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More on trust

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.

-- Warren Buffett

 

In an earlier post I wrote about the importance of trust for premium pricing. But trust extends beyond confidence in the product; trust is even more important when considering working with a vendor.

"Body scans are never saved."

The new scanners used by TSA in major airports show a virtually naked view of the travelers. Ignoring the discomfort of having ANY strangers see us naked, the TSA insists the images are looked at by officers in a remote location and not by staff at the machine, and that the images are deleted immediately after the passenger is cleared through security. Yet pictures from these machines continue to pop up on the internet. We just don't trust the vendor of the machines or the TSA to do what they say.

"We won't spam you."

We give our names and email to a trusted vendor who abuses it when revenues are off. Over the protests of the "good" marketing people, the execs or sales people or "bad" marketing people insist that the downside of spamming customers is offset by the increase in revenue. "If we can make a million, who cares if we lose only 10% of our names?" But the vendor has lost more than that. Trust is gone.

Trust is earned

Why do we buy Toyota instead of GM? Design and quality over decades.

Why do we buy Apple instead of Microsoft? Design and quality over decades.

Why do we buy this instead of that? Design and quality over decades.

What can you do to increase trust with your customers? Isn't this really what marketing is all about?

17 Mutable Suggestions For Naming A Startup

One more reason why spending calories on picking a great name is important:  It’s a one-time cost to get a great name — but the benefit is forever.  Conversely, if you short-change this and dismiss it completely, you’re going to incur what I’d call “branding debt”.  Not bad at first, and maybe not a big deal for you ever, but every year, as you grow, you’ll have this small voice nagging inside your head “should I change the name of the company…”.  It’s going to be annoying.  And the longer you wait, the more expensive the decision is, and the less likely you are to do it.  Save yourself some of that future pain, and invest early in picking a decent name.  You may still get it wrong, but at least you’ll know you tried. 

via onstartups.com

Good suggestions for company (and product names). Apple product names are notoriously bad, like iPod, iPhone, and iPad, but their feature names are usually great: Facetime, AirPort, even Time Machine.

A good name should be available, spellable, and speakable. And for B2B, it should be meaningful. Read more tips on naming.

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

How can you be unique?

How in the world can anything be unique?

When you start thinking in terms of market segments, things become clearer

In a well-to-do neighborhood, there are many lawn services. How does one pick? You either pick on price or you pick the one who bothered to show up. After all, they're all the same, right? But what if ONE service also plowed snow in winter and dealt with the sprinkler system in the spring and raked the leaves in autumn. That offering would be unique—at least within the segment. Positioning would be: "We'll take care of your yard—all of it." Of course, this service wouldn't fly in a poorer neighborhood.

Italian restaurants. Steak restaurants. Heck, ANY restaurant. Aren't they all the same? If so, we choose arbitrarily, or based on that nice waiter we had last time. But what if one was unique somehow? Pasta prepared at your table? Menus items using produce grown locally. That's unique (but perhaps not sustainable). The next restaurant could copy fairly easily—unless it broke their business model. Within that geographic market segment, this unique thing would be the differentiator.

Here's my favorite idea: do you really want to be unique? Then FORBID children in your restaurant. There are many family-friendly restaurants but this isn't one of them. This happened with a restaurant in Washington state and the mothers went insane. They felt it was their RIGHT to annoy everyone with their damn kids. But the owner said, I don't have high-chairs or chicken fingers or a play room. I serve adult food to adults. If you don't like it, don't dine here. And adults flocked to this unique atmosphere.

Conversely, what if Chuck E Cheeses changed their theme at night to a family restaurant and not just a play room?

Unique is a tricky idea until you look at your capabilities within a market segment. Start looking from the market's point of view and you can ignore the competition.

Friday fun: Let local teams localize

Do you market your products in multiple countries? If so, you need to have marketers in the local region to tailor your message in their language.

Japan is rather (in)famous for using English phrases that don't mean what they think they mean... if you know what I mean.

Source: http://www.engrish.com/

To work with other countries, first get your positioning right... in your own language. Send the result to your marketing counterparts in each country and have them tailor the message for their market. A phone conversation is probably worthwhile so you can ensure that they understand what you're saying and you understand what they're saying. Keep confirming until you're sure that you've communicated both directions.

