A brief history of web analytics

As part of a MBA assignment, I had to summarize the history of web analytics.  I thought it would be nice to share it with you:
– – – – – –

The official definition of web analytics by the Web Analytics Association is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of Internet data for the purposes of understanding and optimizing Web usage.   This standardized definition was not proposed until 2006, which reflects how young the field is.  Only until the early 1990s did the use of log files become popular among nontechnical persons, particularly with the creation of Analog, one of the first log file analysis programs that was widely available on the Internet, by Dr. Stephen Turner in 1995 . Commercial web analytics started with the founding of WebTrends in Portland, Oregon in 1993, even if they didn’t start selling software until 1995 .  Other important companies are NetGenesis (established in 1994 by MIT graduates), Accrue, Omniture, and WebSideStory (all founded in 1996). By the year 2000, web analytics vendors were struggling with web server logs as optimal sources of data and JavaScript tags emerged as a new standard for collecting data from websites.  JavaScript log files are easier to maintain than web server log files and their use shifts the responsibility of collecting and processing data from internal company IT departments to web analytics vendors in most cases.  Currently the three big vendors are Coremetrics, Omniture, WebTrends.  Mid-market vendors are Unica, Yahoo! Web Analytics and ClickTracks.  Consolidation is common in this industry, for example Omniture acquired the previously fourth big vendor, Visual Sciences (better known as WebSideStory), and Yahoo! Web Analytics was born out of Yahoo!’s acquisition of IndexTools.  Finally there are several basic solutions such as StatCounter and Webalizer.  Google reshaped the web analytics industry in 2005 when it purchased Urchin and, subsequently, released it as a free tool under the Google Analytics  name.  This made first-class web analytics tools available to anybody for free.  The key to success in this industry is constant innovation such as the use of heat maps (cluster of clicks on a web page and their density using colors) from CrazyEgg .  The latest trend in web analytics is moving away from prepackaged key performance indicators (e.g. number of pageviews) towards key actionable insights (e.g. visitor’s primary purpose of visit).  The key trendsetter in the web analytics industry is Google with the Google Analytics tool and Analytics Evangelist, Avinash Kaushik.

Revisiting Flickr versus Snapfish versus Photobucket versus Slide versus Shutterfly


Yahoo! Flickr - 468x60

The response to the post:

Flickr versus Snapfish versus Photobucket versus Slide versus Shutterfly

has been great! Thank you very much for reading it. Here is a breakdown of the number of daily readers provided by WordPress BlogStats

big-5-stats

I am really happy that my Spanish colleague, Gemma (who writes a great web analytics blog in Spanish called ¿Dónde está Avinash cuando se le necesita?, a great tribute to Avinash Kaushik) found some inspiration to use Google Trends (one of my personal favorite tools!).

Another great tool for broad research is Google Ad Planner (currently in Beta, so you need an invitation, mine took about a week to arrive).

Let’s take a look at the BIG 5 (Flickr, Photobucket, Snapfish, Shutterfly, and Slide) of online digital photo sharing using this tool:

using Google Ad Planner
Flickr versus Snapfish versus Photobucket versus Slide versus Shutterfly: using Google Ad Planner

Google Ad Planner provides much more in-depth information on a monthly basis (the figures for unique visitors and pageviews are on a 30-day basis).  The reach is for the United States.  As discussed on the previous post, Photobucket appears to continue to have the upper-hand over Flickr.

What I found really interesting is that if I was to theoretically put ads on these 5 sites trying to reach everybody in the United States, I would reach 31 million or have a country reach of 13% or have 660 million pageviews.

Do you think that is a lot? Wrong! Take a look what would happen if I just select Facebook and Myspace:

big-2-together

That’s 90 million unique visitors or a country reach of 39% or 20 billion pageviews!

Does that mean that advertising on Facebook and Myspace is better than advertising on the top 5 of online digital photo sharing?

If your objective is to monetize on printing services, I would dare to say no.

Why?

