Andrew Lark

I Crashed On Mars Shortly After Takeoff

This is soooo much fun... neat mash-up with Google...

What they really meant when they said that...

Some classic quotes here... Including a range of Bush gems...

The First Mover PR Advantage...

Apple is enjoying a little first mover PR advantage with its pricing comparisons to Dell. First mover advantage is something that has been both promoted and discounted, but in the PR wars it's worth lots - especially when your foe doesn't move quickly (real-time) to counter the noise.

What I think people are missing here is that Dell's model is geared to moving prices in a competitive way. I'm not sure Apple's is as aggressively geared. They're a smart bunch down in Austin - watch what happens next with Dell Pricing... If there is one things I have learned - competing with Dell on price is a fools errand.

I've been watching Apple's announcements of the past week with keen interest (esp as I just installed a mini mac at home with Sonos). As someone who lives on both the Mac and Windows I care less and less about the operating system. Apple's is lovely and reliable - I would argue better. Windows is annoying and ugly - but fast and supports a plethora of software that I have no choice but to need (Internet Explorer) and some that I prefer (Outlook, Office, Powerpoint). Pogue does a better job than me on all of this.

So long as Microsoft and Dell have that advantage I'll keep buying their products - first mover advantage or no first mover advantage. So long as Apple has its advantage, I'll keep buying theirs. And so long as my employer keeps buying at least one of these systems, I'm stuck with that as well.

Which leads me - very circuitously - to my main point. The future won't be about who is better but rather who can tie it all together - and from that standpoint Apple is off to a good start... I'm going to want the best of both worlds on one system.

And oh, those Dell guys, they'll be in the middle of this as well, you wait and see.

Technorati : Apple, Dell, PR

Authenticity & Astroturfing

Great page on the New PR Wiki on astroturfing.

Press Release Optimization...

Good wrap on press release optimization (or press release SEO) for search. And more here on search.

Technorati : PR

You've Seen the Cover... Now Reality

BusinessWeek's cover on Web 2.0 zillionaires irked me. Total hype and lousy reporting. All about selling mags on the newsstand, not informed commentary. Seems Kevin Rose is bringing the story back down to earth himself:

"I'm not a multi-millionaire, I'm not a millionaire or even a thousand-aire. ... I can't even afford a couch in my new apartment."

Another View On Technorati's Numbers...

Kevin Burton has an alternate view on Technorati's numbers. He makes some fair points - there is no way that there are 50 million active blogs.

But I don't agree with Kevin that for a blog to be active post needs to happen every day: "lets be generous and say that a blog has to post at least once per day to be considered active". Why? I'd be OK with a couple of times a week.

Technorati : Blogs, PR

Nice tool...

Great time tracking tool over at Tickspot. A big deal for those of us who need to keep track of time. Even if you don't have a commercial need, keeping track of your hours worked on community and charitable projects can be of real use when assessing if it was time well spent.

Got this via the new and improved Styleboost...

The 10,000 Question...

Tim has a great post on the multitude of start-ups with $10,000 to spend on a PR agency. OK, I'm one of them. It just seemed like such a nice round number to start with. Somehow it's crept-up a little bit though... Must fix that...

Tim is right (he is right on most things)... we all want PR pros. But I don't want $15,000 dollars worth of service. I don't even know what that is!

I want results. I don't care what it costs or whether an agency has to under or over service to deliver it. I just want results against the agreed budget. You commit, I commit, we all commit together.

What is more troubling to me as a Valley CMO is:

1) finding a great agency is bloody hard work. They are few and far between. At any billing rate. Few CMOs I know get the value of PR or AR, let alone the value of a good agency... I accept we are part of the problem, but...
2) finding an agency that gets your business and has a real enthusiasm for contributing to the growth of the business - harder still
3) finding an agency that understands that great ideas get funded - near impossible. They are caught in the conundrum or belief that ideas require budget prior to being generated. Bullshit. (and I am talking about real ideas, not those regurgitated from the last pitch)
4) finding a team that can explain why they should get paid more and then associate some kind of outcome with the result - well, if you find them, let me know. The most common justification - "we've been over servicing your business for six months now, you need to pay us more" - is nuts. Nuts!
5) finding an agency - the word is a bit of an oxymoron. It implies some kind of powerhouse of ideas and execution - the strength of a team. What you generally end-up funding is one very dedicated individual surrounded by some other folks - generally you aren't quite sure what they are doing but they all arrive for meetings and scribble madly into notebooks.

What is needed is a new kind of agency. One not built on billable hours and 10k budgets. Maybe one built on the power of ideas to drive a startup's growth curve? One with the courage and conviction to articulate a value proposition that resonates with the CMO of a start-up and ability to explain what the budget should be.

You see, we live less in the conceptual world of brand and reputation and more in the real world of qualified opportunities, pipeline growth and time to sale.

Until then, 10k sounds like a nice round number to start with. Agencies shouldn't let it end there. We will pay more. And I am willing to put my money where my mouth is.

NZ A Topped Rank Place To Do Business...

Bloody easy says the World Bank... I think they kinda miss the point though. Might be easy to do business there but most entrepreneurs I know are more interested in doing business here. That would be another axis on the chart that I might fear lead to a different outcome than this:

1. New Zealand
2. Singapore
3. United States
4. Canada
5. Norway

So, entrepreneurs in Serbia and Montenegro can register new businesses online, and if the entrepreneur has not heard from the government in five days, the business can start. Now try getting your product to market in Japan or the US.

Sorry for the cynicism but I deal with Kiwi companies trying to break into the US every day and am all to familiar with the real challenge they face.

Thanks to Guy & Peep for flagging.