For international product teams, positioning documents with collaboration is the best way to connoct poopie.

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

A Product Management Elevator Pitch - Travis Jensen on Product Management and Development

I am a product manager, but what that really means is that I produce software. Just like a producer in the entertainment business, my job is to understand what the consumer is going to buy, make sure that it gets built, and ensure it is done for a profit.

via softwaremaven.innerbrane.com

The producer vs director analogy is powerful. In the entertainment business, a producer owns the business while the director owns the art. The strategic product manager is a business leader while the team lead in development focuses on the art of the product--the innovation. Whether you call it a product manager, a product marketing manager, a product owner, or any number of other titles, the one who knows the market and defines the business is the product producer. It's a strategic role.

What's your role in creating great products? Are you the producer or the director... or the janitor?

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

The Influencer Project – summarizing the shortest marketing conference ever | On Product Management

Billed as “the shortest marketing conference ever“, the goal was to get 60 presenters and give them each 1 minute (yes 60 seconds) to provide insights on how to increase your online influence in the next 60 days.

via onproductmanagement.net

Elevator pitches gone insane! Wow!

Saeed does a fine job of summarizing one hour of talks into the 60 salient points of the talks. What would you say (about your self, your product, or you company) in one minute--or one sentence?

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

Is Your Product Morphine, Aspirin or Vitamins?

Morphine solves a HUGE pain for the customer. Aspirin cures a headache. Vitamins are supplements – a nice to have. So which is your product?

via blog.pekpongpaet.com

Is your product a must-have or a nice-to-have?

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

What is iPad? (Answer: I still don't know)

It's like a Kindle but for books AND video.

It's like an iPhone but it doesn't make calls.

Words words words. But what is the positioning?

What is iPad? (Answer: I still don't know)

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

The Five Profitable Positions in any Marketplace

The five profitable positions for any market category are The Market Leader, The Second, The Alternative, The Boutique, and the New Category Leader.

via marketingtechblog.com

I think I'd've chosen 'Dr Pepper' or 'Sprint' as the Alternative and 'Cheer Wine' as the Boutique but overall, a very healthy look at positioning by category.
Which are you?

Posted via web from Steve Johnson on product management

An engineer roasts "marketecture"

Alas, "Marketecture" is often a term of scorn used by developers and engineers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hn-AU3KQRk

Ideally, you should use marketecture to free yourself from the technical and refocus on how the product solves problems for buyers. Now that's a marketecture I can believe! Or as Adele would say, "Got a great product? Get over it." Talk to buyers about solving their problems, not about your features. DCPs indeed.

Kindle 2 and positioning

Amazon announced the new Kindle 2 last week. It got me thinking about the impact a new model or version has on positioning.

The Amazon Kindle is a book-reader that seems targeted to early adopters--people who like new gadgets--yet the discussion boards reveal that regular people, not gadget guys, are buying the Kindle in droves. Using traditional "buzz" marketing, Amazon was able to get Oprah to rave about it so Kindle got quick exposure to regular people... or at least Oprah people.

So for a start, Kindle needs two positioning documents: one for technical "gadget people" and another for non-technical "voracious readers." It could conceivably have another positioning document for people who like large-print books since it can do large fonts for any book, helpful since large print often follows the first printing by at least a year.

But with the new release, Kindle needs a new set of positioning documents. I should say, an additional set. The original docs are still fine for the new buyer who wants to know "why should I buy?" But Kindle also needs a new position for "why should I upgrade?"

Original Kindle positioning: take your book library with you. New buyers will appreciate 1) Read Kindle anywhere you can read a print book, 2) Over 200,000 books available, and 3) with Whispernet you can start reading new books in under 60 seconds.

All 'n all, a very tight message.

New Kindle positioning: take your book library with you. Existing customers will appreciate 1) cleaner design, 2) longer battery life, and 3) more memory means more books.

Hmm, I think I want one... Yup. I do want one.

[Notice that Amazon uses the Pragmatic Marketing concept of marketecture with their Whispernet feature. It solves a specific problem (downloading new books effortlessly) without talking about the technology (an EVDO card accessing the Sprint network). And because it doesn't talk about technology, they can change from Sprint to another carrier without changing their message.]

