The sale is better because the sign is bigger

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Jun 19, 2010 in Marketing | 8 comments

At the grocery store, a husband and wife were arguing over a $3 bag of crackers while I tried to vanish in plain sight.

Husband: Look, there’s the crackers we want. And they’re on sale, 10% off.
Wife: I have a coupon for $1 off, let’s use that instead.
Husband: You can’t use both. The 10% sale is better.
Wife: How would you know? The coupon is for a dollar. I think that’s better.
Husband: No! The sale is better!
Wife: No it isn’t! I’m pretty sure the coupon is better!
Husband: The sale is better, you stupid [expletive]!
Wife: Why?
Husband: The sale is better because the sign is bigger!

The power of marketing is such that a bigger sign can defy the laws of mathematics to the computationally challenged.

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The trouble with innovation

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Jun 18, 2010 in Marketing, Sales | 7 comments

Take a look at the Zapthrottle Mote Extractor!

It’s amazing – it’s got the ability to transform any free state element into crystallized elements! Cloud of fog? No problem – the Zapthrottle Mote Extractor will convert it into incredibly handy Crystallized Air. Steam cloud? Crystallized Water and Crystallized Fire are just a button’s press away! Contact a local 305+ engineer to buy yours today!

What do you mean you don’t want one?

This is the greatest dilemma of innovation – when you’ve got something that is authentically new and innovative, you will have incredible difficulty helping people to understand even what it is, much less why they want one. Most of the things we call innovative are spins on existing things, and for good reason – it’s easier to sell someone on an idea they understand already.

• Email was innovative for its delivery speed and cost, but the idea of sending a message to someone else in the written word was not new, and thus it was adopted with relative speed because everyone understood what it did.
• A DSLR camera is exactly the same conceptual device as a film camera, minus the film part.
• The iPad isn’t innovative at all, which is what makes it sell so well – it’s a very large iPod Touch, and anyone who has used the iPhone OS immediately understands and gets it.

True innovation requires your brain to first comprehend what something is, figure out if it’s useful to you, and only then finally decide whether or not you’re going to purchase it.

If you’re a marketer who is trying to market something that is legitimately innovative, this is one of the few times that I’ll strongly recommend a case study, or multiple case studies, so that you can get over the first two hurdles with a prospective customer as quickly as possible. Without those examples of how something innovative can be used, you’re leaving it up to the mind and imagination of the prospect to create value for themselves, and your sales will deeply suffer as a result.

That said, if you can create something truly innovative and valuable, the landscape is yours for as long as you can hold onto it.

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Are you ready for the Twitpocalypse?

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Jun 16, 2010 in New media, Twitter | 21 comments

UPDATED: Twitpocalypse postponed to August 31, 2010

Original:

Are you ready for the Twitpocalypse?

On June 30, 2010, Twitter will change forever. For many of you, your favorite widgets, sites, clients, and applications will shatter. Twitter will simply stop working for you in the way you’re used to.

Why?

Twitter announced a really, really long time ago that on June 30, 2010, they’re ending support for basic HTTP authentication, and requiring that all applications that access Twitter via the API change to OAuth authentication. This is being done for security purposes, to make Twitter more secure and accounts less vulnerable to hijacking.

How do you know if you’ll be affected?

Simple. Any application, site, widget, etc. that requires you to type in your Twitter username and password will stop working once Twitter flips the switch. This includes software like popular desktop clients, iPhone apps, and services like TwitPic and many others.

Any application, site, widget, etc. that requires you to “authorize” an application will continue to work as intended.

What can you do if you will be affected?

Plan for a short time to use the Twitter web site until your favorite tools convert over to OAuth if they’re not already on OAuth. Contact the manufacturers of your favorite tools to let them know to switch over to OAuth if they still ask you to type in a username and password today. Find alternatives to your favorites on sites like OneForty.com by searching for applications which specifically use OAuth. If you’re highly dependent on an application or service that uses Basic Authentication and there’s no sign it’ll be ready for the switchover, let your friends and followers know where to find you besides Twitter.

Ultimately, the switch to OAuth is an important one and a good one, but there will definitely be some pain along the way. Be ready now.

Get this and other great articles from the source at www.ChristopherSPenn.com! Want to take your conference or event to the next level? Book me to speak and get the same quality information on stage as you do on this blog.

Strengths, weaknesses, tanks, DPS

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Jun 15, 2010 in Marketing, World of Warcraft | 9 comments

Strengths, weaknesses, tanks, DPS

I asked on Twitter the other day:

“Assume you can do only one. Do you enhance your strengths or mitigate your weaknesses? Why?”

The responses were amazing and overwhelming.

