Over at TechFlash, I’ve shared some decade-ending experiences I had trying to find a new home for technology from the end of the last decade. And the futility nicely illustrates just how far we’ve come in personal tech in a mere ten years.
The guest commentary: “Perfect, perfectly useless tech.”
In the interests of irritating those on all sides of an issue, I’ve posted a guest commentary on TechFlash calling for the optional, voluntary professional certification of journalists.
Why would I do something others in my former profession might think, well, is stupid?
After all, I spent more than a decade as a full-time news broadcaster (radio and TV), and then — after I moved to marketing consulting — still worked on the side as a columnist for Eastsideweek/Seattle Weekly (for four years) and KCPQ-TV Seattle as a commentator (for another four years). I should be one of the last people to call for journalist “certification.”
Years ago, when I read Algis Budrys’ 1977 novel Michaelmas, I wasn’t just struck by its prescient vision of a distributed, networked computer intelligence. I was struck by its vision of the profession of its protagonist: as a highly respected, freelance journalist, handling his own research, video and reporting — and selling his reporting services to the highest bidder.
More than 30 years later, Budrys (who died last year) may have hit upon the journalistic future I think we’re about to embark upon: that of free-agent professionals who are medium agnostic and can produce text, audio and video for just about any kind of media outlet, including one they individually control. Think of it as blended reporting. (more…)
Over at TechFlash, I’ve contributed a commentary on the potential value – even for pure Internet companies which produce only digital products – in having a physical world presence.
For more than 15 years, brick-and-mortar businesses have been creating Internet presences for both marketing and e-commerce. But there seems to have been an unspoken hesitancy to promote moves in the other direction, from Web-only to Web-plus-cinder block.
Underlying the hesitancy may be a false assumption that the Internet is the ultimate destination for all business, and that a physical presence is a sign of the past. No company, it’s implied, should go out of its way to create a real-world presence if the business was spawned and is doing fine on the Web.
Yet it does pay off. (more…)
You might also title this, “How bad customer service kills good newspapers.” For while newspapers across the country are in the fight of their lives to attract advertisers and subscribers, they have frequently been their own worst enemies when it comes to keeping the very customers they’ve worked hard to obtain.
Admittedly, I’m a focus group of one. But I also am predisposed to like newspapers (as a former alternative weekly newspaper columnist), which apparently puts me in the minority. Yet, despite my high newsprint-stupidity threshold, these customer prevention policies stun even me:
If you think video games are recession proof, question your assumptions. Because there is no single “video game industry” with one platform, distribution model and customer set.
In a guest commentary on TechFlash.com, I’ve outlined my thoughts. And I’ll stress test them when I moderate a panel of game industry execs at the Washington Technology Industry Association dinner Wednesday in Seattle.
It’s hard not to want to agree with people like Big Fish CEO Jeremy Lewis, who compared the appeal of his company’s casual games to Charlie Chaplin’s films during the Great Depression. Chaplin’s escapist entertainment was cheap; the medium, novel. The same is true of many games today. And they’re far better than video games available during the last deep recession of 1981-82. Yet that recession ended with the 1983 collapse of the era’s video game industry. Not necessarily a great historic precedent.
So makers of confident pronouncements should be wary. Any recession proofing could be relative depending on how far the economic tide recedes — and which players are left stranded on the bottom.
I have just wrapped up my reponsibilities as a first-round judge in one of the longest-running, most prestigious award competitions in technology and education. And what entered companies go through in their efforts to avoid winning amaze me.
In the interests of protecting the clueless (or perhaps in this economy, resourceless), I won’t name the companies. Or even the competition. But if you’d like to waste your award entry money, you do so can very efficiently by following these three easy steps: (more…)
It’s an odd reflection on the bubble the tech industry lives in — and simultaneously a sobering commentary on tech adoption in the education market — that there is still discussion of blogs being “new” in 2009.
But inside the education industry, even among the largest players, there are debates about whether or when to blog. Pros and cons were dutifully outlined for an article I wrote for the Software and Information Industry Association’s new book, The Expert’s Guide to the K-12 School Market, Second Edition. You can find an excerpt that succinctly outlines the pros and cons of companies blogging on the Selling to Schools site.