So with the new release, the positioning doesn't change; the feature list does. That is, you emphasize one set of features for new buyers and a different set for upgraders.

A new product release usually doesn't require a change to the primary message for existing positioning; usually a little wordsmithing is called for but not a rewrite. But a new product release almost always requires a "why to upgrade" positioning. After all, you have a new persona with new problems: an existing customer's upgrade decision is different than a non-customer's buying decision.

Look at your current customer set. Do you have customers who haven't upgraded? Maybe they just need to have you explain--in buyer language--why upgrading is beneficial to them. Of course it's beneficial to YOU (it reduces your cost of support mostly) but why is it beneficial to THEM?

Write a positioning document for each persona, in each market segment, and explain how you can solve their problems. New releases mean new personas which means new positioning.

don't forget the accessories

The PLATFORM strategy is one of the five strategies recommended in The Marketing Playbook by Zagula and Tong. Rather than assuming customers want one-stop shopping, the platform strategy encourages third-parties to extend your product with accessories.

The famous case of dBase III shows how an extensible solution led to an industry full of thousands of VARs actually adding value to the basic dBase III platform. Then, as explained by Rick Chapman in his book In Search of Stupidity, the execs at Ashton-Tate decided to kill the third-party market but instead destroyed the dBase product. The dBase platform created the third-party community but the third-party community ultimately created the success of the platform.

People spend much more on the accessories than for their iPods and Blackberries. Didn't you buy the better headset, the bluetooth, the car mount?

I have a Toyota Camry. It has a nice little cubby with a line-in jack for my iPod. Uh, how do I select songs? Oh yes, open the cubby, remove the iPod, choose your playlist, put it all back in the cubby, and enjoy! Hmmm, sounds like the dashboard designers didn't want anything to interfere with the elegance of their design. It seems that Toyota (and all car manufacturers) would rather sell me rims and sports apparel than a phone or iPod mount that integrates with the dashboard.

Thankfully, the team at ProClipUSA has the solution. They have figured out clever ways to shove a mount into the joints and openings of most car models. First, tell them what car you have and they'll tell you what mounts work; then tell them what device you have and voila! you have a holder for your iPod, your Blackberry, your GPS, your whatever.

You'd think that the car designers would offer these dashboard "extensions" for the most popular third-party devices or perhaps they should set up a partnership with ProClipUSA. Instead they assume a "closed" posture and miss an opportunity.

Should you pursue a platform strategy? You could. You can create a better customer fit without using your own resources. To do so, provide APIs and partnering programs to extend your product without doing everything yourself.

The Golden Keys of E-Commerce

Naseem Javed writes,

It only takes a minute to establish if one is holding that magical key or just toying with a rusty screwdriver.

Today, in order to have a commanding presence with universal access on e-commerce, domain names must act like very special golden keys as without it, the entire exercise of Internet-centric commerce becomes almost useless. Super-success in cyber-branding lies in the sophisticated creation, development and ownership of these powerful and magical keys, so that they may open an undiscovered universe of billions of unknown customers around the world. Without this power and access, what's the point of being in the race for leadership and image positioning?  It only takes a minute to establish if one is holding that magical key or just toying with a rusty screwdriver.

Domain management strategies have now, in fact become ultra-sophisticated and the most valuable components of building digital branding assets and the intellectual property of any ambitious corporation. Domain names are no longer small issues to be handled by the booming logo-centric-slogan-happy-agencies or web-tech-teams. They now demand powerful strategic, boardroom-level discussions with a commanding knowledge on global domain-registration laws and search-engine-visibility rules while capturing all other nomenclature objectives to create such golden keys.

During the dotcom boom, a million domain names were registered a day. Even the most unusual, silly and dysfunctional names were sought-after icons of get-rich-quick dreamers. Ninety-nine percent of such names failed. Exhausted or expired, these names have now disappeared. Along with them, the hundreds of millions of dollars on short lived website campaigns. But today, now fully matured in concepts and strategies there are some very powerful universal domain names that skate around on e-commerce, open complex gates and passages and have carved powerful, highly lucrative positions. The global power of e-commerce can only be demonstrated by their superior and exclusive fluidity on the net.

