1) Building a Brand with Personality – “A brand is a company’s most important asset. A company can’t own its facts. If the company’s facts (speed, price, quality) are superior to the competition, any good competitor will duplicate them, or worse, improve upon them, as soon as possible. What a company can own, however, is a personality.” Salesforce.com created a personality around the No Software concept that created an emotional attachment with its customers.

2) PR Doesn’t Require a Big Budget – Salesforce.com treats the media as allies rather than adversaries, providing the top tier journalists with direct access to his contact details. “Position yourself either as the leader or against the leader in your industry. Every experience you give a journalist…must explain why you are different…This does not require a large team or a big budget; it just requires your time and focus.”

3) Piggyback on Your Competitor’s News – Benioff states that “I’m a believer in the power of public relations. It’s significantly cheaper to encourage a journalist to write a story than it is to buy an ad in the WSJ.” What I liked most about Salesforce’s approach to PR is the ability to “piggyback” on competitor announcements. When Oracle purchases Siebel, Salesforce positioned it as the death of traditional CRM. When Microsoft acquired Great Plains, Benioff put together an internal memo together then leaked it to the press.

4) Simplify the Story – Create a simple story that describes how your company is going to disrupt the traditional approach to a problem. Position your technology as innovative and game changing. Then choose some simple analogies that relate your product to something that is current and relevant. For example, “Salesforce.com is Amazon.com meets Siebel Systems” or “Force.com is Windows Internet operating system.”

5) Limitations of Free Pricing – Initially Salesforce.com gave its service away for free. Up to 5 users could access the CRM system for up to one year. Salesforce called this the “seed and grow strategy.” There was no need to have a salesperson involved. However, as time passed Salesforce.com learned that customers weren’t thinking as carefully about Salesforce.com’s implementation as if it had required a larger investment. Users were not conducting the appropriate levels of due diligence nor were they striving to win support of executive committees. With all the buzz you hear about “free” it was nice to see an industry leader recognize the limitations of the approach.

6) Consumerization of the Experience – Traditionally enterprise software has always been complex. An army of consultants or IT staff was required to install the software. Multi-day training sessions were required to instruct the end-users. Screens were intimidating with lots of optional fields that were not intuitive to users. Benioff stated that he wanted to “Deliver applications as web site with easy-to-use tabs. It will be a simple as Amazon or Yahoo!” He commented that” Instead of tabs with books, CDs, DVDs – accounts, contacts, opportunities, forecasts and reports.”

7) Turning Bad News into Trust – As every SaaS company does at some point in its lifecycle, Salesforce.com encountered periods of unplanned downtime for its application. But rather than let journalists and competitors use the information against them, Salesforce responded with complete transparency. Much like in social media, being transparent and forthcoming about bad news makes it less newsworthy. Journalists love to write stories about companies when they are trying to deny or cover-up bad news. But it takes the fun out of the process for the media when the company is the first to announce its bad news. Salesforce.com took the transparency and trust became a strong part of branding and identity.

8) Get Your Customers to Tell You What Features to Build – Another genius innovation of Salesforce.com was the IdeaExchange. Historically companies have invested millions conducting primary research with customers to identify feature gaps and unsatisfied needs. IdeaExchange allowed Salesforce.com to introduce an idea for new product features to its customer base and then monitor how it resonated with community. As a result, the product management team could weed out bad ideas from good. As a result the company could avoid wasting time on building capabilities that no one would use. Benioff describes it as the “global focus group that never sleeps.”

9) Get Someone Else to Build Feature Enhancements – Companies both large and small struggle to build the long tail of features that their customers require. The genius in Salesforce’s Force.com (Platform as a Service) model is that they effectively offload this problem to a community of outside developers. Salesforce.com customers wanted more features, but they did not have the resource to build them. With Force.com the company made its code available for other companies to build their own complementary services. The Apex programming language was released to provide a development environment. AppExchange was created as a marketplace to promote and sell these applications.

