marketing/PR

Less than meets the ear

April 8, 2009

Last week, SAS Institute did what few other rearrangers of jargon have done: They got attention — in the way fashion hounds do. They’d like to replace “business intelligence” with “business analytics.” Why? Because “business intelligence is not “where the future is.” Last year’s styles are never next year’s. Sooner or later, all clothes, cars [...]

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Pulling on the root of bad business writing

March 23, 2009

In his fine weblog Startup Diaries, David Silverman takes a good stab at answering the eternal question: Why is most business writing so bad? He writes, for example, “I blame this on an educational system that rewards length over clarity. When you get tick marks for bulls’ eyes — and no demerits for the number [...]

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Rejecting stale tech marketing words

March 12, 2009

Read a pile of technology marketing and you quickly assume that you alone despise many of the words you keep hearing. They’re words like optimize, leverage, synergy, and utilize. People in this industry don’t really talk like that, do they? Many don’t, at least not in private, and they don’t tweet like that, either. One [...]

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Don’t call me “non-technical”

March 10, 2009

When I’ve referred to “non-technical” users, I’ve always meant just about anyone working far away IT. Well, based on research by Lyzasoft’s CEO Scott Davis, I think I’d better be careful with that definition. My concern is not for IT people. It’s for the “quants” in finance, marketing, accounting and operations who may not write [...]

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In dead bird vs. flow chart, bird wins

March 2, 2009

So many BI flow charts resemble the view out my hotel window in Las Vegas on the rooftop just below: a tangle of ducts, pipes, platforms, valves, and big metal boxes. What got my attention was a bird that had landed on a metal box and died.

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Blame it on PR

February 9, 2009

Apparently a true story I just heard from a former boss: Back when he managed Comdex, the giant tech show, he shared a PR manager with a rival VP. That VP often felt short-changed by the PR manager. At the 2000 Comdex, a reporter got food poisoning at an off-site event and died the next [...]

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Some of us like to name things in BI

January 6, 2009

Stephen Few’s damning review of a new BI tool prompted a weeks-long discussion-turned-scholarly-fistfight over definitions.

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Escaping the ghosts of BI marketing past

December 23, 2008

How sweet is is to escape, if only momentarily, from BI marketing that seems intended for techies. Just across San Francisco Bay from me, Birst made its point and made me laugh with a holiday-season three-panel comic strip. Marketing director Barbara Lewis emails me that the artwork’s by illustrator Kevin Pope, and the idea came [...]

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Does jargon sell tech products or not?

November 25, 2008

Those of us in the tech world who shun jargon may forever remain an underclass. We may never rise to the mainstream, where today tech-centric vendors rule. So I’m delighted when I meet another one of our clan who declares proudly his rejection of tech-speak. Don Farber, vice president of sales and marketing at KnowledgeSync, [...]

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Play terminology by ear when selling to the mid-market

November 19, 2008

Those who sell BI software to mid-size companies get to be good at nailing down what shoppers want. These shoppers are smart and hard working. But when they shop for technology, the shopping list may be just a problem, a wish, or a fantasy—known only by a description. I just spent Monday and Tuesday helping [...]

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