How *NOT* to demo a product: Bezos’ Kindle 2 Demo on Jon Stewart

I can *totally see* his marketing people pitching Amazon Founder & CEO on the brilliance of the idea.  Pitch the Kindle 2 on Jon Stewart.  The audience demographic is spot on – smart, relatively wealthier 18-34 year old males.  The show oozes cool.  Jon Stewart’s funny and well-read.  And Jeff Bezos is an articulate, engaging fellow.   And—best of all—the Kindle ROCKS—what a product, it’s awesome.   What a perfect way to take the Kindle 2 beyond its early adopter roots into the early majority. 

What could possibly go wrong???  Well, it turns out quite a lot. 

Words can barely do all this justice, so I’ve embedded it in an articel below.  

http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20090224/jeff-bezos-sells-the-kindle-to-jon-stewart-wed-make-it-cheaper-if-we-could/ 

The key issues that I saw were:

• There was no interesting content on the Kindle for Jeff to show Jon.  Jon picked up the reader and all he saw were those ‘screensaver’ photos of authors that the Kindle scrolls through. 
• Jeff had very weak messages on the Kindle’s benefits.  The key benefit Jeff promoted was that the Kindle let you ‘read one handed.’  WTF?  WTFF?
• Jeff jumped the shark or whatever you call it when he said this was unlike other interviews he’d done.  This was the kiss of death, the coup de grace, the creme de la creme, when Jeff remarked (nicely, mind you) that this wasn’t like other interviews.  This was the silent but deadly!  Jon Stewart’s interview was straight-forward for Jon—what is this thing?  why is it good?  and I’ll make of you if your answers suck!!!  Jeff didn’t have a fawning press hack asking him about the future, just basic, Product Manager 101 questions.  To say this was unlike other interviews, having watched it, is nuts.

Ok, so what would I do differently.  Pretty simple:

• Have an interesting demo, get an “Ooooooh/Aaaaaah” out of the audience.  Oprah may love your thing, but Stewart’s never seen it.  If you’re going to show someone for the first time in front of an audience, then actually demo the damn thing so that people can be wowed and give you some ooooh factor.  Then Jon Stewart can’t quite rag on you so bad.  Cripes with a Kindle, you have to figure some folks in the audience love the dang thing and would hoot for it even with a crappy demo—make that a part of the thing.  I’m still shocked that Bezos didn’t demo the thing.
• Speak about the benefits your product provides as if you were a human being.  The Kindle is such an awesome product, even with all its shortcomings.  Saying it’s benefit is that you can read one-handed is almost criminal.  B- entries would include: say you travel a lot and you like to read.  Now instead of carrying along a set of books, you just carry this.  IMagine you’re someone who likes to read 6 books at any one period of time, alternating between them.  Customers tell us its great to have one device to switch between them, not look all around the house for the book they want right now.  Finally, for the future, imagine you go to college and you have 440 pounds worth of books, imagine what this might someday be able to do for you—we’re working on it. 
• NEVER say on camera that this is unlike any other interview you’ve ever done, unless it’s for your child’s elementary school newsletter.  This showed me that Bezos hadn’t prepared, or his marketing people hadn’t build a set of talking points, whatever.  The net was it was clear that this was off script.  It made Jeff look like a tourist in the land of Stewart.  This is unfortunate, as I really really like what Amazon is doing.  I’m a happy Kindle customer.  Good cautionary tale.

Filed under: business, marketing, tech, technology , bezos, business, jon stewart

Do the ad campaign first

Seth Godin discusses an interesting question today on his blog: “Which comes first, the product or the marketing?”

He argues that marketing (broadly defined) should come before the product.  In other words, define marketing by Peter Drucker’s standard of “creating a customer,” and then and only then build the product.

This is hard to argue with–of course, you need to know who your customer is and what their pain points are before you go off burning time and money building a product for them.

Sure thing, makes total sense.

