prospects... your career. Go ahead, think it over. You've got four minutes to decide.