The Two Archetypal Marketing Messages: “Bags Fly Free” and “Soup is Good Food.”
There are only two archetypal marketing messages, exemplified by: Bags Fly Free, a current advertising slogan used by Southwest airlines. Soup is Good Food, a 1970s campaign slogan used by Campbell’s soup [1]. Quick, what’s the difference between these two messages? Soup is Good Food answers the question “why buy one (at all)?” while Bags […]
Buying GitHub – A very smart move by Microsoft !
I have been wanting to write this from the time I saw the first tweet on the topic few days ago. Lets just say life got in the way . Also, as always – this is just my personal point of view and not that of my employer. For what its worth – the visual […]
The Domo S-1: Does the Emperor Have Clothes?
I preferred Silicon Valley [1] back in the day when companies raised modest amounts of capital (e.g., $30M) prior to an IPO that took 4-6 years from inception, where burn rates of $10M/year looked high, and where $100M raise was the IPO, not one or more rounds prior to it. When cap tables had 1x, […]
The Two Engines of SaaS: QCRs and DEVs
I remember one day, years ago, when I was a VP at $10M startup and Larry, the head of sales, came in one day handing out t-shirts that said: “Code, sell, or get out of the way.” Neither I, nor the rest of marketing team, took this particularly well because the shirt obviously devalued the […]
Talking Competition: Methinks Thou Doth Protest Too Much.
From time to time marketers and executives need to talk about the competition with those outside the company, including analysts, partners, and prospective investors. In this post, we’ll cover my 4 rules for this type of communication. Be Consistent. The biggest mistake people make is inconsistency, often because they’re trying to downplay a certain competitor. […]
Is the I in AI incremental and dumb ?
First, pls read this important blog from my friend Den Howlett of Diginomica . He raises several important questions and I thought I could share my personal point of view on those topics. Terminology hell is absolutely real, and is a pain. But it’s not a show stopper Den makes a valid criticism of loosely […]
Kubernetes won – so now what?
One of the questions my colleague Stephen is adept at asking and answering is of the form: “You won, so now what?” On the flight home from Kubecon 2018 recently it struck me that this frame is appropriate for a discussion of the state of the union. Kubernetes is the de facto standard for container […]
Experience? Engagement? Same Difference! Right?
ah, the wonders of having been there, done that, and having the t-shirt…. i actually have tons of t-shirts. i have not only done many things early, that’s what comes with being an analyst for 20 years – the wonderful challenge of working with early adopters guiding them to achieve the visions we concoct, but i […]
“Always Scrubbing the Pipeline” Means “Never Scrubbing the Pipeline.”
Perhaps you’ve seen this movie: CEO: “Wow the quarterly pipeline dropped 20% this week. What’s going on sales VP?” Sales VP: “Well, that’s because we cleaned it up this week.” CEO: “That sounds great, but you said that last week.” VP of Sales: “Well, that’s because we scrubbed it then, too.” CEO: “So shouldn’t it […]
Write Actionable Emails! (aka, If You’re Going to Make a Proposal, Make One!)
As CEO of a company, I can’t tell you the number of times, I get emails like this: Dave, I know our policy is that we don’t pay both the salesreps their high-rate commissions on low-profit, one-of items, but we ended up doing a $50K/year pass-along storage fee for Acme, because they are managing a […]