I would go a step further though.  I suggest that a team start with the marketing (as Seth advocates), with the explicit goal of being able to create the ad campaign that would exist when the product was in market.

Now, I know many people think Big Media / Old Marketing advertising is dead (see Seth Godin’s Meatball Sundae, e.g.).  And it may well be that you are designing a product that will never have a TV ad run for it.

I don’t really care about what ads you end up running, instead, I’m advocating that you sketch out the ads you would run if you were going to run them.  Here’s why: the marketing task of building an advertisement forces you to develop several key elements of your marketing thinking.  For example, advertising forces you to develop (and stick to) a single main idea for what it is that your product is all about.  BUilding an ad requires you to articulate what are the truly compelling benefits? And, finally, an ad forces you to communicate those benefits or your positioning in a cogent, concrete, and brief way.

For those reasons, I am a big believer in doing the work to build the ad campaign first, based on the marketing work that goes into it.

A great example of this, is the MacBook Air.  Here’s an excerpt from a Steve Jobs interview on the MacBook Air and it’s development:

We decided a few years ago to build the world’s thinnest notebook. And so, it started in the design phase, figuring out how small we could make things,” Jobs told CNBCs Jim Goldman. “And we probably built 100 models to get to this. So the first step was just holding a model in your hand and saying, ‘if we could make this real, we would all just lust after this.’ And, we did! So its been about two years of work to make this…

It’s [takes] precision machined aluminum to get it this light and this thin.”

Now look at the ad.  I would be willing to bet a lot of money that execs at Apple had the vision of an ad with a beautiful Apple Laptop sliding out of an inter-office envelope very, very early in the design phase.

It clearly articulates to the marketing and engineering teams what the vision of the product is all about.  And when it comes time to launch the thing, you know exactly what your single big idea is all about, you know how to communicate it cogently etc.

Now the counter to this is to do “the marketing first” and then build the product, and the heck with the ads.  This is ok, but it has risk.  Notably, if the product teams start making compromises along the way, if there’s feature creep, etc., then you start losing site of precisely what the single main idea of the product is.  The product limps across the finish line with nothing distinct, nothing unique, and the marketing guys then get out the lipstick and start doing  pig dressing.  This happens all the time, not because people are stupid or incompetent, but because there was never a flag stuck quite deeply enough in the ground at the beginning to state what the product was and who it really was for.

Having lived through that a few times, without naming the specific products, I’ll tell you that nothing is worse as a marketer to have a product that lacks a single main idea or cogent set of benefits.  No one’s happy–the engineers think you suck as a marketer.  The partners think you’ve built a crumby product.  And you have nothing to do but stand fast and just pitch, pitch, pitch.

Force your team to do the ads first.  Having them early will help everyone stay synched on what the core benefits are that you’re building.  And if the team can’t agree on the benefits to customers that you’re trying to build at the outset, well, that should be a pretty good indicator that the team doesn’t know what its trying to do.

Technorati Tags: seth godin,marketing,business

Filed under: business, marketing, tech, technology

New FriendFeed Search bring FF a lot of promise

FriendFeed launched a new advanced search capability today, reported on here.   I think it opens up the promise of FriendFeed to expand into something far more impactful and useful than it already was.

To date, I’ll confess that I’ve not been a heavy user of FF.  It was awesome in terms of its sheer conversational (and other) data that would go through there.  But in terms of usability, it seemed like people could get really, really drawn into threads and discussions that went way past their usefulness.  A bit like those email threads that just won’t die.  Prominent tech bloggers were getting sucked into the FriendFeed vortex, and interventions were being publicly advocated.

Yep, as someone who needs to stay productive, I had to stay away from FriendFeed.

Now along comes the Advanced Search, and now, all these conversations become something that I can go and pull stuff out of.  I can choose to be part of the whitewater rapids of conversations flowing through FriendFeed, or I can drop my search in and fish out whatever I want.  I’m more of a fisher, and this feature’s great.  Obviously a ton of different scenarios could be useful as Marshall’s article mentions.  But this feels to me like FF could become a pretty strong platform where vertical searches on all sorts of stuff becomes important.

