Many levels of influencer — long tails, tall tales
Duncan Watts is getting a lot of attention for attacking the notion that markets can be divided into influencers and influencees. The influential 
Seth Godin argues the market wants to gather into “tribes” of people who, no doubt, influence each other. On the other hand, he also argues for a more classical, top-down, influence-the-influencers approach as well. Guy Kawasaki buys into an extreme form of the Watts argument.
I agree with Godin, not Kawasaki. More precisely, I think there are many kinds and levels of influencer. The most important can be identified, and should be direct targets of your market outreach. But you should also be trying to reach an influencer “long tail” as well.
If selling enterprise technology, for example, you should separately target 8 different kinds of influencer, namely: Read more
| Categories: Analyst relations, Marketing theory, Technology marketing | 7 Comments |
Negative marketing in the internet era
Mark Hemingway’s recent article in favor of negative campaigning makes some good points, such as:
- Negative advertising highlights differences between candidates.
- Negative advertising undercuts opponents’ misrepresentations.
- False negative advertising can itself be debunked quickly online, and will likely backfire accordingly.
He’s right.
However, there are two big differences between negative marketing in politics and negative marketing in enterprise technology.
- If you say something negative about a technology competitor, it’s likely they can come back with the rebuttal “That’s not true any more.” Rapid product cycles are wonderful things.
- Whatever rebuttal you have to negative advertising in technology, you’ll have plenty of opportunity to present it. If it’s late in the sales cycle, your salesperson can deliver it. If it’s early in the cycle, internet-based marcom has time to take effect.
So should you go negative in enterprise technology marketing? If so, when and how should you do it? Here are my thoughts: Read more
Fear and Greed
When I was a stock analyst, I learned the maxim that all investor behavior could be explained by two factors: fear and greed. Any stock’s price reflects a balance between fear of the reasons it could go down, and hope based on the reasons it could go up.
Buyers of enterprise information technology operate pretty much the same way. They buy technology because of what it can do for them. They avoid purchases for fear of project failure, or of the products not living up to their promises, or of difficulties in the products’ use. Indeed, in its heyday, IBM was said to sell largely on the basis of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD), in a memorable phrase sometimes attributed to analyst Ulrich Weil.
Voters do much the same thing. Read more
| Categories: Marketing theory, Political marketing, Technology marketing | 1 Comment |
Seth Godin on dealing with influencers and listening to the market
From a Seth Godin interview conducted by the SEO-oriented Eric Enge:
They need to find the thirty bloggers matter, and months before they need them, give to them. Post comments, link to them, talk to them, engage them as a member of the community, and then when they roll something out those bloggers trust you. An example is Boing Boing, which is one of the three most popular blogs in the world, and there is a piece of software that just came out that helps you track appointments and stuff like that.
Cory Doctorow wrote a rave review of it yesterday on Boing Boing. Why did he do that? Because they showed up an hour ahead in time and begged him? No, because he’s known the founder for a long time, and the founder actually asked him a lot of advice about how to make the software better, and he gave it to them. So, he has a sense of relationship and ownership, so when the software comes out, of course he is going to say something about it. That time investment, and that respect is an asset that people at a traditional company might not have earned.
Certainly the company/analyst relationship fits into that paradigm.
Godin went on to take a related point to an extreme:
The thing that’s going to be hard for a lot of people is it represents a shift in power, that the reason most people become marketers is because it is fun to be in charge. It’s fun to put on a show; it is fun to have influence that comes from money. What we are seeing in the new marketing is that the opposite is true. People who are succeeding tend to be the ones with no money, because having no money makes you humble and being humble makes you work with the marketplace better.
