Comments on: If a PR / Marcom Weenie Wrote This Blog

By: How Product Marketers Are Like Bad Real Estate Agents | The Cranky Product Manager

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 19:44:57 +0000

[...] Weasel”. It really pisses the CPM off and is the reason why the Internet is full of meaningless, watered-down descriptions of companies and products. In the end, this makes prospects mad, generates crappy and [...]

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 18:26:33 +0000

What, nothing about “the cloud”? Web 2.0 and Ajax is sooo last week.

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 12:56:09 +0000

I’m disappointed that “boner-inducing” didn’t make the list

By: gander

gander — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 12:46:46 +0000

MIdlakewinter: That is about the best piece I have seen in a long time, up there with the Sun “You chose product management, DEAL WITH IT” videos.

I have a Tech Dev director who thinks he can play marketing. Just two days ago he got in the face of our sales director on why the channel partners couldn’t see unqualified leads in our CRM. WTF is a tech dev director doing rooting around in the CRM tool?

Also the PR speak could use a “paradigm shift” to keep this somewhat on topic…

By: midlakewinter

midlakewinter — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 12:37:33 +0000

Sorry if you’ve already seen this, BUT the “Enlightened Stupid Marketer” video is amazing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH9vcZO9SKw

By: Paco

Paco — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 04:00:35 +0000

Anybody else LUV watching that new show “Pitchmen”? It’s such a brilliantly simple demonstration of how product development, sales and marketing have been done successfully for over a century in America (infomercials are almost verbatim copies of old boardwalk sales routines in Atlantic City):

1. Find a problem lots of people have.
2. Find a product that solves that problem.
3. Do basic field research and price the product so that people will buy it at enough volume to be profitable.
4. Make a marketing message that clearly and concisely explains what the hell is going on (e.g. the infomercial).
5. Test-market it.
6. If the test is successful, scale up and sell, sell, sell. If the test fails, tweak and try again.

Software marketing is so pathetically caught-up in techno babble. It would be amazing to see Billy Mays create a 2-minute pitch for a software application. Not only would the pitch be completely devoid of jargon, it would probably be clear (and loud) enough for your grandmother to understand.

By: Ivan Chalif

Ivan Chalif — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 03:42:02 +0000

Where’s “Game-Changing”, “Global”, and “Green”? You’ve got “Next-Gen” in there, but it sounds pretty weak with just a soft-g. You need the hard-g trifecta to garner (there it is again) any traction (that’s a good one, too).

By: Whatsizface

Whatsizface — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 02:54:22 +0000

You also forgot “Easy to use”.

Aren’t we all.

By: gander

gander — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 02:15:26 +0000

YOu seem to have forgotten “Platform neutral, virtualized, with unlimited growth potential delivering value add content in a multicontextual environment.”

If you can squeeze in “Solar powered, renewable driven, or hybrid” you can get some extra credit

On a more serious note, I whip of 5 or 6 press releases a year, putting gold into the text. Once it hits Corporate Marcom, the blandest pablum comes back. I no longer get upset at the castration of any decent messaging.