Ideaz and confusions

-- by William C. Taylor is co-founder of Fast Company magazine Last month, in an article in the New York Times on the ever-escalating "war for talent" in Silicon Valley , Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a passing comment that has become the entrepreneurial equivalent of a verbal tick — something that's said all the time, almost without thinking. "Someone who is exceptional in their role is not just a little better than someone who is pretty good," he argued when asked why he was willing to pay $47 million to acquire FriendFeed, a price that translated to about $4 million per employee. "They are 100 times better." Zuckerberg's casual calculation reminded me of a conversation with Marc Andreessen, the legendary cofounder of Netscape, and now one of Silicon Valley's most high-profile venture capitalists. "The gap between what a highly productive person can do and what an average person can do is getting bigger and bigger,"...

A number of people have asked us to summarize our marketing principles in a simple, easy-to-remember way. Good thought. Having written (or co-written) 11 books on the subject, I can see how our basic principles can get buried in a blizzard of examples and case histories. What's the No. 1 principle of marketing, at least as far as we're concerned? It's the principle of focus. You narrow the focus in order to own a word in the mind of the consumer. Without a focus, it's very difficult to build a strong brand. And without a strong brand, any company's future is in doubt. While focus should be the key ingredient in any marketing campaign, it's not the whole story. So we developed an acronym called FOCVS that does sum up our key thoughts. "FOCVS," a word using the original alphabet of the Roman Empire, consists of five key elements.   F is for 'first' Nothing works better in marketing than being the first brand in a new category in...

--An article by Al Ries is chairman of Ries & Ries(http://www.ries.com/) Each year, hundreds of graduate schools of business turn out thousands of marketing people. When they arrive on the scene, these newly minted marketers want to make their mark. So they dismiss their advertising agencies and hire new ones. They revamp the marketing plans, even including new systems of compensation for the sales force. They change names, logos, slogans and strategy statements. Welcome to the world of marketing. This happens every year, usually around budget time. Actually I didn't write these paragraphs this year. I wrote them 16 years ago in an article published in the June 19, 1994, issue of The New York Times. Headline: "Marketers, Stop Your Tinkering." That was also the year a USA Today panel of top ad agency creative directors named Little Caesars as the "best ad campaign of 1994." Maybe you remember the Cliff Freeman & Partners campaign. ...

-- By Dave Trott, Executive Creative Director at CST The Gate I’ve just seen a great TED talk by Steven Johnson. In it he makes the point that ideas usually aren’t ‘Eureka’ moments. Someone very rarely goes off alone and has a sudden flash of insight. More usually it’s a team game. It happens in a more crowded environment. With people talking and swapping ideas. Someone raises a problem. Someone suggests a solution. Someone shoots it down. Someone finds a way round the objection. Someone refines the idea. Everyone thinks about that. Eventually everyone agrees it’s a good idea. And off you go. Great ideas don’t come out of limbo. They come as solutions to problems. He gives a great example. Timothy Prestero runs a company called ‘ Design That Matters’ . This is a company staffed entirely by volunteers. Its mission is to use design to help create a better life for people in the third world. One of the main problems is infant mortality. A million premature babies d...

It’s 7.30 in the evening and I am standing here at an overcrowded aisle of a well-lit supermarket. In my hands, I have two bottles of shampoo. Both well-known brands. I can’t make up my mind. All I can remember is that Aishwarya and Shilpa come on television toendorse these. I think both are hot. And the prospect of buying them together excites me deeply. Do they really use these shampoos? I doubt it. Any idiot knows that. I think hard. My thinning hair doesn’t really warrant a shampoo. But we need it all the same. In my bathroom there are at least ten different bottles in various stages of use. But there is space for more. Besides, these are new variants. We need this. I have seen how people are more confident when their hair and teeth are shiny. I have a need to be liked. I am not gullible though. You can’t fool me. I might not know what ‘dirt busters’ mean, but I always buy detergent with ‘dirt busters’. I bought a front loading washing machine last month. And ...

A great article by Kiran Khalap,co founder of chlorophyll (agency, not pigment). Its really worth reading . Creative person or creative professional? Which one are you? Stupid question? Give me 4 min 33 seconds at two words/second to clarify. The shortest (three words), simplest and deepest definition of creativity was provided by Teilhard de Chardin, the paleontologist philosopher whose work has influenced almost all the 20th century thinkers on human evolution. “Creer c’est unir” “To create is to unite.” Outside Andheri railway station in Mumbai, a vendor shouts, “Laal baraf khaao.”  (“Enjoy red ice.”) He unites the coldness of ice with the redness of the watermelon to create an irresistible consumer proposition. On TV, Rajanikant’s heroics unite with the speed of 3G to create the unforgettable ZooZoo Superman. Advertising employs creativity for ‘problem solution’: it must deliver commercial results to clients by solving the problem of influencing their customers. But cr...

Almost everyone has a story related to cars. It doesn’t matter if you’re a die-hard car collector or a college graduate who just bought your first one. A car is almost like a character in the story of a fumbling first date, making a cross-country trip, or schlepping a friend’s belongings for a move. Tapping into that passion is the main focus of Nissan ’s new director, Erich Marx. He has held management positions in his 20-plus years at Nissan and is now in the newly created role as its director of Social Media & Interactive Marketing for Nissan North America, Inc. Recently, Erich talked with MarketingProfs about social media and why it’s crucial for businesses to harness its power. Why does social media even matter for car companies? There’s an unbelievable amount of passion regarding the industry and cars. So, it’s a natural fit. Whether Nissan...