Musings of a Marketing Maven

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Entries from October 31st, 2007

Competitive Strategy: How to Step Up Your Game

October 31st, 2007 · Comments Off · Bookshelf, Marketing

As a mar­ket­ing strate­gist, I often get a bird’s eye view of how high tech com­pa­nies approach com­pet­i­tive strat­egy. It can be sur­pris­ing to see how lit­tle “qual­ity time” is allo­cated to a thought­ful analy­sis of the under­ly­ing dri­vers of the com­pet­i­tive envi­ron­ment, or assess­ing which moves are likely to lead to the best results. […]

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Learning to Blog

October 30th, 2007 · 1 Comment · Tools & Technology

It’s been only a cou­ple of weeks since I decided to start this blog, and I’m amazed at all the things I’ve learned since then. And the deci­sions to be made. Blog­ging is not for the faint of heart.

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Leopard: Living Dangerously?

October 29th, 2007 · Comments Off · Tools & Technology

Our Leop­ard 5-pack arrived today, ready for instal­la­tion on our Macs. The Mac geek dis­cus­sion boards have been full of cau­tion­ary tales, so I’ve backed up my Mac­Book Pro and will test com­pat­i­bil­ity there before installing on any other Macs. It will be inter­est­ing to learn how Leop­ard com­pares to Tiger (Mac OS X 10.5 versus […]

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Demise of the Fax, End of An Era

October 29th, 2007 · Comments Off · Tools & Technology

I just paid the last phone bill for my fax machine. Sidelin­ing the fax… It feels like the end of an era — yet another unin­tended con­se­quence of email and web-based ser­vices on a small busi­ness like mine.

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A Great Tool for Virtual Project Teams

October 24th, 2007 · Comments Off · Tools & Technology

I often work with an extended team of expe­ri­enced design­ers, writ­ers, web pro­duc­ers, devel­op­ers and so on. Col­lab­o­rat­ing with other team mem­bers — or our mutual client — used to be a chal­lenge before we dis­cov­ered Base­camp from 37Signals. Base­camp offers a safe, secure, inex­pen­sive hosted ser­vice to coor­di­nate our activ­i­ties. It’s light­weight, easy to […]

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3D">Navigating Your City in 3D

October 23rd, 2007 · Comments Off · Tools & Technology

When you live near Microsoft and Amazon.com’s cor­po­rate cam­puses, you can run into some amaz­ing peo­ple while gro­cery shop­ping, enjoy­ing a latte, or exer­cis­ing. Today I had one of those serendip­i­tous encoun­ters. While power walk­ing in the late after­noon sun­shine, I heard about a cool new com­pany that a col­league launched a few weeks ago […]

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Search My Professional Library

October 23rd, 2007 · Comments Off · Bookshelf

Here’s a wid­get that will let you search my library for books on: busi­ness strat­egy, com­pet­i­tive advan­tage inno­va­tion and inno­va­tion man­age­ment brand strat­egy and brand man­age­ment mar­ket research cus­tomer man­age­ment how cus­tomers shop, how they buy con­sult­ing prac­tice man­age­ment The wid­get links to Ama­zon, in case any of the search results belong on your book­shelf too.

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Why I Love My iPhone

October 22nd, 2007 · Comments Off · Brand Matters, Marketing, Tools & Technology

I love my iPhone not just because it’s an object of beauty in its own right, but because the expe­ri­ence of using it is so plea­sur­able, so much of the time.

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Book Lovers, Unite!

October 22nd, 2007 · Comments Off · Bookshelf

I’ve just stum­bled across a won­der­ful resource for book lovers — social net­work­ing for bib­lio­philes. Library­Thing pro­vides a handy way to orga­nize your book­shelf online, and share what you’re read­ing with oth­ers, or dis­cover peo­ple whose read­ing inter­ests over­lap a lot with yours.

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Diluting the Brand

October 22nd, 2007 · Comments Off · Brand Matters, Marketing

The brands I admire most have a long-standing com­mit­ment to their core prin­ci­ples, the things the brand stands for in the mind of con­sumers. Whether you like the brand or not, you know what it stands for. I sus­pect that one of the rea­sons brands tend to zig and zag so much is the impact […]

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