Rocket Watcher

Google Chrome OS: Dissecting A Great Marketing Announcement

Last week I was having a heated discussion with another marketer about Google's marketing and my position was that Google's marketing hasn't impressed me much.  And by marketing I mean the way they launch, message and position products.  The exception has been Google Chrome which I've written about before and I thought was a good launch.  My argument was that they didn't do a great job of articulating the value of their products.

Today the Chrome team has announced Google Chrome OS and I'm going to have to go back to my friend and eat crow because this is a fantastic piece of marketing. 

The blog post on the announcement can be seen here.  Go and read it.  This is textbook example of how to build momentum and mindshare in a market (while causing your key competitor considerable grief) with a product that isn't going to see the light of day for a year and a half.

Here's how they do it:

1. Establish credibility - In just 9 months they now have 30 million regular users of Google Chrome.  This is the "we know what we are doing and now we are going to do something even better" part of the announcement. 
2. Tell us what it is - "Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks." Read that again.  It doesn't seem hard to come up with a one-liner that describes what your product is or does but almost nobody does it well.  I'm at the first line of the second paragraph and I'm paying attention (see point 1) and I know exactly what they are announcing.
3. The value statement - "Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS." Not only is the value statement very simple and easy to understand, they are also extremely relevant to the target market (netbook users) and VERY differentiated from the key competing product (Windows). The rest of this paragraph gives a very digestible set of examples that outline why you care about speed, simplicity and security.  Here's the paragraph:
   Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We're designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.
   It's easy to understand and compelling to the target market.
4. Talk to the Ecosystem - they follow with a message for application developers, a key constituent for their main competitor:
   For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.
5. Address positioning with existing products - Next they address the overlap with Android and explain the positioning of the two products.
6. Wrap it up with the value again - lastly they hit you with the value statement again, each of which is a clearly articulated example of how users will see value in the new operating system.

Notice what isn't articulated in this announcement.  Other than describing what hardware the system will run on and stating that the Chrome OS will be "running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel" there is nothing that gets into the gorey bits of how they will build the thing.  Their potential users don't care how they do it, they just "...want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up."

Michael Gartenberg makes a great point about the timing of the announcement here and supposes that the announcement is really more about disrupting Microsoft as they try to keep the focus on Windows 7, rather than really winning the netbook market:

Right now, this all about Google putting pressure on Microsoft at a time when MSFT would rather keep the market focus on Windows 7, not some upstart Linux platform. By creating of lot of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt this morning (after all, every PC runs web-apps really well and no one is looking for devices that web based only for the most pat). they hope to take the attention and luster off of Windows 7 and that’s exactly what they’re doing.

He may be right and this announcement may mainly be about taking the focus off of Windows 7.  But even if it is, in my opinion, it's very well executed one.

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VC Pitch Template

I've been working on a presentation for a startup to use to pitch their business to VC firms and I've used and shared this template enough now that I thought I would share it with all of you.  Every company is different and my experience has been mainly around Business to Business companies but in general I think the flow works.  The slide where you describe current customers will change for a business to consumer play but otherwise the rest applies. 

Here is the flow:

• The vision
• Market opportunity
• Customers
• The business problem
• What is the product/solution
• Value proposition
• Sales
• Partnerships
• Acquiring and retaining customers
• Revenue model
• Development plan
• Team
• Current customers/pipeline
• Fund raising
• VC fit

It's up on Slideshare and anyone can download it.
Am I missing anything?

Rocket Watcher VC Fundraising Template

View more documents from April Dunford.
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Looking for the Winner when Markets Collide

Some of the most interesting ideas for new startups come from the intersection of markets.  If I look back at some of the V1 products I have worked on I see it over and over again. 

One thing to keep in mind when developing the messaging and positioning around such products is to make sure you are targeting the right buyers.  Whenever there are markets colliding there will be one side that always "wins" over the other in the gray space in the middle. You can probably still make sales to both sides but selling to the winning side will be much, much easier.

