Marketing Nomenclature, and
the Naming of Names - articles, books and insights by Naseem Javed
Editor:- January 31,
2003 - a new article is published today on MarketingViews called "Marketing
Nomenclature, and the Naming of Names". The author is marketing
nomenclature guru - Naseem Javed who has published over 100 articles and many
books on this subject. Naseem also advises CEOs of Fortune 500 and other leading
corporations on all matters of complex global naming in the e-commerce. You'd
better set aside some time for this, because it's a fascinating subject for
anyone involved in marketing, and once you start - you won't want to stop. ...read the article |
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Worse than the SQL Slammer:
Thousands of Top UK Managers are Paralysed into Inaction this Week by Friday's
Tax Deadline
Editor:- January 29, 2003 - if you're not getting the
usual fast response from your UK partners this week, chances are they've been
buried by paperwork and are not taking any calls. This week sees the annual rush
to complete UK personal tax returns which have to be in by Friday or face fines
and interest charges. Due to the well publicised cases every year in which the
UK's tax department (Inland Revenue) lose thousands of tax returns which are
sent in early, and due to the other pressures which affect high paid tax payers,
the national sport is to see just how late you can leave it before starting to
look at the list of all the documents you need.
In past years, yours
truly has left his own paperwork collection exercise till the very last moment.
But this year I'm ahead of myself, and feel pleased with myself. I started
today and it's done. My accountant will hand carry my return into the tax office
tomorrow, which is a good 24 hours earlier than the drop dead deadline. Plenty
of slack in the system.
In the days leading upto the January 31
receipt deadline financial institutions all over the UK get frantic phone calls
from their customers. "Where's the paperwork for that dividend payment I
got last February? It's lost. Fax me another copy dammit. I need it now."
Even if, like me, the payments for all this stuff were computed and sent off
long ago, the physical process of wading through a year's worth of personal
financial I/O is like wandering down memory lane. The simple act of retrieving a
statement from the slush pile which should only take a minute or two, seems to
extend into an hour of procrastination.
Napoleon referred to Britain
disparagingly as "a nation of shopkeepers" but it's more accurate to
say we have become a nation of unwilling accountants. The government creates
taxes which are so complicated that you need an army of accountants just get
through the mess of regulation. Nowadays of course, you can fill in your tax
return via the web. If your idea of fun is spending 45 minutes filling in boxes
online only to have all the information disappear, just as you get to the end,
then that's a good option. But filling in the forms is the easy part anyway.
It's finding out the numbers you have to fill in which is the hard part. Anyway
that's why you can't talk to anyone important in the UK today. We're all working
for the government. |
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Missed Storage Visions 2003
Conference? Buy the Book
SAN
JOSE, Calif - January 28, 2003 - If you weren't able to attend the Storage
Visions 2003 conference earlier this month, a bound book of the
conference presentations is now available. The book has 300+ double-sided
pages and costs $195 plus shipping ($10 domestic and $40 international) and can
be ordered online.
The Storage Visions 2003 Conference addressed data
storage requirements for companies involved in creating multimedia content and
distributing it to consumers through high speed data transfer systems. The
conference contained 16 in-depth sessions, panels and keynote talks. These
sessions were organized by Visions Conferences and the Multimedia Research
Group, Inc.
Over 70 companies were involved in the sessions, exhibits and keynote
addresses. The conference was sponsored by 24 companies and organizations
including Seagate Technology, NDS, Computer Technology Review, United
Entertainment Media, FCIA, MPEG-4 Forum, SMPTE, iVDR Consortium, Jobstor.com,
and STORAGEsearch.com. Keynote speakers included Michael Maas of the IBM Digital
Media Group; George Wiley of Qualcomm, Ken Morse of PowerPC, Rob Pait of
Seagate, and Lowell Moulton of Sony.