But while extreme, that’s not entirely wrong. For example, the technology industry has advanced to the point that large firms have huge economies of scale, and startups keep succeeding even so. (E.g., see my coverage of Netezza or Qliktech.) And this year’s presidential campaign has, so far, been friendly to insurgent candidates such as Mike Huckabee, Barack Obama, a rebounding John McCain, or even Ron Paul.
| Categories: Campaign 2008, Marketing theory | 1 Comment |
Updating my marketing prescriptions for the Clinton campaign
The competitive landscape in the 2008 Democratic presidential campaign has changed significantly since Tuesday morning. What does this do to the marketing strategy I suggested for Hillary Clinton a mere 24 hours ago? Let’s see. Read more
| Categories: Campaign 2008, Hillary Clinton, Political marketing | 2 Comments |
How Hillary Clinton regained authenticity
A huge fraction of what I do as a marketing consultant is advise on how to be credible. In consumer marketing – including politics – analysis often focuses on the closely related factor of authenticity instead. Hillary Clinton’s stunning New Hampshire win is in large part being attributed to a sudden recapture of authenticity.
I agree with that top-level analysis. Specifically, I think there were four main factors driving the sudden change in Clinton’s image. Read more
| Categories: Campaign 2008, Hillary Clinton, Political marketing | Leave a Comment |
What all this political blogging has to do with the enterprise software industry
It may seem odd that I’m posting so much about politics rather than technology. Rest assured, however, that it makes sense to me. The connection between the two subjects is that enterprise technology marketing and political campaigning are a LOT alike. I have many reasons for feeling that way, but most of them boil down to this: In both enterprise technology and in politics, you can directly influence how your competitors are perceived.
Read more
| Categories: About this blog, Political marketing, Technology marketing | 3 Comments |
Obama’s polls/results gap may show the opposite of what people think it does
Barack Obama did much worse in the New Hampshire primary than polls suggested he would. As the night unfolded, analysts started relating this to similar events in other races featuring black candidates, such as Tom Bradley’s and Doug Wilder’s campaigns for the governorships of California and Virginia respectively. Evidently, Americans are more eager to be perceived as voting for an African-American than they are to actually vote for one.
If that interpretation is correct, and I think it is, there are two major ways of explaining the phenomenon.
- Hidden racism – people are ashamed to admit to being racists, but in the secrecy of the voting booth let their true feelings show.
- The virtue of supporting a minority – people are eager to be perceived as pro-diversity. But in the secrecy of the voting booth they pick the candidate they really want, with race being set aside.
Theory #1 is the conventional wisdom, but a key piece of evidence supports Theory #2 instead. Read more
| Categories: Barack Obama, Campaign 2008, Political marketing | Leave a Comment |
An interesting but flawed process critique of the Clinton campaign
Over on DailyKos, webranding gives an interesting reason for Hillary Clinton’s marketing problems: He says bad decisions were inevitable because Mark Penn is both head pollster and head strategist — i.e., both the message crafter and the message tester. That is, webranding argues it was foreordained that polls would validate the strategy Mark Penn already decided on.
Implicit in this critique is the idea that one should test messages via polling. Now, up to a point I agree that’s a great idea. But political campaigns aren’t just about pitching to people’s preconceptions — they’re also about changing people’s minds. Read more
| Categories: Campaign 2008, Hillary Clinton, Political marketing | Leave a Comment |
The classic marketing mistake Hillary Clinton now needs to avoid
I’m writing this Tuesday morning. It is widely expected that Hillary Clinton will get shellacked in the New Hampshire primary, and her campaign is searching for a strategy with which to rebound.
The temptation will be to make a classic marketing error: Excessive focus. And if they fall into that trap, they will lose.
If Hillary Clinton is to win the Democratic nomination, her campaign now has to simultaneously follow all (or at least most) of the following strategies:
- Pitch her experience, positively (and in more detail than they have been).
- Attack Barack Obama’s lack of experience.
- Pitch her “change-through-accomplishment” story, even though that will accomplish little more than stemming defections from her existing base of supporters.
- Open a new conceptual front, by stressing Clinton’s role as a womens’ rights icon.
- Continue to advance on the likability front (she’s a wonderful, moving speaker, when she lets herself be).
- Unleash Bill Clinton on the campaign trail, with the dual assignment of highlighting policy differences with the opposition and – even more important – giving examples of specific Hillary Clinton accomplishments behind closed doors.