Take a look at the age and income distribution of the audience at Myspace using Google Ad Planner:

myspace-audience-1myspace-audience-2

Compare it with the demographics of the audience at Shutterfly:

shutterfly-audience-characteristics-1shutterly-audience-characteristics-2

Obviously Shutterfly has a more mature audience with more spendable income, so they would be more prone to spend on printing services than a younger audience with a tigther budget.

Of course, you could argue against this hypothesis.

Yahoo! Flickr - 300x250

Let me hear your thoughts.


Flickr versus Snapfish versus Photobucket versus Slide versus Shutterfly



An important part of my job is to understand the trends in the online photo sharing industry and I wanted to provide a couple of insights to my readers using Google Trends.

Daily Unique Visitors of 5 key players in the online photo sharing industry.
Daily Unique Visitors of 5 key players in the online photo sharing industry.

For the period May 2007 – September 2008, Flickr and Photobucket compete for the highest number of daily unique visitors worldwide out of the five selected online photo sharing:  Flickr, Snapfish, Shutterfly, Photobucket and Slide.

Take a look at the latest performance of Photobucket and Flickr:

What caused that there were more daily unique visitors at Photobucket than at Flickr?

Yahoo! Flickr - 300x250

Photobucket is capturing more daily unique visitors than Flickr in the top photo sharing market: U.S.

However, Photobucket should not rest in its laurels, because Flickr is ahead in the second most important photo sharing market: India.

What about Slide?  Slide enjoyed an important spike in the last quarter of 2007, but its number of daily unique visitors is coming back to previous levels.   What caused this?

2 reasons: hi5 and England.

Worlwide, people who search for the the term “slide”, also search for:

As you can see, hi5 appears several times and it different languages!

This is relevant because hi5‘s daily unique visitors worldwide dwarfs that of the top 5 players in the photo sharing business (note: I drop Snapfish, because Google Trends only accepts 5 websites at a time).

Plus, Slide did pretty good during that period in England!

Finally, what about Snapfish and Shutterfly?

They depend on each other because:

People who search for “snapfish” also search for “shutterfly”.

And people who search for “shutterfly also search for “snapfish”.

In conclusion:

  1. Markets outside of the United States DO matter!  Increased demand in important markets (e.g. Slide in England, Flickr in India) can generate a lot of views, which potentially means increased ad revenue.  Just ask Dave McClure, web analytics guru and blogger at Master of 500 Hats.
  2. Despite all the hype about international markets, the leader must keep its focus on the top market, the U.S.
  3. Keep a close eye on the SEO tactics of your rivals and copy what seems to work (Shutterfly and Snapfish).


Yahoo! Flickr - 468x60

What do you think?


The idaconcpts way to solve a Harvard Business School Case: Collabrys, Inc.

As you may have read in the About the author section, I am enrolled in the Master of Business Administration at the Shidler College of Business at Honolulu, HI.  A very common question that I get all the time is:  “so…what do you do?”  Well, one of the most common assignments that we get is to solve business problems given a specific context.  This context is usally found within Harvard Business School cases.

So how do you solve one?

Let’s give it a try!

Today we will use the idaconcpts way to solve the Collabrys, Inc. case from the Harvard Business School.  Unfortunately I cannot post the PDF file because I would infringe their copyrights.

According to the Harvard Business School, this is the scenario:

The CEO of a two-year-old start-up must now decide whether to become a technology provider or a service agency. In a time of enormous uncertainty about the viability of various business models for Internet-delivered services and products, Collabrys has survived the burst Internet bubble by partnering with brand-name large companies and by responding to market feedback. This case traces the company from its earliest days and its original value proposition to a point at which the two very different future strategies appear feasible. Originally funded by venture capital, the company has changed key personnel, experimented with different distribution and partnering schemes, developed some sophisticated intellectual property, and raised a second round of funding.
Here is my take on the Collabrys, Inc. case:
a
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I.    Situation Analysis
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Collabrys, Inc.’s situation is a textbook example straight out of the pages of Steven Gary Blank’s book The Four Steps to the Epiphany because of the company initial focus on the product development process rather than on the customer development process.  During the dot-com era, and some still today, Internet startups fail to understand that the most common source of failure for startups is a lack of customers and not a lack of product development.  Collabrys was good at managing its product development, but terrible at managing its customer development.  Let’s review what is wrong with the product development process as a business model:
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Sales, Marketing, and Business Development in a Startup.  Power Point Presentation.  Retrieved on 09/18/08 from www.stanford.edu/class/msande273/resources/Blank%20presentation%20101403.pdf
Steven G. Blank , 2003, The Customer Development Model: Sales, Marketing, and Business Development in a Startup. Power Point Presentation. Retrieved on 09/18/08 from http://www.stanford.edu/class/msande273/resources/Blank%20presentation%20101403.pdf
a
The flowchart  above indicates the main problem with using the product development process as the cornerstone for an Internet startup is that it does neither generate customer demand nor sales until after a considerable amount of cash has been spent on building capacity and marketing campaigns.  Even Collabrys’s MVP manager, Villapando-Ibalio, found it difficult to explain the potential for BrandPrint to potential clients and Collabrys always encountered the question:  “What can I do with BrandPrint tomorrow that is different from what I do today?”  Obviously the company failed to solve an existing problem because it was still using the same outrageous sales projections from its written business plan from the financing rounds and it failed to understand that what it needed to do is to provide customers a solution for a problem that was critical for them and eating away their profits.  Collabrys’ sales deteriorated over time because it was not able to answer the following questions:
a
  1. What are their customer’s top problems?
  2. Does Collabrys’ services concept solve these customer’s problems?
  3. If Collabrys was to offer its services for free to its clients, will they still acquire them?
  4. If Collabrys was to charge for these services, does it have a repeatable sales model?

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II.    Problem Definition
aa
Collabrys does not have a repeatable sales model because it failed to address its potential customers’ top problems, its customers did not agree that its current service offering added value, and its customers were not willing to pay for a service that did not offer a solution to their problems.  Collabrys did not have a proven sales roadmap previous to product concept development, did not understand the sales cycle of its customers, and did not have a set of orders that validated its sales roadmap.  In conclusion, Collabrys had a financial model that did not make sense.
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III.    Analysis of Alternatives
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Collabrys alternatives all aim to the customer development process:
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//www.stanford.edu/class/msande273/resources/Blank%20presentation%20101403.pdf
Steven G. Blank , 2003, The Customer Development Model: Sales, Marketing, and Business Development in a Startup. Power Point Presentation. Retrieved on 09/18/08 from http://www.stanford.edu/class/msande273/resources/Blank%20presentation%20101403.pdf
a
Unfortunately for Collabrys, the company had already burnt a considerable amount of its funding to realize that it needed to validate a repeatable sales model before it could build a whole company around it.  The two alternatives were either for Collabrys:
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1.    to become an analytics software company
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or
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2.     to use the technology in-house, but as part of a service provision.
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Either of these solutions would have to provide a repeatable sales model to essential clients with these characteristics:
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•    Has a problem
•    Know they have a problem
•    Has been actively looking for a solution
•    Has put together a solution out of piece parts
•    Has or can acquire a budget
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Given the previous communications with clients, it was clear that Collabrys needed to establish a clear difference from other CRM applications in the mind of clients and that Collabrys should not spend time focusing on groups that did not have a clear idea of their problem, did not actively look for a solution (as opposed to explore options), and did not have access to a purchasing budget at all.
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IV.    Recommendations
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The second alternative, to use the technology in-house, but as part of a service provision. provides the right approach through the search of specific answers for the critical questions:  What are we selling? What are its benefits?  Who do we sell to?  At what price?  The creation of  the Tiger Team should have been the starting point for Collabrys and the cornerstone of its business model, because it focuses on the prescribed customer development process of Blank.  The process of contacting all existing partners and 35 potential clients to determine the budget of clients, necessary client interaction (e.g. sales cycle), existing competitors, and price ceiling of clients, would provide Collabrys with a clear idea whether clients are serious enough to buy a service that still needed some tweaking.  The Tiger Team process clearly addresses the customer discovery and customer validation sections of the customer development process, which in turn would allow the company to set realistic year-one objectives according to its market type, position the company and service, and create repeatable, sustainable demand.
a
By focusing on being an agency that provides managed solutions for companies during their product launch an introduction and targeting the sales process to brand managers (instead of interactive marketing managers, market research people, or advertising agencies) the company will be able to make more efficient use of its resources and channel management and sales personnel to profitable activities.
a
This option is less likely to lead to either an IPO or sale of the company, but it provides a clear spending plan, establishes that the current team is right for this stage of the company and provides a clear sales growth plan.  The company would now have the right mindset and tools to establish the goals for the next twelve months.   A main concern of this recommendation is whether or not existing competitors can replicate Collabrys service provision, because there is not enough information on the case to establish a valid conclusion.
a
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What do you think? : )

