miketrap

I have a love/hate thing with PowerPoint.

The vast majority of it sucks. Every time we’re forced to endure some shmo standing up to read a wall full of bullets, a faerie dies. Microsoft is partly to blame, given how easy they make it to produce crap, but the truth is the real culprits is the craftsmen, not the tool.

I shared a few thoughts on How To Present as one of my first posts on BostInno, which you can check out here. This post is less about that, and more about the important role PowerPoint is playing as we try to get better at marketing Actifio.

PowerPoint is a tool that can help you tell a story to a group. Like all great marketing, a great presentation starts with a clear sense of what your audience thinks, feels or does today; and an equally clear sense of what you want them to think, feel, or do when you’re done. It lets you create a structure for that journey – a logical progression – and a string of visual aids highlighting points in the journey from A to B.

Looked at this way, the app becomes useful not only in telling a story, but in crafting one… more here.

Fascinating piece on the evolution of technology marketing, from the Mad Men days forward… (via Make mainframes, not war: how Mad Men sold computers in the 1960s and 1970s | Ars Technica)

Been drinking from a firehose the last few days, starting with a sales meeting at 8:30 on my first day here in Waltham. It was a fitting start given some really good advice I got from the head of product and marketing at PTC last week…

Copy matters. If you want to change behavior, you need to make them FEEL something.

This will be my last post for the Holland-Mark channel, and my last day at Holland-Mark. There’ll be plenty of time to talk about where I’m going and why I felt compelled to leave a successful partnership of good friends, but for my swan song here I thought I’d share a few thoughts on my journey that might be useful to you.

It’s too long, but it’s a pretty good story. The short version is that I’ve come to organize the journey of my career in the same way I’ve tried to organize the journey of a business.

I start with a Vision of who I am, and the ways I think I’m uniquely able to create and capture value in the world. From there I focus on finding the Truth - to corrupt this original vision with the external reality – in a way that refines it based on new information and ideas. Once I’m there, it comes down to Conviction, to having the fortitude to accept and act on the changes necessary to deliver the result.

That’s it, really. If you want the details… here’s what happened.

If you’re interested in how subtle changes to the structure of a marketing call-to-action can lift your results by 173%, you should click the title above.

TechStars Boston is not your father’s startup showcase. Here’s a sample of the goings on there this morning, just to highlight the level of attention they gave to making this a fun and great experience for everyone who attended. In the process they create a context where people are open and listening to accomplished people talk about tangible progress realizing big ideas. That’s worth a lot.

I was utterly blown away by today. To Katie, Reed, and everyone else… bravo.

Chris Sheehan, Kai Gray and David Cancel sponsored a fantastic day of firearms and startup camaraderie yesterday, cheekily called “Geeks With Guns.” About 15 of us headed out to the Minute Man Gun Club in Burlington, MA, and let off a little steam by blowing some shit up. Fun.

A few things struck me heading home after the great dinner that followed the event. The first was how great a group of people were gathered there, and how happy I was to be considered in the context of entrepreneurs I genuinely respect and admire. The second was how important the social layer of the startup ecosystem is… how each of us was doing something right now we might not be doing in 5 years, but how these relationship would endure and support us in the changing tides of a hard-charging career.

Finally, it struck me that I was relaxed. Firearms take focus. Focusing on them means unplugging for the stress of everything else - something I’m sure other people get from running, fishing, bird-watching, whatever.

That’s some good ju-ju. Need to do more of that going forward, whether it means blowing shit up or not.

“People don’t buy what you do, they buy why they do it.” Yes.

First Why, then How, then What. Magic.

Much to learn from the story of Caine’s Arcade:

• Do what you love, and you’ll never work again.
• Inspire people with your story, and they will carry you on their shoulders.
• Entrepreneurship is a craft, that can be learned. But entrepreneurs… they’re just born that way.

Good luck, Caine. To contribute to his scholarship fund here.

Great marketing is less about what the product is, and more about why it matters to the people who buy it.

Powerful West Point lecture given by William Deresiewicz, and shared in American Scholar magazine.

The short version is that great leaders demonstrate an ability to rise above the clatter, retreat at least mentally to a place of reflection, and formulate creative, thoughtful solutions to challenging problems.

Profound stuff.

Actifio’s Ash Ashutosh asked us to kick off his marketing planning meeting with some thoughts on the state of marketing itself… how it’s changed, what it’s about today, and how smart companies are using it right now in new ways that push the envelope, and get results. High level stuff, hopefully with eye toward the practical and applied.

Here’s the deck, welcome any thoughts or feedback below.

Objectified documentary trailer. “When you see an object, you make so many assumptions about that object, in seconds. What it does, how well it’s going to do it, how much you think it should cost…”

AWESOME overview, what design really is and why it matters more than most startups think. Great stuff, props to @taylorwriting for the get.