Why French Fries are Like Marketing

With a "thank you" to Mark Dykeman, Broadcasting Brain for his post today that reminded me of this chestnut of a post, OnlyOnce: Why French Fries are Like Marketing

It's true. It was true in 2004. It is even more true today. The choices are myriad. But, that doesn't mean you *have* to or even *should* do everything, be everywhere, all the time.

Choose what makes sense and what you know you will maintain. Think about *not* linking everything to everything, so all the same stuff goes out everywhere. Disconnect to connect more meaningfully. Think about which people go to get their information and tailor your content to suit. Offer up completely different content in different places and see what happens.

At least, that's what I'm going to experiment with as soon as I can figure out how to disconnect and undo, so I can do all over again, but differently, more thoughtfully, and hopefully, it will have more meaning and relevance.

A lesson in selling from David Ogilvy - see a genuine "Mad Man" in action | Drayton Bird's Commonsense Marketing

A new acquaintance recently pointed me to Drayton Bird's site and blog. I love his rather self-effacing, quirky, powerful approach to communicating and driving home a point without being left feeling like I've been the victim of a drive-by.

I've just watched this 2:02 minute video several times. Kind of ironic that it is 2:0or was it calculated to be 2:02? At any rage, David Ogilvy is still brilliant and so is Drayton Bird. Do yourself and your company a favor and spend 2:02 with Mr. Ogilvy.

A lesson in selling from David Ogilvy - see a genuine Mad Man in action | Drayton Bird's Commonsense Marketing

I look forward to your comment on this blog.

O.P.S.

It's been far too long and I've been remiss in posting. I've been thinking a lot, working a lot. It's easy to save something to Draft and then, procrastinate on going back to finish a post and actually publish it.

I've resolved to take a page from Seth Godin's playbook and just post already, another iteration of shipping. I can only hope that what I have to share is a fraction as interesting as Seth's posts.

In my defense, I've had some programming issues as well as having to invest in a new Mac after the logic board on Old Faithful crapped out last week.

At any rate, are you still curious about that cryptic title?

Earlier this week I was at the monthly SFNewTech event and someone asked me what I do. I started to explain when we both started to laugh about how the same thing has gone through so many name changes over the years. As in so many other cases, every time a company pays a research company to compare their new offering to their competitors' and write up a white paper, part of the deal is to come up with a new description and the associated clever acronym for this revolutionary "solution." Hence, what was once called an ASP (application service provider), Web-based, SaaS (Software as a Service), that is now "in the cloud," is all the same thing more or less.

So, okay, you're thinking, I know that already, but what the heck does that have to do with OPS?

Well, back in the 80's, Wall Street talked about never using your own money, always using OPM or, Other People's Money. So, I've always referred to the application we offer, PrivateLabel Mail/Venntive uses OPS or, Other People's Servers.

It's my own acronym that really describes why we all love remotely hosted applications. Because, you see, when you use Other People's Servers, it's their responsibility to maintain them and make sure they are always up. It's their personnel, their hardware investment, their headaches. And, what do you get? Isn't it kind of like renting versus owning a house? Uh, yeah. And, as we've learned, that is not a bad thing!

So, power to OPS!