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Monday, September 09, 2002
Viral Marketing Links
AdResource: Using E-Books to Drive Traffic to Your Site"Not all sites and products can be made viral... You can, however, create a viral e-book. Good e-books, with built-in viral capabilities, keep spreading from person to person perpetually." (2/7/01) AdResource: Using E-Books to Drive Traffic to Your Site "Not all sites and products can be made viral... You can, however, create a viral e-book. Good e-books, with built-in viral capabilities, keep spreading from person to person perpetually." (2/7/01) Business 2.0: Best Buzz Marketing "The guerrilla marketing campaign for the second-season premiere of Showtime's Queer as Folk series brilliantly capitalized on the intersection between the Internet and the gay community." (5/02) Business 2.0: Lee Jeans Pitches Bare Bottoms "But Lee's viral-marketing strategy has made the campaign all the more effective. The ads are quickly gaining attention on the Web, even though Lee has barely begun the campaign." (4/9/02) Business Journal: Viral Marketing Gets the Message to Many -- Cheaply "In its stripped-down version, viral marketing is nothing more than word-of-mouth advertising that is generally tied to an e-mail message. For example, viral marketers pass along ads for products and services, hyperlinked promotions..." Digitrends: Viral Marketing Doesn't Have to be Complicated An e-mail marketing viral campaign that gives Web users a new way to pass along their favorite bookmarked content. (3/01) Draper, Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ): What is Viral Marketing? Steve Jurvetson defines viral marketing and its uses. DFJ is the inventor of the term 'viral marketing.' (3/30/00) e-fluentials Research has identified a group of online movers and shakers - the e-fluentials - who shape the opinions and attitudes of the Internet community. Idea Marketers: Marketing Strategies that Pay Tenfold Great viral marketing strategies to increase traffic. 2001. Info-sec.com: Viral Marketing Hits New Low Leander Kahney discusses the negative side of viral marketing, and what not to do to your customers. Seattle Times: Katie Couric Not Needed if You've Got Net "Whether or not you agree with the acid punditry of Michael Moore, his "Stupid White Men" experience is a telling case study in the marketing power of the Internet." (4/1/02) Strategy: United Way Clicks With Viral Campaign "A viral e-mail campaign that spawned 250,000 hits on a local Toronto United Way Web site in a single three-day period has given an unexpected boost to the non-profit agency's Internet marketing strategy." (3/16/01) Unleashing The IdeaVirus Download the entire book by Seth Godin. Viral Marketers Viral marketing tools and information. Includes references and case studies. Web Marketing Today: The Six Simple Principles of Viral Marketing Dr. Ralph F. Wilson discusses the principles of viral marketing, and how the viral system works. Wired: New Worm a Marketing Ploy? "A porn-peddling e-mail worm currently clogging computer networks in Asia, Australia and Great Britain may be a misguided variation of an advertising technique known as viral marketing." (5/9/01)
The Mark-ist Manifesto - Colgate's CEO Reuben Mark remarks on leadership
The Mark-ist Manifesto rom Business 2.0 - Magazine Article - In Praise of the Anonymous CEO {Colgate's CEO Reuben Mark, who shuns publicity and has a better record than Jack Welch gives an interview to Business 2.0 and talks about his guiding principles..} Guiding principles of Reuben Mark's brand of leadership. First, do no harm Mark avoided the empire-building that damaged so many other companies. Not one of Colgate's acquisitions has been outside its chosen group of product categories, and even within those bounds, the company has tried to be careful. For 12 years, Mark wooed pet-food maker Iams, becoming friends with the owner. But when Procter & Gamble intervened with a $2.3 billion bid, Mark walked away, convinced that Iams was worth no more than $1.7 billion. Believe in the business In the 1990s, consultants warned consumer-goods companies that they were in a commodity business, doomed to an eternity of slow growth and narrow margins. Mark recognized that as nonsense: Any product that goes on the hair or skin or in the mouth generates intense interest and brand loyalty. Keep tinkering Colgate's pay-for-performance plan has been the human resources equivalent of Mt. Rushmore, a process of continual chiseling and polishing. One recent improvement: Managers selling detergent brands -- low-margin products Colgate wants to de-emphasize -- are rewarded for boosting per-unit profits but not sales. Mind the message Symbolism matters, Mark believes, and it's one of the many reasons mergers so often fail. When the CEO keeps trying to get into new businesses, the employees running the old lines feel they're the past, not the future. The perception is likely to be self-fulfilling. Sunday, September 08, 2002
Yawning is incredibly contagious. I made some of you reading this yawn simply by writing the word "yawn". The people who yawned when they saw you yawn, meanwhile, were infected by the sight of you yawning--which is a second kind of contagion. They might even have yawned if they only heard you yawn, because yawning is also aurally contagious: if you play an audio-tape of a yawn to blind people, they'll yawn too. And finally, if you yawned as you read this, did the thought cross your mind--however unconsciously and fleetingly--that you might be tired? I suspect that for some of you it did, which means that yawns can also be emotionally contagious. Simply by writing the word, I can plant a feeling in your mind. Can the flu virus do that? Contagiousness, in other words, is an unexpected property of all kinds of things, and we have to remember that if we are to recognize and diagnose epidemic change. from gladwell dot com / books / THINKING ABOUT YAWNS buy the book The Tipping Point recommended reading on Branding Building Strong Brands by David Aaker Strategic Brand Management The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding:How to Build a Product or Service into a World-Class Brand The End of Marketing as we Know it by Sergio Zyman Kotler on Marketing: How to Create, Win and Dominate Markets Customers.com: How to Create a Profitable Business Strategy for the Internet and Beyond Eating the Big Fish : How Challenger Brands Can Compete Against Brand Leaders from Careers in Marketing: Product Management > Overview Saturday, September 07, 2002
