Devolver

Hmm. Doesn't sound like you read this closely.

For one thing, the subtitle of my post says "In which the tech industry's stigma against marketing creates a SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY that leaves a trail of failed products, fire sales, and wasted years in its wake."

There is also a big header that says "Our anti-marketing bias has created a self-fulfilling prophecy."

Not quite sure how you missed both of those.

Also, the entire point of the article (and the framework I'm promoting) is that building the right marketing foundation is one of the major keys to getting "the rest of the puzzle in place."

The core of the framework itself has nothing to do with sorting leads into buckets, content marketing, nurture marketing, etc.

It is about building the right foundations. It is about solving the puzzle. It is about getting to the center of the Maze.

But perhaps "The Maze is not meant for you."

"ergo" = therefore. Ergo, there needs to be a strong logical thread between one side of the equation and the other.

The fact that Apple is great at marketing and super-profitable doesn't equate to the Valley respecting marketing. Not at all.

Apple is one of the exceptions that proves the rule.

Yeah, it's true that ecommerce operations are almost always driven by marketing's priorities and demands.

However, Amazon seems to have found a pretty great balance here.

I'm truly sorry you feel that way.

I was hoping to bridge the divide and help technical people understand that their distaste and distrust of marketing hurts them more than anyone else.

Please help me understand how I fell short.

If you are really taught that, then your teacher has done you a great disservice.

The most original product person in tech's history was also one of it's most brilliant marketing and sales people.

I'm talking, of course, of Steve Jobs.

Please elaborate on the source of the disconnect for you.

Perhaps I failed, but I tried to make it clear that the foundation of great marketing IS building a product the market needs...because doing that well usually means knowing what the market needs in the first place.

Knowing what a market needs and understanding those needs all the way through is exactly what I mean by "marketing."

Once you understand the substance of that argument, the ideas that Google Wave failed because of bad marketing and that building a product that the market doesn't want IS bad marketing make a lot more sense.

This view is my case in point.

But given how the marketers at your company seem to be behaving, I understand your frustration.

But look at Steve Jobs: the ULTIMATE marketer if there ever was one. Or Mark Benioff, another brilliant marketer. Would you accuse them of skimming?

Yeah, I totally hear you on the pop up. I kinda hate them and think they suck UX wise, but email opt-ins are my bread and butter, and I only set it only trigger when people are about to click away.

Also, as the article (hopefully) argues, "Marketing" encompasses a whole lot more than lead-gen and customer acquisition (two things pop-ups can help with).

That's a very good point. I could add that Steve Jobs was marketing genius at core, that Salesforce's success (especially early on) was heavily driven by marketing, and that Snap's recent rollout of Spectacles is one of the best product launches I've ever seen.

I'll think about that.

Definitely not what I was saying.

$19-499/month seems pretty expensive for that.

You're competing with SumoMe, which does essentially the same thing + is free (with one-off cash charges for upgrades/prettier templates, etc).

What's the differentiation here?

I hope so!

It was a tough lesson, indeed.

Totally.

Siri doesn't do much well (besides set geo-fenced reminders), but the underlying technology enables a much broader set of use cases.

When I say "half-measure" I don't mean that Google Now is worse than Siri. I mean it's not really an all-out assault on the existing model of Google Search. It's more like a complement to it, rather than a disruptor.

A real task-completion engine would be disruptive, and not a half-measure.

It sounds like you're angry because you don't feel I'm giving enough credit to Google Now.

But the piece itself wasn't about Google Now; it was about how Apple is screwing up the opportunity to do something really awesome with Siri, for reasons that I don't really understand.

For the record: I think Google Now is really interesting, but it's more like a "pre-emptive search" engine than a "task completion engine." If Google really builds a task-completion engine (and they certainly have the talent to do so), it would change the search paradigm.

But they make tons and tons of money on the existing search paradigm, so they have an innovators' dilemma.

Actually, I've used Google Now extensively, and think it's really cool.

But I think you're missing the point: Siri has major disruptive potential that isn't being realized at all (by Apple).

Google Now is kinda a half-measure, and if Google wants to really defend itself against disruption (not just from Siri, but from the task-completion engine paradigm) it has to go all out on Google Now.

But then it risks bulldozing the AdWords model.

Did you actually read the whole post?

I'm glad you liked it!