The Gettysburg Principles for keeping your customers
I’ve got a post at the Harvard Business Review site about what I’m calling (not too seriously) The Gettysburg Principles. The point is that you can keep your customers buying from you if your business...
View Article[2b2k] The power of extreme diversity
Brian Millar has a brief article in FastCompany about his company’s strategy of consulting “extreme customers” to get insight into existing products and ideas for new ones. He writes, “You can learn a...
View Article[mesh] Michael O’Connor Clarke
Yesterday at the Mesh conference I caught the second half of Michael O’Connor Clarke‘s presentation, to a packed house, about how not to use social media for marketing. I’ve known Michael since the...
View ArticleDistribution models that work. Are we finally getting it (them) right?
Is it just me, or are we in a period when new distribution models are burgeoning? For example: 1. Kickstarter, of course, but not just for startups trying to kickstart their business. For example,...
View Article[aspen] Amanda Michel and Matt Thompson on how the media have changed recently
Amanda Michel, who I know from her time at the Berkman Center, is being interviewed by Matt Thompson. She’s pretty amazing: Howard Dean campaign, Huffpo’s Off the Bus, Pro Publica, and now social media...
View Article[aspen][2b2k] Ideo’s Tim Brown
Tim Brown of Ideo is opening his Aspen Ideas Festival talk with a slide presentation called “From Newton to Design”. He says he’s early in thinking it through. He points to a problem in how we’ve...
View ArticleLouis C.K. and the Decent Net, or How Louis won the Internet
(This is the lead article in the new issue of my free and highly intermittent newsletter, JOHO. Also in it, a Higgs-Bogus Contest on particles that would explain mysteries of the Internet.) Louis...
View ArticleDoc Searls: WSJ centerfold!
Actually, it’s more like Doc Searls: Wall Street Journal Cover Boy! It’s a testament to Doc and also a hopeful sign of the times that the WSJ today features on its weekend cover a story by Doc about...
View ArticleThree vendors and/or products to love: Computer parts, music, electric...
I wanted to replace the smashed screen of a white MacBook, and found what seemed like a very good price from Wegener. The new screen arrived very quickly, and was exactly as described. But when I...
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Unstartling presentation
Oy. I fell for an ad today because it promised to tell me four startling things that happen to you before you get a heart attack. The video, which has no pause or fast forward button, is a grating...
View ArticleSubverting ads
I’m a sucker for ads that comment on the dishonesty of ads. For example, I laughed at this one from Newcastle Brown Ale: I also really liked this one as well: I do have a duck-rabbit disagreement with...
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Guess who lost the right to complain about Yelp reviews?
Yeah, I’m talking to you Scrub-a-dub. Way to corrupt the system.
View Article[2b2k] Popular Science incompetently manages its comments, gives up
Popular Science has announced that it’s shutting down comments on its articles. The post by Suzanne LeBarre says this is because ” trolls and spambots” have overwhelmed the useful comments. But what I...
View ArticleHoles, not drills
“People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole.” This gets quoted a lot by marketers. Usually it gets attributed to Theodore Levitt, an economist at Harvard Business...
View ArticleHow to introduce a change in its user agreement
Reddit shows us how to introduce changes in a site’s user agreement. The agreement itself is admirably minimally jargony, but the discussion with the community is a model of honesty and respect.
View ArticleCluetrain meets Reddit
Cluetrain touted the rise of customer voices. We see through the marketing bullshit and we tell one another about it. Fine, but there was always the problem that if you’re a consumer products company,...
View ArticleIf I were Shakespeare…
Well, here’s what I would do if I were Shakespeare & Co., a theatre company in Lenox, Massachusetts of which I am inordinately fond, as consistent readers of this blog know (hi, Mom!). Yesterday my...
View ArticleThe social Web before social networks: a report from 2003
The Web was social before it had social networking software. It just hadn’t yet evolved a pervasive layer of software specifically designed to help us be social. In 2003 it was becoming clear that we...
View Article[liveblog] CV Harquail on generative business
I’m at a lunchtime talk by the Harvard Business School Digital Initiative (led by Colin Maclay) by CV Harquail. (I’m an advisor to the DigInit.) CV says she is a academic and am enthusiast of...
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