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Week 8 - Guerilla Marketing

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 The final chapter in Guerilla Marketing did a great job affirming the fact that I actually absorbed some of the concepts presented in the book.  I centered my advertisement practical project around a type of “survey” to act as a consumer data collection tool, so reading about how that kind of activity fits into marketing felt like an academic “high five”. Image Source. I had planned out a social media effort to gather information on potential clients.  My logic was resultant of two ideas.  Even though my project was fairly reliant on personal “shares”, meaning it’s sampling method was convenience rather than random, there was still an element of targeted selection, since my quiz was designed to interest a particular group of people.  Also, clicking the initial link is at least a baseline indicator that the person would be somewhat inclined to participate in one of my potential service/tour venues. Though the book presented a simple SurveyMonkey quiz, I leaned more toward noted gueri
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Week 8 - Ascend your Startup

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Image Source. As I finish up my material review of Ascend your Startup , I’m reminded that this entire guidebook is simply an outline of the first 100 meters or so of a marathon-level endeavor.  We’ve discussed preparation strategy, marketing needs, product development and roll-out needs, operations feedback and process improvement - all incredibly important to the baseline foundation of your startup business.  However, these points are just that – a starting point.  There’s quite a bit more to learn, develop and implement as your business grows beyond the scope allowed in this context. I know personally, this experience has further shaped my future plans.  There were several concepts that were newly introduced to me that had me rethinking my planned approach to my post-military business endeavors.  It’s ok to dream big, but you need to take deliberate, planned steps toward your goals, particularly in retail or service industries.  You need to consider the wants and needs of your consu
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Week 8 - Surfing the Tsunami

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I find it interesting that I was assigned three separate texts in this marketing course – none which presented as typical textbook theory material.  Surfing the Tsunami , in particular, almost felt out of place in a marketing and branding course.  I can now say, after reviewing the presented topics and injected information from past discussions, that understanding the implications of machine learning and artificial intelligence will be absolutely essential to operations within the future advertisement technology industry. Image Source. This book only scratches the surface of the potential impacts of such technology.  There are technical-analytical fields across a myriad of industries that could (and probably, inevitably will) benefit from the adoption of artificial intelligence.  As simulated neural networks and reciprocal decision-making algorithms (among other things) improve, the processes that AI can reach out and touch will expand exponentially.  I’m incredibly curious on the dire
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Week 7 - Guerilla Marketing

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I actually found Chapter 7 of Guerilla Marketing more of a textbook read, rather than something that has captured my interest in line with previous chapters.  This week’s review focuses on reducing costs and improving efficiency – reminiscent of “Lean Six Sigma” perspective in process management.  While obviously beneficial, I find the topic to be mind-numbingly boring. I would rather discuss efficiency in the same scope as the feedback loops described in the last two chapters.  Reevaluating marketing needs on a continuous (or at least periodic) basis as a reaction to changes in business operations or consumer sentiments/needs presents the best opportunity to improve efficiencies.  This might also include reductions in time, energy and money that was initially placed into the advertising strategy. Image Source. This seems pretty logical: the majority of the marketing strategic mission is completed in the planning and product roll-out portion of the product life cycle.  As the dust set
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Week 7 - Ascend your Startup

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I really enjoyed the flavor of the five decisions presented in this week’s portion of Ascend your Startup .  Ultimately, the entire section is grounded around a single topic – “How are you going to take care of your people?”.  It highlights some very important aspects of business culture and quality-of-life management needs that can make or break organizations.  Trust me, I’ve lived on both sides of this coin. Image Source. The first touch point asks how to inspire cultural collaboration?  That’s to say, how do you integrate company values and goals into a positive work culture that encourages collaboration, team-building and constructive relationships?  There’s an entire science behind the “How” here (think organizational behavior), but the importance is not lost through summarization. The second consideration leans more toward something that feels a bit more specific to this day and age.  “How has your technology connected humanity?”.  Well, most of us have quite a bit of work to do
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Week 7 - Surfing the Tsunami

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I feel like Chapter 7 of Surfing the Tsunami took a step back from the deep dive we’ve been conducting into the “What, why and how” and gave us a second to consider the “Who”.  Much of the skepticism and apprehension surrounding the adoption of artificial intelligence / machine learning technology is reflective of the notion that it takes the human component out of the equation.  It’s easy to forget that A.I. development is, at its core, a data science industry, and that industry employs a huge number of highly skilled professionals.   Image Source.   This is a good 7-min read on the “training” of deep neural networks.  I found this post while “rabbit-holing” about some of the comments in the personal profiles in this week’s chapter. My favorite read in this chapter was Geoffrey Hinton profile, given his response to the “Why?” question.  He alludes to the idea that building an artificial brain is an effective approach to learning about how our own assimilates and processes information
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Week 6 - Ascend your Startup

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One of the toughest parts of managing business growth is quality assurance, and this is particularly difficult for young companies.  I’ve been mostly blogging about establishing, marketing and delivering a minimum viable product (MVP) for these companies – but eventually you’ll need to move on to specialized or niche products as well.  The same self-monitoring rules apply to future rollouts as that for the MVP.  There needs to accountability measures in place to ensure ongoing quality controls, as well as feedback mechanisms to “adjust fire” when needed. Image Source. Ascend your Startup recommends using Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) to establish targets and milestones for ongoing operations.  The principle is to create business objectives that align with, and further, your long-term business strategy while creating related, functional-area metrics (based on results, feedback or outputs) that indicate success on the way toward said objective. This parallels how I’ve been taugh
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