July 30th, 2008
by Projectline

In catching up on my RSS feeds over the weekend, I found myself staring at a short New York Times article that suggested a long story left unwritten. How does anyone build a viral campaign that succeeds out of any force other than blind luck?

Believe it or not, there is an equation for just that purpose:

[Be Amazing] + [Act Amazing] = [Get Amazing]

Viral is really that simple – just be worth talking about and do something worth talking about. The only catch is you have to have both to succeed. Notice also that I’ve not mentioned timing anywhere. There is a reason for this: Great campaigns always make their own timing.

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tags: advertising, audience perception, Best practices, creative services, Digital Content, early adoption, marketing, marketing goals, messaging, new media, web 2.0

July 13th, 2007
by David Jones

Technology Adoption Programs (TAPs) are intended to serve one (or both) of the following purposes:

1. Product Validation—Customers provide technical feedback, feature validation, and bug identification for a pre-release product so that engineering can improve the product before release.

2. Early Adoption—Customers partner with product marketing to adopt the new technology and share their experiences publicly in support of the product launch.

Over the past five years I have noticed a trend whereby TAPs have continually gotten larger. To me this indicates how crucial TAPs are to the launch of a new technology, and how very successful they have been. So the natural inclination is to take something that is going well and pour more resources into it for a bigger return. However, TAPs are meant to be “high touch” and scaling them larger can jeopardize the ability to provide a certain level of engagement to participants.

For this posting I would like to focus on the second purpose mentioned above (Early Adoption). I am sure you’re on the edge of your seat wondering, but when is he going to share his thoughts on Product Validation programs? You will just have to check back at a later date. Always leave them wanting more. (more…)

tags: B2B, blogging, early adoption, marketing, product adoption