stuff we like

interesting approach

…and strategies for figuring out which new things to try and when. Sorta long but good.

This article reminds me of something that stuck with me from a Consumer Marketing class in business school.

My professor (Youngme Moon) pointed out that the old game for advertisers was to describe their customers (or at least their visions of themselves) perfectly, and make their products fit so well in customers’ visions of their lives that the products became identifying…(think about a rugged car commercial that shows an off-roading as a way for someone to feel adventurous and daring even if they just drive it to the grocery store and around the burbs).

With the advent of Google ads (and online more generally), the game changed — advertisers suddenly wanted to describe their products perfectly, and stop attempting to map to the disparate sets of people who might want to buy them.  Since Google returns ads based on what you’re searching for, who you are becomes less important than what you’re looking for and how a marketer can anticipate “if you say you want X, you’d like my product” to buy search keywords.

The idea of self-segmentation seems in line with this, a more open and distributed approach to defining who the people are who are after particular products.  It’s far more dynamic than the old model…

a very interesting response to Fred Wilson’s presentation on earned vs. paid media (posted here)

interesting article on the various ways companies are using Twitter today