I’d watched FF from a distance, admiring it and thinking that it was pretty ingenious.  Now I’d say I’m pretty excited about their prospects indeed. 

 

Technorati Tags: friendfeed,internet

Filed under: internet, tech, technology

Six Ways to Use Facebook to Look for Job

My recent post questioning whether Facebook was taking out LinkedIn generated many comments.  This morning, I saw that Guy Kawasaki had put together “Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn to Find a Job.”  As a relatively heavy user of both services, and as someone who sees a lot of value in using Facebook for things business oriented, I wanted to put forth my own ideas on 6 ways to use Facebook to help in building your career and resume.

Before I do that, I’m going to build on my prior post comparing Facebook to LinkedIn.  To me, the key difference is the active nature of conversations that Facebook drives.  I’m connecting with and updating people I know, people who have some shared interest with me.  Yes, this is more inherently “non-work” related, but it is far more engaging and conversational.  LinkedIn, more and more, has become for me like a souped up CV/resume service.  My profile is out there, but it’s not like I got there everyday to update friends and colleagues on what I’m doing.  The activeness of Facebook is something I find a big difference versus LinkedIn.

This difference makes an impact on job hunting strategies.  Using Facebook to connect and engage with friends and acquaintances can and should be a legitimate route to pursuing a job.  This is not to say don’t use LinkedIn–certainly one should use all tools at their disposal.  I’m merely arguing that Facebook is a viable, important tool in career building, if you want/need it. 

With that, here are my six ways to use Facebook to look for a job.  Parroting Guy Kawasaki’s advice, if you know someone who’s looking for a job, forward them these tips along with an invitation to connect on Facebook (if they’re not there already).  Before trying these tips, make sure you’ve filled out your profile and added at least twenty friends.

1. Let people know you’re looking.  No stigma here, let people know you’re looking.  I’ve seen friends mention via status updates that they’re looking, meeting with recruiters, whatever.  Depending on how well I know them, I can wish them luck, suggest a friend, whatever.   A no brainer way to let people know. 
2. Engage thoughtfully in conversations on topics that interest you.  With the recent election, many people have used FBK to engage in conversations on politics, the bailout, etc.  Engaging on current event topics gives you an opportunity to connect with new people and build credibility with existing acquaintances.  One good tip can be to connect Google Reader to FBK.  When you see an article you like in Goog Reader or that you think others might enjoy, then you can “Share” the article via Goog Reader and it posts to Fbk.  A good way to build conversations on topics you find interesting. 
3. Find topical groups that interest you and join them.  Microsoft recently announced layoffs.  In the short-time since this announcement, support groups on Facebook have sprung up.  One, Help Microsoft Friends Find a Job, already has over 900 members comprised of recent casualties in the lay-offs, employed ex-MSFT alums working at different companies, as well as current MSFTies.   These types of networks open up new relationship possibilities and new routes for job seeking.  If you don’t find a group that fits your needs, create one.
4. Start a blog.  I loathe writing those three words “Start a Blog,” as I fear it has become such vapid advice for anything.  Wanna cure cancer?  Start a blog!  Wanna make cash?  Start a blog.  Want a job? Start a blog.  Etc.  That said, I think blogs can become useful tools for anyone to document thoughts and ideas that are important to them.  Write about anything that you find important or interesting–I’d not write about your job hunting, unless there’s something interesting in that to cover.  What’s good about writing in general and blogging in particular is that writing can both teach you more about yourself, but give you access to untold people who might read your stuff, find you interesting and connect.  Obviously, you can connect your blog postings to Facebook, and if those postings have any relevance, then pushing them into your network of friends at FBK can be a good way to amplify your voice.  As silly as I think the advice sounds, I’d suggest having and writing a blog if you’re job-hunting. 
5. Get background on particular companies through friends.  FBK is nowhere near as good as LinkedIn on mapping out who knows whom at which company.  LinkedIn is much better at the “who do I know at FOO-tronics?”  Still, Facebook has an increasing number of companies and employees of companies available through it, which you can use to find out more of the skinny at a specific company.
6. Always be building your network.  This is another piece of advice that I kind of cringe to write, as it sounds pat.  The problem is that most people when they hear the words “consummate networker” or “schmoozing” think of some shmarmy guy who hands out dozens of business cards every day and says “hey, yeah, let’s do lunch!”  This is fake and surface and superficial networking, and it’s not what I mean.  Honorable people remember favors.  Smart, hard working people who get stuff done, want to know more people who are smart, hard working and who get stuff done.  You want to both do favors and be smart, hard working and a gets stuff done person.  Building networks of people like that, becoming someone they trust as smart and helpful is something you need to be doing.  That to me is networking–if you’re paying it forward, then in my experience, this is does come back to help you in the end.  If you network with those ideas in mind, then your network will expand fruitfully.  I’ve lived in Silicon Valley for just over a year now, and I’m surprised at how many people either don’t spend time networking, or who do but are far more schmarmy at it than I think they should be. 