Smart businesses around the world are aggressively in search of such golden keys. To approach such universal domain-naming tasks starts with a serious audit to professionally measure the strengths or weaknesses of the names; this process is best served by highly objective views. The primary goal is to achieve power and access for maximum impact. Today, only the very best names will dominate the global marketplace. Weak, confusingly similar, or nearly identical names do not have a chance of surviving the power and ubiquity of e-commerce.

The duplication factor alone will bury most names in complex global listings. The most expensive websites are useless and the best campaigns will remain stuck unless there is a deeper understanding of this subject. Then there are alpha-structures, killing great websites and become liability to business itself. One must have the knowledge to determine the message, personality and length of the name, plus the choice of alpha characters, as each emits its own unique signals and demands typing. General branding exercises cannot be mistaken for these complex naming analyses and the strictest application of The Five Star Standard of Naming guards against such expensive busts.

The hyper-visibility of a universal cyber-name is the main issue. A quick search on Google is an instant test of any name's visibility. To appear on the top or on the first page is the most sought after idea but only an extremely small percentage can achieve this as most names are poorly structured and stays buried in massive duplication.   With high cost of promotion and intense global competition it's a brand-new frontier. A lot of money can be wasted in creating an artificial bounce to highly expensive websites, but in reality it's only those uniquely designed domains that quickly rise to the top with very little effort. Only an in-depth, highly custom analysis will point to the deep problems and illuminate latest methods to fix them.

Today, it's about global domainization, as multiple domain names create multiple problems in multiple markets. There are highly sophisticated rules to be followed. Be aware that there are too many fancy services offering strange global registrations and localization often faceless websites and without references. Domains are for the international audience and global customer base, so why have serious language issues, where in translations and foreign connotations they may be embarrassing or confusing customers. Cyber branding is an extremely global phenomenon.

Mind-share is more important than market-share. Customers must allow a name brand to settle in their minds before they give out cash. As such, market positioning is more critical than profit maximization. The human mind gravitates toward good names; those that are user-friendly and trustworthy. When trying to process millions of silly and randomly structured names, the mind quickly becomes exhausted.

In conclusion, logo-driven-branding has fallen into a deep sleep on these complex matters, and there's no need to wake it up. Currently with 95% of the domain names stuck in traffic jams, a frank and very candid CEO-level discussion is required while denials and refusal to face up to reality will simple keep the e-commerce presence in oblivion, guaranteed. Today one needs a very special golden key to open the gates of e-commerce and must now throw away that rusty screwdriver?

Naseem Javed is recognized as a world authority on Corporate Image and Global Cyber-Branding. Author of Naming for Power, he introduced The Laws of Corporate Naming in the 80s and also founded ABC Namebank, a consultancy established in New York and Toronto a quarter century ago. Currently, he is on a lecture tour in Asia and can be reached at [email protected].

Which sounds more like your distinctive competence?

Mary Schmidt writes in "marketing without blinders,"

Words are powerful. Words can change the world. But they have to have meaning (and commitment) behind them. Otherwise, they’re like the - ahem - “stuff” that comes out of the other end of that horse. A frequent blind spot with which I help clients is that marketing isn’t just something you “do” externally - it’s also critical for internal communications - up, down, and sideways.

She continues,

Which of the following would fire you up? “I have a dream!” or “Our strategic initiative is designed to produce innovative products for leading-edge Fortune 500 companies.”

Which sounds more like your distinctive competence?

What is a brand?

"Brand” is a word with no brand. Marketers seem to flock to the idea that a swoosh or a logo or a bleed-to-the-edge will create an identity, and they call it a brand. But no one seems to agree on exactly what a brand is.

Have you seen the new logo for the 2012 Olympics? In an article on sportinglife.com, the new logo was called a logo, an emblem, and a brand. Yeesh. And it’s ugly too.

From the article: “The dramatic new logo for the 2012 Olympics was unveiled… The bold jagged emblem based on the date 2012… Organisers hope the brand will be immediately recognisable worldwide….” Well, which is it? A logo, an emblem, or a brand? And to add to the confusion, they claim it will change color and shape.

