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Steve Jobs reportedly hated focus groups. His famous quote …

If you know Star Trek at all, you recognize the name Kobayashi Maru as that of a pivotal test James Kirk, as a cadet at Star Fleet, had to take to become an officer. No cadet had ever passed the scenario because it was, in fact, a no-win situation (details are here for closet Trekkies who aren’t familiar with this story).

Infographics are all the rage these days in marketing departments. But why? What can an infographic do that other marketing tools can’t? And, just as importantly, what are the limits of infographics?

Effective marketing requires crisp differentiation. Define a unique market segment and be the best in that segment. Simple enough, but be careful – it is not product differences that define your segment, but rather buyer differences. Segments are defined by unique buyers with unique needs and desires.

I saw two great movies last week. The first – The Sapphires – was an independent film with unknown actors. The other was Iron Man 3, starring Robert Downey Jr. You couldn’t find two more different movies in terms of star power, production values, and overall polish.

A while back one of our clients called and asked if we could help with their inbound marketing. I’ll confess I had heard of the term at the time, but wasn’t precisely sure what it was. I told our client so and she went off to find an inbound marketing firm.

Two questions clients ask me all the time about online video are “how many views are enough” and “how can I get more views”. These are great questions. The answers might surprise you.

Yogi Berra famously said “You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.” You never knew what Yogi was really talking about, but in this case he may have been talking about choosing your marketing targets carefully. Here are three things I’ve learned over the years about choosing your marketing targets:

About four years ago we noticed a fundamental shift in marketing. PR — which had always been the lead tactic of emerging technology companies — was becoming less relevant. We never saw the CEO in pitch meetings anymore. You can read our thoughts on what was causing this shift in marketing.

Market surveys don’t discover the truth. They uncover perceptions. Let me give an example.