...Looking ahead. The 2004 Storage Visions Conference is scheduled for
January 6 and 7, 2004 at the Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas (just before the 2004
CES show). The conference organizers are now soliciting conference sponsors,
exhibitors, and speakers for the 2004 event. ...Storage Visions |
|
Thousands of Web Sites
Affected by SQL Slammer Worm
Editor:- January 27, 2003 - there was
a great advert today for Solaris and other Unix derivatives, caused by the
shutdown of thousands of web sites worldwide due to a web virus which attacked
Microsoft based servers. Our own ISP, Verio (UK), shut down their datacenter
this morning as a precaution to isolate the virus. This action affected all web
sites - not just those hosted on NT. So our publications went offline for some
hours. We apologise to readers for this inconvenience.
Microsoft says
that a patch for the
SQL Server 2000 vulnerability was released as long ago as July 2002.
Nevertheless millions of users have been unable to access web sites today
because of this server based virus.
Is there a market for higher priced
web hosting based on higher security infrastructure? My guess is - yes.
Maybe
Sun should make more capital out of this issue. It's unlikely that other major
Unix server vendors such as HP or IBM will use this incident to talk up the
superiority of Unix derivatives over Microsoft servers. That would jeopardize
their relationships with Microsoft.
See also:-
STORAGE Security |
|
Marketers Rediscover
Real-Time Business Intelligence Tool from the 1980s - Say Hello to the Phone
Editor:-
January 24, 2003 - in these troubled times when a valued customer doesn't reply
as quickly as expected to your email, what's the first thing that goes through
your mind?
- the customer is out of the office on vacation?
- the customer has been let go, by the organization they used to work for?
- the whole organization has disappeared in a puff of smoke?
If,
like me, your first thought is the puff of smoke scenario, what do you do next?
No good going to the company's web site - it was never up to date
anyway. Reach for... the phone.
This year you're going to see a lot
of long established customers go down the drain carried by the tide of
recession. Knowing what's going on may save you delivering products and
services for which you're never going to get paid. The phone is a useful and
reassuring way to keep in touch.
This is also the year when many of you
are going to discover that all that email marketing you did in the last year was
mostly wasted. I'm surprised that the fable of email marketing has persisted
this long. If YOU don't have time to read your email, and 90% gets filtered out
as SPAM or block deleted without being opened, how can you realistically expect
all the targets of all that opt-in SPAM to behave any differently? There's only
one effective method of opt-in mass marketing - that's web advertising. Banner
ads are only served up to live people who are looking at web pages. You don't
get charged for readers who aren't there...
...Unlike the 25% of
people who will never get to see see your mailshot. When times are bad - print
publishers have even less resources to clean their lists... ...or the 40% of
readers, in some cases, who will never open the magazine which contains your
expensive ad. But don't worry. I'm assuming that MarketingViews readers gave up
the B2b print advertising habit years ago. It's a process which converts
valuable marketing dollars into expensive paper and ink which is soon recycled
as garbage with few other measurable side effects.
Back to that phone
thingy with the dust on it... Which is the bit which you talk into? Where's the
help button? You'd think they'd have icons for that sort of thing sorted out by
now. |
|
Hearing the Voice of the
Customer - When Budgets are Tight
Pioneer, Calif - January 24, 2003
- when budgets for travelling and market research are tight, it's more important
than ever to get the right answers for deploying your business assets, otherwise
you may be shooting in the wrong direction at the same time as being low on
ammunition.
That's the thinking behind a
new service from King Research
called CABs - a teleconference/web-based Customer Advisory Board service.
Because the new service uses teleconferencing and the web it is very
cost-effective compared to traditional focus group based research.
We
have a rigorous methodology for developing and running our clients' CABs. This
process starts with the segmentation of a client's market. After clearly
identifying our clients' most important market segments, we develop a profile of
representative customers. Customers are then recruited, and the CAB panels are
formed. We moderate the CAB panels in-person or via teleconferencing and the
web, analyze the results and report on what customers need and value. ...King Research |
|
The Next "Big Thing"
in IT?
Editor:-
January 22, 2003 - a new article today on MarketingViews asks the
question - "What Could be the Next "Big Thing" in IT?".
Luckily we give a plausible answer. So if you're still looking for a positive
fast growing market opportunity to put in your business plan, this could be it. |
|
'E-nabling' Is Driving
Marketing More Than Sales Departments
NEW
YORK - January 21, 2003 - The most successful marketing departments are turning
more frequently to the Internet to boost sales and find new customers for their
products and services as market lifecycles shorten, according to an article in
the current issue of Across The Board, The Conference Board magazine.
