Results tagged “marketing” from KPAO

I was getting my hair cut today, and I mentioned I was going out to dinner for my wife's birthday tonight. I told him we are vegan so we don't tend to go to the kind of high-end restaurants most people do when they are out celebrating. He seemed really interested, tho. He asked what restaurant it was (Vegetarian House), where it was (in San Jose), and what the menu was like (mostly Asian influenced with some American fare, but all vegan).

That got me thinking, what if the tables were turned? What if he were talking about an issue that I was interested in hearing more about? I realized that being a hair stylist was a great opportunity for dissemination of information. They meet with 8-12 clients a day, and they probably have several hundred unique clients. And especially at an up-scale place like where I get my hair cut, these are likely powerful and influential people. You could reach a lot of people in a short amount of time an issue you care deeply about.

But then again, the savvy stylist is thinking about the long-term relationship with the client. It's all about them, listening to their stories, laughing at their jokes, making them feel good about coming to see you. They wouldn't want to risk alienating these folks and driving them away. So maybe it wouldn't work as well as I initially thought.

I just read this article on how the value that the free market puts on a song from iTunes in China is about 1.3¢. And then there's this article claiming that the inevitable price of music is zero, and it will happen in 2011 or 2012.

But that got me thinking... why not throw some variability at the cost of music and see what effect that has on demand? I believe Amazon did this back in the day, showing different prices to different people. And I suppose it can be annoying if you're one of the few that bought the song for 80¢ when the guy down the street got it for 49¢. But it would be interesting to see what value consumers place on a song, rather than what the industry has dictated.

Amie Street is a music site that has a similar model. They start every song out as a free download, and the more popular it is, the more expensive it becomes (capping out at 98¢). But since they are selling more obscure music (stuff you've probably never heard of) and since the price is monotonically increasing, it's not a true free market.

Still looking forward to that day where all the music is free, though. Until then, there's always Seeqpod and Playlist.

Sean O'Malley — a colleague of mine — recently posted these slides on 3 marketing lessons to get your start-up off the ground. I've embedded it below so you can check it out right here.


I'm also working on a similar slide deck on designing with vision. Look for that in the coming days.

I'm sure you're all familiar with getting an Amazon (or other e-tailer) shipment that comes with a bunch of marketing pamphlets in it for other totally unrelated products and services. My thought is to apply that idea on a smaller but more targeted scale.

Say you're a band and you're trying to get the word out to people who might like you. Demo CDs are cheap to produce, and you could easily drop them into the shipping package for items you may have sold on eBay. But the odds of someone buying your bread maker would also be interested in your trance-metal crossover soundtrack are pretty small. So get targeted.

Acquire a large number of CDs that are popular enough to sell quickly on eBay, and similar enough to your music to ensure high likelihood that buyers will be interested in your stuff too. Of course for music these days, shipping atoms is not very efficient. But this was just the random example I picked. It could be done for any product you produce that you think could be successfully marketed to buyers of a second product.

Note you can also list items on Amazon's Marketplace. Just click the "I have one to sell" button on the product page.

The Microsoft hardware group (which makes mice and keyboards) has been supporting the Mac for years. And now they're finally marketing to that audience.

Check out the packaging for the exact same mouse, the first for the PC market and the second for Mac. They certainly nailed the elegant, minimal feel that Apple has. But my question is, why don't they apply these same design principles to the PC packaging? Do PC consumers really want a massively cluttered packaging experience?