The full article in the book also includes a nine-step checklist to follow before starting a company or product blog. And, as you’ll note, the pros and cons and checklist apply to any business — not just those in the education market.
So why is this article curious? Because it, like almost nothing else, illustrates the gap between the leading edge and the trailing edge of technology.
Technologists today would be stunned that anyone would even think to ask about whether a company should blog; after all, blogging is a decade old. Not only is everyone blogging now, they’d say in wide-eyed disbelief, but anyone who knows anything has moved on to Twitter or something less, well, ancient.
Yet educators and education companies — a combination of a system developed for a mostly agrarian America and an industry still largely more comfortable with paper than pixels — are just starting, in broad measures, to come to terms with technology tools used in their classrooms and industry.
That’s not to say either extreme of the adoption curve is right or wrong. It sometimes helps to wait a reasonable interval so the pros and cons of any new development are clear, as my article outlines for blogging.
But, in my mind, there is also no better example of the disconnect between those who develop cool new stuff, and those who have to figure out how to use it in a practical manner in existing settings.
(This post originally appeared on the frankcatalano.com blog in January 2004.)
As someone who loves words and language (and indeed is a writer when he’s not a marketer), I’m amazed at how some marketers abuse their biggest tool for communication. Now that 2003 is becoming a memory, there are words and phrases that should be banished from marketers’ and PR practitioners’ lexicons. Not just in technology marketing, but in all marketing.
Why? Because they’re overused, meaningless or lazy. Indeed, I suspect when most prospects or customers see these words and phrases, they reflexively treat them as one treats long names in a classic Russian novel: their brains glaze over and they skip to the next word or phrase.
Allow me to suggest five words or phrases for banishment:
1) “Leading” This standard of PR boilerplate (as in “leading company”) should have been killed off years ago. It’s lazy. It shows a company can’t figure out why its product, service or self is different from anyone else, or — worse yet — confirms that it really isn’t any different. “Leading” should only be used for athletic events or questions.
2) “Because you deserve it” This pops up in broadcast and print advertising ad nauseum. Admit it: What most people who think they “deserve” something really deserve is a good smack upside the head. We have a culture of entitlement and this is going to change it? Encourage a bit of personal responsibility. Seriously, this phrase is the most blatant kind of ego manipulation that anyone with half a brain sees as such.
3) “Collectible” This label tends to be slapped on product packaging for a higher-priced version or one of a series. If any toy, DVD or issue of TV Guide bears this label, you can be certain they’ve created enough copies of it to ensure it never will be.
4) “Powered by [blank]” or “[Blank] inside” This favorite of technology and Web site companies worked once: for Intel. And Intel spent millions in advertising to reinforce that message. Still, people buy Dell or IBM laptops, not Intel laptops, and the chip inside is a tertiary choice to manufacturer brand and price. Customers generally don’t care what powers something as long as that something works. And it can backfire. (“Powered by Google? Why, wasn’t their own old search engine any good? Wonder what’s not up to par about the rest of the site?”) Sure, a brand name like Intel or Google can give a boost to an otherwise unknown. But if the unknown turns out to be any good, that’s the brand the unknown’s marketer should be trumpeting. We live in an overmarketed world: Expect prospects to remember one brand message, not two.
5) “… And more” This catch-all usually appears in small business names, company tag lines or advertising copy. I suspect it results from weary marketers giving in after endless internal arguments: “But we sell more than widgets.” “OK, OK, we’ll call it ‘Widgets and More.’” Look, you’ve carefully identified your target audience, identified what your competition is known for and decided what makes you unique. Why water it down by tagging on “and more” to your name or description? Let people know you for what you want to be known, and be pleasantly surprised that you offer a broader range. But let your marketing message emphasize your core.
Sure, there are others (“mission critical,” for example, itself should be on the critical list, as should “interactive,” “cyber” and “e-” anything, all of which have that dot-com stench of death about them), but the above five would be a great start. Language is a marketer’s tool and, like any tool, it can be used well … or in these cases, quite badly.