Good luck, and any feedback or other tips are welcome. 

Filed under: career management, social media, tech, technology

Is Facebook taking out LinkedIn?

As a mid- to late-thirties professional in the high-tech field, I have been a long-time member and user of LinkedIn.  In the past, it was a super useful service for me to get my professional profile out there, connect with colleagues and friends, and so on.  I would consider myself a relatively ‘heavy user’ of this service.

I was relatively later to Facebook, joining about 2 years ago.  For the first 1-1.5 years, I dabbled on Facebook, enjoyed connecting with friends, mainly a social thing.

From basically 2007 to mid-2008, I used Facebook for fun and LinkedIn for business.  A good analogy is that Facebook was the Mac in my life; LinkedIn was the PC.

My usage over the last 6 months has been interesting is that I’ve basically stopped using LinkedIn entirely.  Any professional interaction that I need to have basically, I can do on Facebook.

One person’s experience is probably not that useful.  What’s interesting for me though is that I’m in the core segment that LinkedIn is targeting.

Given the accleration of more Facebook adoption in my age demographic, I think LinkedIn is going to face an increasing challenge.

I’ve pulled the latest web metric scores comparing FBK and LinkedIn, and it shows the juggernaut-like growth of FBK and what looks (in comparison) basically flat numbers at LinkedIn.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens over the next 18 months, but I’d be pretty skeptical of where LinkedIn is going to be, as they are super exposed to Facebook.

Filed under: internet, tech, technology

Thinking Big

“Fortune favors the bold.” — Cicero

Much is being written, presented, emailed, and blogged about the economic meltdown and the impacts it has on high tech startups and VC-based startup financing in particular.

As someone who speaks with a number of early stage and pre-funding founders, I get the question a lot of my impression of what this crisis will do to early stage financings, etc.  My answer is simple: The current financial turmoil really is the least of your problems. 

Instead, the big question to wrestle with is really the same for us as it was when markets were more favorable.  That big question to ask yourself is am I thinking big enough? 

My 3 step formula in these times are:

1. Look honestly at your business idea, asking if its a big enough idea.  Push yourself to expand your vision, mission and impact that your idea can take on.
2. Push forward boldly in your execution.  Follow Cicero’s advice.  It’s the best way to assure success.  Waivering or doubt will only kill you, partiuclarly in these more dangerous times.
3. Avoid worrying about “the market” or anything else you can’t control.  If you can’t control it, you shouldn’t spend time worrying about it.  Be super optimistic, think great big thoughts–there are plenty of pessimists now, they can carry the negativity water.  You stay away from that. 

