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I read something the other day which summed things up pretty well… most ‘marketing’ is not marketing, but advertising. If you look at the sum total of energy put into marketing activities, it’s safe to say that most of it is directed towards trying to convince people to either buy things they don’t need, or to buy a particular undifferentiated brand. As in most all things in life, Pareto’s law applies.

When it comes right down to it, the most important marketing effort is really applied to the ‘Product’ part of the 4 P’s. If you get Product right, everything else should pretty much fall into line. And by ‘get it right’, I mean that the Product has to solve someone’s problem in some unique way. If you can nail that, people will Promote your item for you, they will demand that your distribution chain (Place) carry it for sale, and Price will start to become less significant in the purchasing decision.

I’m involved in an exciting project right now which looks like we might be getting Product right. Lo and behold, excitement is building and people are seeking us out demanding to buy our item, even though it’s not available yet. I concentrate that with my marketing efforts on myriad other products, which I would equate with repeatedly banging my head against the wall.

So consider:

• it’s easier to get on American Idol if you’re hot
• it’s easier to be a newscaster if you have great hair
• it’s easier to be a pro basketball player if you’re 7 feet tall
• and it’s easier to be a marketing genius if you happen to be marketing a great product.

So if you’re in marketing, do whatever you can to get a seat at the product design table, which might be hard since everyone will wonder why the advertising guy or gal showed up. If they let you in, be sure to keep asking “whose problem does this solve, what is the problem, and does someone else already have a better way to solve it?”

If you are seeking gear and clothing for 5.11 tactical needs, then check out this website. They carry a wide variety of tactical shirts and pants, plus knives, jackets flashlights and more. They ship most orders in 24 hours, so can get you the tools you need fast. It’s a great source for police gear.

I saw a good documentary last week. A murder mystery, of sorts, called Who Killed The Electric Car? The movie covers GM’s half-hearted, small-scale release of the electric EV1 in California, followed by a seemingly abrupt decision to not just withdraw the car from the market, but also to reclaim each and every model in existence and run it through a car-crusher. There are lots of theories as to why GM yanked the car. GM claims lack of public interest, which is odd in light of a lackluster marketing effort, which against all odds created a rabid and vocal fan base for the vehicle. EV fans point fingers at the oil lobby and change-resistant car companies, among other targets.

The thing which struck me about the film was a) how GM had inadvertently stumbled into a product which had all the requirements for a major tipping point (any reader of Gladwell’s book The Tipping Point can use this as a case study in what you would hope to happen when you launch a product), and b) how GM killed it off just when it was about to likely succeed. Ironically, Honda came out with the Prius hybrid shortly thereafter and proceeded to eat GM’s lunch.

Just a few thoughts here…

1. At this point, alternative-fuel vehicles can’t justify their purchase price with the energy savings. The payback period is just too long.
2. That really shouldn’t be a barrier to sale. Good marketing needs to find other features which DO justify the purchase price. For example, add 35% more ‘cool’. Lest there be any doubt about this, consider the Roadster from Tesla Motors (0-60 in less than 4 seconds, and 245 miles per charge):

Oh, GM. You coulda been a contender! But now you’re going to be competing against Silicon Valley. While folks from the left coast may tend to be a little pie-in-the-sky at times, one thing they are not is beholden to the status quo. If this thing works as planned, that could be big trouble for the old boys in Detroit. And they won’t be able to blame the Japanese these time around.

With the holidays upon us, money gets a little tight for many people. That might make it the perfect time to look for an unsecured line of credit in order to smoother over your holiday spending. EZunsecured makes it easy, they can approve in 1-3 days and get your money to you in 1-3 weeks. So it’s fast and simple to get started just visit the site and fill out the online application.

Good article in the Wall St Journal today (Lights! Camera! Sales!) on how various smaller companies are adopting the use of video in their promotional efforts. Not shooting for commercial-quality video, which is wildly expensive, but rather low-budget videos which can be uploaded to YouTube and similar sites. Some of these campaigns can do quite well.

As you would think, the successful campaigns are a) humorous, b) unique, and well-suited to go viral, and c) tied in to the brand or product message close enough that viral success will have tangible results for the product. 

One of the best examples is a series by BlendTec which promotes their apparently super-powerful blenders. Check out the clip below where they annihilate a (gasp!) perfectly good iPhone…

Like many people, I occasionally have some hot or cold sensitivity in my teeth. I’m no doctor, but I suppose it’s probably due to fillings. Once in a while it can get pretty bothersome. A while back, my dentist had recommended that I try some sensitive toothpaste in order to diminish the senstivity. This worked out pretty well, but 2 issues were that 1) the brand she recommended was subscription-only, meaning you can’t get it without going to the dentist for a subscription, and 2) it’s pretty darn expensive.

So with that in mind, check out Biotene, which is a special toothpaste for sensitive teeth– it contains potassium nitrate, which is an antihypersensitivity agent. Unlike other over-the-counter products, this solves the problem instead of just masking the problem. Of course Biotene also has anticavity protection as well as dry mouth protection. It’s very simple to use, no special instructions beyond what you would do with normal toothpaste. The taste isn’t bad, so it doesn’t have any super-medicinal flavors to make it unpleasant. It is a lot easier to purchase than any kind of subscription only brands, since you can get it at many major retailers as well as online. So it’s not a bad product to try out, and perhaps keep a tube around for those times when you need it.

The Christmas shopping season is upon us. The malls are jam-packed, and internet connections are slow as people slack off from work to shop online. The season of shopping hype is here– every news report carries an obligatory up-to-the-minute update on how spending is going. The general theme is typically ‘uh oh, not looking good, people better get out there and run up tabs on those credit cards or we’re heading for a depression.’

Really, I don’t know why the average consumer needs to be kept up to date on Wal-Mart’s Black Friday take. For the average consumer, I would think the only news of interest would be perhaps what cool new products and deals are out there. Not business reports for the sake of business reports.

OK, back to shopping…

Oh, those Christmas days of yore… when I would cruise the mall and ultimately wind up at Spencer’s Gifts, where I could ogle over all kinds of pranks and gadgets and doodads. My folks never let me buy any, though, and it’s not like I had a job (hey, I was 8).

So I was happy this week to have the opportunity to check out a few products from a company called Vat19, which as far as I can gather is kind of an online Spencer’s. The first product reminds me of this program called ‘Yule Log’ which always got played on one of the tv channels on Xmas Eve. The product is the Ambient Fire Video Fireplace DVD– it’s a DVD of a fireplace! Actually, you have your choice of fireplaces… everything from rustic to posh to modern. And there is music playing in the background. I’ve always wanted to have a fireplace at home, and now I do (see pic!).

Another product is called Insta Snow Powder. This is ideal for people who live down South with kids. You can have a White Christmas no matter how hot it is outside. You just add water to this powder and it instantly puffs up into ’snow’ which will last for weeks.

Sometimes the best things in life really are free. I’m always on the hunt for ways to drive web traffic to my sites, especially search engine traffic. One of the tips I’ll pass along is something that seems to have worked pretty well — Squidoo. This is a site run by Seth Godin of Ideavirus fame. In a nutshell, it is a platform which lets you publish pages on any topic which interests you. It’s kind of like Wikipedia, except self-promotion and commerce is welcome.

I put up a page called Do-It-Yourself Real Estate Investment Analysis which is an informative article ending in call to action to visit my Real Estate Genius site. It seems to work out pretty well in delivering a slow-but-steady stream of visitors over to my site. I think a good strategy would be to build up a whole portfolio of pages like this. Can’t be a bad thing to help with Google Pagerank either.

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