Jim Novo wrote in response to the last post: This is an interesting line of thought Christopher, perhaps I can help with a bit of a framework. And you’re right, product is the root of Marketing decision making. I hope my attmept at a chart below makes it through the CMS without breaking… Brand for any product is a continuum between Product-centric and Image-centric, example: ……….Product Centric………..Image Centric Beer…….Sam Adams………………Budweiser Image-Centric Brands tend to have commodity status, which begs the need to differentiate by creating some kind of unique Image. Product-Centric Brands differentiate on hard Features and Benefits. If you think about the Marketing for Sam Adams, it’s all about ingredients and customization. If you think about the Marketing for[…]

Michael Porter, in “On Competition”, appears to emphasize the importance of trade-offs. Roger Martin, in “The Opposable Mind”, appears to de-emphasize the importance trade-offs. Porter defines strategy is the process of making choices about activities that results in sustainable competitive advantage. Both books make reference to activity diagrams – so there’s unity and acknowledgement that choice matters. At the core: Porter explains the ‘why’ of strategic decision making, and Roger Martin describes the ‘how’ of strategic decision making. The ultimate way of showing trade-offs, in my view, is though the Production Possibility Frontier. What is very elegant about the production possibility frontier (PPF) is that it’s two dimensional and tells a very clear story. There are trade offs between quality[…]

Preliminary results from a membership survey suggest a strong level of satisfaction with the work coming out of the Web Analytics Associations’ Research Committee. And that’s heartening, since the volunteers do a lot of work. I’ve participated in some of that research over the years, and it’s always pretty enlightening. It’s good news.

I published seven axioms over the past week – in a not so humble fashion. I’m taking the James Burke line to heart and just putting it out there. The Seven Axioms are: 1. The purpose of analytics is to derive competitive advantage for the organization / firm / entity. 2. Data alone does not yield competitive advantage. 3. A sequence of progressive hypothesis testing is the most efficient and effective method to derive competitive advantage from data. 4. Predicting the future requires an understanding of cause and effect. 5. Correlation is not always Causality. 6. Accuracy over Precision. 7. It is possible for there to be two optimal, equally true, answers to a problem. (And Sometimes More!) (X^2 =[…]

I’m reading Sam Ladner’s thesis. It’s strong work, and quite possibly one of the best reading experiences I’ve had since “Reading Virtual Minds”. On Page 149, there’s a quote in explaining the common occurrence for ‘fires’ to occur as a result of low-ball estimation: Curt: Why do they have the fires? Sam: Yes Curt: There could be a million different reasons if you think about it, I mean, clients coming in with aggressive timelines period or everybody will come in with big dreams, right?…Like you never lose the champagne dream even if you’ve got a beer bottle budget, right? You always dream big but you might not be, like, okay…” And I’m in awe. What a gem. And I ask[…]

I’ve been reading four books simultaneously these days. Of course, I shouldn’t really say simultaneously. I can only read one at a time. More accurate language would be ‘jumping between four books’. The first is Sam Ladner’s excellent thesis on the commodification of time in the new economy. It’s a pretty awesome read. The second is Gladwell’s latest book. And it’s a manageable read because the chapters are well contained. It’s called “What the dog saw”, and that line is pulled from one of the Chapters on Caesar Milan. Fun! The third is a seminal 500 page book about competition. And it’s a sobering read. And the fourth is about mental structures in the new economy. And I haven’t decided[…]

You may or may not have been hearing about a debate going on in web analytics. To most, it might seem like a lot of inside pool. And I suppose most of these things are. I want to talk a little bit about some of that inside pool. Over the course of my WAA Research Committee work last week, I stumbled upon a paper entitled “Assumptions, Explanations, and Prediction in Marketing Science: “It’s the Findings, Stupid, Not the Assumptions” by Eric W. K. Tsang. In it, he replies to a debate that’s been going on for a long time, but what natural scientists had settled a hundred years ago. Richard Staelin back in 1998 said that there’d always be debates[…]

Eric Peterson wrote yesterday about the coming revolution in web analytics. It’s worth a read and it sparked off a lengthy twitter exchange. I think we have a huge talent supply problem in the web analytics industry. Web analysts are very specialized in terms of their understanding of the Internet, websites, tracking technologies and reporting methodologies. And necessarily so. There really aren’t that many of them. Sure, there are plenty of people who have Google Analytics on their blog. And I’m glad that they do. It’s great to have so many people interested in Web Analytics. But there’s a gap between the interpretation and the turning of that data into actionable insight. In fact, many of the things that look[…]

My initial feedback: YO #OMNITURE I NO U JUST MERGED AND ALL N IMMA LET U FINISH BUT SPSS’S MERGER WAS THE BEST ONE THIS YEAR – Kanye West So what does Adobe really get for its 1.8 billion? A company in the top 5 of web analytics tools providers for one. A great client base for sure. But there’s a black lining to that white cloud.  Even with a client list that most analytics companies dream about – Omniture is hemorrhaging money. Even with strong revenue growth, it hasn’t been able to make marginal profit on that growth. It should just confirm what all honest practitioners admit at a Web Analytics Wednesday: the software is frakencode that’s a time[…]

David Hamel wrote: The issue behind it all is that the web isn’t static, it is constently changing.  Ever heard of AOL?  Of course you have.  Know anyone still using it? Probably not.  What about MySpace?  Also there is the inevitable the march of time.  Your persona for Bob has his age at 52.   In five years time, will Bob still be useful?  Probably the difference between 52 and 57 isn’t that large.  But what if your target demographic is 22?  There is a much larger difference between the interestes of a 22 year old and a 27 year old…In conclusion, use personas but don’t let them get stagnate, your personas represent people and people change. Hamel rightly points[…]