While I was working with the Nortel Incubation program, we were specifically focused on the points where the traditional Telecom space was bumping into the world of IT.  Web.alive was a great example of a product that took traditional voice and text communications technology and applied it to creating a more immersive, interactive collaboration environment.  When we spoke to customers it was clear that when IT-based collaboration and voice functionality collided, collaboration was the winner.  It was the IT groups that did the technical assessments of the product and the traditional telecom folks weren't even at the table.  Trying to position this product as "telecom" and selling it to that side of the house would have been pointless.

A conversation with the CEO of a startup I had this week gave me another example of this.  His company's product functionality falls exactly into the communications side of the house. When they took their product to market, they made sure they had messaging and positioning that made sense for a comms buyer and when they started having meetings, the buyers loved what they had to say.  As time went on however, they noticed that sales were slow to close and many didn't close at all.  When they took a closer look, it became clear that the IT buyers had a greater say in the purchase than they thought because increasingly the product was being used as infrastructure under an IT application.  The company re-positioned what they had for the IT buyers and sales took off.

Is the product you're working on talking to different intersecting markets?  Are you sure you are selling to the winning side?

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Startups and The Vision Thing

David Crow has a thoughtful post about how startups need to think through their exit strategy in order to make smarter decisions along the way to make it happen.  He talks about how he's surprised that almost every startup he talks to has a plan to get acquired by one of the big guys.  Here's an excerpt:

When I talk to startups everyone seems to think that acquisitions are a dime a dozen. That even based in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Waterloo that they are prime acquisition targets for Microsoft, Google, Oracle, Cisco and other Valley companies. Which surprises me! Sure all of these companies have done Canadian acquisitions, they are the exception and they are done for very specific reasons.

While I agree that successful tech IPO's are rare (especially right now) and that a venture-backed enterprise must have a realistic exit strategy, I also think that the focus on exits at the very early stages of a company can be an innovation-killer.  Particularly when it stops companies from thinking about the bigger picture of how they might really disrupt a market.

As a consultant, I've had a chance to talk to a large number of startups here in Toronto.  One of the things I find really frustrating is how few of them have a longer term vision for the company.  Most of the companies I talk to have a product idea.  While they can certainly see their product growing and getting popular, the "vision" for the company seems to end there, with the obvious ending being, "...and then we get acquired by a big company."  This happens so often I worry that some of these companies actually started with a dialogue around "so what does Google want to buy and how can we build that?", instead of insight into a key customer problem or an inadequately addressed hole in a market.

Setting out to build a company to be acquired, I worry, stops them from thinking bigger about how they can potentially transform the markets that they are in.  A VC said to me recently "Lots of folks come in here with ideas that make great products, and decent businesses but not great companies."  A great company takes vision.

Are you just a "vendor" to your customers?

When you work at a big company you can clearly see how important a company's vision is to customers, particularly larger ones making big ticket purchases.  A half-million dollar software purchase is going to get amortized across at least 5 years (if not more) and customers want to know that you aren't just building products for today but that you understand the future of the market.  The key word here is "market", not just the future of your own particular product. 

The CMO at my last job told me a story about how shortly after leaving IBM to join a new company she had a meeting with the CIO of a key account.  At one point in the meeting the customer said "I talk to a lot of vendors like you."  She was stunned.  She said, "He called me a vendor!? Could you ever imagine being called a "vendor" when you were at IBM?"  Indeed I could not.  Not every company loved us but at IBM we weren't some "vendor" trying to squeeze our monthly PO out of our customers - we were working with the company at a strategic level.  Customers weren't just betting on our products, they were betting on our view of the future of technology as it related to their businesses.  Oh and by the way, they were willing to pay a premium for that.  Vendors?  Customers negotiate hard on price with those guys because at the end of the day, vendors are replaceable.

Ability to execute

The trick for startups of course is that even if they do have a compelling vision, they need to be able to realistically map the steps that get them there.  There's a reason those Gartner magic quadrants have vision plotted against ability to execute.  One without the other doesn't count for much.  But just because you're small doesn't mean you can't find a way to punch above your weight. Picking a starting target market where you can dominate and then use as a launchpad for other markets is key.  Finding the right partners and/or sales channels that can increase your reach is also important. 