Note: If you are a current MBA student and are planning to use this as a reference, go ahead! But please include me in your references section.

Language and Regional Analysis Google’s Picasa using Google Trends

First of all, it is important to point that it is not possible to see the Daily Unique Visitors graph of http://picasa.google.com using Google Trends. Also a big mahalo (thank you in Hawaiian!) to fellow Photo Lover, Katharine Osborne, for showing me Skitch. This great little image capturing & editing tool for Mac has made my blogging much easier.

Why Picasa?  Well, in my personal opinion, the 2 main players for desktop applications in photo organizing & sharing for Mac OS are:

Teaser: what are the differences between the 2 of them? : ) Coming soon!

Since it was not possible to look for the Daily Unique Visitors graph, I looked for the Search Volume Index of the term “picasa”.  Here’s what you get:

The letters correspond to relevant news, here’s the list:

The biggest spike, highlighted with the letter A, happened after the release of Picasa 2.0 by Google, back in 2005 which included a series of improvements such as picture captioning and blog-posting ability (for the whole list check here).  A spike in the search volume of the term “picasa” is expected around the date of a new release.  This is supported by event F, because on September 3, 2008, Picasa 3.0 was released.

What was really interesting is that the United States does not appear among the top 10 regions where the term “picasa” is searched for!!

Is this possible? Is it an error? Let’s analyze the following:

Notice that there appears no U.S. city on the top 10 cities that search for “picasa” and that English does not appear on the top 10 languages!

This finding is very interesting so I adjusted the upper right setting for region from:

to:

and I found that English is the 3rd language of the region when searching for “picasa”!

Conclusions:

  1. The term “picasa” is searched more around the release date of a new version of Picasa.
  2. Google’s Picasa has a stronger presence abroad than in the United States.
  3. Google MUST consider that the majority of its users come from outside of the U.S., so web sites version in different languages might be needed to support its users.  This situation is not strange, the same thing happened to Flickr.com.

Why are these conclusions relevant?

Consider the following for Apple’s iPhoto, when looking for the term “iphoto”, this is what I found:

Notice that:

  • United States is the second region where most searches happen.
  • 8 of the top 10 cities, where the searches happened, are inside of the U.S.
  • English is the top language of the queries.

This illustrates the difference in strategies between Apple’s iPhoto and Google’s Picasa.

What do you think?

Lateral Marketing and The Tipping Point – Part 4: Introducing Blink

• Given the higher failure rate of products and the saturation of marketing channels, it is necessary to improve the understanding of the innovation process in order to better meet the customer’s needs and to launch to market ahead of the competition.

• I agree that innovation requires a different approach that goes beyond the category where the idea originated and that there are special kinds of people needed for this process. Kotler and Trias de Bes (2003, p. 104) indicate that “the logic of creativity consitsts of taking an element, displacing laterally one aspect of it, and connecting the gap that has been provoked. The logic of creativity follows a process similar to that of humor”.  Below are three pictures of an innovative sculpture that combines the work of two my favorite artists, Salvador Dali and Albrecht Dürer.  This sculpture is located at a hotel nearby the Nagoya airport in Japan, notice that Salvador Dali sculpted this based on Dürer’s Rhinocero’s woodcut.