A new report released today by The Conference Board finds that the introduction
of new technologies in the past five years has had a bigger impact on the
organization and processes of marketing departments than on sales departments.
The report is based on a survey of 80 senior marketing, sales, and information
technology executives worldwide.
The new word for what is happening
is "E-nabling" - the implementation of digital and communication
technologies such as the Internet, Intranet, and Worldwide Web to improve
business performance and allow the organization to operate in real time.
E-nabling has increased the speed of communication within organizations and
between their markets and has flattened organizations.
E-nabling has had a greater impact on the marketing department (65%
report changes to marketing) than the sales department (48%), largely because of
the greater centralization of the marketing function and the greater
independence of the sales organization.
"Firms citing success in e-nabling are those that are close to
their customers," says Thomas Bodenberg, author of the report and founder
of The Conference Board's Council on Corporate Brand Management. "They are
able to anticipate changes in their customers' operations and processes so as to
mirror those processes in their own firms." The
report
costs $140.00.
...The Conference Board
Editor's
comments:- I think it's great that people are still able to invent new "e-words".
It's more difficult than you might think. Looking ahead, a reference article on
the marketing problems associated with company and product naming will be
appearing here soon. |
|
Directory of Independent
Press Association Membership is Now On-Line
San Francisco - January 14, 2003 - In
conjunction with the 1st Annual IPA Convention, the
Independent Press Association (IPA) has launched an on-line, searchable,
annotated directory of the IPA membership. The directory surveys a deep and
wide cross section of the independent press in the United States.
Major
sectors of the independent press are included: ethnic, business, religious,
social, cultural, alternative, fiction, and more. Entry annotations for each
publication provide a short essay the on the history and editorial mission of
the title, contact information, publication format and language, circulation
region, circulation mode, and distribution frequency.
Sample topic categories include: arts and culture, business and
economics, ecology and environment, education and schooling,
ethnic/community/immigrant (with 20 sub-categories), fashion and style,
parenting and family, peace and militarism, race relations, religion and
spirituality, rural issues, science and technology, sex and sexuality. There
are 39 major topic categories as well as additional subcategories and over 400
Publications.
...IPA |
|
|
Editorial Calendars: A Key to Publicizing Your Business
January 14, 2003 - by Bill Stoller Founder,
PublicityInsider.com
What is the one thing that all of the best public
relations agencies do every year?
They research and compile editorial calendars from publications that
are pertinent to their client's business. You should too.
What's an editorial calendar?
Editorial calendars are schedules of what topics a publication plans
for cover for a particular month. For example, the
INC. editorial
calendar for July 2003 states that they're writing an article on various
business services. Bingo!
If you feel that you can contribute to this
particular topic, call or email the editorial department at INC. (try to "speak"
to the managing editor) and find out who (which reporter) has been assigned to
write the story. Email or call the reporter and explain how you can contribute.
It's that simple - it takes less time than writing this article - and is much
more effective than blast-faxing a garbage bound press release to inappropriate
reporters.
Final thoughts: Many publications post their editorial calendars on
their Web sites - usually they're found in their advertising media kits.
Otherwise, contact the publication's advertising departments and ask for a
calendar. Check for editorial deadlines - many publications work 6 months in
advance.
...PublicityInsider.com
Editor's
comments:- as a directory publisher
ACSL's content,
like many web media, is not constrained by the production and distribution
process associated with print. All our content is viewable all the time. New
content is added daily. So we don't have an editorial calendar. But that's
unusual.
See also:- Bill Stoller's article:-
7 Tips to Get More Mileage
out of Your Online or Offline Publicity |
|
Life in the Channel is Long
- Harte-Hanks Study Reveals
LA
JOLLA, CA - January 13, 2003 - A new study by Harte-Hanks, Inc.
reveals new findings about the importance of channel selling, and its strength
and resiliency in the recent tech spending slowdown. The study was based on
16,838 in-depth interviews completed during the past 15 months with companies
that act as channel partners for technology organizations. Interviews were
conducted with VARs, ISVs, OEMs, dealers, distributors, service providers,
systems integrators, and other resellers. Among the findings:
- There is longevity among channel sellers in the technology sector. A full
95% of interview participants represent companies that have been in business for
more than five years, with nearly 40% in business for 20 years or more. Despite
the volatile nature of the technology sector in recent years, there appears to
be marked stability among channel resellers.
