The Many P's of Marketing

From my days in school - a long time ago - we learned that you should pay attention to the 4 P's of Marketing. These 4 P's were:

• Product
• Price
• Place
• Promotion

Today I have received a book telling me about a 5'th P -

Purple Cow.

The book is called Purple Cow and is written by Seth Godin. I have now started reading it, and will now and then give you my thoughts from what I have read.

Using Experience

Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again. (Anonymus)

It seems to me that the US is good at using people whome have gained experience through the years of dutyful working for a company or government.

John Murtha (74) is now back in his old role as chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, where he will be using his experience which he gained by being a Vietnam veteran.

Condoleezza Rice (52) became Secretary of State on January 26, 2005. Prior to this, she was the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, commonly referred to as the National Security Advisor, since January, 2001.

In Norway we have a tradition for not using people who have gained experience. Are you older than 40 years of age, you will have trouble in getting a new job. In Norway we may say it is an age discrimination as seniors are more or less "out of business".

Is this good politics for the Norwegian corporate world?

Evangelizing Customers

Church of the Customer is announcing the new and revised version of Creating Customer Evangelists in paperback. What about it?

Well, this is a "new" way of thinking marketing. Take for instance the Brewtopia case. Brewtopia did not spend a dime on advertising or other strings of traditional marketing. They, deliberate or not, used the six tenets of customer evangelism, even before the book was released.

In short the six tenets are:

1. Customer plus-delta: Continuously gather customer feedback.
2. Napsterize knowledge: Make it a point to share knowledge freely.
3. Build the buzz: Expertly build word-of-mouth networks.
4. Create community: Encourage communities of customers to meet and share.
5. Make bite-size chunks: Devise specialized, smaller offerings to get customers to bite.
6. Create a cause: Focus on making the world, or your industry, better.

And what did Brewtopia accomplish?

1. From initial 140 contacts, customer base is now 20,000+ in 27 countries
2. Turnover; 2,000 cartoons per month average
3. 90% sold over the web, 10% in traditional outlets
4. First full year in sales expected to top $ 1 million
5. 64 of 100 referrals to www.blowfly.com.au register (up from 32 in 100)
6. Sales: 1 in 2.25 members buy the beer or merchandise (up from 1 in 9)
7. Licensing deals being struck in UK, US and NZ
8. Customer feedback initiates new lines of business, e.g. Corporate label beer
9. STILL never advertised, owned a brewery or had more than 4 staff

The full report "Testify" can be downloaded here.

I have read it. And what did I do next? Ordered my paperback copy of "Creating Customer Evangelists" on Amazon.com for about US$ 10 only.
Hopefully you will do so also.

TIME Kept The Promise

On saturday I received my TIME Vol. 169 No 5 just ahead of the weekend. Now TIME has proved that the promise can be held. Hopefully it will.

My apologizes (for now) to TIME.

TIME - Not Keeping The Promise

In TIME Vol. 169, No. 3, in the Managing Editor's "To Our Readers" Mr. Stengel writes in his column;

We' ve changed our production schedule because the news environment has changed, and because we've been listening to you. Over and over, we've heard that our subscribers put the magazine aside to read on the weekend. The solution was pretty simple: let's get you the magazine when you want it.

Yesterday, on Wednesday after the weekend, I received my copy of TIME Vol. 169, No 4.
Mr. Managing Editor; don't you keep your promises?

Be "The" Expert

How often do we phrase: "We need an expert to do this or that"?

Why don't YOU be THE expert to be called on when your expertise is needed.

Seth Godin refers to an article in Times and writes:

"For the past couple of years Jun Kaneko, the ceramic artist..."
It didn't say "a ceramic artist." No. It said, "the ceramic artist".
The entire tone of the piece changes. It's so much better to be a 'the' not an 'a'.

What about you? Are you the expert?

How to make a trackback

Thanks to Robert Lindsay I can hereby disclose how you make a trackback.

