I always thought my "shut the company down and take a job" exit was as an engineer.
I'm starting to think it's "Marketing Fixer" instead. Let's test the theory:
Reply with a company and its problem, and I will pithily solve it in a single tweet.
I'm starting to think it's "Marketing Fixer" instead. Let's test the theory:
Reply with a company and its problem, and I will pithily solve it in a single tweet.
Lyft repositions away from "Uber for Cars" and towards "drivers will deliver a bunch of common things you need and are already in your area" just-in-time delivery service. Long term sustainable? Maybe not, but they've got no Uber Eats equivalent.
Oracle stops denying it and instead embraces it. They take out full page ads in Beat the Shit Out of Me Magazine, displacing United Airlines in the process.
As the old joke ends, "you didn't come here for the hunting, did you."
As the old joke ends, "you didn't come here for the hunting, did you."
Google rebrands basically everything its SVP of Bad Decisions does as Chaos Engineering experiments. Suddenly terrible customer experience becomes bleeding edge engineering best practice.
Palantir gives up all pretense of caring about its image and instead leans into it, since they're not fooling anyone anyway. "Any shop can put its candidates through whiteboard interviews; we put them through waterboard interviews instead."
Fanatics now sells licensed merchandise for things beyond sports that are popular during the pandemic.
Netflix series, various kinds of bread, and Animal Crossing are their first stop.
Netflix series, various kinds of bread, and Animal Crossing are their first stop.
SpaceX and Tesla: Less a marketing problem than one for their Compliance Officers. They should give Elon a new problem to focus on instead, like "how can he tweet ruinous things with two severely broken hands?"
Given that Intel sponsors giant booths at cloud computing conferences where no processor buyers are present, I'm not sure that their marketing department is ever measured on freaking anything.
So invest the budget in polo ponies instead.
So invest the budget in polo ponies instead.
All of Softbank's marketing budget gets repositioned to the buyer that actually matters: the guy in the back of the investor meeting who's sharpening a bone saw.
Perhaps he'd like a super nice hoodie?
Perhaps he'd like a super nice hoodie?
AWS: I'd probably tone back the product strategy of "yes, we do that to" and focus on things that won't actively convince 98% of companies that they're a competitor.
I'd also spin off from Amazon, but that's a losing argument.
I'd also spin off from Amazon, but that's a losing argument.
Frankly they're already killing it. I'd maybe give Mark Zuckerberg an acting class or eight before his next fauxpology in front of Congress, but past that the money keeps coming in.
I'd slap a holding company wrapper around Tarsnap that charges 100x as much but "Speaks Enterprise Buyer" in a way that the currently excellent product very much does not.
IBM: stoke anti-technology sentiment, given the copious examples given earlier in this thread. Position themselves as the sensible alternative: a typewriter vendor with an excellent repair offering.
The Self Employed: Reposition away from "how you do the thing you love" and start instead talking about the expensive problem you solve super well with that skillset. Charge a boatload more.
Apple: Redefine "web-based" to include a definition that captures "via iOS app sold in the App Store." It's almost certainly an easier lift than building out massive web services at a global scale.
Every cloud vendor's managed Kubernetes service: Find the business value hiding within the k8s ecosystem and embrace that; there's limited time until the emperor's nakedness is exposed by an uncomfortable question in a venue you can't control.
Amazon: Do something breathtakingly good that nobody (even on Twitter!) could argue against. Spend a sarcastic amount of money doing it, and thus reframe.
Also maybe not do crappy things to the people who make the business work, while I'm dreaming.
Also maybe not do crappy things to the people who make the business work, while I'm dreaming.
Red Hat: Y'know, getting $34 billion for a business in decline is probably the single greatest marketing story of this generation.
All I could do would be to mess that up. They win!
All I could do would be to mess that up. They win!
PornHub: Accept that there's a stigma around adult entertainment that acts as a brake on DAUs, so launch a news show that covers serious topics in depth. Then pay Chuck Tingle to title the segments for you.
Also a mirror domain that's less titilating.
Also a mirror domain that's less titilating.
Linux and SystemD. Strive to come up with at least one example this decade wherein "open source community" isn't perceived as a massive liability. People fleeing up the stack to get away from you isn't terrific.
Twitter and the Sourdough problem: Put everyone who tweets about Sourdough into Twitter Quarantine. It's the yeast you could do.
Juul: They can fuck right off. I don't work with tobacco companies.