BrianneVillano: @cspenn Enhance strengths so you can excel@something. Otherwise, you are working towards mediocrity.
bryanrhoads: @cspenn Strengths! analogy – Jordan would always be avg baseball player – his strength is basketball – be the best!
bryanwp: @cspenn I prefer to mitigate weakness. Its the weakness that can bring you down. Strength can only help you. What about you?
bryanwp: @cspenn mitigate weakness. The weakness is what can bring you down in a time need. What about you?
christinainge: @cspenn Enhance strengths-no one is without weaknesses, and many times, they lead to growth, if your strengths are there.
djwaldow: @cspenn Easy. Enhance strengths. Bigger payoff to be best at something than so-so. I’m a big believer in focusing on what you are good at
dvautier: @cspenn Mitigate weaknesses. Strengths will shine no matter what, weaknesses are opportunities to learn, change & create a new strength
EQGal: @cspenn Enhance your Strengths! For me the Gallup research supports what just seems to make sense…the positive way to BE!
findenlake: @cspenn Weaknesses. It’s all about working from a solid foundation. A weakness can hurt you more than An average attribute.
hoovers: @jsandford @cspenn Enhance your strengths. But context is key. (I wrote on this here: http://is.gd/cLwj9 (expand) )
jayjaboneta: @cspenn focus on enhancing my strengths according to Marcus Buckingham.
jeremymeyers: @tamadear @teresabasich @cspenn but strengthening strengths implies that they’re not yet good enough, no?
joeshartzer: Stronger strengths make you better. RT @cspenn: Assume you can do only one. Do you enhance your strengths or mitigate your weaknesses? Why?
jsandford: @cspenn Def. mitigate weaknesses; that doesn’t imply “Jack of All Trades, Master of None”, though. Your strengths will still be just that.
kimjinwhan: @cspenn I will stronger than before, if I enhence my strength. And it will covers my weakness.
LeanneStewart: RT @RobHatch: @cspenn Strengths, always strengths. Focus on those for yourself and others, they are the means for addressing weaknesses.
mckra1g: @cspenn Enhance strengths bc what we focus on expands. Knowledge of our weaknesses *is* a strength FWIW. Most r oblivious to theirs.
MKMartin: @cspenn Focus on mitigating weaknesses. “The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.”
pammcallister: Strengths. Works better, easier. RT @cspenn Assume you can do only one. Do you enhance your strengths or mitigate your weaknesses? Why?
RobHatch: @cspenn Strengths, always strengths. Focus on those for yourself and others, they are the means for addressing weaknesses.
sandrapakosh: @cspenn I build on my strengths… even the lesser ones… while learning lessons.
smallbizhowto: RT @cspenn: Assume you can do only one. Do you enhance your strengths or mitigate your weaknesses? Why?
StevenSchlagel: RT @cspenn: Assume you can do only one. Do you enhance your strengths or mitigate your weaknesses? Why?
tamadear: @cspenn Strengthening strengths almost always mitigates weaknesses by default. The reverse, however, is not often so.
tamadear: @TeresaBasich @cspenn Strengthening strengths is an action of building. Mitigation is patching and filling holes….
TeresaBasich: @cspenn Enhance your strengths. Positive focus and effort into what you’re good at helps mitigate weaknesses by default.
TeresaBasich: @cspenn Interesting observation: Men seem to be about weakness mitigation; women seem to be about focusing on strengths. Biology?

Here’s the catch: the question is somewhat false, or at the very least has a catch. Let me introduce you to two concepts from World of Warcraft, tanks and DPS. (for the purposes of this discussion, we’ll group healers in with DPS, for those that know the game)

In the video game, tanks are a type of character that stand in front of packs of monsters and get beaten up so that other players on the team don’t. They protect spellcasters and healers, letting them do their jobs. As a result, tanks have to balance their survivability – a measure of how resilient they are to getting beaten up – and threat, or how much attention they can generate from bad guys, so that the bad guys don’t turn their attention elsewhere.

In the video game, DPS (damage per second) are a type of character that zap, shoot, burn, freeze, or otherwise cause damage to the bad guys. Their sole job is to kill the bad guys as fast as possible before the tank succumbs to the bad guys.

When it comes to managing the various attributes of these character archetypes, DPS have it easy. They MUST emphasize their strength – the amount of damage they can do – to the exclusion of nearly everything else. If DPS are bad at what they do, the bad guys will win because the tank will die, and then the bad guys will beat up the DPS and kill them off quickly, spectacularly, and humorously.

When it comes to managing the various attributes of tanks – that’s a different story. For tanking, you have to balance and mitigate your weaknesses first and foremost because yours is a job of endurance. If your armor is weak, if your gear isn’t up to scratch, you have low stamina, which means you die faster. If your weapons are weak and you don’t know what you’re doing with all the buttons to press, you don’t generate enough threat, and the DPS get eaten first. Whichever is your weakest area is the area you must address first in order to provide maximum survivability to your group. (those who are tanks know all about defense cap, melee hit cap, stamina, avoidance, EH, dodge, parry, block, etc.)

The answer, to the extent that there is an answer, about whether to emphasize strength or mitigate weakness depends on what you have to do. If you’re in a marketing department and your job is to generate content, then you have a very focused function to perform and everything and anything you can do to make yourself a better content generator will show very quickly. The results you generate will dramatically improve even with just a few small improvements. You’re effectively in a DPS role.

Suppose, however, you’re in a marketing department and your job is defensive SEO, protecting your web properties from competitors. Suddenly it’s not just about generating content – now you’re mitigating weaknesses in page structure, managing keyword lists, trying to build links, and trying to steal away link juice from competitors. Rather than aggressively go after one small area, you have to mitigate the weakest areas of your SEO strategy first, then slowly build up strength across the board. Too much strength in any one area inherently leaves other areas weak and open to competitors to attack you. You’re effectively in a tanking role.

Which is best? Neither. Any experienced World of Warcraft player will tell you that a bad tank leads to failure, and bad DPS leads to failure just as easily. They’re symbiotic and collaborative. The toughest part for you as a Warcraft player or business person is knowing which role you’re in and doing it well.

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Photo Friday: New York City HDR

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Jun 11, 2010 in Photography, Photoshop fun | 5 comments

As much as some of my friends who are professional photographers dislike HDR as a gimmick, it’s a fun gimmick, so I do it when I can and when I see the opportunity.

Click for a larger version

This is one of my favorite shots of New York City in HDR, not just because it’s dramatic and stormy, but because of the subject matter and timing. If you’re not familiar with New York City, this is one of the major banks that got hit hard in the financial crisis. The photo was taken a little more than a year ago when the market was in flames, so the appearance of HDR-enhanced doom and gloom over a well known financial institution was quite apropos.

Have a great photo Friday!

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