Categories
Daily Life

The Next Writing Project

I’ve started a new project and as a result I can see that this blog will suffer. Hopefully you’ve been entertained thus far, and the good news is the next project has much more structure and won’t just be the ramblings off the top of my head.

As the quarter kicks off we’ve covered the new messaging and it’s time for me to execute. The same goes for Marketing Over Coffee, the program continues to accelerate, but the bad news is that means there’s more work to be done to lift it to the next level. Suffering through all of it is The M Show, it’s been more than 2 weeks since the last show, and there may be something else coming out this week, but the return on that investment is getting smaller all the time compared to the value that MOC is generating.

So, it’s time to put my head down and fade away for a while. Don’t worry, when I’m back there’ll be plenty of interesting stuff to talk about.

Categories
Daily Life

Back to Normal

The WU alternative has been found and the Secret Project is back underway. Have a good weekend and enjoy the warmer weather. Next week is the Sales Kickoff, but this quarter it’s only one day and I’m not able to make the dinner out so it may actually be a quarter start without a lot of insanity!

Categories
Daily Life

Pushed too Far

HulkI have been reminded to control my temper better while posting. I’m considering that suggestion and apologizing for nothing.

Categories
Gaming

Gaming on the Rise

Longtime readers know that gaming is a subject close to my heart, but it is relevant to any marketing discussion given the rapid growth of this market. Microsoft’s Halo 3 made anywhere from $150-170M depending on what numbers you believe. Bigger than the initial take Spiderman 3 or the final Harry Potter book. Enough for the movie industry to use it as an excuse for a bad week.

Give credit to the Nintendo Wii from changing the market from “Gamer/Non-Gamer” to “Wii and up”. Everybody in my family has played with the Wii and enjoyed it, they may not be standing in line for the release of Starcraft 2 (I’ll may even pre-order, but no line for me) but they at least see some of the entertainment value.

I’ve been lucky enough to see the GuildCafe, a startup here in Boston from prior to first funding at one of the WebInno events before they started hitting Comdex-like attendance.

Last week they announced an additional round of funding and a name change to gamerDNA. Led by Jon Radoff (who did a recent presentation on startups here), they have experience at the helm and are moving into an exciting new market.

Categories
Great Marketing

The Price is Right

I really enjoy Drew Carey, we always used to have a stack of “Whose Line is It?” on the TiVo (no chance of that now because the Verizon FIOS DVR is a POS).

Here’s some weekend fun, even though I’ve seen this show all my life I only appreciate it as a product placement showcase now:

glumbert – The Easiest Million Ever
Categories
The Marketeer

Sports Marketing

Sports marketing is a interesting niche, if you are into it, the AMA Boston has an event with a completely kick-ass panel coming up. The panelists work with the Red Sox, Patriots and Bruins, as well as reps from Dunkin’ Donuts, EMC and Jordan’s Furniture (they are again offering free furniture if the Sox sweep the World Series, a promo that they’ve had great success with).

Categories
Podcasting

Stop. Coffee Time.

The latest Marketing Over Coffee went out yesterday, a good listen for anyone getting their email campaigns off the ground or starting their company’s first website:

Direct link to file

Categories
Brain Buster

Are you into CrossFit?

Today I learned about CrossFit from Peter Shankman, a fitness program built on this principle: “Develop the capacity of a novice 800-meter track athlete, gymnast, and weightlifter and you’ll be fitter than any world-class runner, gymnast, or weightlifter.”

And you’re already asking how this relates to marketing… but it does.

About 5 years ago I first started learning about low carbohydrate diets and it changed my life. Up until that point I had lived the average American life of gaining a pound a year after turning 21. This was even with being more active than average, including a Boston Marathon, over 300 miles with the Boston NikeTown Running club, skiing, golf, blah, blah, blah.

The problem with the low carbohydrate diet is that it goes against everything we have been sold for years. Between filling up the aisles of the supermarket with processed flower and sugar, and getting a food pyramid built by the groups lobbying for the grain industry, there’s been no profit in telling you otherwise (unless you are a guy named Atkins selling books, or you are sharp enough to come up with a brand called South Beach).

Now I can actually affect my weight, something that I was not able to do before that point. My only problem now is my addiction to sugar and baked goods (which weighs heavier on me now because I am making a conscious decision to be a fat slob rather than being able to cry victim of my metabolism, natural weight or whatever excuse is vogue). The good news is that spring is here and it’s time to take off the winter weight, and begin training for the Falmouth Road Race.

As part of that I’ll be setting a new Nike+ group as the race approaches and would be interested in any training stories, and I’m going to try and learn the CrossFit exercises. Hopefully I won’t injure myself doing an inverted hang or some other doofus move. Anyone fatblogging, feel free to step up, or throw down a gauntlet. And check out the CrossFit blog for daily workouts. Yes, that is not an error, averaging over 400 comments per post.

Both low carbohydrate diets and CrossFit started to come together in the 70’s. Both of these brands had a fundamental truth behind them – the ability to get results, but without the Marketing machine of a profitable industry behind them, it’s taken 30 years to get to me. Think about that when you are trying to measure the velocity of word-of-mouth.

Categories
Brain Buster SalesForce.com

Beyond CRM

Lately I’ve been thinking more outside of the box. Not because I’ve taken any consultant or analyst pills, but rather because the world just decided to kick me out of the cardboard container I’m used to.

First was a few weeks ago when I installed VMware Fusion on my wife’s Mac. The sight of windows booting up (and running better than it does on most PC’s was something I never expected to see firsthand (nor even ever own a Mac for that matter, now there are 3 in the family so far).

Second was getting to check out some Solid State Disk Drives (or SSDs as you’d call them if you were in the know, and now you are). Having a hard drive with no moving parts changes the game in a lot of ways, as soon as a media player and a laptop hit my price point with an SSD, I’m in. Things like reducing the boot time from a minute 40, to 35 seconds is right where I want to be.

This week I’ve been doing some data analysis. The labor has changed now that I have access to the SalesForce.com API. I’m starting to move beyond CRM – the idea that the best you could do is a database that contains all the information about your customers and prospects. I’m now thinking about exploring how the database changes as time passes. Questions like “Is the sales process improving?”, “What data am I missing, and is it important to fill in the blanks”, “What does the normal suspect to prospect to customer lifecycle look like?”

The crazy part is that these questions have been discussed for years, but we’re finally reaching the point where almost any business can get access to the tools to answer them.

Categories
Podcasting

Studio N

The weekend is almost over and that means off to Studio N for the latest episode of The M Show.

Listen here: Direct link to file

You can also check out some new photos from Fenway Park, my sister hooked me up with Yanks/Sox tickets on Friday.