Tim Spalding wrote:
>
> I certainly don't think "marketing" or "branding" is the answer.
> Google didn't establish itself through marketing. And, absent
> marketing, the web site with a silly name ought to have been at a
> disadvantage to the massively-financed government institution with a
> branch in every town, school and college. There are ten times as many
> libraries as Starbucks in this country.
>
You might want to check this out:
http://www.librarything.com/work/196834
"Marketing" is not something that you do with a textbook definition
of "marketing" in mind. It's like you someday discover in amazement
you've written prose all your life without even knowing the word.
And success doesn't depend on the amount of marketing you do but on
the persuasiveness and appeal of your product. Sometimes all it takes
to get in business is to present a new product somewhere, anywhere,
and then it spreads by word of mouth or whatever because of its
compelling qualities.
A good road to success (see in that book) is to first define a new
category in a way everybody understands, and then place your product
into it as the first that can fill that newly discovered need.
Chances are the name of your product becomes generic for the category,
which is the optimum.
Example: PowerPoint both created and at once occupied the new category
of "Presentation software".
Other examples are Starbucks and LibraryThing.
That road, however, requires imagination. Beside the concept itself, a
new and suggestive name is of utmost importance.
The whole idea isn't new at all. Shakespeare wrote, at the end of
Midsummer night's dream:
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
The poet's role would be ours in this scenario.
B.Eversberg
Received on Mon May 11 2009 - 04:36:24 EDT