Charles Revson, the founder of Revlon, was once quoted (see page 7) as saying: "In the factory Revlon manufactures cosmetics, but in the store we sell hope.” While his customers may not have appreciated this characterization, I have always remembered it as a pithy quote that dramatizes the ultimate
I’ve linked here to a post by Paul Graham, derived from a keynote at Xtech, that talks about the reproducibility of Silicon Valley. (In addition, here are links to two posts that commenting on it. The first is from slashdot, the second from Curt Monash.) I have some direct
(This was originally an aside in the DB2 Viper post, but I decided it was too big a distraction in that post, so I'm pulling it out separately, and adding a few ideas.) Every high-tech marketer faces the following decision at some point in his or her
One advantage of having kids is that they keep you in touch with pop culture. I’d never had heard of Simple Plan, Nickelback, or Green Day were it not for my kids. Such is also the case with MTV’s Pimp My Ride, the metaphor for today’s post.
There's an old (bad) joke that goes: when it comes to classification, there are two types of people -- those who get it and those who don't. (Get it? The two types are the classes.) Unfortunately, as a content neophyte, I put myself in the second group.
I found this post the other day by David Weinberger, best known as co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto. It's entitled Taxonomies and Tags: From Trees to Piles of Leaves. I knew I had to blog on it as soon I encoutered the pithy and nearly impenetrable phrase
Often in the marketing hi-tech products, the benefits are soft: more productivity, increased performance, better access to information, information you can trust, better decisions, etc. So it's always appreciated when a story comes along with very concrete costs/benefits related to a hi-tech problem. That'
I must admit that my favorite movie slogan ever belongs to (yet another) bad sci-fi movie that I've featured in this blog -- Robocop: "Half Man, Half Machine, All Cop." I like it for a few reasons: * It's a clear, powerful piece of positioning
(Revised 4/18) Most marketers know the old saw from John Wanamaker, considered the father of both the modern department store and modern advertising, that goes: "I know that half of my advertising dollars are wasted ... I just don't know which half." The quote speaks to
In an eerie turn of events, my ex-, ex-, ex-employer Ingres Corporation has been resurrected by, of all people, Terry Garnett, one of Oracle's early marketing vice presidents, now of Garnett & Helfrich Capital. They have bought Ingres back from Computer Associates, open sourced it, and are
Yes, web 2.0 is a big buzzword. That's not the question. The question is: is it more than that? I think yes. As someone who's generally marketing and buzzword averse, it took me a while to arrive at this viewpoint, but I do believe there
At Mark Logic Corporation, we make an XML server. The product's name is (ever so subtly) MarkLogic Server, or just MarkLogic for short. This post provides some Q&A that helps you understand how we think about (or in marketing speak, "position") our product. What