10) The IPO is a Marketing Event – Benioff viewed the Salesforce.com IPO as an opportunity to build more credibility for its brand. “Most companies go public to raise cash, which they use to expand, acquire companies, or retire debt…First and foremost, we wanted credibility.” Listing the company on a public market provides not only financial options, but impacts across the whole business. “It’s like a Good Housekeeping seal of approval for companies, and the trust it instills can help retain talent, recruit leaders, expand business relationships, and reassure customers.” Furthermore, Benioff viewed the choice of listing on the NYSE (versus the NASDAQ) as a way to position the company differently. “We are in San Francisco, so people already think we’re flakey; and we’re a dot com, and those are going away quickly…We need the credibility and the panache of the NYSE brand: it’s traditional, old-line, well established…”

Whenever I talk to an outside consultant or marketing agency they ask me what my elevator pitch is.  I tell them I don’t have one.  The pitch I would deliver on an elevator depends upon which building (industry) I am in and who the other passengers (personas) are.  A generalized and consistent message like an elevator pitch is never as compelling as a targeted and customized message that relates to specifically to your situation.  This is the primary reason why I don’t believe in elevator pitches.

Today’s marketing requires targeted messages directed at specific buyer personas.  If I am speaking to an IT professional I would provide a different pitch than I would to a Line of Business (LOB) manager.  Of course, different LOB personas require a targeted message that is specific to human resources, finance, marketing, sales or customer service.  In addition to having different pitches for your primary buyers, I also recommend having specific targeted messages to use with industry analysts, venture capitalists, equity researchers and technology journalists.

I also think the pitch varies depending upon what industry your buyer works in. A customer in financial services needs different messages from those in health care, industrial manufacturing or the public sector.  I also recommend having unique targeted messages for small businesses, middle market companies and channel partners. 

Most marketing professionals will disagree with the approach I am recommending above.  How could we train the sales organization in so many messages?  But if you have a large sales organization chances are that your account executives only focus on one or two customer segments or buyer personas.  The sales representative that is focused upon selling to very large financial institutions only needs to understand the positioning for insurers and banks.   The application vendor that sells back office products only needs to understand the messages for human resources and finance. 

Non-sales organizations are easy to train as well.  For example, there are only a handful of people in the corporate communications department talking to analysts and press.  The CFO and CEO are the primary spokespeople with venture capitalists or equity analysts. 

So while the development of with a diverse set of messages creates more of a burden for marketing organizations, the issue of sales training is not as complex as it might seem.

 There are always newcomers to the world of marketing which need a primer on the available social media tools, but there is real shortage of advanced materials for who have mastered the basics of inbound marketing.  Success is not just about the tools.  You can tweet 10 times a day, publish 100 videos to YouTube, write 1000 blog posts, but you will not have success with inbound marketing unless the content is interesting, educational or provocative.

Last week I came across a phenomenal e-book from Hubspot that provides the best set of recommendations for content ideas that I have seen yet.  The e-book is full of great topic suggestions for blog posts, videos and podcasts.  These are exactly the types of approaches that I see consistently getting loads of traffic.  A few examples include:

• Write a list of some things to avoid
• Relate your content to current event
• Create a list of trends to watch
• Write a review of a non-competitive product
• Publish a first take on news in your industry

The e-Book (100 Inbound Marketing Content Ideas) also offers lots of great suggestions for how to repurpose existing content in alternative formats.  These are great techniques to get more ROI from content you (or others) have already developed. Examples include:

• Publish a weekly or daily links roundup
• Share an excerpt from e-book, webinar
• Create a summary of podcast or video interview
• Share slides from recent presentation
• Create a roundup of last year’s most popular posts

I highly recommend downloading it ASAP.