Here’s some longer context…  Before I became an entrepreneur, I remember doing a thought experiment as I read through the Forbes 400, the richest 400 people in America.  Briefly, the thought experiment tried to identify patterns among all the entrepreneurs on the list.  There is a business (not a personality) pattern that I think emerges if you look at a tapestry of names like Gates, Buffett, Page/Brin, Jobs, Walton, Bloomberg, Schwab, etc.  That pattern is consistently *big* ideas, where those ideas have a massive sway in our lives and economy today:

• PC on every desk, in every home (MSFT)
• Universally findable information (Goog)
• Stock broker services for everyone (Schwab)
• Selling for less (WalMart)
• Financial services information platform (Bloomberg)
• etc.

Now if you listen to big thinking VCs like Vinod Khosla or John Doerr, you can see that again, they’re thinking big–in particular around cleantech. 

Many early stage entrepreneurs with whom I’ve met and spoken over the past two months have interesting ideas and they’re showing traction against them.  Users, awards, even in cases customers.  This is super to see.  The question that I commonly see though is one around ‘bigness’  — even if this thing was a hit, how many people would it impact? 

I argue that if you really think that venture funders are important for you to achieve the dream of your business, then you need your 1-sentence statement of your business to get you somewhere near the ballpark of those bullet points above.  It should be obvious why the opportunity — if achieved — is a big, big deal.  If you can’t make that clear, then that’s at least a yellow flag. 

My suggestion to early stage startup folks is not to worry about the current financial crisis.  Focus instead on thinking about how to ‘blast out’ your business in a manner that makes the impact to customers and the impact to the world bigger.  Stay focused on that, and if you can start executing efficiently and credibly towards that vision, then the financing piece will work itself out. 

Put this way, its exactly the same advice worth taking when markets are more favorable. 

Filed under: bootstrapping, entrepreneurship, tech, technology

Recommended Conference : STARTonomics — Oct 2 in SF

As a start-up guy, I tend to shy away from most conferences.  My personal perspective is that the time and in particular the money aren’t worth the fees.

That’s different with the upcoming STARTonomics,produced by Dave McClure.  For anyone interested in gaining useful insight and practical advice on what you need to do to start an internet company, I’d recommend this strongly.

I’ve known and admired Dave for a few years now, he’s given me straight, pragmatic advice every time we speak.  His blog is enjoyable and useful.  And his investor pitch deck that he’s posted to SlideShare is world-class.

Filed under: bootstrapping, entrepreneurship, internet, tech, technology

Bill & Steve Deserve Some Respect — Nice to See O’Reilly Provide Some

Tim O’Reilly’s writeup of the recent Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer panel at All Things Digital was refreshing.  He passes on BillG’s very useful advice of staying very scrappy and fiscally conservative.  He also makes some mention that, indeed, Bill had a massive vision for the world of computing that has an impact.  Finally, he points out the strong value of having a great partner when starting and building a company–on this front, I think it’d be hard to point to a more valuable, sustaining relationship that Bill and Steve.  (I envision it as the Lennon / McCartney of the business world.)

On a separate dimenson, though, it was generous and appropriate of Mr. O’Reilly to point out that more probably should have been done to highlight and celebrate Bill Gates’ tremendous contributions to the industry.  Yes, Microsoft is feared and by some in the Valley hated.  Still, at his core, Bill is someone who deserves recognition and respect.  He had a massive vision and he pursued it relentlessly, and it’s hard to overstate the massive impact Gates has had on our industry as a whole.  In my few meetings with him, Bill’s struck me as driven and hard core, but also as decent and fair.

If you imagine that Jobs were standing aside, I’m sure there would have been a massive celebration and look back by Swisher and Mossberg.  You may have a worse taste in your mouth about Gates, but he’s built a tremendous company, and they should have done more.

Thanks Mr. O’Reilly for pointing this out and giving Gates some respect.

Filed under: internet, tech, technology

Social Media & Cutting the Digital Mustard

Kara Swisher in the Wall Street Journal’s All Things D Blog discusses the fact that the big swinging brands and ad buyers on Madison Avenue are not finding social media as endearing as users.

