Archive for the “Random Musings” Category

The Talking Heads were playing on the radio as I made my trek to the train this morning.  I imagine many people are asking this very question today about their personal and professional lives.  What did I do to get into this situation?  I guess the better question now is “what do I do to make the the most of my future opportunities”? All the cliches about hard work and “making our own breaks” aside, now is the time to think about what could happen before it happens.

Many times in my professional life I am asked to help people locked up with too many “priorities”.  My strategy is simple.  Make a list of everything that is on his/her mind and force rank them by priority (A, B or C).  I know we want it all but we can’t.  It is better to make a decision about priorities than have it emerge based on unintentional neglect.  The decision will be made now or later.  Isn’t it more empowering to make it yourself than have it make itself?

So what are you doing to make the hard decisions?

Did you know that the word gullible is not in the dictionary?

Bah, dum, bum, crash.  Thank you very much.  I’ll be here all week.  Don’t forget to tip the waitresses.

I knew it was going to be one of those days when my 7 year old started the day with her own April fools joke.  I hope that she sticks with her strength which is sales rather than marketing.  Her delivery was good but her creative strategy was flawed.

After about the 10th fairly obvious gag campaign of the day, I started to think about what makes a truly great April Fools promotion (I’m not calling them jokes as they are often well planned online marketing campaigns)?  Here is my list:

Consistency with brand - The best ones are “on brand” making them truly believable.

Good enough – Some of the promotions are just too “over the top”.  Think about the Google CADIE application listed on their homepage.  Not only did it stick out like a sore thumb but it was just too clever even for Google.

Easy to share – It is simple for the person getting “conned” (I believe the technical term here is sucker) to forward it quickly before he/she has time to realize it is bogus.

Has a great payoff when forwarded – The person who forwards it will suffer great humiliation from friends and coworkers when the obvious hoax is discover.  This also gives the embarrassed a strong incentive to try to “get” someone else (think viral spread).

Mainstream media picks it up – You get bonus points if the media first report it as real news but in the end, this is a PR/viral marketing exercise so any mainstream coverage is a big win.

Just think of it as a viral campaign with a twist.  More than just getting a simple laugh, you need to make sure the forwarder also feels the pain.

Did I miss any other obvious ones?

Busy week so I didn’t have time for any opinion pieces.  Here are some highlights from the week and what is on my mind.

WebInno21 – Amazingly this was my first time at the event.  I’ve signed up before but each time it just never happened.  If you in are in Boston, it is a must.  Almost 500 entrepreneurs and service providers filled the room.  Unlike other “networking events”, this one was packed with people actually trying to build stuff and change the world.

Adroit Interactive -  They received the most votes from the crowd at WebInno.  I really like the idea of dynamically driven ads, but I am also wary of any business working on a CPM basis when the aftermarket prices for online ads are under $1 these days.

BravoCart – I am sucker for boring (sorry guys but shopping carts are not sexy) technologies that make a big difference.  I know, I know, shopping carts are so 1998 but I would bet these guys have the most success of the the main dishes at Webinno.  In the end, their core customers will “get it” and the ROI will be easier to demonstrate.

Dropcard – I handed one guy my business card and he immediately typed it into his iPhone.  It wasn’t until I returned to my office the next day that I discovered he had sent me an electronic business card.  Pretty cool.

Dapper – Adriot’s competitor in the dynamic ad market gets bonus points.  I was among the compulsive tweeters at WebInno and Dapper smartly responded to one of my tweets.  They are now on my radar.  I guess social media really does work.

I am off to SXSW (that is South by Southwest for the rest of us) next week.  I should have lots of tasty morsels to blog about.

Stay tangy.

My experiences in fast-growing companies revealed a variety of ways people measure growth.  The one that always gives me heartburn is year-over-year growth.  It is frequently stated as a ratio of your current performance to same month or quarter in the previous year.

Here what makes this challenging:

• What happened last January?  Any big  customers wins? Or losses?
• Is your business seasonal?  Did any business slip a month or two?
• Any economic shocks (think last October when everything stopped for a few days)
• How many days in that month again?  (Yes, last February had 29 days)

Beware of these comparisons.  I prefer measuring the change in the annualized or quarterly run rate.  These numbers are less susceptible to one-time events and/or optimistic interpretation.

To quote a Wall St. friend, we live in a second derivative world.  The change in the growth rate both thrills and scares people.  I am suggesting that you look at the underlying numbers carefully and make sure they are not full of special factors that skew results.  Most businesses have a natural rate of growth based on its core customers and markets.  Talented managers can change the slope of the curve while pretenders manipulate the numbers.  Be careful out there.

