This content from: Duct Tape Marketing VistaPrint’s Blue Ocean Strategy VistaPrint has been around on the web long enough for most people to know something about them. Their success has not been an overnight sensation, but it is a great story. I got the chance to hear VistaPrint founder Robert Keane talk about his story and influence [...]

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing I Don’t Have Time for Marketing The preposterous sounding title of this post is a direct quote from the lips of many a small business owner I have encountered. The root of this problem of course can be summed up nicely in something known as Parkinson’s Law Parkinson’s Law is the [...]

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing Are We Products of Our Entrepreneurial Environments? I’m not sure why this riff keeps running around in my head, but I thought I would pose it to my readers as a kind of fun, but potentially telling bit of research. Owning a business, marketing a business, horn tooting, innovating, fearlessly charging into [...]

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing A Community Business Model For a recent episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast I had an opportunity to learn about a truly unique business located in Ann Arbor, Michigan. My guests, Ari and Mo, are principles in a business known as Zingerman’s Community of Businesses. Zingerman’s started out as a [...]

Here's the #1 most overlooked secret of marketing, of growing your organization, of building trust and creating for the long haul. Actually, it has two parts:

Show up on time. It doesn't cost anything to keep your promises when it comes to time. Show up for the meeting when the meeting starts. Have the dry cleaning ready when you promise. Ship on time. Return that phone call. Finish the renovation ahead of schedule.

Boy that's simple. Apparently, it's incredibly difficult.

If you want to build trust, you need to be trustworthy. The simplest test of trustworthiness for most people is whether or not you keep your promises, and the first promises you make are about time.

Cherish my time. The second part is closely related. It has to do with respect. You respect my time when you don't waste it. When you don't spam me. When you worry about the 100 cars backed up on the road and figure out how to get us moving more quickly. You respect me when you value my time more highly than your own.

If you want someone to think you're selfish, just ask for a minute of their time and then waste it or use it for your own ends. Or automate the process so three minutes of your time wastes three minutes of the 1,000 or one million people on your list.

In a society where so many people have enough, few people have time to spare. When you waste it (by breaking a promise and being late) or abuse it (by viewing your time as worth more than mine), we respond by distrusting you, ignoring you and eventually moving on.

I have a new thing to collect.

I collect pictures of crowds stunned by a baseball bat heading their way. I don't collect photos where anyone is injured, just the ones where people are all weirded out.

This, of course, is a crazy thing to collect, but the fascinating thing is that it's possible at all. All of us grew up in a world of content scarcity, and now we live in a world of content infinity.

That means, for example, that finding a rare song is essentially banal. There are no rare songs (except on LP). It means that finding a photo of what you're looking for isn't the hard part, it's deciding what to look for in the first place.

Of course, it's not just photos or music. It's service providers, freelancers, employees, charitable tools, places to live, vacation spots, dogs to adopt, people to date.

If you find a great baseball bat flying in the stands photo, I'm hoping you'll send me one. In the meantime, don't be afraid of infinity. There's a lot of it going around.

Every day, day in and day out, Tim Manners drips a new marketing idea. He finds something in the news and explains it. And now he has a new book out.

Tim will make you think twice about what you thought you knew.

Peter R. points us to this innovative free service run by Peter Shankman.

You tell him your name and email address, and a few times a day, he forwards you a list of reporters looking for experts to quote for various articles in various media. Sort of like Daily Candy for publicity hounds.

It doesn't work if you answer all the queries. So be honest with yourself, save your time and the reporter's. Just speak up when it's helpful.

Joe Biden is long winded. His voters say so, so does the press. And now his new boss does as well.

The feedback couldn't be more clear. So why not fix it?

Verizon has mind-numbingly bad customer service. People hate to call them. People switch providers just to avoid this problem. So why not fix it?

DiFara's makes the best pizza in New York. But it takes 90 minutes or so to get a pizza. Everyone complains, so why not fix it?

In the case of DiFara's, the answer is easy: because fixing it would make it normal. It would take away what makes the place special. People wouldn't complain any more, but people wouldn't go, either.

If your 'one big thing' is a key part of what makes you successful, how dare you change it.

On the other hand, if momentum or laziness or lack of will (or focus) is the thing holding you back, it's time to get serious. When you remove the one big thing from people's list of objections, your career and organization will take off.