1. Categorize patents – The authors recommended dividing patents into three different categories. First, identify those which are both being used in current product lines that are poised for relatively high growth.  Second, make note of those which are not being used currently, but might be valuable to other companies.  Third, list those which are not being used and are unlikely to provide much value to other companies.
2. Abandon low value patents – Those patents which are not being used and are unlikely to provide much value to other companies are natural candidates to discontinue.  Large companies such as Dow and Dupont donated selected patents to universities and nonprofit groups.  The donation strategy not only eliminates the need to pay on-going maintenance fees, but it enables tax savings as well.
3. License high value patents – Those patents which are in high growth segments and might be of value to other companies are likely candidates for licensing.  The authors recommend creating a patent citation tree which enables you to visually represent the companies that are most frequently citing your patents in theirs.  These are the companies which might be interested in acquiring your patents.  Co-citation refers to the scenario when other firms repeatedly cite a cluster of your patents together.  You should consider packaging those patents and marketing them as a group.
4. Create a patent wall – By patenting not only an invention but the surrounding processes a company can effectively bracket the competition out of using a particular technology.  For example with Gillette’s Sensor razor it not only patented the blades, but also the high speed photography techniques necessary for capturing microscopic images of the shaving process.  With Gillette’s Mach 3 the company patented the cartridge loading system and the coating process for the blades.
5. Start a Teardown lab – Some companies have invested in laboratories which “teardown” their competitor’s products to identify possible instances of patent infringement.  There are several specialized organizations which will perform teardowns and intellectual property analysis as a service.  Examples include UBM Tech Insights of Ottawa, Canada. UBM offers a wide variety of services including IP strategy formulation, IP monetization and IP defense or leveraging.  For a fee, UBM will dissect an entire category of products to understand the bill of materials, manufacturing process and component costs.  Using powerful electronic microscopes, teardown specialists can inspect the structural analysis of integrated circuits.  Sophisticated software can be used to reverse engineer firmware embedded in the device as well.
6. Create a holding company – Some companies have created a separate holding company for their intellectual property assets.  The holding company has no products, no sales and no operations.  As a result, it cannot possibly be infringing on someone else’s properties.  The holding company can initiate patent infringement suits with very large companies, but without the typical concerns about endless litigation and countersuits.
7. Securitize your patents – Any predictable income stream backed by tangible assets can be securitized.  While home mortgages are the most popular type of securitization the same principals could be applied to the future royalties of a pharmaceutical or high tech company’s patent portfolios.  In addition to securitization, companies can borrow against the value of their patent portfolios. 
8. Acquire patents from distressed companies- When confronted with a patent infringement lawsuit one strategy might be to acquire a small company with a related patent.  Distressed companies on the verge of insolvency often auction their patents to the highest bidder in hopes of generating cash to repay their debts.  The authors provide examples of how both Guidant and several small semiconductor companies have used this strategy.
9. Tax-advantaged strategies – Some companies have placed the economic rights to intellectual property with a holding company located overseas.  US companies can beneift from lower effective tax rates overseas.  Such a strategy can result in millions of dollars in savings for those organizations heavily licensing their patents.

Although the book was ten years old, I still found many of the ideas to be thought-provoking and extremely relevant in today’s marketplace.  For example, consider the following quotation which I think is more insightful than ever in 2011:

“These IP-savvy chief executives recognize that the burgeoning knowledge economy has given rise to a new ecology of competition in which the wars once fought for control of markets are now being waged over the exclusive rights to new ideas, innovations and inventions.  In this new ecology of competition, it is not our land or natural resources but intellectual property that now carries the DNA of wealth creation, the genetic code for competitive advantage. For CEOs and other senior executives, therefore, survival of the fittest will mean mastering the secrets of intellectual property and, like modern-day alchemists, using these to turn knowledge into gold.”

Throughout the book there are a number of interesting anecdotes about how technology companies have suffered the consequences of not properly protecting their intellectual property assets.  For example, I had always wondered why Xerox did not more closely guard the Graphical User Interface (GUI) developed in its Palo Alto research center.  However, the authors explained that in 1975 Xerox was forced to sign an FTC consent decree that required them to license their patented photocopier technology to its competitors.  The result was a tidal wave of lower cost copies from Japan which leveraged the Xerox technology.  In the years following Xerox was less focused on patents especially for non-core technologies such as personal computers.

The inventors of Visicalc did not patent the spreadsheet technology they invented. The lack of protection created an opportunity for Microsoft to build Excel and Lotus to create 1-2-3.  In fact, software was not considered patentable until the 1980s.  And throughout the 1980s many developers in Silicon Valley considered patents to be the weapons of corporate behemoths used to crush visionary innovators.

Another fascinating insight I gained is that the issue of patent litigation is not new.  I was under the impression that patent infringement lawsuits had been steadily rising in recent decades.  However, the authors pointed out that Alexander Graham Bell fought 600 separate patent infringement suits in the 1880s.

It was around the same time, in the early 1990s, that live coverage of the war in Iraq came to television screens around the world. One of the key catalysts to CNN’s growth was the coverage it provided from Baghdad during the Gulf War. I remember sitting in my college dorm room watching CNN reporters such as Peter Arnett and John Holliman who were on the ground in Iraq. When video could not be streamed Bernard Shaw relayed news received via audio transmissions. CNN had negotiated a special agreement with the Iraqi government which allowed for a permanent audio connection that continued uninterrupted during the bombings. At the time the idea of live coverage of political and military events was revolutionary.

