Marketing Today

Little History On Cyber Monday

The term, "Cyber Monday" was invented by Shop.org, part of the U.S. trade association National Retail Federation, in 2005 when retailers noticed a trend of people shopping online on the Monday after Thanksgiving when they were back to the office using their high speed Internet connections.

Cyber Monday Has Evolved With Faster Home Internet Connections

With faster connections at home, CyberMonday has become more about online retailers offering bargains than people shopping from the office.  "Americans appreciate the convenience of shopping online, which doesn’t require standing in line, circling for a parking spot, or even changing out of your pajamas,” said Scott Silverman, Executive Director of Shop.org. “Cyber Monday promotions are enticing, so shoppers can expect incredible bargains on popular holiday items, percentages off entire websites, and a lot of free shipping.” The survey says that while some Cyber Monday shoppers will choose to shop from the office, the large majority will shop from home.  And, 3.8 percent of them will shop from a mobile device like an iPhone or a Blackberry.

Is Cyber Monday For You?

Before I wrote it off as a gimmick, I decided to see if there were any deals online for the things that I was going to buy the people on my list any way.  I'm happy to report that there was!  My nieces love to use my Flip Camera, so I decided to get them one of their own for Christmas this year.  American Express is letting you cash in points for one.  But, before I did that, I decided to type "Cyber Monday deals" into Google.  This search term took me straight to cybermonday.com (a shop.org site) where I typed in "Flip Video" and was presented with options from $119 to $189 from online retailers.  So I just went ahead and bought one from Amazon.com for $119 and took the free shipping option. 

I'd encourage anyone to at least give online shopping a shot to see what deals you can find regardless of where you're doing your online shopping or which day you're actually shopping on.  In this competitive marketplace, you might as well take advantage of the Internet to help you save some money.

Headed to ProductCamp Today!

This morning (yup, Saturday morning!), I'm headed over to Microsoft's Cambridge offices for the ProductCamp unconference which will cover user-driven topics related to Product Marketing and Management.  Having spent most of my career in product marketing for high-tech firms in the Greater Boston area, I'm interested to see where the day takes us and who the crowd will be made up of.

ProductCamp has no attendees, only participants. Everyone is expected to actively participate in leading a session, round table discussion, speaking on the topic at hand, or volunteering.   Last February’s ProductCamp Boston event brought over 120 Product Management and Marketing professionals together to learn, share, and network with their peers.  Today's event looks like it bring 200 people together.

The list of participants, scheduled speakers, and events are posted on the ProductCamp Boston Website: http://barcamp.org/ProductCampBost.  Want to see what we're up to?

Take a look at:  

ProductCamp Boston website/wiki

Join the LinkedIn Group

Join the Facebook Group.

Follow ProductCamp Boston on Twitter.

More news on how the Product Camp Unconference went tomorrow.

Greetings from EMC World Where A Big Show Is Really Effective

This week I'm in Orlando at EMC World.  It's an annual conference for EMC customers and partners that connects them with EMC experts for software, hardware, solutions and services.  Thousands of people came together to learn from each other in a way that you just can't do strictly through online activities.

Live Keynotes and Sessions

You can read about hot information technology topics like virtualization and cloud computing, but there's nothing like hearing about it from Joe Tucci, EMC Chairman, President & CEO or Paul Maritz, VMware President & CEO live and in person.  And, let's say you're running Oracle applications on EMC storage, can you find a better way learn more about how Oracle Databases run on the new EMC Symmmetrix V-Max than from subject matter experts who are available to answer all of the questions you have in person?

Online Activities for the Offline Crowd

This year's conference features ways for online communities who collaborate through out the year to network with each other live.  For example, there is a Proven Professional community of certified EMC professionals who stay up to date through webcasts and online training events.  At EMC World, there is a special track of events for the Proven Professionals and a day where all Proven Professionals wear a special shirt with the EMC Proven Professional logo on it to identify themselves.  And, naturally the EMC Proven Professionals are on Twitter.

There's a super popular blogger's lounge onsite for all EMC bloggers and tweeters to relax in while they post content.  There's even a special Twitter area - #emcworld - for EMC World on Twitter and there have been thousands of Tweets every day from the show!  I tweeted live on topics like the Gin Blossoms concert and the activities in the EMC pavillion.

Live Events Are Key

In an era, where many organizations are cutting back on big live events, I recommend stopping to think that decision through.  Your customers are everything to your organization.  Recognizing and rewarding customers at an event like EMC World is more important than ever.  Communicating online is great and you need to be doing that, but nothing replaces face to face time with the subject matter experts for learning and networking. 

I'm happy to have the opportunity to be here to chat with customers, partners, and the EMC folks who before today, I only knew through e-mail and concalls!  Now, when we communicate with each other on line, we've got the shared experience of meeting up at EMC World 2009 in common.