Me
Photo Credit: Me
Me
Photo Credit: Me
Me
Photo Credit: Me

•Lateral marketing uses the power of context and the stickiness factor concepts of Gladwell to create “a simple way to package information that, under the right circumstances, can make it irresistible” (Gladwell, 2002, p. 132). The case of “Big Brother” TV Contest in the United States and the Sony Walkman in Japan are good examples of well-executed lateral marketing.

• The three steps of lateral marketing are (Kotler and Trias de Bes, 2003, p. 104):
o Choose a focus where we want to generate a lateral displacement.
o Provoke a lateral displacement for generating a gap.
o Think about ways to connect the gap.

• Kotler, author of the 4Ps, wouldn’t pass the opportunity to include them in the process described above and defines the three main levels of lateral marketing as 1) the market definition level, 2) the product level, and 3) the rest of the marketing mix level.

• I found the example of the creation process for the artificial flower was great. In this series of talking points, I have discussed the similarities and differences between “Lateral Marketing” and “The Tipping Point”. However, I think that another work is more appropriate for chapter six of Lateral Marketing. “The Tipping Point” was concerned with grand themes, with figuring out the rules by which social change happens. “Blink” is quite different. It is concerned with the smallest components of our everyday lives–with the content and origin of those instantaneous impressions and conclusions that bubble up whenever we meet a new person, or confront a complex situation, or have to make a decision under conditions of stress.

Photo taken from the author's bio section at www.gladwell.com by Wiley Chin.
Photo taken from the author bio section at his website by Wiley Chin, http://www.ximnet.com.my/thelab/comments/comments.asp?id=80.

• “Blink” is a good read, especially for the second step of the lateral marketing process, making a lateral displacement on one of the three main marketing levels through substitution, inversion, combination, exaggeration, elimination, and reordering. This process is more like brainstorming. “Blink” is a “book about rapid cognition, about the kind of thinking that happens in a blink of an eye. When you meet someone for the first time, or walk into a house you are thinking of buying, or read the first few sentences of a book, your mind takes about two seconds to jump to a series of conclusions”.

//images.amazon.com/images/P/1586217615.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg
Photo Credit: Amazon. http://images.amazon.com/images/P/1586217615.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

• The hardest part about the process of lateral marketing is the last step, that is solving the gap of the lateral displacement with a value proposition that will result in either: 1) same product, new utility; 2) new product, new utility; or 3) new product, same utility. The further reprocessing of the marketing mix is about dealing with small details that make a big difference. This is the same objective of “The Tipping Point”: “how a number of relatively minor changes in our external environment can have a dramatic effect on how we behave and who we are” (Gladwell, 2002).

Lateral Marketing and The Tipping Point – Part 3: Investopedia.com and Fool.com

  • According to Gladwell, the Power of context infers that epidemics are sensitive to the conditions and circumstances of the times and places in which they occur .  This is a main idea within lateral marketing, because it involves an important transformation of a product or service:  there must be the radical addition of a use, situation, need or target that had not existed ever before (http://www.gladwell.com/tippingpoint/guide/chapter4.html).
Brooke Williams.
Malcolm Gladwell. Photo Credit: Brooke Williams.
  • While vertical marketing consists of modulations within a given market, lateral marketing restructures markets by creating a new category through new uses, situations, or targets with the appropriate changes in a product (Lateral Marketing, 2003, Kotler and Trias de Bes, p. 75).  I found it really interesting that Kotler and Trias de Bes state that lateral marketing is a complement of vertical marketing, because lateral marketing works in the areas where vertical marketing does not.  Throughout the first four chapters of Lateral Marketing, one gets the idea that lateral marketing should completely replace vertical marketing.  In chapter 5, the authors make it very clear that both types of marketing are complementary and necessary.