Startups get acquired when they cause pain

So coming back to the question of exit strategy.  In my experience (I've been at companies that have been acquired 3 times and have been on the acquiring side 4 times) the main reason companies get acquired is because they are causing the acquiring company pain.  They're stealing customers, they're causing customers to re-evaluate the status quo, they're slowing down the buy cycle for the big guys.  In short, the startup is causing such pain that the larger company is willing to pay some big dollars to make it stop.  Trust me, a new product in the market doesn't cause IBM pain.  A company with a new vision for the market that customers are interested in is another story entirely.  Get the attention of your customers and the market takes notice.

None of the companies I worked for when we were acquired started out trying to build something that the acquiring company wanted to buy.  Just the opposite - we were trying to put those guys out of business because we believed we were the better choice for customers.  Similarly, on the acquiring side we bought small companies for innovation, for a way to help us own the future in the minds of customers.  We didn't purchase "vendors".

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Will PR own Customer Relationships?

Todd Defren over at PRSquared (an awesome blog for PR folks that you should read) raises an interesting question about the future of PR and poses that the role of PR is shifting.  Here's an excerpt:

When people talk about the “Death of Public Relations,” it doesn’t bother me at all.  I know what they are talking about.  They are talking about the death of MEDIA RELATIONS.

That’s what PR’s been all about for the past 50-odd years.  After all, during that era, the only way to reach the masses in a reliable way was through mass media.

Now that that’s changing, our approach can change.  PUBLIC RELATIONS can fulfill its mandate to improve RELATIONS with the PUBLIC.

Media Relations will still have a role.  PR will not be subsumed by Customer Service.  PR has a role as an overlay; a facilitator; we serve as both a counselor and tactician  across these areas.

That got me thinking - who should own customer relationships inside a company?  Aren't product marketers (or perhaps product management) the natural folks to own that?  Why do customers want to have a relationship with you in the first place?  It certainly isn't so that you can serve up marketing messages to them.  They want to have a dialogue with someone who can answer their questions, provide additional insight about the product or service, someone who can act on their suggestions.  Is PR equipped and mandated to do that?

I posted the following comment on the blog post:

In my experience, building customer relationships has been the domain of product marketing (and sometimes product management), not PR. It’s the product marketers that have been running Advisory Councils and User Groups because they have the product knowledge that customers are looking for and the ability to take the feedback they get and bring it to development to act on.

I don’t believe PR will be subsumed by Customer Service but if PR is going to expand into building/managing relationships with customers (and I like the idea of that) they will need to make sure they bring more than just messages to the table.

My point being, that wouldn't it make sense to apply the same principles of 2-way dialogue, collecting feedback, answering questions that we use in User Group or Advisory Councils to building relationships with a broader set of customers?  And secondly, does PR have the product knowledge and the connections to development necessary to do that? 

Todd responded:

Hi April - Those advisory councils, etc., will continue to play a big role, particularly in enterprise b2b settings. I am talking more about b2c examples, I think, i.e., where there are potentially THOUSANDS of prospects/customers to deal with…

So instead of having hundreds of people who want to have their questions answered, there are now thousands of people who want them answered.  Instead of a roomful of people who want you to listen and act on their feedback, there are legions.  But just because there are a lot of them, are they really going to be less demanding?  Will they really want to build a relationship with someone that can't answer their questions or act on their suggestions? 

I love the idea of PR moving into the customer relationship business and I think it's entirely possible that it may end up there.  I think that would be very valuable for companies.  To do that though, would require a change in skillset as well as changes in the way PR operates with the rest of the business, particularly Product Management and Product Marketing.

What do you think?

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Social Media: Just Another Marketing Channel?

There was a study that was reported on recently with the bold headline "Social Media Fails to Manifest as a Marketing Medium".  The article covers the results of a study done by consumer research firm, Knowledge Networks.  Their press release summarizes the results with the equally bold title "INTERNET USERS TURN TO SOCIAL MEDIA TO SEEK ONE ANOTHER, NOT BRANDS OR PRODUCTS" (the use of caps is theirs).  The findings were, according to them "surprising" and included the following insight:

...when Knowledge Networks asked users whether they regularly turn to (social media) sites when trying to make a purchase decision, the highest percentages among nine categories were 4%, for travel and banks/financial services. Responses for clothes/shoes, restaurants, mobile phone services and five other categories ranged from 1% to 3%...

