A weblog by Christopher Carfi, since 2004.
Joe Andrieu: "Only in the simplest commodity markets is pricing ever the sole factor.
Whether you focus on relationships and conversations or the 20th
century model of brand-driven differentiation, there are lots of
factors that influence a transaction at least as much, if not more,
than price."
You can find the whole conversation here. Worth a read.
David Hornik writes a post that sums up something that I’ve been thinking about lately, having reviewed a number of pitches and proposals that fall into this trap. David:
"Adjectives are not convincing. Facts are convincing. I may not agree
with the conclusions a company draws from those facts. But I will at
least be in a position to appropriately assess those conclusions.
Whereas adjectives are all about conclusions without the underlying
facts. As an entrepreneur, you are far better off having me determine
that your market is "massive," your founders are "brilliant," and your
product is "elegant," than to tell me that your company has "an elegant
solution serving a massive market designed by brilliant founders." So
reread your pitch and remove all of the adjectives. It will go
massively, monumentally, gargantuanly. colossally better that way."
This one is getting taped to the monitor, just a short reach away from the copy of Strunk and White.
(hat tip to andrew anker for the ^H idea. heh.)
Had a great chat today with John C. Havens on BlogTalkRadio about transparency in business. About 30min or so in duration, was one of the more fun biz conversations I’ve had in a while. Check it out.
The Good rocking the house at Martyr’s in Chicago on 23-Feb-2008 at their reunion gig, with old friend John Scholvin on lead guitar. (He’s also a financial trading rocket scientist – really.)
Oh yeah, you can get the music here.
Great summary of last week’s VRM meeting in London, with commentary by Ian Delaney. An excerpt:
"One of the latest solutions to the problem of marketing without wasting
loads of money is CRM. Companies collect loads of data about their
customers and potential customers and then target their marketing
efforts at segments of those groups. CRM is ‘lame and bad’, though,
because it isn’t about relationships at all…"
Larry Dignan: "I’ll predict 2009 as the year of enterprise social networks."
(Click on the globe to learn more)
Yes, I’m in Dubai but, alas, only virtually. As noted earlier, we’ve been doing some groundbreaking work with the Professional Aviation Maintenance Association (PAMA) and the SAE Institute in helping them use social media tools and word-of-mouth techniques to let the world know about the new certification they’ve launched for aviation mechanics.
As part of the rollout of the exam, Cerado created an easily-sharable online quiz that gives a flavor of what’s involved in certification. Here’s what Sarah has to say about the Global Challenge quiz:
"This is a free 10-question quiz based on the PAMA/SAE
Institute Professional Certification exam that will test your
knowledge and get you thinking about your career. It’s also fun! (And
you may want to share it with your colleagues.)"
So, give it a shot. Will you get stranded? Or can you ensure your 747 makes it around the world?
Seth Godin has a strong piece up today on the mindset shift taking place in the "human resources" functions of large organizations. Seth:
"Like it or not, in most organizations HR has grown up with a
forms/clerical/factory focus. Which was fine, I guess, unless your goal
was to do something amazing, something that had nothing to do with a
factory, something that required amazing programmers, remarkable
marketers or insanely talented strategy people.So, here’s my small suggestion, one that will make some uncomfortable.
Change the department name to Talent."
This change is already taking place. For example, this past fall the Future of Talent conference raised key issues in the areas of how social networking is affecting organizations and the talent within.
Last week Dan Greenfield and I chatted by phone about the question "does ‘if you build it, they will come’ work for social networks?" (I say no.) Dan’s post is up today and is worth a read. Here’s an excerpt, read the whole thing here. Dan:
"In one of my favorite movies, “Field of Dreams,” the main character Ray Kinsella struggles with the idea of building a baseball diamond in the middle of a cornfield in Iowa. Questioning his sanity, he does so with the assurances from a voice that tells him: “If you build it, they will come.” In the end, he is amply rewarded.
Today’s corporate communications professionals probably don’t worry about baseball fields, but when faced with the idea of launching a social network they should not be faulted if they ask themselves the same question: “If we build it, will they come?”
As more companies launch forums, build social networks, or create FaceBook or MySpace pages, there is pressure to follow suit. And that’s not an easy task. Social networks force corporate communications professionals to face a legion of concerns, none more pressing than achieving critical mass. The blogosphere is rather unforgiving, and an irrelevant social network can be worse than no network at all.
In launching a social network, it is tempting to create a FaceBook page and declare mission accomplished. Yes you can check off that item on your social media to do list. But having friends on your company page rarely taps a user base looking for a meaningful forum to engage with your brand or company.
That is why I called some social network companies KickApps, GoingOn, CollectiveX, Broadband Mechanics, Snapp Networks, Haystack, and ONEsite. They provide tools to help companies build and brand their own unique social networks. Mark Hendrickson’s Techcrunch piece based on initial research by Jeremiah Owyang was very helpful in identifying these companies."
Thanks, Lee!