What’s a brand? My friend David says, “Branding, as an advertising and marketing term, has as its origins the visual mark burned into a cow's butt.” Indeed.

---

UPDATE: On the day following the announcement, organisers say nearly 45,000 people have so far signed a petition demanding London's 2012 Olympics logo be scrapped. The committee has rebuffed criticism that the logo, which cost 400,000 pounds (US$800,000) to design, is "puerile" and "hideous," saying it is meant to be "edgy" and that people will get used to it. Sounds like the agency is thinking "everybody is stupid except us."

On product naming

If you want to start an argument, offer your opinion about product and company names. One person loves the name “nuvi” and another hates it. Some folks love putting the company name in the product name; some don’t. The basic principles of naming apply to both products and companies. In general, business-to-business (B2B) names tend to be meaningful while business-to-consumer (B2C) names tend to be unique. Meaningful names tell us what the product or company does. Unique names can be trademarked. Ideally good product names are both meaningful and unique.

Some good names that are both meaningful and unique are WebSurveyor, NetBackup, Uninstaller, SalesForce.com, and Solution Selling. Each name explains what the product does and has the added benefit of being unique. The challenge of course is that so many meaningful names are already taken. That’s why unique-but-meaningless names are so popular. One of the great things about combination names is that at least some of those are still available. You’ll want to check WHOIS before you commit to any name to make sure you can get the URL.

The value of a meaningful name is that you don’t have to educate the buyer on the name. How much money was spent getting us to equate Seibel with sales force automation? Ideally, the product’s name is also its chief benefit or capability; the product’s name articulates its position. Do a search on Google for “sales force automation” and look at the sponsored links. Will you click on salesforce.com or NetSuite? Will you click on SalesLogix or Miles Technologies? A sales force automation product should surely have the word “sales” in the name, shouldn’t it?

Sadly, despite being one of my favorite “good” names, the WebSurveyor people have changed their name to Vovici—a unique name but not meaningful. And they probably paid big bucks to a naming service for it. Uninstaller was once a single product but is now a category; I forget who originally had the name but I guess they didn’t trademark it. Solution Selling is still going strong even though its creator, Mike Bosworth, has a new method called Customer Centric Selling. “Customer Centric Selling” is seven syllables versus Solution Selling’s five but it’s really not as descriptive, is it?

Unique-but-not-meaningful names are everywhere in B2C: Squidoo, Yahoo, Google, Nuvi, iPod, Apple, and the list goes on. Because the names themselves are meaningless, your marketing efforts become branding efforts as you attempt to educate customers on what the product is and how to say the name. Sony used to have a sidebar on their PC page explaining how to pronounce “vaio” (rhymes with “hi-ho.”)

Suites

A popular technique that creates unique and meaningful names is to use a product family name in conjunction with a product name. For example, Adobe Acrobat Reader combines company, family, and product names. Using this technique, you can use the full name (long family name and product name) the first time and the shortened name (product name only) for all subsequent uses. In effect, teach a nickname to your clients. In printed pieces, you could write, “Adobe Acrobat Reader lets your customers read formatted documents without the application that created them. Download Reader from our website.” The problem with the suite approach is that there are often too many names to remember. NetBackup is officially Veritas NetBackup from Symantec. Wow! TMI: Too Much Information. Three brands in one product. Each has three syllables so we’re likely to only remember one of them. Company, suite, and product. Which matters? Apparently, Adobe has found the family name confusing because its now just called Adobe Reader.

Short names and letter names

Good product names should be short or easily shortened. If you give your product a long name, your clients will give it a nickname. Federal Express became FedEx but Total Reconciliation became Total Rec ("wreck").

Tech companies continue to use letters rather than names. Letter name are always bad because the brain simply cannot retain letters. For instance, IBM isn't a good name but shows what you can do with a bad name when you spend billions of promotional dollars over a century.

Bad names are those with poor connotations ("Total Wreck"), hard to spell ("Vovici"), hard to pronounce ("Vaio"), or hard to remember ("IBM"). Bad names aren't fatal, they're just expensive. You have to waste your marketing emphasis on the name instead of on the product and its benefits.