Product Management: Overview
Product managers are responsible for the marketing and development of products such as sports cars, insurance policies, and sporting goods. Product managers are both strategic and tactical. Strategic because they responsible for positioning a product, assessing the competition and thinking about the future. Tactical because they are in the field developing appropriate promotional campaigns, talking to reps about what customers want and think and doing the day-to-day sales tracking that's required for any major product category. Product management professionals are excited about their ability to manage and strengthen brands. They are at the vortex of company life because their decisions directly affect the success of a business. from Careers in Marketing: Product Management > Overview Fortune - because you gotta keep up strategy+business - Booz Allen Hamilton's magazine the NY Times Sunday Edition..read it all week long.. and This week's quick read: The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive by Patrick M. Lencioni - an easy weekend read, with a few nuggets of wisdom..read it in 3 hours while tanning on the deck..then give it to your CEO Click here to go to an online Glossary of New Product Development Terms Acknowledgment: Some of the definitions for terms in this glossary have been adapted from the glossary in New Products Management, by C. Merle Crawford and C. Anthony Di Benedetto. Terms, phrases, and definitions generously have been contributed to this list by the PDMA Board of Directors, the editors and authors of The PDMA ToolBook for New Product Development (John Wiley & Sons, 2002), the editors and authors of The PDMA Handbook of New Product Development (John Wiley & Sons, 1996) and several other individuals knowledgeable in the science, skills and art of new product development. We thank all of these volunteer contributors for their continuing support. I had some further confirmation from a series of articles that appeared in the New York Times this week on my theories about the importance of building communities for your products and on the power of language to move a market. All products should come from a community need, do your market research before building with your so-called great new technology widget, make sure somebody wants what you are building and is willing to pay for it. But as McKean points out, a Big Mac is no longer just a hamburger, it is a piece of McDonalds corporate culture, and lives in the community of McBabys that feed on it. The Fringe built the internet, the rest of us are just exploiting it - to build communities for our McBabies. Got to love how Watts Wacker manages to make a living telling us what we already know.. Neologizing 101 By Erin McKean Words failing you? Why not create your own? Click here visit Nytimes.com and read the whole story The Fringe Is Full of Ideas By William J. Holstein How business ideas move from the edge to the mainstream is the subject of an intriguing new book, "The Deviant's Advantage: How Fringe Ideas Create Mass Markets." Click here visit Nytimes.com and read the whole story Watts Wacker, co-author of "The Deviant's Advantage," argues that top executives can build corporate cultures that are open to innovative ideas. Click here visit Nytimes.com and read the whole story or read the book The Deviant's Advantage: How Fringe Ideas Create Mass Markets
Internet Research & Statistics Resources
from eBC - Links Internet Research & Statistics Emarketer eMarketer is the world's leading provider of internet and e-business statistics. eMarketer’s award-winning website provides reports that combine original analysis with aggregated numbers from leading sources worldwide. Ferris Research Ferris Research specializes in the creation of business intelligence in digital communication technologies of messaging and collaboration. Nua.com Nua.com is the authoritative online source for information on Internet demographics and trends. Canadian Netizens A free, monthly report offering an extensive demographic analysis of Internet users in Canada Internetstats.com Canada's largest source for statistics on the Internet and its users. Contains over 30,000 research publications, industry profiles, and Business Reports. Nielsen//Netratings To succeed in online marketing you need to apply a depth of understanding that can only come from detailed, real-time research and analysis. Whether you are developing an eCommerce strategy or designing an online media plan, Nielsen//NetRatings is the information source you need to drive revenue. Thursday, September 05, 2002
Scientifically Priced Retail Goods
{This is interesting in light of the technology being employed in determining the pricing schemes - for more customer loyalty analytics talks visit Ekaros Analytical Inc} September 2, 2002 By BOB TEDECHI WHEN Saks executives greeted investors with better-than-expected results last month, they made it clear that e-commerce initiatives deserved part of the credit. But this was not a case of Internet retailing finally catching up to the exaggeration of years past. Rather, it was a testament yet again to the slow, quiet progress of new business technology, which is transforming entire industries one mundane task at a time, far from the view of consumers. For Saks, one of the accelerants is a system that helps merchants set prices across different stores, or stores in different regions. Like all retailers, Saks faces the problem of deciding when to start marking down items, and at what price, so the company can glean as much profit a sit can, without discounting so early that the company sells out and alienates customers, or so late that the company looks like a museum for unwanted merchandise. Using systems from a handful of small but fast-growing technology companies, retailers like Saks, ShopKo and Meijer Stores are now making