Joe Biden can carry a timer in his pocket. He can become reticent in public. He can, in just one day of hard work, solve his problem. Verizon can invest focus and and money and solve their problem. AT&T can invest and fix their wireless network. It just takes commitment, not a miracle.

New startups can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars racing after a dream: a giant splash on launch.

Just imagine... a big spread in Time Magazine, a feature on all the relevant blogs, a glowing review in the Book Review. Get this part right and everything else takes care of itself.

And yet.

Here are some brands that had no launch at all: Starbucks, Apple, Nike, Harry Potter, Google, William Morris, The DaVinci Code, Wikipedia, Snapple, Geico, Linux, Firefox and yes, Microsoft. (All got plenty of PR, but after the launch, sometimes a lot later).

I'm as guilty as the next entrepreneur. Great publicity is a treasured gift. But it's hardly necessary, and the search for it is often a significant distraction.

It works for movies, in fact, it's essentially required for movies. But for just about every product, service or company, the relentless quest for media validation doesn't really pay. If you get it, congratulations. If you don't, that's just fine. But don't break the bank or your timetable in the quest.

People are fickle, but we're generally rational. When someone makes a choice (hiring, firing, choosing a vendor, buying a soda) they're using some sort of internal logic and reasoning to support that choice.

As a marketer, you win when they choose you.

So, why choose you?

The answer to that question is your competitive advantage. What makes it likely that more than a few rational people will consider their options and choose you or your company or your organization?

Truth: It's rarely a computerized cost/benefit analysis. Instead, it's a human choice.

When the factors that matter to me are processed through my worldview and compared against the options I'm aware of, I will choose you when your advantages are greater than the competition, provided I believe that you're worth the cost of switching.

Key points:

Matter to me: Not matter to you or to the next guy, but matter to me. That's all I care about. (Example: it might mean more to me that my friends use your product than it does that you're cheaper).

Worldview: Based on the way I see the world, the assumptions I make, the truth that I believe in. (Example: If I don't trust young people as a matter of course, I'm not likely to choose you if you're young, all other things being close).

Options I'm aware of: If I don't know about you, you don't exist.

Switching cost: The incumbent gets a huge advantage, especially in high cost/high risk/network effect instances.

Some of the ways you might build or maintain a competitive advantage:

• Access to hard-to-replicate Talent
• Hard-earned skills
• Higher productivity due to insight or organization allowing you to be cheaper
• Low cost of living for you and your staff allowing you to be cheaper
• Protected or secret technology or trade secrets
• Existing relationships (switching costs working in your favor)
• Virally organized product and organization
• Large network of users already and a network effect to support you
• Focus on speed
• Monopoly power and the willingness to use it
• Unique story that resonates with the worldview of your target audience
• Shelf space due to incumbency
• Large media budget
• Insight into worldview of prospects--making what they care about
• Emotional intelligence of your salesforce or customer service people
• Access to capital and willingness to lose money to build share
• Connection to community

Not on this list, at least not prominently, are "we are #1!", "we are better!" and "we try harder." Cheerleading skills are not a competitive advantage in most settings. And, with few exceptions, neither is "we are new." Also, "we are better and I can prove it," is rarely a successful argument.

Here's what your board wants to know:

• What's your competitive advantage?
• Is it really, or are you dreaming it up?
• How long will it last?
• Can your competition copy it?
• Does it resonate with the part of the market that is looking to buy?
• Is the advantage big enough to overcome the switching cost?

Twenty-five years ago today (boy that was a long time) I finished the internship that changed my life. My bosses at Spinnaker Software gave me a lot of room and I ran with it.

Last March, I posted about an intern program I was starting.

I was overwhelmed by the quality of what I got back. (The quantity was expected... interesting internships are hard to find). I heard from students on most continents, with a huge variety of backgrounds and life experiences. And these people were smart.

Unable to just pick a PDF or two, I invited the applicants to join a Facebook group I had set up. Then I let them meet each other and hang out online.

It was absolutely fascinating. Within a day, the group had divided into four camps:

• The game-show contestants, quick on the trigger, who were searching for a quick yes or no. Most of them left.
• The lurkers. They were there, but we couldn't tell.
• The followers. They waited for someone to tell them what to do.
• The leaders. A few started conversations, directed initiatives and got to work.