Almost two thirds (63%) of social media users agree that ads are a "fair price to pay" for use of these sites and features; but a much smaller proportion (16%) say they are more likely to buy from advertising brands. "Staying connected" – to friends and family, as well as meeting new people – is by far what is "most liked" (54%) about participating in social media.

To summarize - this study showed that when I want to buy a new car or a cell phone I don't go to Flickr or Last.fm or YouTube or Twitter to find out which brand I should buy.  According to this study, consumers "surprisingly" don't go on Facebook and browse the ads to make purchase decisions. (Note the list of sites included in the study notably leaves out those specifically devoted to reviewing or talking about products/services such as Amazon, Chowhound, Edmunds, Epinions or the like) 

I grew up in Business to Business marketing where we smirked at the "spray and pray" marketing we saw over on the Business to Consumer side.  We weren't trying to sell to just anyone.  We had target markets and more specifically, target companies within those markets we wanted to sell to.  Our marketing was about establishing relationships inside those accounts in order to be in a position to someday, when the opportunity arose, sell something. Sure, if we had enough budget we did some traditional advertising but it was more about awareness (so that the CIO, when you finally did meet her, had at least heard of your company) than generating leads.  Big ticket sales were about relationships not jingles or impulse buying behavior. 

Building relationships when you are target account selling is fairly easy to do because you can easily identify the folks you want to talk to and each sales person is working a relatively small number of relationships at any one given time.  At the corporate level you can have Customer Advisory Councils and user councils to help extend those relationships beyond the sales rep.

Historically for business to consumer markets, building a relationship directly with customers was difficult if not impossible to do.  How could you ever reach all those people in a way where they could talk back to you?  Before social media relationship marketing really wasn't something that Business to Consumers marketers did.  The tools in their kit bag were about broadcasting a message out, often as broadly as possible, to consumers while they were doing something else (watching TV, listening to the radio, driving, etc.).

Now we've got social media that allows both BtoC and BtoB marketers to engage in a dialog with individual customers and users to give them a much deeper, more nuanced understanding of the products and services being offered and in turn gain a deeper understanding of what customers like and dislike about the offerings.  As a "marketing medium" social media has more in common with a user group than it does with a "channel" like television or print.  It isn't "just another channel" as I've frequently heard it referred to by marketers just getting started with social media.

Saying "Social Media Fails to Manifest as a Marketing Medium" is like saying talking to people fails to manifest as a marketing medium.  Trying to force fit social media into becoming a marketing channel similar to non-interactive, one-way channels like TV or print misses the point of why social media is interesting and important to marketers.

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5 Not Obvious Reasons Product Marketers Should Twitter

Thomas Fuchs Martin over at webproductblog.com had a great post called "the 7 reasons why good product managers must be on Twitter" which covers the big reasons like listening to customer feedback and connecting with other PM's.  This then got me thinking about other perhaps less pressing reasons to be on Twitter and I give you...

5 non-obvious reasons product marketers should Twitter:

1. Communicate Bad News - You thought Twitter was just for tooting your/your company's horn?  Twitter is all about real time information distribution.  You're having a major service problem? Your website just went down?  Your CEO just got arrested?  Your customers will be happy they heard it from you first before they got a chance to get all cranky because they don't know why things aren't working (well OK, maybe not that last one).
2. Spy on the Other Guys - There are actually not that many examples of people leaking corporate secrets on Twitter but you can certainly get a feel for what certain groups are thinking by following the individual Tweet streams. Plus you get to feel like a spy.
3. Get inside the heads of Analysts and Experts - They curse! They make geeky jokes! Watch them in their native environment and understand what makes them tick (or at least have some better small talk topics lined up when you next meet with them).
4. Find People you Want to Hire (and some you don't) - You can learn a lot about a person from their Twitter stream.  I've got a list of people I only know from Twitter that I would like to work with.  That works the other way too. Remember the "Cisco fatty" incident where a person was caught tweeting the following - "Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work." Don't be the manager who hires that person. (OK, it was an internship and she already turned it down, but who knows what crazy stuff YOUR candidate is Twittering...)
5. Prove you're human (so people cut your company some slack when you screw up) - I think marketers vastly underestimate the power of humanizing a brand.  It's very easy to type "XYZCorp sucks" in a moment of frustration.  It's much, much harder to type that when you exchanged fart jokes with the lead product manager of XYZCorp just yesterday.  You think I'm joking.  I'm not.  