In the past few months there have been numerous uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa. Starting in December 2010 a series of protests and demonstrations commonly known as the Arab Spring occurred in countries ranging from Bahrain and Yemen to Morrocco and Algeria. Revolutions occurred in Tunisia and Egypt. However, the way information has been shared during these most recent events greatly differs from the Gulf War or Apartheid battles of the early 1990s. Today, some of the best information is being generated not by the BBC or CNN, but by citizen journalists who are participating in the uprisings. Not only are social platforms being used to organize protests, but they are being leveraged to report the results. One Egyptian activist tweeted during the protests, “We use Facebook to schedule the protests, Twitter to coordinate, and YouTube to tell the world“.

The Arab Spring news coverage is just one of many examples of how social media has significantly changed the role and activities of journalists.  I should point out that the two, citizen and professional journalists, are not competing.   A more accurate way of stating this is that the professional news organizations are able to augment their coverage of political events with contributions from amateur sources.   Professional journalists are benefiting from a real-time feed of news, photos and videos delivered over the Internet.  In the future, as the reliability of citizen journalism improves reporters may not need to risk their lives to report live from war zones. 

Of course, a similar trend is occurring in technology and business journalism as well.  Prolonged recessions and lower advertising revenues are forcing publications to find more innovative ways to capture the news. For example, tech and business journalists no longer need to fly around the world to attend trade shows.  And incidents such as the Icelandic volcano (Eyjafjallajökull) eruption that disrupted trans-Atlantic travel for several weeks have driven the more cautious travelers to reconsider the need for live attendance.  Much of the information can be gathered simply by monitoring live streaming videos, microblogging services and photo- sharing sites.

You might think that the ability for users to gain the benefits of attending a conference without paying the registration fees would be a negative for the tradeshow business.   However, I think the event business is actually benefiting from the emergence of social media. Because people can engage in real-time conversations during and after the event, it is drawing interest back to tradeshow participation and sponsorship.

These are just a few examples of how social media is revolutionizing functions such as journalism and tradeshows.  What is perhaps most interesting is that rather than displacing these functions social tools are being used to enhance the content and experience for end-users.

Perhaps even more shocking is the level of investment that new Silicon Valley startups have been attracting in recent months.  I am still confused as to how Color could get $40 million in venture funding.  It makes you wonder whether Brennan Huff and Dale Doback, better known as Step Brothers, would be able to get funding for Prestige WorldWide in this economy.  Without question, these two created the best venture capital pitch ever!  See the clip below in case you have forgotten.

The level of granularity for requirements definition varies considerably depending upon what industry you work in.  If you work in a Silicon Valley startup with agile development methodologies you may not write requirements at all.   On the other hand if you work for a Federal Government agency you may need to document even the most obvious characteristics of your product. 

I came across this government specification for a lead pipe on the Internet the other day, which I think offers a nice summary of the approach:

• All pipe is to be made of a long hole, surrounded by metal or plastic centered around the hole.
• All pipe is to be hollow throughout the entire length – do not use holes of different length than the pipe.
• The I.D. (inside diameter) of all pipe must not exceed the O.D. (outside diameter) – otherwise the hole will be on the outside.
• All pipe is to be supplied with nothing in the hole so that water, steam or other stuff can be put inside at a later date.
• All pipe over 500ft (153m) in length should have the words “long pipe” clearly painted on each end, so the Contractor will know it is a long pipe.
• When ordering 90 degrees, 45 degrees or 30 degrees elbow, be sure to specify right hand or left hand; otherwise you will end up going the wrong way.
• Be sure to specify to your vendor whether you want level, uphill or downhill pipe. If you use downhill pipe for going uphill, the water will flow the wrong way.

Also, you may want to review the US Military Specification MIL-C-44072C effective 12 February 2003  (PDF file) is a 26-page description of how to produce a chocolate-covered brownie and chocolate-covered oatmeal cookie.  Section 3.2.5.3 provides the exact specifications for the walnuts required for the oatmeal cookie.  It reads as follows:

“Shelled walnut pieces shall be of the small piece size classification, shall be of a light color, and shall be U.S. No. 1 of the U.S. Standards for Shelled English Walnuts.   A minimum of 90 percent, by weight, of the pieces shall pass through a 4/16-inch diameter round hole screen and not more than 1 percent, by weight, shall pass through a 2/16-inch diameter round hole screen. The shelled walnuts shall be coated with an approved food grade antioxidant and shall be of the latest season’s crop.”

Should product managers in the high tech sector take a similar approach to requirements definition?  Not a chance, but sometimes it may seem like that is what is required to obtain the right product from development….

