4 articles tagged ‘Fashion’
- Seth Godin: Inspired by “All Marketers Are Liars”
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Seth Godin’s book ‘All Marketers Tell Stories’ inspired me to share what I’ve learnt in 30 years of the software business.
Software companies often find themselves stranded on islands of excellence, serving a small group of customers but unable to grow. Opportunistic sales result in a few more islands from time to time.
It’s depressing to see companies with excellent technology shipwrecked. A love-hate relationship with marketing is often a contributory reason. We love having many qualified leads, but hate getting our hands dirty with marketing.
Why’s marketing hated like this? In my experience the cause is often the developer background of many managers. Developers equate lead generation with advertising. And developers hate advertising even more than marketing!
- Expensive lessons: Seismic change costs $540 million
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I saw first-hand what happens when your worldview hold’s you hostage: we lost out on a deal worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Worldviews change; ignore at your peril. At Dynasty Technologies Inc. in the 1990s, I saw first-hand what happens when your worldview holds you hostage.
Dynasty was a 2nd generation client/server application development tool. Our main competitor was Forté Software Inc. Founded in the mid 1990s, both companies had significant venture capital funding with a growing global base of enthusiastic early adopters.
The Dynasty Development Environment generated native C/C++ code with no runtime system. Forté generated proprietary code with a runtime interpreter. For some developers runtimes were OK; for others a pure incarnation of evil. Customer’s runtime worldview was decisive for sales.
- Tablets: Is your story fit to touch?
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Tablets are increasingly around when customers spread your story, so it’s time to start thinking about tablet-compatible content.
The Apple iPad and other tablets open attractive new channels for storytelling. Increasingly be a tablet will be around when your customer spreads your story.
Unlike notebooks, tablets are easily and naturally shared by passing them back and forth. Ideal for ad-hoc demos in the pub!
Check your website looks good in both portrait and landscape at tablet resolutions (1024×768 for the iPad). Check you’re using supported file formats. The Apple iPad doesn’t support Adobe’s Flash, so you’ll need to re-encode videos in H.264 format.
- Agile storytelling: Ship new content and moves on
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The waterfall model for content creation is too slow. You need an agile process to create and ship your storytelling content.
To sell a product you must know what your target audience wants, not just what they need. Wants changes; worldviews are not static. Every message and conversation with peers has an impact, moving the story along.
The software business is quickly picking up qualities of the fashion industry. Both satisfy wants, not needs. Does anyone need designer sneakers? No. Do they want them? Yes!
Worrying about the slippery slope of fashion isn’t new. Windows 3.0 lead business users to want GUIs for their apps. They didn’t need a GUI for their B2B apps, but it was obvious they wanted one. They got what they wanted.
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