1. “Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.” Parkinson’s 1st Law
2. “If it weren’t for the last minute nothing would ever get done.”
3. “To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan and not quite enough time.” Leonard Bernstein
Two men changed my thinking about problems.
Marty Chenard told me “all problems are the result of their system.”
Dan Pena shared a vignette with me about a CEO he knew who offered to pay his employees up to $250,000 for their biggest problem. When asked why, Dan said the CEO knew his employees problems also contained solutions to other problems his firm had already experienced or would experience at some point in the future.
What are the three biggest problems you have solved?
Can the solutions be applied elsewhere?
Jay Baldwin the designer of the Ford Econoline camper has created a new type of pickup camper. As expected, his Quickup Camper has met resistance in both the pickup camper and recreational vehicle markets. The ability of an industry to embrace innovation corresponds with its history of having innovated in the past.
This is both a blessing and a curse for the new product developer. On the one hand, industries which show little or no aptitude for creative and innovative thinking are by definition ripe for having their markets disrupted.
On the other hand in industries where creativity and innovation are required for survival each new product introduction can only hope to disrupt.
Product launches in either market have their challenges.
My recommendations for launching the Quickup Camper are as follows:
1. Change the name. The status quo will not willingly allow disruption of their market from within their market with their language. This rules out camper and recreational vehicle term mashups.
2. Clearly define the target market and buyer. Is the market for this product really the camper? If so, construct a new brand name from within their lexicon. Getting mature campers to embrace change sounds like an uphill battle to me. This leaves the 18 to 45 year old market. Since the product has a 21st century look, co-opt 21st century language to brand it. Campod, Pickupod or Popupod could get a lot of mileage.
3. Announce your new product to the media. Lead the audience to your website. Forward prospective buyer information to potential dealers to create your own distribution network.
I signed up for a course a few months ago and then soon forgot about my subscription. I went to the site a number of times and got what I needed. Several months have now passed and there isn’t much new at the site except the promise of more to come.
Tonight I spent twenty minutes at the publisher’s site and another twenty minutes on the Paypal site looking for the “cancel my subscription” button or the “stop taking my money” switch. I couldn’t find either.
Looks like this particular Paypal merchant and internet publisher has harnessed the power of the ’til forbid recurring revenue model.
According to comScore Media Metrix online classifieds have grown 47% from last year to 37.4 million internet users. Craigslist.org has seen its traffic increase 99% over last year’s total and is the online classifieds category leader.
Will the newspaper industry ever be able to get the Craigslist genie back in its bottle?
For some time I have seen the GoogleTestAd show up in search data as a popular keyword query. I decided to dig a little deeper. Google Test Ad even has its own Wikipedia entry. However, tonight I see Google is bidding on their own keyword. The Adwords ad reads: Congratulations! This is a family safe ad. All systems are go! Clicking the ad in turn leads to a Google search results page for Family Safe.
Blog Pulse a service of Nielsen BuzzMetrics has identified 33,773,884 blogs. 59,507 new blogs came to life in the last 24 hours. Although there are numerous blog software providers, I inexplicably acquired Cohn.Wordpress.com and Cohn as my member profile at Technorati. Surely there is more than one Cohn in the blogosphere…
Since Technorati sent my new blog traffic today, I have decided to “claim” my new blog as they have instructed.
Search Marketing Communications 