Posts About The Industry feed
FOWD NYC 2009 Recap
Last week we attended the Future of Web Design conference (FOWD) in New York City. We actually volunteered for the day to sit on the other side of the table and see how these events work. We spent the morning at the registration booth helping the nice folks from Carsonified. The rest of the afternoon we helped out here and there and attended the event. We met some great people, heard some fantastic presentations and...Read More »
Marketing Strategy from Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War”
Twenty-five hundred years ago Sun Tzu wrote the Art of War. Washington, Clausewitz, Mao, Lenin, MacArthur, Stilwell, Patton all memorized what this ancient Chinese general preached in 13 short chapters.
If your company is 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th or 10th in market share, you’re a guerrilla. Pay attention to Sun Tzu’s simple suggestion, “Attack a place the enemy does not protect.” Small companies survive, and even become giants in their specialty by listening to this simple advice. For example, Enterprise Rental Cars focused on auto-body repair shops. Enterprise promised to reward consumers who crashed their cars by personally delivering a rental to the body shop. They also rewarded the body shop with a commission. Hertz, Avis, General, Budget, Thrifty all attacked each other for the airport business traveler. They paid no attention to this little company focusing on renting cars to people who crashed their cars. Now Enterprise is the largest rental car company in the world.
Don’t forget Sam Walton’s strategy. He attacked the small towns with his Wal-Mart stores for 10 years before he went head to head against K-Mart. He killed them.
“Attack a place the enemy does not protect.”
The Great CMS Debate
Over the last several months, the topic of CMS (Content Management Systems) has been widely discussed within the office. After several years of doing custom development on all of our projects it was important to find a CMS solution that could streamline projects and lighten the dependency on ruby developers. Over the last year we have stuck with one CMS that has helped offer our clients an affordable solution as well as lowering cost on our end. Now we are reevaluating our options in the hope of finding a couple solutions that can meet project needs in unique ways as well as continuing to do custom development. So here we are.
I should first mention that my initials happen to be CMS, so it seems all too fitting that I should write this post. There are plenty of avenues to go down in regards to the benefits, pitfalls, cost effectiveness, etc. of using a CMS. However, the goal of this post is to get varying overall opinions on what’s important, what isn’t important, and past experiences in regards to a CMS. This will aid in our internal goals but hopefully shed light to users with similar issues as well. Based on input and further research I will follow up with more detailed posts on specific aspects. You might call this a series of sorts.
Strategy and Law #22
I’ve spent 30 years introducing new products into consumer and business-to-business markets. There is no difference in successful approaches whether you are entering a business to business or a consumer market. You must spend 75% of your advertising and promotion dollar on the end user and 25% on the trade.
Massey Ferguson is an example of my first experience with this phenomenon. In 1948 Massey Ferguson was the largest farm machinery company in the world, owning 48% of the global market. By 1978, when they were my client, they were nearly bankrupt. Their market share dropped to 3%.
Here’s what happened. They gave huge promotional money to their independent dealers with no strings attached. For example, the list price of a four-wheel drive tractor was $150,000. Massey gave their dealers a $75,000 dollar rebate to negotiate with their farmer customers, so the dealers
IE6 Support is a Warm Gun
There has been a lot of discussion regarding whether we should stop supporting IE6 and, of course, both sides of the argument are equally as loud and zealous about their reasoning behind their stance. The topic has been discussed, at length, at places like Digg and by people like Paul Boag and Noah Stokes. There is no question that most web developers and designers wish that they didn’t have to deal with the notorious bugs that have plagued IE6 for the last 8 years, but the reality is, we’ve all done fine and we’re still alive in spite of the browser-that-refuses-to-die.
How to ______ Without Being a Jerk #1
A big part of my professional role involves client management and education— putting complex scenarios and processes in simple understandable terms. When faced with a mind boggling question or situation, addressing it in a clear easy to understand manner can build trust and strengthen relationships. The more people understand and grasp what they want and need to know, can mean the difference between a project becoming a big cluster or it running smooth as butter. And above all—the most difficult part—doing all of this without losing your cool.
I want to share a few suggestions—how to handle mind boggling questions or situations like Fonzie when your first inclination is to be a jerk. Read more »