price decisions more scientifically and less by gut instinct. And while this technology has been known to make merchants initially uncomfortable, senior executives are greeting it with much more openness as they see the effects. "We're excited about this," said Bill Franks, Saks's chief information officer, referring to the system, which he called price optimization technology. "It's not going to change the world, but we've seen very positive results from it." Mr. Franks said Saks started testing the system in earnest early this year, using technology from Spotlight Solutions, a software vendor based in Cincinnati. That software analyzes sales data from past years and the current selling season, then determines which goods to mark down, at specific prices, and at specific stores. Notably, the system, which delivers its recommendations to merchandising managers over the Internet, also suggests the timing of the markdowns. "All retailers have a cadence to their clearance process," Mr. Franks said. "You take the first markdown on merchandise, then the second, then you dispose." The new system, Mr. Franks said, works on the assumption that Saks can achieve a better average sale price across all of its stores if it discounts at different times in different places, depending on Spotlight's recommendations. Mr. Franks would not quantify the effect precisely, but he indicated the new system is already partly responsible for the improvements in Saks's gross margins and excess inventory levels for the first six months of this year. He said the company would begin rolling out the system – now in a limited, but undisclosed, number of stores. – across all its stores in the near future. As will others, eventually, said Carrie A. Johnson, an analyst with the technology consultancy Forrester Research. Ms. Johnson said that fewer than 10 percent of retailers were using this technology, despite the fact that they could improve gross margins 10 percent with such systems. Ms. Johnson said the retailers' sluggishness was not unexpected, given how reluctantly the industry usually approaches new technologies. But she said that as more prominent companies report successes, retail executives would face increasing pressure to look into the software. This is particularly probable given the softness of the retail market and because clearance goods represent about one-third of a typical retailer's sales, up from single digits in the 1970's. Price optimization technologies also hold promise for companies that do not mark down goods with the same rhythm as apparel retailers. Companies like ShopKo, Winn Dixie, Longs Drugs and others are in the midst of rolling out technology that helps them price thousands of different items in their stores on a continuing basis. But Brent Lippman, chief executive of KhiMetrics, which supplies the pricing software to ShopKo and Winn Dixie, said the technology could, among other things, help set prices on complementary goods - for example, tortilla chips and salsa - and determine how a discount on one item would affect demand for the other. By tweaking the prices and adjusting for demand, merchants can anticipate profits on products in the system and plan sales accordingly. Mr. Lippman said that one unnamed KhiMetrics client - a food retailer with billions in annual sales - increased gross margins 5 percent in a test last year. Given the potential savings available to big retailers, technology vendors in this category have been able to extract a premium for their services, with fees ranging from $1 million to $5 million to license and set up the software, depending on the size of the retailer. Those fees also speak to the years of research most of these technology companies invested in their software before attracting their first customers. David Boyce, vice president for marketing and strategic initiatives of ProfitLogic, which provides pricing software to J. C. Penney and Meijer Stores, among others, said the company developed sales algorithms for retailers like T. J. Maxx and Ann Taylor for 14 years before realizing in 1999 that it could create software from that work and license it to multiple clients. No matter how much work went into these technologies, though, retail merchandisers have not been quick to cede control over the price-setting process, retail executives and analysts said. Take Meijer Stores, a closely held general merchandise retailer and grocer with sales of $10 billion last year, which this month begins rolling out pricing technology from ProfitLogic. One senior merchandising executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said ProfitLogic "really had to make believers of all of us." The Meijer executive added: "The attitude is, `I'm the buyer. I bought it. It's a great product, and it's got to sell. The weather's got to get colder.' Or pick one of the 100,000 other reasons in your mind not to take a markdown." Like other retailers using this technology, Meijer gave its merchants the option to accept or reject the system's recommendation. If, for example, the merchant knows a cold wave is about to hit, he would delay marking down warm-weather apparel or discounting soup too drastically. Such second-guessing aside, Meijer's merchandisers relied on the pricing system enough over a year-long testing period to glean 10 percent in gross margin improvements. Mr. Franks of Saks said entire categories of items would be exempted from the price recommendation system since, for example, "a lot of the designer merchandise" is so unusual that it would be difficult for the software to accurately predict pricing and demand. But, he said, a "significant portion" of the company's merchandise would be covered. While pricing technologies have worked well for mainstream and discount retailers, "This hasn't really been tried in the upper end of the marketplace," Mr. Franks said. "We proved it works there, as well." Meanwhile, consumers need not worry that the trend will result in fewer bargains to pick through. Although the technology could, in fact, lead to fewer racks of clearance items at the end of a season, executives said their customers might see discounts earlier than usual – and bigger discounts, at that. from the nytimes |