Got any others that I missed?  In the comments please.

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What Marketers can Learn from Chris Brogan's "Next Media Company"

Chris Brogan is a social media marketing smarty-pants.  There are a lot of folks out there (in marketing especially) that bill themselves as "Social Media Experts" because, like, they use Facebook a lot, but Chris, my friends is the real deal.  If you don't read his blog you should and following him on Twitter is great because he interacts with everyone.

His latest post "The Next Media Company" is a must-read for anyone thinking about what social media means for traditional media and communications in general and that mean YOU, dear marketing readers.  In it he outlines a set of characteristics that he believes the next generation of media companies should have. Here are a few points I have picked out that I think are really important for marketers to think about:

• Stories are points in time, but won’t end at publication. (Edits, updates, extensions are next.)
• Media cannot stick to one form. Text, photos, video, music, audio, animation, etc are a flow.
• Everything must be portable and mobile-ready. (Mobile devices need to evolve here, too).
• Everything must have collaborative opportunities. If I write about a restaurant, you should have wikified access to add to the article directly.
• Contributors come in many shapes: onstaff, partner (how pros like TechCrunch link to Washington Post), guest (for love and glory only), and conversational come right to mind. Who else?
• Collaboration rules. Why should I pick the next cover? Why should my picture of the car crash be the best?
• Everything is modular and linkable. Everything is fluid. Meaning, if I want the publication to be a business periodical, then I don’t want to have to read a piece about sports.

Now go back and think about your company website, your marketing materials, your customer facing information in any form.  How much of that is interactive/collaborative/fluid?  How much of your customer facing communications crosses media types?  How much of it is mobile-ready?  Is all of your customer-facing content being created inside the organization?  Do you make your customers read a bunch of stuff that isn't relevant to them, just to get at the bits that are?  Do you collaborate with your customers?

If you are in marketing, you are in the communications business and the way we are communicating is changing, in my opinion, for the better.  The next great marketing company is going to be thinking a lot about the same things the next media company is thinking about.

ProductCamp NYC

On Saturday July 18th I'm going to be at ProductCamp New York and so should you.

I moved back to Toronto after spending a few years in manhattan in 2006.  When I lived in New York I was really surprised at how few tech community events there were (especially when I compared it with Toronto, where literally I can find a geeky event every single night of the week if I'm looking for one).  It's been a few years so I'm sure things have changed but I'm looking forward to this event because it's exactly the sort of thing I was always looking for when I lived there. 

The great thing about the un-conference style of event is that the attendees get to set the agenda.  I'd like to lead a product marketing discussion and have a handful of topics I am thinking about including:

• Why product marketers should be on Twitter

• Startup product marketing mistakes and how to avoid them

• Segmentation - how to get started and get concensus

• Storytelling in product marketing - ways to use stories to bring your value propositions to life

• How to engage customers and prospects using social media

What do you think would make a good topic?  Leave me your ideas in the comments, or if you're shy, click on link below and let me know what you really think (it's totally anonymous).

Click here to vote on a topic or propose a new one.

If you live in or around new york make sure you come to this event and when you do, make sure you say hi to me.

**Update***

Here's what I've heard from the poll so far (you guys are awesome!):

1. Storytelling in product marketing - ways to use stories to bring your value propositions to life
2. Best practices for pricing analysis and risk assessments
3. Why do North American's believe that a worldwide market is bounded by The Atlantic (on the East) and The Pacific (on the West)?
4. How and why on buyer personas? More on the how.
5. 5 startup marketing mistake to avoid
6. April, the topic of 5 Startup mistakes to avoid is a timely topic. Go for it!
7. 5 mistakes to avoid - great!
8. Importance of "creativity" in PM for start-ups, esp. for cutting through the clutter.
9. "whole product' marketing for startups.
10. Finding, keeping good PM people
11. Why great products get beat by good products with great marketing?

