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Mac Strikes from Within http://www.marketingtwo.com/mac-strikes-from-within.html | Comments  One of the big shifts in the marketing paradigm today is in the relationship of customers to the sales process. The broadcast marketing model was all about persuading customers to buy (by interrupting with effective, outbound messages). The P2P marketing model is based on inspiring customers to both buy and advocate your brand to others (by providing relevant products, service, content, and dialogue).
Last week’s BusinessWeek cover story showed the new model at work – in the nascent growth of Mac computers in corporate environments. The Mac may finally be getting some traction in companies outside of the traditional niche of design and communications firms. The intriguing part of the story is that this growth is happening despite the fact that Apple has no corporate sales force. This is intentional. Steve Jobs has argued that companies can succeed by focusing on corporate or consumer buyers, but not both. (Agree? Comments? Counter examples?) What is driving the Mac’s entry into the corporate environment is that managers are finally giving in to growing requests from employees to bring a Mac into the office place. Companies like IBM and Cisco are allowing pilot programs where a few dozen employees are allowed to switch from Windows to Mac OS, in order to gauge the impact on the organization. (Has any manager ever been faced with employees clamoring to allow Windows into the workplace?) Part of this shift may be driven by the catastrophic roll-out of Microsoft Vista last year (like many, I’m sticking to my XP guns). But the Mac “pilot” programs are also testament to the power of inspiring a community of customers to support your brand, rather than persuading them to buy from you because they have no other viable choice. 
[marketing 2.0]
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The Boxhttp://weeklyramble.wunderman.com/index.php/weblog/the_box/ Harold Burson always answered his own phone. He encouraged us to do the same. “Clients pay to speak with you” – not with layers of gatekeepers…was his lesson.
10:41:08 AM
Abandon the Super User, Focus on Customershttp://www.marketingshift.com/2008/5/abandon-super-user-focus-customers.cfm I am the digerati -- more or less -- which is exactly why companies should ignore me. My television is run by one of the five computers I own. My phone receives RSS feeds, email and texts all day. My Outlook Calendar is synched with Google Calendar. I have a multimedia blog about media and journalism, complete with a wiki and social network. All that gadgetry is necessary for me to do my job, but as the folks at ReadWriteWeb break down, the "digitally savvy," high-income, wealthy few who are early technology adopters are not great predictors for businesses. Turns out the signal-to-noise they produce -- along with what we second-tiered adopters produce -- isn't the best indicator of what services and software applications will "make it." Super-users -- or supernodes, which are the people at the center of large networks of people -- can be so disruptive to services that Om Malik at Gigaom suggests technology companies may want to charge these folks for excessive use since it can bog down systems, thus turning off regular users. It's an interesting proposition. But there's one problem: super users get nasty when they feel slighted and charging them money isn't going to fix that. Super users demand service in a free world. FriendFeed is an aggregation service that allows users compile all of their -- and their friends' -- pictures, videos, blogs and Tweets in one place. It's a great idea unless someone deletes on of their threads. When that happens, the comments that everyone else left disappears as well. That enraged Robert Scoble -- one of the Web's superest of super-users. The big question for FriendFeed -- and other companies -- is this: who cares if the super users don't get what they want? The business model doesn't depend on making the digerati happy. VHS didn't beat Betamax because it was a better technology. Microsoft isn't a flashier technology than Apple. And the Web won't be ruled by the tech elite.
10:40:39 AM
The top 8 mistakes in usability (and companies investing in it)Mark Hurst Describes the top 8 mistakes in usability in his Good Experience newsletter. 1. Not conducting any customer research. 2. Conducting "pretend" research. 3. Conducting research, but the wrong type. 4. Conducting one-on-one research, but with tasks defined beforehand. 5. Not inviting stakeholders to attend research. 6. Not prioritizing findings. 7. Not relating to business objectives. 8. Missing the larger picture. http://goodexperience.com/2008/05/the-top-8-mistakes-in.php
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