    www.imm.org.my/My%20Webs/myweb3/images/kotler.jpg
    Philip Kotler. Photo Credit: www.imm.org.my/My%20Webs/myweb3/images/kotler.jpg
Ana Jimenez.
Fernando Trias de Bes. Photo Credit: Ana Jimenez.
  • One generally accepted assumption for Gladwell, Kotler, Trias de Bes is that all kinds of high-tech products fail, never making it beyond the Early Adopters, because companies fail to transform an idea that makes perfect sense to an Early Adopter to one that makes perfect sense to a member of the Early Majority (http://www.gladwell.com/tippingpoint/guide/chapter6.html).  Most high-tech products fall under the lateral marketing area and require a greater effort on consumer education.  Consumers can assimilate and adopt more readily vertical marketing innovations because they fall within their comfort zones.
  • The last statement ties in directly with the “Stickiness Factor”.  There are small but critical adjustments in how we need to present ideas to the average individual, so that we can overcome the weaknesses from these ideas and make what we have to say memorable.
  • An example: Both Investopedia.com and Fool.com seek to educate all investors, from novice to advanced, because they believe that the key to success in investment banking is the access to information and that is why, online investing education sites offer a variety of glossaries, investing tutorials, articles, tools to calculate return on investments and investment simulators.  The main objective is to have a better understanding of how the financial market operates so that individuals can maximize their potential profit and minimize their risks by becoming aware of potential hazards in investing.  This is all nice and fine, but it completely misses the other two rules to start an epidemic, “the stickiness factor” and “the power of context”.  Both educational sites miss “a simple way to package information that, under the right circumstances, can make it irresistible” (Gladwell, 2002, p. 132).
Screenshot of Investopedia.com in January 2005.
Screenshot of Investopedia.com in January 2005.
  • Throughout many years these two websites failed to become “epidemic” because they failed to: identify the level of expertise of the investor; create as many hyperlinks as possible; recognize that most users on online education websites already hold some education about investments; put everything into the context of the investment industry (because the goal of online investing education is authentic learning); and provide training material for the certificates, licenses and other forms of legitimization that the investment industry requires.
Another screenshot of Investopedia.com in January 2005.
Another screenshot of Investopedia.com in January 2005.
  • A great area of opportunity for the investing education sector was the gap between what takes place in educational practices and what takes place in current work practices, and this creates an educational gap.  Gladwell (2002) refers to this as the “Power of context”.  Both Fool.com and Investopedia.com realized that even though it was necessary to expose the novice learner to the industry vocabulary, the two main goals of an online investing education website should be (1) putting vocabulary in context and (2) reinforcing the trust of the community in its non-material elements.  This is called authentic learning and it specifies performance standards in a profession. Therefore, it was necessary to develop more articles and tutorials about industry practices and specific industry skills like due diligence, portfolio management and professional certification.
Partial screenshot of Investopedia.com in October 2008.
Partial screenshot of Investopedia.com in October 2008.
  • So, did these sites follow this advice?
Daily unique visitors of Fool.com (blue) and Investopedia.com (red) according to Google Trends.
Daily unique visitors of Fool.com (blue) and Investopedia.com (red) according to Google Trends.
  • For many years, Fool.com had a clear advantage over Investopedia.com.  However, the graph above clearly shows that Fool.com has lost visitors, while Investopedia.com has a steady upwards trend of daily unique visitors.  To minimize the asymmetry of information in the areas of Finance and Investing, there should an increase in the teaching-learning practices that use the concept of a community of practice to diminish that asymmetry.  The investing sector is a community of practice that uses authentic learning to develop learning activities that are similar to those that take place in the current practice of finance and investing, which it is assumed that he or she wants to take part of later in the future.  There have been important advances in the field on online investing education but there is yet much to be done.