 

Product Launch: Wolfram|Alpha Lessons

You might not have heard of Wolfram|Alpha yet, but you will.  The purpose of this post isn't to get into what it is or what it does.  Instead what I wanted to do is highlight a few things that I think that team is doing well from a Product Marketing perspective.

• They understand that positioning is everything - Is it a search engine?  No way!  Positioning is going to be the most important thing for the success of this product because nobody can successfully take on Google in search.  The team behind Wolfram|Alpha seem to understand this and they are very clear in their positioning that it is not a search engine.  It's the first question they answer on the FAQ.  What they can do better than Google is answer certain kinds of questions.  Now, they could have easily gone down the road of Cuil and positioned themselves as something "like Google but better", but instead they are a "computational knowledge engine".  Now, I do have a complaint that the home page doesn't really explain what the heck a computational knowledge engine is or does but it doesn't matter all that much because....
• Usage examples (and more) on the home page - New to Wolfram|Alpha?  No problem, just have a little look at the sidebar to the right and away you go!  Man, if every Web2.0 application had this, I personally would do a lot less clicking around trying to figure out what the heck I should be doing. 
• The usage examples are cool and work - You might laugh at how obvious this is but I recently was on a web2.0 travel site where I searched on "Paris" after it suggested it as an example search and found a page with almost no content on it.  One of my biggest complaints about Cuil was that I was sure that it could do SOME searches better than Google but it never gave me any clues as to which those might be.  The Wolffram|Alpha guys nail this one and have an extensive set of examples that show the product at it's best.
• There's additional help for new users - Examples by topic, a visual gallery of examples, an introductory video, an intro by Stephen Wolfram, a one page summary.  If you get to the site and can't figure it out, frankly, you just don't want to.
• Appeal to your early adopters - It's an oldie but a goodie that Google has used for years but if you hide a bunch of jokes in your product that only those who go looking will find, well, folks will go looking.  The Wolfram|Alpha easter eggs were popular.

All of this preparation and positioning has paid off for Wolfram|Alpha so far.  The coverage, in general, reflects the positioning well.  Mashable's Stan Schroeder's article Five Things Wolfram Alpha Does Better (And Vastly Different from Google) says:

Wolfram Alpha is not a search engine. Perhaps it will one day become one, but currently it’s exactly what its tagline says: a computational knowledge engine. However, it looks like Google, it provides you with answers and therefore most users will try to use it as a search engine, which doesn’t always yield good results. Once you start asking it the right questions, it’ll give you better answers.

Even the negative coverage tends to get the message right (and these folks tend to be disappointed that is isn't more of a "Google killer").  PC World had this to say in Wolfram Alpha the New Geek Almanic -

The company calls Wolfram Alpha a "computational knowledge engine," which is probably the best description, but only after you've actually seen Wolfram Alpha in action so you know a "computational knowledge engine" when you see one.

I believe Wolfram Alpha will be popular with people who find certain features that the simple search query-style user interface is well suited for. Or who understand what you get when you enter a city name or a date or whatever else they are interested in.

Now, all of this said, some coverage still did the Google vs. Wolfram|Alpha direct comparison.  Wired did it for laughs in their piece Wolfram|Alpha Fails the Cool Test, and Slate's Farhad Manjoo takes on the question of whether or not Wolfram|Alpha is a search engine in his piece Like Google Only Much, Much Worse by saying:

This is the eternal problem for any wannabe Google competitor. Wolfram Alpha doesn't revolutionize search; at best, it adds a marginally useful new layer on top of it. But Google can easily co-opt such improvements—and suddenly everyone's got a better Google.

The world seems to want an alternative to Google and any company coming into any adjacent space has got its work cut out for it to make the world see it in a different light.  Only time will tell but I have a feeling we will be hearing more from the Wolfram|Alpha folks.