- The top industry sectors served by channel selling include healthcare,
government, finance, education, and manufacturing.
- Channel sellers in the tech sector rely twice as much on
business-to-business e-commerce to drive sales compared to companies across all
industry segments combined. 18% of channel respondents report at least some
percentage of revenue attributable to e-commerce/Internet sales.
- 70% of channel participants derived at least half their revenues from small
and medium businesses.
The Harte-Hanks Channel Database is designed to
enable technology marketing organizations to segment, manage, monitor, and
leverage existing and potential channels. It also seeks to enable better matches
between sellers and channel partners, increasing the likelihood of predicting
partner success. Full results of the report on these in-depth interviews can
be obtained by calling Harte-Hanks at (800) 854-8409.
...Harte-Hanks |
|
European Web Hosting Market
Slows But Demand Continues, Says IDC
LONDON -
January 9, 2003 – According to IDC's latest research, the managed
Web hosting market in Western Europe will grow from $1,942 million in 2001 to
$5,556 million in 2006, representing a CAGR for 2001 to 2006 of 23%. The
hosting industry is consolidating and there is a current steady stream of
closures, bankruptcies and acquisitions. Most hosting facilities will remain
operational and customer-ready, but overall capacity will decrease significantly
as excess capacity is removed from the market. UK and German companies continue
to dominate the European hosting market, accounting for 60% of spending on
managed Web hosting services in 2002, declining to 56% by 2006. Similarly, large
companies with over 250 employees accounted for 62% of spending in 2002,
declining to 52% by 2006.
"The hosting market has certainly slowed down during 2002, but
from extremely high growth rates in previous years, " said James Eibisch,
IDC Research Director for EMEA IP and Hosting Services. "Although
companies' hosting budgets are currently tight, and some users are even moving
hosting back in-house, demand is fundamentally strong despite the industry
turmoil". He continued, "the growth in broadband access, content
consumption and ecommerce is high and, despite individual cases of poor cash
flow or unsustainable business models, will drive the need for robust,
professional hosting services".
...IDC profile |
|
The End of Advertising as
We Know It
Editor:- January 8, 2003 - I love reading books, and
spent a large part of the recent Christmas holiday period wading through piles
of new books which I got as presents from my family. But I thought I might get a
little restless, so I made sure to buy some books for myself. The most enjoyable
one of these was:-
"The End of Advertising as We Know It" -
written by advertising guru - Sergio Zyman. It's got 240 pages and was
published in 2002 by John Wiley & Sons.
I've always been cynical
about the major players in the advertising industry. This was the industry
which happily warmed itself by burning through billions of dollars of dotcom
investors' money with flagrant disregard of the consequences. One of which was
the IT recession in 2000. But I'm not an advertising guru. I only operate in
the narrow area of B2b web advertising - and there's more to advertising (and
life apparently) outside that narrow domain.
Sergio's book is like a
breath of fresh air. He thinks (like most of us) that advertising agencies are
mostly useless, and are more interested in their own egos and winning awards
then in getting more business for their customers. This book contains numerous
wake up calls to anyone involved in advertising. The examples given of good
campaigns and bad, are entertaining, informative and up to date. He's a very
good writer, and if he wasn't one of the 20th century's top 3 advertising gurus,
with better things to do, I can imagine him making a pretty good living out of
writing books.
There were only a couple of sentences in the whole 240
pages that I didn't wholeheartedly agree with:- his analysis of Apple's role in
the PC market (about which whole books have been written), and the role of focus
groups... He's cynical about the value of professional focus groupies in
consumer marketing. I don't know about consumer marketing, but I do believe that
this has a role in B2b. Apart from those negligible quibbles - I would pretty
much follow everything else he tells you to do in the book.
Sergio
actually recommends that you should leverage what you've learned from reading
his book, otherwise it's a waste of money. I've done that in two ways.
