14Mar/081
“Marketing is the price you pay for being unremarkable”
Quote from Robert Stephens, founder of the Geek Squad - via Carsonified.
I've read this quote before, but it hit home this morning having just gone through a big PR push for GigPark.
I chose to interpret the quote like this: Rather than spending a lot of money on marketing, it's always better to spend your time and money building a remarkable product/company that people want to talk about and journalists want to write about.
I still believe that PR/marketing/advertising experts can be an incredible resource to help you spread the word, but they shouldn't be used to drum up interest in a product or company that isn't, in some way, remarkable.
About Pema Hegan
A Kiwi living in Canada.
I love music, obsess over architecture, ride my bike most days and miss the ocean.
I'm a partner and managing director at Rethink Toronto.
Before that I founded and then sold GigPark, a social web startup. And before that I was the founding editor-in-chief of the Canadian media company, Dose.
Find me here
pema.hegan (at) gmail (dot) com
- @malbonster Don't laugh too loud. I remember Boys being some of the best Thai food in the city. http://twitter.com/pema
- @ryanfeeley No. But wow - that looks interesting! Next time ;). http://twitter.com/pema
- @ebonical Next time we just need to time our trips so we can enjoy some if it together!! http://twitter.com/pema
Archives
Toronto tech community
- Bryce Johnson
- David Crow
- Founders Lunch
- Global Nerdy
- Greg Wilson
- Jay Goldman
- Jevon MacDonald
- Malgosia & John Philip Green
- Mark Dowds
- Mark Evans
- Mark Kuznicki
- Mathew Ingram
- Rick Segal
- Rob Hyndman
- StartupNorth
- Suzie Dingwall Williams
- Tom Purves
- Will Pate
- WirelessNorth
Flickr
June 16th, 2008 - 16:42
You know, I loved this quote the first time I heard it, then someone reminded me about GigPark today and I stumbled into this post…
It’s just so right. As a career marketing bloke and now a flack by profession, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve felt the need to say something similar to people I’ve met with.
Build something remarkable, something that a lot of people will actually want (or, even better, need) and then the approach to market should follow naturally; almost defining itself.
I think there’s a corollary to this, which is that the process of “marketing” has to start an awful lot earlier in the development cycle than it typically does in software companies. I blogged my thoughts on this a while ago (ack, link-pimping – sorry): http://snurl.com/2jdj2