What Replaces Marketing

During the last few months, I’ve been teaching and advising some students over at Stanford University on Entrepreneurial marketing (in a class taught by Chuck Eesley). My key thesis is

Who You Are Is What You Make

Sharing another talk I’ve recently done on innovation and igniting performance inside our firms. Innovations like pyramids, paper, gunpowder and silicon are the direct result of the cultures that introduced

What Does Wall Street Reward?

A recent analysis said that, all things being equal, a heavy reliance on marketing spend will hurt a company’s stock valuation. Of course, we say. Duh, we think. But have

Swiss Army Knife of XYZ

Because of a twitter exchange, a CEO of a company sent me their website link and asked me to check it out. After a minute of arriving, I left. I

Smartphones as Appliances

The growth of the mobile data marketplace is one of the bright spots for business in the current recession. Mobile carriers report increasing demand for data services, and Apple and Research in Motion both reported strong earnings aided by sales of their smartphone products.

Marketing in a Social World

The business equivalent of making sausage is the marketing of marketing. In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (November 29-30, 2008), Tom Hayes and Michael Malone explain the new world of marketing in a Web-based world. They have a provocative name (“Marketing 3.0”) and a new concept (the business meme or “beme”). In the end, they sound like apologists trying to make a pitch for why advertising agencies are still relevant and reminds me of this humorous video imaging what would happen if a modern advertising agency designed the stop sign. In short, they are marketing marketing.

Online Communities: Ignore at Your Peril (I)

In the strategy work I do with tech companies, I’m frequently asked about web communities — how they operate, what they can and can’t do, and how a company should

Who Owns Strategy? We All Do.

A couple weeks back, I was teaching a course at Santa Clara University for their high tech marketing program, when a bright young product manager asked me a question. In