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Is "Marketingspeak" Killing Technology?
An anonymous reader writes "In this essay titled, inevitably, "SUNset?" an analogy is drawn between the car industry in Detroit, which failed in the 70s because the execs looked out their windows and saw nothing but American cars and so missed completely the threat from Japanese companies, and Sun Microsystems. "Sun is going to fail in this decade if it does nothing but send out surveys to customers asking them to validate marketing phrases of Sun's creation," says the author. He adds: "If you are someone who never gets tired of hearing 'proven,' 'best-of-breed,' 'cost-effective,' or 'taking the surprise out of business solutions,' then contact Sun and demand as much of their current marketing material as they can muster." But it isn't just Sun, surely. This is a failing of technology marketeers in general. Hmm, doubtless we can all come up with our own examples far equally awful as these from Sun. Who can come up with worse?"
Are these signs of a mature industry which is in need of a disruptive change in the market to shake it up?
Currently I am proactively generating a synergistic environment where I can bring to fruition a new paradigm in answering questions of this nature.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
That's unpossible!
is that this is the only time I want to see the word "synchronicity" being used.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
So, I go into this store, and I ask about such TVs, and all the sales droids yammer on about Sony with "ColorStream!"
WTF is ColorStream? Does that mean component video inputs, i.e. YPbPr that support 720P and 1080i inputs? "No," sales droid says, "ColorStream" gives you a better picture.
It was only by requesting the manual for the set in which I was interested, that I could verify that ColorStream meant YPbPr. And even then, I had do refer to the specification summary page.
I'm sure that many lost sales happen because some sales doofus doesn't know that the product they're flogging actually meets the customer's needs perfectly!
You could've hired me.
--from earlier today.
The Statue of Liberty is America's lawn jockey.
... at band camp?
First, run the "BS Detector" (www.streettech.com/bs) over your website to check for marketing-speak. Then deploy and action these tips:
Convert your online visitors into customers by inviting them to act. Every page should have a clear call to action to get your visitors to take the next step.
Cut to the chase. People scan web pages, they don't read them, and they read at least 30% slower off the screen than off paper. Use active verbs rather than passive ones. It saves words and is more persuasive.
Note all the bolded text in the snippet above. Is this an inside joke? Look at all the BS in those sentences!
Un-news
Uh.... didn't Sun fail last decade??
Nope, I looked outside, and The Sun(tm) is working perfectly! In fact, I used too much of The Sun(tm) over the weekend and it seems to have given me a nasty burn.
I hate The Sun(tm) now.
This has been around for a while (since 2000 I think), but I still get a laugh out of it:
Catbert's Mission statement generator
Perfect for this thread!
That's nothing. This one time, I saw a well-known web site use the phrase "far equally awful as these" in an article. I'm not sure what they meant by that.
For more information, click here.
Talking to your existing customers works fine in a static market. You can still win even if the technology is changing but the customers remain the same. "The Innovator's Dilemma" pulls a lot of material from a large study of the disk drive industry. Incumbent players stayed in business through radical changes in technology, dying only from changes in the market.
Changes in the market happen when a "disruptive" technology comes along. "Disruptive" doesn't mean you have to rip out your assembly line: the disk drive makers succeeded at that several times. "Disruptive" means something that redefines the market.
The personal computer is a clear example. Like other disruptive technologies it was cheaper than what was already there, sold to a different set of customers, and wasn't as good (*at first*) as the incumbent technology. DEC's customers continued using VAXen to do work that wouldn't fit on the first personal computers.
Then the new customers buy in volume, mass production drives down the price, high volume pays for improvements, and before you can say "386" the disruptive technology is undermining the old technology. Companies like DEC wind up selling "proven" solutions to a shrinking customer base. Eventually they die.
"Marketing", in its highest and most useful form, involves getting into the heads of your customers and understanding what they need before they know it themselves. But the future lies with people who are not your customers.
The book listed other examples including hydraulic earth-moving equipment, but the principle was the same.
One time??? One?!?!?
You cannot make this stuff up!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Is it value-added?
A goal is a dream with a deadline
I innovated a partnership paradigm with a flute!
No weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men.-Ronald Reagan
As a geek, and unable to understand "business-esse" AND looking for a job in the mid to late 90's, AND (most importantly) on a dare, I used one of the "BS Generators" to fluff up my "objective" on my resume. To my shagrin - it worked! I got more pegs/emails/phone calls on that particular resume than I ever have - previous or after. I truly think the "businessey-type" people really DO believe their own BS - and the "Mission Statements".
Only for poor marketers and poor technologists.
Good technology marketers often start out as as engineers who find they have a passion for evangelizing their creations. Similarly, the best technologists make the biggest impact on the world often because they are able to get people to immediately understand the value of what they create.
The "field of dreams" approach usually ends up giving you a pile of dirt covered with weeds.
A two stories below this one, the following gem lies:
Privately funded in 1993, now with customers in 40 countries* and over $67 million** in cash reserves, the company experienced a phenomenal growth and continues to aggressively pursue new frontiers in order to meet or exceed the needs of most demanding customers by providing a scalable, seamless, comprehensive offering.
Leveraging our paradigm-shifting product line with state of the art technology developed by a dedicated team of professionals, we offer a significant competitive advantage on the diversified but fragmented market of best of breed anti-spam solutions.
I think it would depend on your company's "mission".
The truth about Led Zep should never be told on
> But it isn't just Sun, surely.
There's dumb marketing everywhere.
But Sun could have the best marketing on the planet and still not be selling their products (hardware and OS), which have been largely commoditized. Yes, they have high-end servers...but years ago, cheaper Intel/AMD boxes weren't considered "server-class" hardware like they are now.
There is a larger issue: Sun's ability to "pull an IBM" and figure out how to leverage the changing software/hardware world instead of defending their market share.
Hardware and software where people's lives are on the line are mission critical. Think Apollo missions and nuclear power plants, folks. Anything else, isn't.
That's an extremely poor definition.
"Mission critical" is a concept that very much relies on the nature of your "mission" (obviously). Not everyone has life-or-death issues hinging on our projects. Usually, it just means that you'll lose some customers, lose some sales, lose a few million dollars, lose your job, etc. However, just because no one's dying, doesn't mean that it isn't important. Obviously.
For example, I used to work for a company that supplied printing plates to a cardboard box manufacturer (the agricultural industry). Our mission was getting these plates to the customer fast enough so that they could keep their multi-million presses running 24/7.
The economics were as such: every hour the press wasn't running (waiting for plates to arrive, whatever), cost the company $55k.
Plus overtime for the press operators.
Plus not getting the boxes to their customer before their product started to wilt in the field.
Plus delaying the schedule of the truck drivers who had to haul this stuff cross country.
Plus my company getting a rep for not being able to come through in the clutch.
Essentially, one "little" mistake (or delay, same thing) ends up affecting hundreds if not thousands of people, and their livelihoods.
In my case, that's what "mission critical" meant.
What's your mission?
m-
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
I have a friend whose company was bidding on a contract. Part of the forms they had to fill out was their company's mission statement. Well, since they didn't have a mission statement, and since it was a *required* field on the form, he went to Dilbert.com and fetched one of these lovely (*cough*) mission statements.
They got the contract, in part because the client thought they had a good mission statement. (Needless to say, they never told the client where they came up with it.)