Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department

Great article on integrating marketing with your core business:

http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2009/07/seth-godins-talk-from-business-of-software-2008.html

My takeaways:

• Products for your customers, not customers for your product.
• Commitment before success!
• Be Remarkable. People remember and talk about purple cows, not brown ones.
  
• Don't sell to everyone: Products on the edge are unique and sell when other struggle (Hummer & Mini).
  
• BMW spends a fraction on marketing compared to GM. They spend that extra money on engineers.
• Get people to talk about your products: mismatched socks for teenage girls. "Look at my socks"
• Longtail companies sell what other don't have. 50% of Amazons sales are not at BN.com.
  
• Joel on Software built his own media channel and can easily market products
• Threadless has brilliant marketing... get lots of your friends to go to the site and vote for you so you win.
• 37Signals was brilliant in getting people to share.
  
• Runners in Newton shoes wave at each other.
• Martin Luther was a "heretic", but formed a tribe by being different and stand up.
• Enrich your customers lives and connect them to each other.
  

Really Cool Commuter Bike Company

Check out this cool company. Great idea. Mass customization, great design. Very cool.

Tragedy of the Commons

Jon Udell: Information routing: "In the 1968 essay that popularized the concept, 'The Tragedy of the Commons,' Garrett Hardin wrote:
Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit -- in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all."

Ineresting. I've been thinking a lot lately about how the world is a closed system, and how perpetual increase (revenue, house values, market share, etc) is not sustainable for everyone.

Business Review

I am going to start blogging about exceptional businesses that I run across; exceptionally good and exceptionally bad. Most businesses I interact with are just mediocre, so I want to spotlight the ones that really stand out.