- By using his quote in our advertising pages - "Simply put, the goal of
advertising is to sell more stuff to more people more often for more money."
- And by writing this review.
|
|
Targeting News Content with
Banner Ads on STORAGEsearch.com
January 7, 2003 - ACSL, publisher
of STORAGEsearch.com and MarketingViews announced today a new targeting option
for advertisers which is triggered by news stories about related subjects.
Here's
how it works:- let's say the advertiser wants to run a banner ad for RAID
systems targeted at news stories about RAID. The banner ad would appear whenever
a news story about RAID appeared as one of the top 3 visible news items on the
STORAGEsearch - news page.
The banner would also appear on the STORAGEsearch
- home page. whenever the selected headline for that part of the day
related to the targeted segment.
Targeted segments can be news items
about products by competitors (or the advertising company), or market research
about that product segment, or news about a new article which talks about that
subject. In general, when the news story is visible on the users screen (is one
of the 3 most recent news stories) - then the targeted banner ad will always
appear. Because news stories occur randomly with market conditions ACSL expects
that targeted time slots will typically last from 4 to 24 hours at a time.
However the publisher will analyse historic data on news stories and current
and projected reader size data and market trends to predict the annual banner
impressions for the new targeting option.
News content targeting will
be sold on an exclusive basis for each subject. The new package does not impact
current targeting by content page, which ACSL has been selling since 1998, and
companies who are advertisers (using other ad products) are always excluded from
being targeted by a competitor.
"Advertisers have to think more
about what's going in inside their customer's head" says Zsolt Kerekes,
publisher. "If they're reading a news story about a particular subject and
see an ad which relates to the same subject on a focused site which they came to
seeking that kind of information that's a good time to get their attention.
We've found that targeting by content and context has always been a very
effective tool for our customers, because it ties in with what readers want to
see. We've actually been targeting news stories with classified ads on an
infrequent basis to increase stickiness for several years. The new approach is a
logical progression to real-time content matched targeting."
The
new package starts at $5,000 a year. For more information about Targeting News
Content with Banner Ads email Zsolt
Kerekes with details of the product or service which is being promoted. |
|
The most important thing
you should do in 2003
Editor:- January 3, 2003 - There's one useful
thing you can all do do which doesn't cost any money, and needs no tools other
than email and a web browser.
Check your company profile on the
top directories in your industry, and if the text is more than a year old,
or looks out of date, contact the publisher with correct information.
As
an 11 year old IT directory publisher with titles including the
SPARC Product Directory,
and STORAGEsearch.com we generally
update and correct company profile on a continuous basis every working day. But
we rely on getting updated information from the companies for whom it matters
most:- the original source themselves. It's in your interests to make sure that
the way your company is represented in trade directories and the web accurately
reflects your current business.
As a service to our readers, we
started listed the date at which profiles were updated a few years ago to help
them determine how accurate the information might be. But that signposting can
be interpreted in more than one way. To our readers a listing that's maybe 2 or
3 years old indicates that the vendor company may be a little slack in its
corporate communications, and may not be long for this world. Improving your
image is quick and easy to do, and most publishers welcome getting updates at
any time of the year. We automatically update company profiles from the news
stories we run about companies, so that on average most current profiles are
less than a year old. So older profiles also indicate to our readers that the
company isn't doing anything newsworthy, or it indicates to me, that the PR
process has failed in that company.
So at the start of the new year,
before you get swamped by everything else, spend a few minutes on the web seeing
how your company is seen by buyers in your market. If that information is wrong
it will be harder and cost more for you to correct those misperceptions by
anything you can do with advertising, mailshots and other promotions. |
|
2002: the top ten in IT
hype
January 2, 2003 -
an
article published today on ZDNet lists the top 10 hyped technologies and IT
products in 2002. |
|
| today's news etc from
MarketingViews | |
| send press releases about
high-tech internet marketing to news@MarketingViews.com |
|
Other news on this page
Marketing
Nomenclature, and the Naming of Names
Worse than the SQL Slammer:
Thousands of Top UK Managers are Paralysed into Inaction this Week by Friday Tax
Deadline
Missed Storage Visions 2003 Conference? Buy the Book
Thousands
of Web Sites Affected by SQL Slammer Worm
Marketers Rediscover
Real-Time Business Intelligence Tool from the 1980s - Say Hello to the Phone
Hearing
the Voice of the Customer - When Budgets are Tight
The Next "Big
Thing" in IT?
