Archive for December, 2007
Regional Branding: the KC Animal Health Corridor
I saw a small piece in a recent Economist on Kansas City’s attempt to make itself into the Silicon Valley of animal health.
My first reaction - foolishly - was that “Animal Health Corridor” was a not particularly catchy or interesting name.
Then I paused for a sec, and reminded myself that it’s a pretty good name [...]
Those Darn Customers
From the “Customers, they are so annoying!” files, Pragmatic Marketing’s Tuned In blog comments on Microsoft’s response to customers having problems with Outlook 2007:
Yesterday Microsoft released an update to Outlook 2007 to help speed up the downloading of messages and reduce the annoying and highly criticized freezing associated with moving or deleting messages. Microsoft indicated [...]
A note to the toy companies
I was going to say “toy makers” but, alas, most of the toy makers aren’t here, they’re in China, where a goodly number of them are apparently using lead paint, the date rape drug, and a lot of other nasty things to produce toys for our little ones.
(As Christmas approaches, toyland is certainly an Opinionated [...]
When Life Hands the Other Guy Lemons… Chinese Toys and American Toymakers
Recent news about lead-tainted toys manufactured in China have been helpful to one segment of the toy industries: small companies making hand-crafted toys in the US. But it’s hard for small operations to gear up to meet unexpected demand, so we see - for example - things like this from a toymaker in Maine:
This is [...]
Pragmatic Marketing Rule #10
This is the tenth in a series of posts on Practical Product Management Rules from Pragmatic Marketing.
Pragmatic Marketing Rule #10: Find market segments that value your distinctive competence.
I suspect that all technology marketers have, at one time or another, attempted to broaden their market to extend beyond whatever segment they find themselves in. Sometimes this [...]
Hamming it up for Chanukah
I was at a small gathering at my friend Susan’s the other night, and she took a few moments to light the third candle on her menorah. Susan and her husband sang a song in Hebrew (which, as Susan pointed out, sounded just like the theme song for the old Western TV show, The Lawman. [...]
Is it the Season to Annoy Your Customers?
Apparently. Well, it happens every year; it’s the busiest retail season of the year, so retailers put their email marketing (along with all other marketing) into high gear.
I used to like getting my weekly Borders email. I often use the coupons they send. The emails work; they get me into the store.
But I [...]
CitiBunk: what’s with the irrelevant ads?
Years ago, Citi ran an ad campaign in which “people” talked about how helpful CB was when they detected unusual spending patterns. I mean, they actually called the consumer to find out if they were actually consuming at the clip that their transactions seemed to indicate.
The folks in the ads were all over themselves praising [...]
Strategeries and Tacticizing
If you’ve ever been to an emergency room, you know that waiting is part of the drill. Put two marketing types into one, add some interesting posters on the bulletin boards, and there’s a new way to pass the time and for one of you to not think about the pain he’s in. As we [...]
Pragmatic Marketing Rule #9
This is the ninth in a series of posts on Practical Product Management Rules from Pragmatic Marketing.
Rule #9: The building is full of product experts. Your company needs market experts.
There’s nothing worse than a marketing person who knows little about the product they’re marketing. Matters not whether you’re “just” in marcomm, minimal fluency is required. [...]
