Author: Christopher Carfi

(MP3)

Many thanks to Barney Beal of TechTarget, who invited me onto the monthly "Voices of CRM" podcast.  Was a great chance to chat a bit about the VRM overview that was held at the Customer Service is the New Marketing event last week, as well as to chat about social networking for business. 

Here’s a link to the show.

Adriana Lukas:

"Last Friday a few of us gathered together in the name of VRM.
Doc was there so the ritual could begin – geek talk about structured
goop with XML crap, excited interrupting of others whilst being
interrupted, nerd in-jokes and, most importantly, pizza with beer! Notes from the session can be found here.
(Warning – they will give you only the gist of it, and a – not always
meaningful – record of the multiple conversations throughout the
evening.)

VRM
is still at the stage of conversations, which, in my opinion, is right.
Some basic assumptions need to be clarified and spelled out. No point
in avoiding that or trying to gloss over them, as they’ll come out of
woodwork a few months down the line anyway, when more time and effort
has been invested. We all have our views and visions of VRM and although the concept is broad enough to accommodate them (in fact, it is a feature, not a bug that people have many and varied ideas about VRM) but there are a few that will need articulating."

Link to whole thing here.

Andy Sernovitz yesterday at the CSITNM conference in the Presidio.  (Check out the cufflinks.)

This is still one of my favorite projects, ever.

"The Obey campaign can be explained as an experiment in Phenomenology.  The first aim of Phenomenology is to reawaken a sense of wonder about one’s environment.  The Obey campaign attempts to stimulate curiosity and bring people to question both the campaign and their relationship with their surroundings.  Because people are not used to seeing advertisements or propaganda for which the motive is not obvious, frequent and novel encounters with Obey propaganda provoke thought and possible frustration, nevertheless revitalizing the viewer’s perception and attention to detail.

The medium is the message."

Link.

(iTunes) (MP3)

Ok, that was fun.  Had a chance to chat last week regarding social networking with a bunch of great folks, including:

• Kara Swisher, co-executive editor of All Things Digital
• Law.com bloggers and co-hosts, J. Craig Williams and Robert Ambrogi
• Eric Goldman, Director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of Law

Here’s a quick overview, courtesy of L2L:

"Social networking sites have reconnected old friends and former colleagues, created  networking ties and have rekindled relationships all over the world. On Lawyer2Lawyer, we will explore privacy rights, intellectual property issues and even defamation and cyber bullying, all rising from social networking sites and discuss the popularity of these sites and the legal issues surrounding the online world of social networking."

This podcast was part of a series done by the LegalTalkNetwork (standard disclaimer: neither am I a lawyer, nor do I play one on the internet).  Here’s a link to the show.

Starbucks new strategy to attract customers has left a bitter taste for at least one customer.  John Moore, who worked as a marketer at Starbucks for over eight years, takes issue with the new Starbucks $1 cup o’ joe, which undercuts both McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts prices, according to Reuters.  John writes:

"In a bigger shift in marketing strategy than spending millions on national television advertising, Starbucks is now selling short-sized cups of brewed coffee for a $1.00 and offering free refills at Seattle-area locations…Oh My!.  A low-price strategy is indeed the quickest pathway to commoditizing and marginalizing coffee back to being, well, just coffee."

Read John’s full post regarding the new Starbucks strategy here.

I have to concur: unless Starbucks is modifying its strategy to be a low-cost provider, per Porter, this would seem to go against their historical approach to providing an "experience" to their customers.  What do you think?

Holy cow.  I had no idea how much of a productivity drag was it was having a dirty screen.  Here’s a site with a utility that cleans your monitor.

Crossing the Chasm is the title of the 1991 book by Geoffrey Moore that describes how technology products enter the mainstream.  Moore posited that although many tech products are often gobbled up by the innovators and visionaries, they then often languish in a "chasm" that lies between those same early adopters and the mainstream.  Wikipedia says:

"Moore argues there is a chasm between the early adopters of the product (technology enthusiasts and visionaries) and the early majority (the pragmatists).
Moore believes visionaries and pragmatists have very different
expectations."

A huge part of that chasm crossing is having a critical mass of "references" who are similar to the prospective buyers who give prospective mainstream buyers confidence that a product will work for them, too.

Check out today’s post by David Pogue of the New York Times, Explaining the Macintosh Surge.  It’s spot on.  (Read the comments, too.)  It wasn’t just one thing that has brought Apple to where it is today.  It’s a combination of things, including:

• The marketwide move to new machines triggered, frankly, by Vista (gotta buy something)
• Awareness of Apple through their media activities (both ads and coverage)
• Mainstream (read "non-geeks") comfort with Apple’s iPod and iPhone
• An increasing number of "reference" customers that span across demographics

Is this another example of patience and persistence paying off?