Robert Lindsay writes:

I use the Wizbang Trackback Pinger. It's a rightwing blog, but what the heck. The Kelsey Trackback Pinger is also listed there but I have not used it for a bit. The Wizbang Pinger is quite reliable and I highly recommend it. It's the one I use on a regular basis.

Click on the Wizbang Trackback Pinger to open a new window. There will be 5 separate data boxes there. The first one says, "Trackback url". This is the trackback url of the blog post you are trackbacking to. Copy-paste the trackback url into this text box. The next says, "Your permalink url". This is the url of your post
where you linked to the post you are tracking back to.

Go find the post on your blog page and either click on the title, if you have clickable titles, or go to the end of your blog piece and find the "Posted at (Time/Date)" hyperlink at the end of the post. That is your permalink. Copy-paste that into the permalink box. The next box is "Your Blog Name". Write the name of your blog in there. The next box says, "Title".

This is the title of the blog post, the one you gave the url to in the permalink box. Next says "Excerpt". You can put anything you want to in here, but it's considered polite to only put in the part of your post where you reference to post you are trackbacking to. If you want to be sleazy, you put in some other part of your post designed to get surfers to click your trackback.

Now that you have all five fields filled in, click "Submit Trackback". Wait a bit, and if it is successful, it will take you take a page that says, "Error message 0". That dumb message means the trackback was successful. Anything other than that means your trackback did not work for a variety of reasons. You can only make one trackback to the same post from the same post.

TIME's Promise

Having just renewed my subscrition for TIME, but being too late for continous delivery, I guess it may take some weeks before the subscription starts again. For that reason I went to the newsstand and bought a copy (Vol. 169, No. 3).

Reading the Managing Editor's "To Our Readers" I got a pleasant surprice. Mr. Stengel writes in his column that

We' ve changed our production schedule because the news environment has changed, and because we've been listening to you. Over and over, we've heard that our subscribers put the magazine aside to read on the weekend. The solution was pretty simple: let's get you the magazine when you want it.

I really must say I'm looking forward to receiving the magazine before the weekend and not at the time I have received it for 6 years - on thursday after the weekend.

8 Stepping Stones to REMARKABILITY

In our everyday lives we struggle through our dailies in order to keep up with our work, friends and families. We somewhat are in the sea of sameness to everybody else. We are part of a gray mass, and we are not being very remarkable. Time to change. This is how YOU will stand out from the crowe and be - yes - REMARKABLE:

1. Be positive.
2. Be supportive, encourage and appreciate.
3. Be enthusiastic, energetic and upbeat.
4. Be active, take action, be bold, be courageous.
5. Smile...laugh - laugh at yourself, laugh with others.
6. Learn, stretch, grow, challenge yourself.
7. Believe in yourself, believe in others.
8. Love all, serve all, be patient, be kind, be generous.
Do these more often and you will be "REMARKABLE".

And by the way - THANKS to Ken Brand who wrote these 8 Stepping Stones in his blog.

Business Should Be Going Green

Honda is having its hydrogen-fuel-cell concept car. Toyota is having their famous Prius.

Saab is having cars using bio-power; bioethanol, and by that giving the car an extra 30 HP. By using bioethanol, the Saab cars are making an impact on reducing harmful emissions. The use of bioethanol does not significantly raise atmospheric levels of CO2 which is a major contributor of global warming.

Other companies are following suit.

In his speech for the New Year, the Norwegian Prime Minister stressed that the polar ice is melting, and that the polar bears soon will be erased from earth if the seals that they have for dinner is disappearing. In the north we have a great challenge because of the global warming. When the polar ice is melting, the water level is rising. That is not of any good. All owing to the raise of CO2 atmospheric levels.

The President of the United States did not want to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Is his mind absent from reality?

We - the consumers - have ratified the Kyoto Protocol, at least in our minds. The consequences of this will be that a lot of manufacturers will see to that also they will be more engaged in the politics of an environmentally friendly world. If we - the consumers - see that a certain company is not complying with the Kyoto Protocol, we will not buy the company's products.

Manufacturers - beware.