It’s a good read, though I would have liked a bit more depth and thought.  Its a bit too puffy, not much to it.  Her premise is basically saying that yes there’s a lot of user promise in Social Media (Facebook, My Space, and a host of other social media apps), these eyeballs and the user engagement are not yet delivering angles for big packaged goods brands to engage and extend their brands.   Given the newness of these services, it’s a pretty obvious statement without much thought or exploration on potentially insightful examples or possibilities.  That’s too bad, so here I’ll try to add a few thoughts. 

First, my business hypothesis: social media will only grow and expand, and advertisers will figure out how to adjust.  Social media networks will continue to grow, as it’s more personalized, never stale, and ultimately technology merged with talking.  The idea that somehow people would stop sharing information or kibbitzing or whatever is to me pretty far-fetched. Whether social media drives the valuations that are currently being seen is not clear, but there will be social media.

Advertisers, while they may think that according to Swisher, ‘no one wants a relationship with their mustard,’ will need to do some innovation.  I tend to agree with Swisher that not as much innovation has occurred here as needed, but I also tend to think that there’s more that’s occurred here than she’s given them credit for.

For example, I thought the TeaPartay by Smirnoff Ice was pretty strong.  It certainly got plenty of play on YouTube and is pretty prominently distributed via key social media networks like Facebook.  When you consider the youthful demographics of social media network and the impact this campaign had, I’d argue it was a highlight in terms of using this new media to establish economically and intelligently a new branding position. 

As to how the canonical mustard (and other brands) might someday embrace and use social media to build and extend their brand building, here are some ideas.

• Locally oriented promos / advertising.  Social media is going to have a big impact on locally-oriented conversations.  (What’s happening in town around church, politics, friends, etc.)  This is a new type of conversation, there will be opportunities here.  Particularly for local brands–for those of us from Western Pennsylvania, Iron City Beer has opportunities on Facebook groups dedicated to the Steelers, for example.  Rinse and repeat broadly.
• Micro-Sponsorships.  Imagine I buy 2 gallons of mayo at Costco, and at checkout they ask whether I want to get that at 99 cents in return for advertising my purchase on Facebook.  I’d take that kind of action in a second.  I ring up my purchase and poof on FBK a little note goes up, and the first 10 who click on my sponsorships will get the same deal.  I’d expect that’d help.
• Fun.   One of the cool things on social media networks is that they’re fun.  Where these brands can conceive of not being so serious and can find fun ways to inject themselves in the conversation, then this could work.  The Elf thing from Office Max was pretty good around this.
• Amazement.  For something like a Snicker’s Bar, it’s hard to imagine sharing a story on the product is going to amaze anyone.  At the same time, there are plenty of very exciting new consumer products that can amaze.  The Swifter, the Dyson, a variety of cosmetic products—when they deliver breakthrough experiences–have the opportunity to drive very positive WOM advertising via these networks.  I get Kara’s point that if you’re talking about mustard and there’s not much new, then this tactic isn’t going to do much.    

My personal view is that we are heading into what will be a great transformation in media consumption with the rise of social media.  How ads and promotions are built, delivered, consumed, and measured is likely going to change dramatically.  It should be a great ride!

Filed under: business, entrepreneurship, internet, tech, technology

Softbank first to announce Iphone in Japan

Apple’s Iphone is coming to Japan, and no big surprise here. Softbank is the first to announce which is great news for them. It will be very interesting to learn whether others (DoCoMo) will also ship the Iphone. Stay tuned. My bet is that SB will have a brief exclusive, though I can’t imagine that DoCoMo will be on the sidelines for long here.

Japan’s consumer and mobile culture should make it a huge market for the Iphone. I’d expect the Iphone to be a massive hit there. In addition, the opportunities there around mobile Iphone-oriented apps should also be quite exciting, as the mobile lifestyle there is something very very well developed.

Filed under: business, japan, tech, technology