
The Benioff Coup. I Almost Got it Right
Watching Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff interview Mike Arrington @ Davos in January, I predicted the Big Marc was after a new job in media. It all felt confirmed when Benioff launched a series of posts at TechCrunch (although I suspected a fellow XXXXX blogger wrote his posts). But now it looks the other way around: […]

Ken Doctor’s 12 Trends of Newsonomics
Ken Doctor’s recent book, Newsonomics is a fine tour of the forces (a tour de force) transforming the news industry as we enters “the Digital News Decade.” Though the disruption has been underway for a dozen years and the crisis for the news industry crescendoed to a clamor in 2009, it is still too early […]

In Search of the Obvious – cutting through the marketing mess
When I first tweeted that Jack Trout’s new book “In Search of the Obvious” had arrived from Amazon, my mate @euan suggested his (excellent) blog is actually easy to find. He called it “The Obvious” because when he started writing about the application of new technology and social media in organizations, he felt that, actually, […]

Is Video a Crock? It's Certainly Not the New Holy Grail. Get Off the Screen, Dudes.
Many of you will recognize the title – borrowed from “Enterprise 2.0 a Crock” Dennis Howlett. Needless to say I was quite interested in his discussion with David Terrar, who is more of an E20 fan. Hm…hard to watch. Dennis is too loud while David is barely audible. I kept on turning the volume up […]

Newsday’s Paywall… the Numbers are in
In October of last year I wrote that Newsday’s paywall would fail to attract new revenue and as a defensive pricing strategy it does little or merit. In the final analysis, this is exactly why it will fail. By creating a pricing plan that defends rather than attacks a market the company is conceding defeat […]

Does a picture paint a thousand words?
I’ve been spending a lot of time in the last few weeks thinking about the basics of presentations combined with how you get the positioning and messaging for your product right. To help I’ve been reading Jack Trout‘s In Search of the Obvious, a marketing book which is all about making sure you focus your […]

Man Bites Dog or Who Really Owns a Community
Taunton Press is a respected publisher known for a family of publications beginning with “Fine” as in Fine Cooking, Fine Homebuilding, Fine Woodworking, and Fine Gardening, we well as series of hard bound books and a premium subscription online service. Each of their publications features an accompanying online component that includes videos, blogs, and most […]

Good Luck Steering the Titanic
USA Today’s (former) Travel Editor blogs her last day, after getting laid off: But what bothers me the most is what my firing represented. See, I’ve been learning all the tricks that a modern multi-platform journalist is supposed to know. In the past 22 months, I’ve blogged, tweeted, shot photos and videos, and handled speaking […]

Build the Brand or the Business? – O2 and BT
When it comes to the real principles of marketing I’ve always been guided by Al Ries and Jack Trout. Their books like Positioning, Marketing Warfare, or The 22 Immutable Laws Of Marketing are essential reading. Even though some of the material is over 20 years old, it’s still perfectly valid in today’s market. Jump in with 22 Immutable Laws (from 1993) – just over a fiver well spent on Amazon (and get Seth Godin’s Meatball Sund…