My life has been taken over by free (or almost free) things.  Here are some examples:

• We decided to use Wordpress for a company knowledgebase rather than purchasing from a leading a SaaS vendor.
• We finished a webinar that yielded over 1,800 signups.  We used Gotowebinar ($99/month) and emails our house list (~$400).  That is $0.28 per lead for those keeping score at home (about 50 to 100 times less than most B2B marketers expect).
• Organic search and social media are the fastest growing parts of referrer traffic at Tangyslice and Firstgiving.
• I chatted on Skype with my parents during their recent trip to Costa Rica.
• I sold my wife’s minivan (ok, snicker away, it was my idea) on Craig’s list.
• After flailing for months without a calendar or contacts on my phone, I discovered Google sync for my Blackberry
• I stopped reading the daily newspaper now that I seem to get all my news through free RSS feeds.

Are you feeling the power of free?  Any other great free stuff to share?

It is always difficult to be in three places at one time so I had to make a difficult decision about what where to go last night.  I had three options: MIT Entrepreneurship Center Reception, WBUR Tweetup or the Mass High Tech All Stars.  In the end I chose the E-center reception and the tweet-up.  Here are some of the story lines from the evening.

MIT Entrepreneurship Center Reception What can I say – Ken Morse knows how to throw a party.  I didn’t count but there must have been over 400 people crammed into the MIT Faculty Club.  The idea is bring together entrepreneurs, students and venture capitalist together for one evening to mix and mingle.  I know, MIT people have a lousy reputation for networking skills but Ken is trying to change this.  The event was sponsored by Highland Capital, Goodwin Proctor and Agilent.

If there is a slowdown in the Boston startup world, it wasn’t obvious to me. People were enthusiastically pitching ideas to friends and investors.  This is one major reason why I love Boston.  Even in the midst of our current capital crisis, the universities continue to churn out technology start-ups.  They may need to work a little harder for capital right now but they will always drive our growth in good times and bad.

I met great people like Brian Halligan, CEO of Hubspot and learned more about their inbound marketing platform.  It seems like the social media infrastructure guys like Hubspot will continue thrive as business figure out how to make money using these new technologies.  I also bumped into fellow Sloanies Sean Brown who has returned to McKinsey after a stint running Alumni Relations at the Sloan School as well as Tim Rowe of the Cambridge Innovation Center.  It was also nice to catch up with Jack McCollough of the CCR Group and my former Sloan protege John Hebert who is doing well at Genzyme.

As a favor to Ken (many of us owe him a great deal for his sage advice and candid feedback), here is a plug for the E-center at MIT.  Take a look at the link for ways to get involved.  It isn’t just for MIT grads.

More from the WBUR Tweetup to come this weekend.  Stay tuned.

FM Days

The issue of trust seems to be everywhere today.

• Can we trust our politicians when they say we need a massive bank bailout?
• Can I trust that this charity will spend my money wisely?
• Can I trust this online business is not some elaborate phishing scheme to clean out my bank account?

Over the years, some of the brightest marketing minds have explored ways to build trust between a customer and business. In 2003, Glen Urban, former Dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management (and my grad school research adviser) published a paper titled “The Trust Imperative” which shares things you can do to build trust. It highlights specific ideas like “being transparent in all you do” and “helping customers help themselves”.

Even though this research was performed almost 10 years ago, I marvel at how the key points of it are still relevant today for online businesses. You can find the full paper here.

1. I found this interesting post last week by Peter Kim about a framework to measure social media.  It is a step in the right direction but it still makes we wonder about when we will see industry standard metrics emerge for social media (ie cost per action, cost per click, etc).

2. I’ve seen a couple of recent articles about Twitter jumping the shark.  I can’t quantify it but it feels like oversharing is down within my cohort.

3. Are we starting to see signs of the social media bubble bursting on the west coast?

4. Don’t forget about Myspace.  With all the buzz surrounding Facebook these days it is easy to forget who has more search traffic.

Here are a couple of things that are on my mind this brisk Monday morning.

1. It is interesting to see Kel Kelly asking about partners and spouses who Twitter together.  Personally, I spare my friends and family members from my microdrivel unless they are already a Twitterati or connected via Facebook or Linkedin.

2. I agree with Lynne Harrold that email open rates don’t matter.

3. Looking for blog post inspiration? Copyblogger suggests some ideas of how to overcome writers block.

4. Has anyone tried Yodle, an online service that assists small businesses by purchasing and syndicating niche keywords?

My British friends have an expression for those people hanging around, blocking sidewalks and taking other disruptive measures to get you to give to their cause of the day.  They call them charity muggers or “chuggers“.

Given the plethora of chuggers who have descended on Davis Square in Somerville, Limeduck and I have decided to create a map to help you get to lunch without being accosted.

Today’s lunchtime chugger sightings: 6

Democratic National Committee: 2 (in front of CVS)

Human Rights Campaign: 4 (2 in front of the Holland street T entrance, 2 at the College avenue entrance)

It would be nice to have at least one lunch without the guilt trip from some overly enthusiastic 20-something blocking my path.  I don’t know about you but I can say I gave at the office.

Please forward any chugger sightings if you see them.

Stay tangy friends.