Want to guess who I hired? (It was a paid gig and five ended up spending time with me in NY on a somewhat rolling basis). If you're hiring for people to work online, I can't imagine not screening people in this way. This is the work, and you can watch people do it for real before you hire them.

As I went to send a note to the 150 or so who didn't make the cut, it felt like a waste. A waste for me, surely, because here were a large number of over-talented, under-employed students facing a boring summer. And for them, too, because I thought some might want a chance to continue the virtual experience.

So I started a group on Basecamp and invited the rest of the interns to try an unpaid virtual experience. The idea was that I'd provide a platform and some projects, and they could (if they thought it might be interesting) participate online. No grunt work, just interesting stuff to try. To my amazement, more than sixty took me up on it. The conversations ebbed and flowed, the work got done (or didn't) but I think everyone learned a lot.

Part of the deal was that active participants would get a shout out here on the blog. So we've put together a PDF of handmade bios of some of the coolest interns in the program. A shortcut for anyone looking for smart folks from around the world.

If I did it again, I'd definitely do it again. I think that smaller, more closely managed projects would probably lead to more productivity, but I also know that when faced with opportunity and freedom, amazing people get stuff done.

If you gave this a try, I think it would be a brilliant move, for you and for the people you work with. It's clear that formal education is failing the smart kids entering our field (not certain what 'our field' is, but you know what I mean). We need to create pathways for students to discover that there's absolutely nothing holding them back.

Karim points us to this update on Kiva.org.

Kiva doesn't fund factory workers on an assembly line. They fund entrepreneurs who are changing a tiny portion of the world. It scales.

Here's a great idea.

What if your new rock group appeals to fans of the B52s? Or if your new book is just perfect for people who like Brad Meltzer? If you have a CD or a book or an idea that will appeal to a certain psychographic, it might not be so easy to reach just those people.

Dave came up with a super idea: go buy a bunch of B52s CDs. Then list them (brand new!) for sale on Amazon and eBay. Price them ridiculously low, like a dollar. The only people who are going to buy a copy are focused fans. Then, when you ship out the CD, include your new CD in the box as well. You've reached exactly the right people (purchasers! who spent money! who are fans!) at exactly the right moment. Why not include two or three in the box? Fans know fans, and they like spreading the good stuff around.

What a shame that Amazon hasn't figured out how to provide this as a useful service. Amazon knows who buys a lot, they know who reviews a lot... why not ask those people if they want a free prize now and then? An influential person would earn the right to a huge number of free samples. Radio DJs used to get them... but now, of course, it's us that are the DJs...

(It doesn't work so well for used cars, of course.)

This works for other fields as well. If you have a massage service that is the perfect complement to customers of a personal training service down the street, why not give that trainer a dozen intro gift certificates she can use to thank her best customers?

MJ points out that the few mainstream publishers that promote their books spend $10,000 or more on ads that don't work. Putting a book into the hands of 1,000 perfect fans may be a far smarter investment.

Thinking small, again. It tends to work. Along those lines, Rich has a neat promo going on.

Day in and day out we run our businesses the best we can. Like anything else in flux the edges get worn, some things just start to get old. The culture around us is in flux also. Things change and so we must adapt. Summer has come and gone for another year - so it’s [...]

I’m surprised this news bite I happened to catch on local TV recently didn’t get picked up more. Recently, a lady called our local TV station, to say that a company whom she purchased from, shipped her order with shredded checks used as cushioning for the product. That on its own is absolutely not OK. To [...]

Tell me if this sounds familiar. You’re at a networking event and someone inevitably asks you….”What do you do for a living?” What do you say? If you’re like most people you have the generic answer, “I’m in the mortgage business” or “I’m an account executive” or ” I own a small business” and you hand [...]

If you really want to work at the frontier of branding, it would be a mistake to focus on communications, measurement or even brand strategy. The place where all the big brand decisions are now being made is brand architecture. Which brands do we want to keep? Which can we afford to lose? How do we transition from one to the other? These are the questions that are keeping senior marketers awake at night.

Most major companies have too many brands at their disposal and, in direct contrast with the 90s, when most looked to expand their brand portfolios, consolidation is now the big topic. Thanks to global expansion, merger and acquisition, and the spiralling costs of building brand equity, major organisations are learning first-hand about the inherent risks and rewards of killing off some brands to benefit others.