'E-nabling' Is Driving Marketing More Than Sales
Departments
Directory of Independent Press Association Membership is Now On-Line
Editorial
Calendars: A Key to Publicizing Your Business
Life in the Channel is
Long - Harte-Hanks Study Reveals
European Web Hosting Market Slows But
Demand Continues, Says IDC
The End of Advertising as We Know It
Targeting News Content
with Banner Ads on STORAGEsearch.com
The most important thing you
should do in 2003
2002: the top ten in IT hype
earlier news (archive) |
|
 |
Advertising
on
STORAGEsearch |
| When
Cheaperbyte's sales manager said he had to accelerate sales in 2003, he knew
just the right way to do it. | | |
|
|
Nibble: Is
the External Disk Market Heading for a Crash?
Two recent market
research reports got me questioning the validity of my own assumptions about the
long term prospects for the that part of the storage industry which supplies
disk based storage such as RAID, NAS, SAN etc. And I'm starting to feel a cold
chill which has nothing to do with the seasonal weather.
First it was
the December
6 news from IDC saying that worldwide disk storage systems factory revenue
in the third quarter of 2002 was down 3% compared with the second quarter. "The
failure to gain revenue momentum in Q3 is yet another indication that a rebound
in the disk storage systems market is not imminent," said Charlotte
Rancourt, research director of IDC's Disk Storage Systems program. "The
third quarter is consistent with an emerging trend whereby growth in gigabyte
per unit does not offset the unrelenting decline in dollar per gigabyte."
Then there was the December 10
report from Peripheral Research Corp saying that the demand for critical
components for rigid disk drives hit a five-year low in 2002. "The industry
has been on a 60-100% per year increase in areal densities, which by nature
reduces the number of Magnetic Heads and Disks in each drive... The demand for
Rigid Disk Drives has flattened out to about 195 million units per year for the
past three years." This report went onto say that growth in demand
for disk drives in consumer products would eventually lead to growth in overall
disk shipments, but that doesn't affect the computer market which we're
discussing here.
Let's recap on the two main reasons that so many
computer companies flocked into the storage market in 2000 and 2001 during the
recession in the PC and server market.
The first, was a widely held
belief supported by direct experience, and codified in a widely publicised
EMC
sponsored research study saying that the demand for storage capacity would
double every year. The second factor was the growth and profitability of EMC
back in 2000. Both factors, taken together suggested to many oems, that here
was a market which was ripe and growing, and in which there plenty of
opportunity for efficient low cost producers to make higher profits than in the
PC market by undercutting the fat dumb and happy market leaders. News travels
fast in this wired world. So hundreds of companies had exactly the same idea.
But
what if these assumptions are wrong? Or don't give the whole picture? What if an
annual doubling in demand for disk storage doesn't actually lead to any
increase in storage revenue? And what if an overcrowded market of EMC wannabes
leads to the same fierce competition and pricing models seen in the PC market?
That's good for users but spells ruin for many storage oems.
In the
semiconductor world Moore's Law has reliably predicted the shrinking geometry of
chip and the growing density of memory for 3 decades. There isn't an equivalent
in the disk storage world. But looking back at the last 10 years, disk drive
capacity has increased by a factor of 1,000, which means that on average it's
doubled every year. So even if demand for storage is doubling, there's no
compelling reason for the market to increase in value. In fact, if you take
into account the new wave of intelligent archiving software from companies like
Princeton Softech
there are optimistic grounds for believing that users will be able to keep a
lid on runaway storage growth by using more compression and faster intelligent
archiving based on data usage patterns.
If disk storage technology
keeps improving, users could end up paying less for their storage networks in
the long term, instead of more. Now there's an interesting thing to think about
as we ponder what the new year may bring.
See also:-
...EMC profile,
...IDC profile,
Market research,
...Peripheral
Research profile | |