Test your name

Got a name picked out? Here’s a trick: put your idea for the product name on a flip chart and leave it in the lunchroom. When you check back at the end of the day, you’ll find every possible way to misinterpret the name. Developers and sales people are quick to find the flaws in a name and won’t hesitate to scrawl comments on the flip chart. “Sales Time” becomes “Sales Slime.” “Nova” becomes “No-Va doesn’t go.” “Automated Sales System” becomes “ASS.” Better your colleagues tell you of a bad name than to learn it from the market after you’ve created all your collateral and your logo and your brochures.

Of course once you have a few names on a short list, test them on some customers to see if the name conveys what you intend.

Related Links

• Laura Reis discusses naming on The Origin of Brands blog
  
• Roger Cauvin offers his opinions about naming.
  
• Wikipedia has this article on naming.

Simple ideas aren't so simple

Sometimes I pine for the simple days of a single, great product. The product managers I meet are usually in an enterprise, B2B software world with a single sales force selling hundreds of products, each with its own message and value proposition. Product managers spend a disproportionate time selling to their sales people and then supporting each sale. Their web sites are a morass of links and it is truly difficult to find anything.

In some book I read recently (probably Good to Great) the author proposed that 250 people as the largest a company could be and remain effective. Beyond that, companies become internally focused and spend too much time talking to one another instead of to the market.

What got me thinking about this single product orientation is The Coffee Fool. They have a single value proposition: fresh coffee is better than store-bought. Period. Actually, they're not a "one product" company: they sell 30+ flavors of coffee. But they have positioned themselves as one thing, one product, one message: fresh coffee. The web site is humorous, easy to navigate, easy to use, and makes it easy to buy. They caution you to not buy or be forever dissatisfied with any other coffee. I've ordered some and I'll let you know if they keep the promise.

Could an enterprise company use this approach? First we'd need to organize our products into logical families or suites and then promote each with a single message. Most of all, we'd need the courage to keep it simple. Contrast the Yahoo! home page with Google's. Can you imagine how many product managers want their product featured on the Google home page? Yet someone there has the conviction to say no.

Could you use these techniques in marketing your products?

10 company (and product) name types

Naming seems to be a really emotional issue for some product marketers. We have to suffer the naming contest and the call to enlist a naming service. There's the ongoing argument of whether a name should be meaningful versus nonsensical. The Name Inspector offers these 10 company name types with examples and pros and cons for each.

Differentiating a commodity

Everybody has a flash drive or memory stick; in fact, most of my friends have many. Flash drives are frequent giveaways at trade shows and conferences. They're wonderfully cheap and come in many sizes. So why buy one brand over another? Pexagon offers flash drives in 14 colors (in 512M, 1G, 2G, and 4G sizes) and they will engrave the drives FREE--no minimums; no setup fee. I'm thinking I'll buy a few for my backback with my name and number on them.

Seth Godin shares another commodity story in when the copy doesn't match the story. He notes that the copy leads off with, "The Bissell Healthy Home Vacuum is built like no other vacuum." Well, not really; the Bissell is just a clone of the Dyson but cheaper.

When your product category becomes commoditized, you can go cheap or you can go custom. Which makes the most sense for your business and for your customer?

More on naming

Are you bored with the UPS "brown" campaign? It's basically terrible. It doesn't communicate UPS's strengths or value. What it's really about is that UPS is one company with one logo and color while FedEx is five companies with five colors in their respective logos. So "what can brown do for you?" really means "FedEx has many different services and we think you're too stupid to know which service to use."

Well, I wasn't confused... until I saw this Superbowl ad for FedEx. It's moderately funny but it troubles me: it seems to me that FedEx is responding to the UPS brown campaign by admitting that its division names and colors are indeed confusing to the consumer.

Instead of an ad campaign attempting to explain the products, FedEx should fix the product names so there's no confusion. Or better yet, ignore the technology entirely. Does the consumer care if the package goes by ground or by air? Should we care which service is used? Don't we basically want a package delivered in a certain timeframe regardless of method? I understand if FedEx wants to create some internal affinity for the separate business units employees but the external consumer shouldn't have to care.

By the way, did you ever notice the arrow in the white space between the 'e' and the 'x'? Once you've seen it, you can't not see it.