Take AT&T - through the acquisition of BellSouth in 2006, the company gained ownership of the leading mobile network brand in the US, Cingular. AT&T does not have its own mobile network brand, having sold the AT&T Wireless brand to, of all people, Cingular in 2004 for $41bn. A year later, Cingular retired the AT&T Wireless brand and transferred its customers across.

Barely three years later, AT&T purchased Cingular as part of the $86bn acquisition of BellSouth. It retired the Cingular brand and transferred all the customers across to... you guessed it...AT&T. In the history of marketing has there ever been a more expensive set of swings and roundabouts?

At first glance, killing off Cingular seemed brand lunacy. It was only six years old, but had already invested more than $6bn in building its own brand equity. In the first nine months of 2006 it spent more than $1bn on media advertising alone.

Not surprisingly, Cingular had strong associations as a modern, dynamic mobile network that appealed to younger demographics. It was the ninth-biggest mobile brand in the world and Millward Brown Optimor calculated its brand to be worth $6.6bn.

For AT&T, however, the advantages of consolidating Cingular into its corporate brand outweighed the benefits of retaining it as an independent brand. AT&T’s chief executive Edward E Whitacre Jr, declared 'AT&T, BellSouth and Cingular are now one company, and going to market with our services under one brand is the right thing to do'. Fair point, but Whitacre needs to find $6.6bn-worth of reasons to back up his claim.

He could start with the marketing savings. Mobile telecoms is a $1bn-a-year branding business and a single brand can soon stack up big cost savings versus maintaining two distinct entities.

Then there is the added strategic advantage of focusing all the resources, staff and leadership on a single brand. Most big corporations struggle to build a single strong global brand - just look at Vodafone - so the challenge of managing multiple brands in this sector is almost inconceivable.

AT&T also believed it could update its own stodgy, conservative and increasingly irrelevant brand equity by associating itself with Cingular over an extended phase-out period. During 2007 the AT&T and Cingular brands were co-branded in stores, in advertising, and across all other touchpoints.

AT&T is betting it can have the best of both worlds: a single AT&T brand that retains all the attractive associations from the Cingular transition. Has it retained them?

As Cingular completely fades into the archives of business history one final chapter is still being written – did the $6bn plus gamble pay off?

30 SECONDS ON... AT&T

- On 1 January 1984 AT&T was forced by the US Department of Justice to divest itself of its regional phone companies.

- It was broken up into BellSouth, AT&T Long Distance, Southwestern Bell, Pacific Telesis, American Information Technologies, Bell Atlantic, NYNEX and US West.

- Of these, the majority had sub-brands of their own. American Information Technologies (AIT), for example, comprised Michigan Bell, Ohio Bell, Indiana Bell, Wisconsin Bell and Illinois Bell.

- In 1993, AIT subsumed those divisions to become Ameritech.

- On 5 March 2006 it was announced that AT&T was to acquire BellSouth for $86bn. The deal was executed on 29 December 2006.

- Of the 22 Bell operating companies that AT&T owned prior to its 1984 divestment, 10 are now part of AT&T following its acquisition of BellSouth.

Sponsored By: Brand Aid

Penguin and Match.com's dating site for book-lovers is a marketer's dream...

He saw her first. Glancing up from his laptop, he found himself utterly spellbound at the sight of the deliciously beautiful, very proper, 40-something woman on the other side of the room.

She sensed the strong, predatory, glance. Glancing icily from over the top of her orange-covered book, she prepared to look disapprovingly at her crude observer. But when she met the gaze of the young, raven-haired man with the computer, she found herself, to her surprise, blushing.

He closed his laptop sharply and stood up. She realised, with a start, that he was approaching her. Secretly thrilled, she waited for what felt like an eternity. Finally, she meekly looked up from her book into his deep, green eyes.

'I am fresh to the old country,' he said with a deep American baritone. 'And I know you don't do this kind of thing often.' He smiled. 'But I just had to head over and make you a proposal that I think you will find mighty agreeable.'

Breathlessly she exclaimed: 'I assure you, I have never been approached in this manner before.' But, oh, the longing... What could this vibrant American have in view? Her mind raced with passionate speculation.

He smiled at her again. 'My name is Match.com.' Suddenly, the handsome American's proposal began to make sense. 'Oh, I see... ' she beamed. 'My name is Penguin. Penguin Books.'

It may sound like bad fiction, but it's a real story of successful partnership, and one every good marketer should study carefully.

Last month,