What’s it about? The authors Craig Stull, Phil Myers, David Meerman Scott talk about how to make products that are succesful. Or ‘resonate’, as they call it. I can’t help but find similarities with Seth’sPurple Cow book, or Free Prize Inside book.
Is it any good? Yes, it makes you think, it tells things that you probably already heard or read in other places but it does it in an entertaining way and it’s always good to hear interesting ideas from a different point of view. The three authors seem to know what they are talking about.
What are the main takeaways?
1. Your opinion, although interesting, is not important. This is a phrase you will hear a lot in the book and it’s something you need to understand, no matter what you do. If you don’t have valid data to support your claims, you are just stating an opinion, no matter what you are talking about: the background of your new website, the packaging, the color. Same idea, from a different point of view I’ve read in a web-design book (can’t recall the name). The guy was saying that changing endlessly the color from green to red to blue to whatever is just a matter of opinion and taste, the whole package counts, not your opinion, so you should stop thinking about the color and start thinking about the whole thing. Simple and powerful. Try it, it works!
2. Your slogans and missions statements should show your distinct competencies, the things you do that solve a users problem. The already famous iPod tag line ’1000 songs in your pocket’ is a perfect example. Don’t make missions statements that talk about what you want to do, talk about what your customers need to solve.
3. When you build a product don’t talk to your existing customers who will just want a better / more colorful / bigger  mouse trap, talk to your potential customers to figure out what they’re problems are (getting rid of rodents) and how to do it. Incremental changes don’t make resonators / purple cows / remarkable products (depending on the author).
Overall? Read it, it’s worth your time. Read also Seth’s books, they are very good, if not better, in some ways. These kind of books make you think and that’s an excellent reason to pick them up.
“Don’t judge a book by its cover”, that’s easy to say. And easy to do if you have a bookstore with 5 books in it. Add a few digits to that number and it’s not so easy to do anymore, is it? And that’s the story with most products we buy these days… So many types of the same product and not so much time.
There are a few privileged products, usually the expensive ones, like high-end phones, laptops, and other gadgets that force us to consider carefully our options, because of the risk of buying the wrong thing for a lot of money .
But what about products like wine? Go to your local supermarket and you will find row upon row of wine bottles averaging around 5-6 euro a bottle and from all around the world. If you’re not Gary Vay-ner-chuck, you’re in trouble.
But not me! I judge the book by the cover, in such situations! Take a look at some of the wines I have at home.
The first one in called Fat Bastard and has a hypo on it, the second is Lounge Dog and has a long dog who’s rear end extend all the way to the back label and the third is just colorful,
You can tell straight away how much I know about wine. One label is colorful and the other two are just funny. Actually the one with the dog is quite good. For me it’s hard to make a difference between wines and I can only judge with – I like it / I don’t like it. Hence the label is the only thing that guides me through the sea of wine. If it attracts my attention and what is written on it sounds good enough – there is a sale.
But this is not true just for wine, is it? Even books are the same. Go to your local store and look around. You will most likely pick up to browse through the books with the most interesting covers.
However, wine and books are the lucky ones because the content still matters! Think about the sea of products that are too dull to tell apart, like tomatoes in a supermarket (not a farmers market). It’s most likely you will pick up the ones that are most conveniently packed.
Hate it or not, I don’t believe there are too many people who don’t judge a book by its cover. Prove me wrong!
I was doing some research for an article a few days ago and I came across some papers that were explaining different aspects of pay-per-action models and contextual advertising and things like this. And at one point it struck me how much math was in there. Formulas here and there and model X and Y explaining problem Z. Models for explaining how advertisers bid in an auction how publishers make the auction and so on and so forth.
Although I respect very much people who have the gift to see mathematical relationships in every aspect of life, I must say – come on people, take a brake, go pet the dog or something, look out the window. It doesn’t even matter what they were trying to prove in that article, the idea is that too many are forgetting that modern economics was built by guys like Adam Smith and Alfred Marshall. Smith was philosopher! If you need to turn to science for explaining at how people are bidding in an ad auction look at psychology first, not math. You are talking about people. Model their behaviour as much as you like that still won’t make you understand things completely.
My take is that among academia too many people are so busy of building “something new”, some “new model” that too easily people jump into making their own little mathematical model that no one understands because it’s new and it will get published. I don’t say these are not useful sometimes but economics and anything else that has to deal with humans is Powered by the People™. If you want to find out what effect a badly designed pop-up has on a sites users look at any talk show. Pop-ups are like that annoying guy that doesn’t let anybody else talk. Pop-ups are interruptions that don’t let you do what you came for. Wasn’t that easy? And I figured that out without building a mathematical model for it.
Posted on April 15, 2009 by Liviu in Fun, Marketing
Do you know those nice buses / trams that have the fancy automated gearbox for silky smooth acceleration? You know how good these actually are, when the driver puts his foot down and it doesn’t jerk, it just goes faster and faster, smoothly… until the same driver floors it, the brake pedal, that is. And than you get to know very intimately the person next to you. And than the foot moves again to the gas pedal and it’s so nice and smooth and you say to the person into you just crashed into how sorry you are for… everything and than bam, the driver slams the brakes and reaches for the hand brake to make a rally style turn and on and on.
