Matthews on Marketing

Matthews on Marketing

Be the Buyer Day: An Easy New Year’s Resolution

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Every marketer knows they should know their customer, but few truly make the effort. It’s hard and takes commitment. Customers are busy and can be maddeningly difficult to get on the phone. A sales rep may not want someone from Marketing talking to their customer. Marketing teams can be so busy with internal meetings their existing workload that finding the time can be a chore. Like many New Year’s resolutions, putting the customer first is obvious, we know it’s good for us, and yet…Just like … [Read more...]

Marketingspeak: Why’s It Called ‘Boilerplate’?

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Marketing is full of jargon, anachronisms (B-roll comes to mind), acronyms, and new expressions dreamed up almost every week. We use them all the time, almost without thinking. I've done my best in The Professional Marketer to dig in and find their origins. This week, from my chapter on the press release, is boilerplate: "Boiler plate" originally referred to the small metal plate that identified the builder of a steam boiler. The term was borrowed by the printing industry, where plates … [Read more...]

Growth Hacking and Marketing Teams – Oil and Water or Milk and Honey?

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One of the biggest challenges in trying to finish a book is drawing the line on content. In a field like marketing, with so much innovation happening in the past few years, I am finding it hard to complete my copyediting without succumbing to the temptation to add new stuff. Around the time I was making my final edit to the chapter on building a marketing department in The Professional Marketer, I happened to be part of a number of conversations on the “growth hacker,” aka “growth hacking.” … [Read more...]

New Case Study: The Virgin America Brand

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Just completed this case study of one of my favorite brands, Virgin America. Thanks to my friends there for helping out on this case study for Chapter 2 on Positioning and the Brand. - T.M.Virgin America is a California-based airline that has a declared mission to make flying good again. Launched in 2007, the airline’s goal was to disrupt the airline industry. Though hyper-competitive, the airline industry had become sclerotic. According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, in 2011, the … [Read more...]

New Case Study: IBM Smarter Planet

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Just added for my chapter on marketing planning, what I think is the best integrated marketing campaign ever created. - T.M. Chapter 4 Case Study – IBM’s Smarter Planet Campaign          The vision for IBM’s "Smarter Planet" campaign was laid out in a November 17, 2008, speech by IBM chairman and CEO Sam J. Palmisano. “The world will continue to become smaller, flatter ... and smarter," he said. "We are moving into the age of the globally integrated and intelligent economy, society and planet. … [Read more...]