Matthews on Marketing

Matthews on Marketing

Ten Marketing Terms You Need to Know

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Marketing lingo has broad and varied origins. The provenance of the terms on the list below spans astronomy, the Industrial Age, television and Yiddish. So, you’d be forgiven for not knowing them all. Then there are newer terms that have been created to describe concepts that have only just been developed. The explosion of martech makes it hard to keep up. Below are ten terms that I think are essential if you are a modern marketer: five old, and five new. Old Boilerplate A boilerplate … [Read more...]

The “Helper” Play: How to Take on a Large Incumbent in a Big Market

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I gave a talk a few months back at Products that Count, hosted at Airbnb in San Francisco. My talk was about adapting your marketing strategy based on the maturity of the market. The talk was well received, but it was my description of “the helper play” that drew the most attention. I don’t know who initially conceived the helper play, but I came to know if from a successful company in the cybersecurity market, Palo Alto Networks. The startup wanted in on the large firewall market. But in … [Read more...]

CMO Tip: Use Magazines to Define and Maintain Your Style

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Approachable. Friendly. Trustworthy. Fun without being snarky. Ever see direction like this in a style guide? I have. I’ve even written some of those words. The problem is that they are open to interpretation, and therefore not consistently effective. So, how can you communicate what you want to a wide and changing group of employees and vendors? Here’s an idea. Use one or two magazines to help build your style guide. Magazines are widely available, and more importantly, they are tangible. … [Read more...]

Marketingspeak: What is a ‘Lower Third’?

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Originally from the television industry, but now applicable to all kinds of video, a "lower third" is the graphic overlay that is typically used to identify the speaker. It can be used to convey any kind of information to the viewer. The graphic appears at the bottom, to be the least obtrusive, and in what is known as the safe area - an area viewable by all television screens. There is no hard and fast rule that it must be one third of the screen, and it can be either a horizontal bar with … [Read more...]