Lateral Marketing and The Tipping Point – Part 2

  • Throughout the fourth chapter of Lateral Marketing, Kotler and Trias de Bes discuss how “new market or category creation is the most efficient way to compete in mature markets where microsegmentation and an excess of brands do not leave room for new opportunities” (2003, p. 72).
  • The cited examples of Lateral Marketing by Kotler and Trias de Bes tie in with The Tipping Point in that they take into account the “power of context” and the “stickiness factor”.  The power of context states that one must accept that the immediate context of behavior is the one that guides one’s actions.  The stickiness factor deals with the small but critical adjustments in that an idea is presented to the average individual, so that it can overcome previous weaknesses and become memorable.
  • Lateral marketing uses the power of context and the stickiness factor concepts of Gladwell to create “a simple way to package information that, under the right circumstances, can make it irresistible” (Gladwell, 2002, p. 132).  The case of “Big Brother” TV Contest in the United States and the Sony Walkman in Japan are good examples of well executed lateral marketing.
  • Unfortunately, the abuse of segmentation and positioning has created an aversion for the introduction of new brands.  The information age and excessive amount of choice has proved a bit counter-productive for consumerism.  The stickiness problem is even more problematic for marketers in the United States.
  • It would seem plausible that both Gladwell and Kotler and Trias de Bes would agree in that the use of shock tactics by advertisers, publicists and celebrities grab public attention runs the risk of desensitizing us as culture and making us immune to the eyebrow-raising, attention-grabbing ploys of marketers.

Lateral Marketing and The Tipping Point

  • On this post, I will discuss the first two chapters of The Tipping Point by Gladwell and the third chapter of Lateral Marketing by Kotler and Trias de Bes because I found a lot of similar points on both books.
Brooke Williams.
Malcolm Gladwell. Photo Credit: Brooke Williams.
  • Kotler and Trias de Bes discuss the most common way of creating innovations by working from the market definition downward, which results in new products that are just variations of existing products and services.  Similarly, Gladwell argues that things can happen all at once, and little changes can make a huge difference.   Gladwell defines as social epidemics the way that change often happens in the rest of the world.  Both Kotler and Trias de Bes, and Gladwell agree that little variations or changes can have a big impact.
www.imm.org.my/My%20Webs/myweb3/images/kotler.jpg
Philip Kotler. Photo Credit: www.imm.org.my/My%20Webs/myweb3/images/kotler.jpg
  • At the same time, these authors warn that even though this innovation process is productive, it will reach a point of saturation.  Kotler and Trias de Bes claim that segmentation and positioning (the most basic marketing strategies) are in crisis, and that a new innovation process is needed.  Kotler and Trias de Bes call it lateral marketing.  Gladwell would argue that it is just a variation of a social epidemic (or word of mouth epidemic).
Ana Jimenez.
Fernando Trias de Bes. Photo Credit: Ana Jimenez.
  • In chapter two of The Tipping Point, Gladwell talks about  about the central role that three personality types, defined as Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen, play in social epidemics.
  • Since the first time that I read the work of Gladwell, I liked the definition of mavens:  “Mavens have the knowledge and the social skills to start word-of-mouth epidemics.  What sets Mavens apart, though is not so much what they know but how they pass it along.  The fact that Mavens want to help, for no other reason than because they like to help, turns out to be an awfully effective way of getting someone’s attention” (Gladwell, 2002, p. 67).
  • The definition of a connector is not bad either: “Sprinkled among every walk of life, in other words, are a handful of people with a truly extraordinary knack of making friends and acquaintances. They are Connector” (taken from http://www.gladwell.com/tippingpoint/tp_excerpt2.html).
  • I have always believed myself to be a maven but most of my friends believe that I am a connector.  They might have a point because a quick review of my social networks reveals so.  At Facebook, I have 687 contacts; at MySpace, 519: at LinkedIn, 95 contacts, and so on.  They might have a point because I enjoying spreading a good message and I am pretty good at figuring out what person would be interested in something or would be a good contact to find about something.
  • In conclusion, I agree that innovation requires a different approach that goes beyond the category where the idea originated and that there are special kinds of people needed for this process.  Among those people are appropriate connectors (people able to spread a message) and salesmen (people with the skill to persuade those unconvinced by the message).
me.
March 2004 @ Hippie Market - Rio de Janeiro. Photo Credit: me.