I was thinking about technology on my way back from work this evening (it’s short enough to walk, but long enough to get a few minutes to myself). I was thinking about the first PC I ever got which was an 8086 (with a Turbo button to boost the speed from 4.77 MHz all the way to 10 MHz), CGA graphics and 2 x 5 1/4 disk drives. Oh, and it also had 640k. Now that’s a far cry from…
Some products are easier to sell online than others. Take books for example, Amazon is doing a magnificent job in cornering that market, and that is partly down to the nature of books. They are easy to store, easy to ship and most people who buy books will come back and buy some more. Other products are a bit harder. Try selling the diet pill Anoretix for example. First of all, selling pharmaceuticals is much harder than shipping books, the…
I’ve just come back from my MBA gradutation in Edinburgh and had an excellent experience as a consumer looking for a place to stay. As my parents were joining us for the trip, we decided to get an apartment rather than stay at a hotel as this would give us more flexibility as well as allow opening up other options for us. Camille found a services apartment called Castle Apartment which was just down the road from Edinburgh Castle. The…
I was watching a snippet from Fox Business News on a company called www.salesconx.com which consists of a marketplace where companies can look for introductions and sales leads supplied by sales professionals all over the country. Here’s the video: The company is described as “LinkedIn meets eBay” which is an interesting concept. Companies bid for the services of sales professionals who are independent agents, not employed by Salesconx. It’s great seeing these new marketplaces emerge and providing a platform for…
Some jobs are easier than others, even if they are pretty similar. Take for example working on the sales team of a company that has a monopoly in a certain product. Marketing in this case is rather easy as it involves maintaining the image of the company and persuading people that the company is really serving them the best they can. On the other hand there are the really tricky marketing roles. For example, take Pepsi, basking forever in Coca-cola’s…
A lot has been written about how effective a proper marketing campaign can be; however the corollary of that is also very true. A botched advert can turn people away, negatively damage your brand and have long term repercussions on the life-cycle of your product. You tend to see companies taking evasive action from this sort of negative marketing when a celebrity has been disgraced and Marketing Advertising companies start pulling out their contracts. For example, Kate Moss lost an…