Episode names were aligned with the way fans would actually refer to them.  Examples included:

• The One with George Stephanopoulos
• The One with the Princess Leia Fantasy
• The One with the Free Porn
• The One with Rachel’s Sister
• The One with the Lesbian Wedding

I have found that technology companies use the same type of naming convention for PowerPoint slides.  Everyone from the CEO down the graphic artist that creates the graphics refers to each slide as “the one with…”  In my experience most companies have a slide that is named:

• The one with the map of all the offices (which tells the customer we’re global)
• The one with all of the customer logos on it (most of which are not approved for use)
• The one with the new screen shots on it (that don’t look anything like the current app)

You might also have:

• The one we used at the investor conference (i.e. that the CEO likes and already approved)
• The one we used at the Gartner briefing (i.e. the one that totally overstates our true capabilities)
• The one we used at the Cisco meeting (i.e. the one that promotes the roadmap features we hope to have next year)

Surely there is a better approach to naming slides.  Should PowerPoint artists start to name their creations?  Most companies would arrive at a stuffy naming convention that no one would remember such as “Global Map with Office Overlay version 4.”

I have been disappointed that no startup has created some sort of social enterprise collaboration tool to catalog a library of PowerPoint slides.  The catalog would display thumbnails of each for easy comparison and selection of individual slides.  Users could tag slides the name of the author or terms such as: map, screen shot, Gartner or investors.  One would think such a service would be obvious for Windows Live or SlideShare to create.   Maybe we will see a new business venture to solve this problem in the near future.  Hopefully, it will have a really complex name so that people refer to the tool as “The one will the PowerPoint catalog thingy…”

A new formula of Coke’s iconic soft drink was introduced.  The formula promised a smoother, rounder, bolder taste, which it was hoping would help to lift sales.  Coke did extensive taste tests on the product with nearly 200,000 consumers.  The test results indicated that consumers would embrace the new formula with many selecting New Coke over Pepsi.  The initial launch of the product was promising with noteworthy sales volume increased in regions such as New York and Washington DC. 

However, there was a public uproar in the Southeastern US where residents did not approve of Coca-Cola tampering with its secret formula.  Following the launch of New Coke, a vocal minority of consumers began a public protest against Coca-Cola.  There were boycotts and bottles being emptied into the streets of southern cities.  Over 400,000 letters were sent to Coke headquarters expressing their frustration with the formula change.  Loyal Coke buyers began hoarding cases of the old products in their basement.  One San Antonio man purchased $1000 worth of Coca-Cola from a local bottler in Texas.  Fidel Castro spoke out against the New Coke calling it a sign of American capitalist decadence.  Bill Cosby ended his contract to perform advertisements for Coca-Cola claiming that he had lost credibility by promoting the new product. 

After 79 days of controversy, the company announced that it would re-introduce the old formula to the market under the name Coca-Cola Classic.  When the news broke, Peter Jennings of ABC News interrupted General Hospital to share Coca-Cola’s decision with the general public.  The following day, Coca-Cola’s decision was featured on the front page of every major newspaper.  

Needless to say Coke Classic significantly outsold the new formula after its relaunch.  Coca-Cola chose to keep both products on the market.  The Coca-Cola Classic name was retained until 2009.  The new formula was renamed Coke II in 1992, however, it never gained significant market share in the US.  In 2002, the New Coke was no longer being sold on the shelves of American grocery stores.  Local bottlers still have the rights and capability to produce New Coke, but only a few do.  For example, Coke 2 is very popular in American Somoa and a Micronesian state called Yap.  You can read the full story of the New Coke launch on the Coca-Cola Company’s web site.   It is great to see that Coca-Cola provides it’s view of the story rather than trying to suppress the whole story as other companies might do.  To it’s credit there is amazing consistency with the Wikipedia entry on the launch.

Now let’s fast forward to 2011.  Can you imagine if Coca-Cola had attempted such a formula change this year?  With today’s social media tools the vocal minority would have organized in a much more methodical and impactful manner.  There would have been Twitter #hashtags, Facebook pages and YouTube channels protesting the New Coke.  Hacker groups devoted to the cause may have launched Denial of Service attacks against Coca-Cola. 

I don’t think the New Coke strategy would have lasted nine days in 2011 let alone 79.  Actually, it is plausible that New Coke may never have reached market.  Today’s consumer product launches typically are preceded by extensive online marketing.  It is likely that a groundswell of negative feedback about the change would have surfaced earlier.  Depending upon the levels of success the entire launch might have been aborted.  If Facebook could take down an authoritarian Egyptian regime imagine what it could do to a major product launch.