Tuesday, August 20, 2013

An Interesting Cross-section of Marketing Spending

I came across this post, The Battle for the Marketing Cloud, on Pandodaily yesterday. Mostly, it's an overview of the current dynamics of the market for marketing software. However, there's an interesting tidbit in this, an overview of marketing program spend percentages -- it's something that you might find useful in presentations and benchmarking your own programs.

Saturday, August 10, 2013

More On US Data Monitoring vs. Cloud Computing

Here is another link to analysis on the potential impact of US data monitoring on the cloud computing industry. This one features numbers and links to an interesting white paper that looks at the potential revenue losses to cloud computing companies here in the states.

Snowden’s gone but his impact on cloud computing remains

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Thoughts on why Apple's current ad campaign sucks

If you've watched much TV lately, you've probably seen this Apple ad.


Sitting around this weekend, it occurred to me what I really don't like about this campaign. In one word, melancholy.

From the quiet, sad little keyboard track to the shots of people having fun at a distance, the whole ad seems more like an excerpt of a depressed video diary. It's like the ad is saying, "I am a sad, disconnected viewer, looking into a world that I can't touch, that I can't participate in. The only sound I hear is the melancholy sound of my own world."

It's like, instead of selling Apple products, their goal was a PSA suggesting that you give up this connected world and trade it in for Prozac.

Monday, August 5, 2013

Marketing and Game Theory

The other day I was catching up on some of my podcast listening. This episode of the Freakanomics Radio podcast, Jane Austen, Game Theorist, has a couple of great observations about game theory and it's relationship to marketing. Quoting Levitt from the transcript:
the difficulty is that game theory really only applies to a narrow set of problems. That’s a set of problems where there are just two or three, or a very small number of actors. And it really does much better when either the game that is being played is repeated an infinite number of times, the same game is played exactly over, and over, and over to infinity, or it’s played precisely once. It turns out that in the middle ground of there being a handful of participants, or a handful of plays, game theory doesn’t often do such a great job of solving our problems.
And this:
There are two things that are important to doing well in strategic settings. And the first one is knowing enough and being skilled enough to put yourself in the shoes of the other person. So you cannot do game theory unless you can say if I do this, she will do that, if I do that, she will do this. Because that is so fundamental to game theory that if you aren’t in the habit or don’t have the ability to understand how someone will react, you have no hope whatsoever. The second trait, which is valuable, is to be able to look many steps into the future. So you can be only so good at game theory if you can think to yourself if I do this, then he does that. Really good game theorists, the most skilled ones will say if I do this, then he’ll do that, then I’ll do this, then he’ll do that, then I’ll do this and he’ll do that. And that’s kind of the difference between a really good chess player and a not so good chess player is being able to see down the road much further.
Rather than comment extensively on these quotes, I think it's worth noting the observations relative to marketing. Many marketing activities involve making grand projections based on a small set of data. It's also a good reminder that many of our activities involve putting ourselves in the shoes of others. Without this fundamental understanding, our ability to make effective observations and predictions sucks.

Sunday, August 4, 2013

Are We Finally Done With 3D Movies?

And I thought I was the only one who thinks that the 3D format sucks! Here's a story I came across this morning that gives me hope...

A DYING FORMAT? PERCENTAGE OF GROSS FROM 3D REACHES NEW LOW.

Saturday, August 3, 2013

Exploring the Impact of Government Data Monitoring

I don't have to comment on here, but I came across a couple of noteworthy stories that you may or may not have seen in this weeks news.

First, this story about a family who discovered that a coincidental Internet search of "pressure cookers" by the wife and "backpacks" by the husband resulted in "how to get a visit from the cops".

Next, we have this piece from the Guardian, looking at the potential impact of government data monitoring programs on cloud computing. Will this be the death of the Internet?

Full disclosure: this post is published on Blogger, a Google product, and is accessed over the Internet. Therefore, it is potentially subject to the concerns raised in the above stories. Caveat emptor.