Chris Selland
VP Strategic Growth at Unifi Software. Previously VP positions at HP Vertica, Yankee Group and Aberdeen Group, amongst others.
In defense of ‘big’
With all due respect to my ‘startup junkie‘ friends, I thought I’d say a few words in defense of big companies. As someone who has spent the majority of my career in small firms, I know firsthand that there is nothing more rewarding or enjoyable than creating something out of nothing and building – and […]
Marketing May Not Be Dying, But It’s Certainly Changing – Right Flo?
Not surprisingly, many marketers were outraged, offended & upset by the recent Marketing Is Dead essay in the Harvard Business Review. Personally, I thought the piece was (intentionally) overstated – but directionally correct. Marketing isn’t ‘dead’ (as my fellow Enterprise Irregular and friend Maggie Fox asserts) but there’s no doubt things are changing – quickly. […]
Bullish on the Valley View
My fellow Enterprise Irregular Sameer Patel took me to task a bit earlier today for my prior post of the still-weak employment situation. @cselland stop being a party pooper already. This is twitter, the capsule where we confine our selves to a bubbly valley view. 🙂 — Sameer Patel (@SameerPatel) July 7, 2012 While […]
Social Market Consolidation – It’s Here
In case you haven’t been paying attention, the Social Media/Marketing marketspace is starting to consolidate – rapidly. What’s driving this consolidation is M&A activity by the large cap market leaders, most notably Salesforce.com who is apparently about to purchase Buddy Media for more than $800M. This follows Oracle’s just-announced $300M acquisition of Vitrue. Salesforce started […]
Marc Benioff is the next…
I’ve always been of 2 minds when it comes to Salesforce.com ($CRM). As an investor (I don’t own any shares) I both follow and invest in tech but tend to be wary of richly-priced companies, which Salesforce certainly is. I’ve always had a value bent with a warm spot for the type of healthy skepticism […]
Is Amazon Slipping?
I’ve been a very loyal Amazon customer for many, many years. I first check the Amazon.com site for practically anything I purchase, and have been a happy Prime member since the advent of the program. In addition, the company’s first VP of Customer Service Bill Price, who wrote the excellent book The Best Service is No […]
Is Social Marketing Replacing Content Marketing – or Enhancing It?
Interesting post by David Strom on ReadWriteWeb this past weekend – Blogging Declines Across the Inc. 500. As stated in the UMass Dartmouth study behind the headline: Fifty percent of the 2010 Inc. 500 had a corporate blog, up from 45% in 2009 and 39% in 2008. In this new 2011 study, the use of […]
It’s just getting started
I had a great time on yesterday’s Focus.com SOPA Roundtable and was honored to be asked to participate. While we took a bit of time to celebrate the fact that the effective death of the current SOPA & PIPA bills is a clear victory for those of us who opposed them, the panel was also […]
The Science of Influence
All customers are not created equal. Nor are visitors to your website, followers of your Twitter feed, or ‘Like’rs of your Facebook page. While companies often give lip service to providing all customers and prospects equal allocations of resources and attention, the truth is that resources are limited – people, money, time. These limitations force […]
To the year ahead
Of the many friends who posted farewells to 2011 in these last few hours, I was struck by how often the tone was negative. Yet, even with the late Christopher Hitchens’ suggestion that what nearly kills you doesn’tactually make you stronger still in my ears, I can’t look back on 2011 with any other view than that, while […]