I can see the social part of this, after all you get to know a lot of people better than you wished to, but I wonder, if they can make these buses accelerate silky smooth why don’t they do something about the braking?
That’s a good example of having the best equipment for providing a great service and ruining it, the service that is.
Tails, long and short, niches large or narrow. These are all words that flow around in the buzz words soup. Seth Godin talks about Tribes, which, in my view, is just a fancy way of defining your place in a niche or to create you own niche. Niches are cool, and there is a reason for it.
In the end all of this talk about The Long Tail and Tribes comes down to the idea that any of us, as an individual, can put in more effort into something that is irrelevant for 99% of the world, but incredibly valuable for the rest 1% than any company or organization will ever be able to. And that 1% may be more then enough to satisfy our needs, whatever those are.
This is so obvious! isn’t it? If yes, why didn’t we talked about this so much back in the “Pen & Paper” era? Because it was too expensive and risky to target such narrow niches. No book store could afford the Long Tail approach and much to rare were the opportunities when we could gather enough people at one place to forge our mighty community (don’t really like the word tribe).
But now we have the mighty internet, the all reaching web with it’s websites, blogs, microblogs and all variations of this sort. Any of us can have a small piece of the web that can be reached by anyone in the whole world with more ease than picking up the phone.
And this gives us the power to be unique and be great at it. Most people may think that we’re not for them, but if there are 10, 100, 1000 people out there that share our uniqueness, then we are in business. And business != $$$, it may be just fun, or ego, or need to be with your peers.
You have not eqxcuse of not being yourself and expressing it any way you can. The only hurdle left is to let people out there know you exist. Google / MSN / Yahoo / etc are all good friends, but these are not enough. You need to build your community. Or if you are just a person that want’s to be part of something, you need to be able to find your community.
But how do you do this? How can you shout out far and wide that you exist?
Posted on December 18, 2008 by Liviu in Advertising
That’s an easy one – we don’t have any traffic, why bother?
This guy has a better reason for it – see here. I like @Jimconnolly‘s approach to business. Very clear and open about everything and that, to me, seems the best way to do it.
Seth Godin vorbeste in ultima lui carte (Tribes) despre comunitatile bine inchegate, sau cum le numeste el – triburi. Cartea este foarte interesanta. Chiar daca nu face mai mult decat sa puncteze unele lucruri, cele mai multe evidente, o face foarte bine.
Si ce e si mai frumos – exista si Audiobook, pe care poti sa-l asculti gratis pe Audible.com.
Printre ce am retinut din si mi s-a parut interesant din carte este faptul ca o comunitate nu trebuie sa fie foarte mare ca sa fie si prolifica. Seth zicea ca 1000 de membri sunt suficienti ca sa permita leaderului sa supravietuiasca prin trib si ca sa existe o comunitate activa.
Si ce mi-a placut foarte mult, o idee pe care o vezi in multe din prezentarile lui Seth, este ca nu tr sa te arunci pe mainstream – si sa te concentrezi pe extremitati…
… partea galbena… unde sunt cei care vor sa asculte ce ai de zis si care vor sa faca parte activ din tribul tau.
Recomand oricui sa asculte sau sa citeasca cartea. sau alteconferinte si lucrari ale lui Seth.
Posted on October 23, 2008 by Liviu in Strategies, Web
Din domeniul “Stiati ca” – stiati ca cei de la Google au o politica sa nu aiba mai mult de 28 de cuvinte pe pagina lor de home? Eu am aflat de curand, si mi s-a parut foarte interesant.
Dar stirea originala din NYT era ca datorita lansarii G1 pe pagina Google acum sunt 39!!! de cuvinte. Textul adaugat este “New! The G1 is on sale now. Learn about the phone”.
Din pacate nu este vizibil decat pe site-ul american si nu am gasit nici o poza. Cei de la NYT i-au intrebat pe cei de la Google daca isi incalca principiile si raspunsul lor a fost:
“We are currently running a homepage promotion. These promotions appear when we launch a major product or service that users might be interested in, or to support a cause that users care about, including the May Sichuan earthquake relief efforts. Because these promotions appear on our homepage for only a few days at a time, we don’t consider them in our official homepage word count.”
Oricum, mi se pare fascinant faptul ca reusesc sa tina cu dintii de niste principii de genul “regula celor 28 de cuvinte”. Chiar cred ca e unul din motivele succesului lor.
Se pare ca cei de la Google isi calca pe principii si o sa furnizeze prin sistemul de AdSense si bannere. Interesanta decizie, considerand ca au plecat la drum sustinand mare si tare ca ei sunt impotriva bannerelor (mai ales pe site-ul propriu) si al popupurilor etc etc. Au revolutionat prin AdWords si acum isi schimba perspectiva… Pareri mai documentate decat a mea au si altii.
Se pare ca pentru inceput Google o sa tina un pic de principiile lor si nu o sa puna reclame sub forma de banner pe propriul site, doar o sa le distribuie la reteaua de utilizatori de AdSense.
Oricum, sunt curios daca o sa vedem si Google Popup .
Intre timp puteti citi mai multe pe RWW sau direct de la sursa.
Si un mic sfat de la Google despre cum sa construiesti un banner.
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