Product Marketing
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March 12, 2013
We all misspeak. And sometimes, it’s comical. From Yogi Berra to George W. Bush, no one is immune to gaffes. But when the words we choose take on more meaning than we intended, it can be ironic, and maybe good for a few laughs...
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February 23, 2013
As marketers, we have the responsibility (or at least we should have the responsibility) to set price and establish pricing promotions. But ultimately, we know that price is set by the market, based on a product's perceived value. (If you're still pricing based on the "cost plus" model, call us and we'll help you with your margins.) So what should we use for our pricing litmus?
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January 22, 2013
There was a time when enthusiasm was all you needed to get by. Things were less technical, then. Selling was done door-to-door. And “word of mouth” happened over coffee cake, at a friend’s house, or at the church social...
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December 8, 2012
We recently had the opportunity to review a survey performed by a group of graduate students, who had volunteered, in fulfillment of a class assignment, to help a prominent nonprofit organization. The survey itself was fine, but the conclusions?
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October 22, 2012
Fascinating experience, this week, with a major telecom provider. It started with a customer satisfaction survey. The call began with the usual questions: “Was your technician on time …courteous …knowledgeable …neat, etc.” And it ended with a Net Promoter question: “On a scale of one-to-ten how likely are you to recommend us to a business colleague?”
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September 25, 2012
Joni Mitchell called it the “Starmaker Machinery,” the maddeningly complex world of music critics and publishers and agents who used to decide which artists would make the top 20 and which would remain obscure...
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September 13, 2012
Ask any of our clients, and you’re likely to hear about my penchant for analogies. Cognitive metaphors, as linguists call them, refer to understanding one conceptual domain in terms of another. When we use analogies, we help our audiences understand a “target domain” by applying their understanding of “source domains.” So, when we say things like “brands evolve,” we don’t mean they evolve in the literal sense...
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August 28, 2012
Went fishing, some years back, with a close friend and colleague. We talked through the morning about a marketing challenge he was facing. His CEO was pressing for a formalized marketing strategy, and he “just wanted to bounce a few ideas” off of me...