Marketing BS

People who know me, should also know I am quite keen on martial arts. I have practiced karate for 10 years and kung-fu for 4 years now. And many principles are quite transposable to business practices.

- Innovate! The unexpected hit is always the hardest to avoid. If you hit someone with your knee or elbow, it is quite unusual, but it is deadly. Very good at short range, and used in few sports. Using it in real-life fight really gives a competitive advantage.

- Deceive! Pretend you surrender. Apologize like you never apologized before. You would shake so much because of fear, you would drop your wallet. If the opponent looks down, it is the best moment to land a straight punch to the nose.

- Have a long term strategy! One hit in the nose is not enough. He could recover and stab you with a knife he has hidden. Chinese emperors would kill a rebel, his wife, his family, and all his wife family to avoid retaliation In this case just make sure he does not retaliate in the minutes to come. Once he is stunned, just give a one two in the face, low kick in the knee, uppercut in the chin and kick in the nuts. Put him on the ground arm-lock him and call the police. (In that case you’re supposed to have been agressed) Business-wise, never ignore a competitor, even in a difficult position.

- Always be armed! If you are being attacked, have weapons ready. I always have keys on myself, and believe me, that hurts. In the corporate world, it could be… have lawyers ready to bite, and counterattack.

- Aim low, or at the weakest points. Well you know where to hit. Eyeballs, throat, nuts, knees… In fact, attack you opponents most profitable market, the segments he needs to survive. He will have to drop the prices and react to your neverending attacks.

- First move advantage! Always try to attack first. Pretend you will not fight, and then try to lead the fight. That’s only if you know that the fight is unavoidable. He who conquers a market first, has a dominant position.

- Choose the right field. Elephant or hippo, who is stronger ? Well in the water, it is the hippo. So you will want to run in a crowded zone to avoid the fight or in a friendly zone to have your friends help you.

- Outnumber! Well that’s obvious. One holds the opponent, and the other beats the crap out of him. (you can also have an extra friend scouting for weapons in the meantime). It would be diversification in different markets with synergies, or just more salespersons for a better market coverage.

- Play with the rules! If the referee does not see it it is not a foul. I try to fall on my opponent with the elbow first, but hidden from the referee. The other guy is out of breath, and I can easily go for an arm-lock. Well I let you imagine how that applies in the corporate world.

So that was my insight today on that topic. I advise you to read Sun Tzu principles of “The art of War”. But that could be another story.

Yes. More than $90. Oil is really expensive.
Why is that?
We’re not really lacking oil. It’s just getting more and more expensive to extract.
Okay now that I’ve given the reason for that title, I can talk about something else. I admit that’s not search engine friendly, nor reader friendly… But once again, I don’t write for search engines, nor for readers… hrmmmm… Let me take that back.

The real subject of that post is Evolution. I read Dr Curry article on Evolution, and he says that our species would split into two species. Sexual selection would make handsome, tall, sexually attractive people mate together… whereas the others would have to take the leftovers.
Therefore there would be two sub-species remaining in the end. One, tall and handsome,and the other which would be gnome-like.
But mankind would depend heavily on sophisticated technology, making them like domesticated animals.

My belief is that Evolution is no more. Reproducing is for everyone. Nobody’s unfit. Everyone can mate, and pass his genes. Life is a commodity, as I explained and buying you genes survival is something you can do. And money is not even discriminatory… Poor people tend to have more children as an investment (like a retirement plan, and having their children emigrate is like a risk diversification process).
We are becoming fatter, and it is not a feature the other gender is considering attractive.
There is no selective pressure. I had laser eye surgery, and could not see anything that was at a 2 meter range. I would have been killed by a predator an era ago.

In fact, what I believe is true, is that we might become technology dependent. I can’t switch off my cell phone for a day, I need internet and a microwave to have an existence I can call as such.
We’ll all beome couch potatoes finding our partners on facebook, and I’d send a sperm sample and my partner would send some eggs to www.sexual-progeniture.com (or anything I’m making this up).
3D live webcasting is a clean substitute for life.

Let’s begin now.

Most of the people have to work in domains where knowledge is power. You know something and you leverage it to gain something else.
You surely know one of those infoholics, who would be so happy to show anyone they know something the others don’t. They trade info, like they would trade baseball cards. Spot them, and become one of them.

Once you’re in that group… how do you acquire knowledge?
1) Either you know the right people and you have access to confidential information
2) Either you don’t.

If it is 1), then you are really wasting your time reading my blog. I mean, you should spend more time with your connections, or your girlfriend or boyfriend, or anything else. You are wasting time here. Switch your computer off and go get a life. Hop hop hop.

You’re still there?
Well for those who are reading the blog at work, do you think your boss would be happy to know that? Because I am going to tell! I can see when you are connecting from work!

For those who really don’t have a life, welcome home.
Now that we are amongst the happy few…
Let’s consider how you can acquire information from data everyone has access to.
How do you do that?
Read everything! Read it all! Your brain will get the most important details and you will extract the interesting information from all those sources. That’s multi-layered intelligence.

You don’t have time for that?
Have you tried speed reading? You should.
Remember when you learnt how to read at school? Letter by letter, you had a word and then a sentence, reading it out-loud.
If you still have that habit, then your reading is SLOW. (S-L-O-W) or sssssssllllllllllllllllooooooooooowwwwwww.
You are limited by your subconscious voice. You should not be reading the words. You should be recognizing them. Even more, you should be recognizing the sentences.
When you see a tree, you know it is a tree. You don’t have to look at each part seperately to eventually conclude it is a tree.
Going to speed-reading is hard. You should never look back to a word you’ve already seen, because your brain has recorded it, but because it is not the way you’re used to reading, you won’t feel safe until you read it a second time. WRONG!
Never look back. Like a porcupine you ran over with your car, don’t look back. You know it’s happened anyway.
But be sure you see everygroup of word and that you don’t miss any of them, and that your inner voice stays quiet. (you can say one-two-one-two while you read).
So speed reading is great and it is a very disturbing process, and does not work with new complicated litterature. Other tricks are involved, I might talk about that in a future post.

Let’s end with Woody Allen’s thought about speed reading:
“I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.”

Thank you Woody.

Working in the aeronautical industry, I know that going from point A to point B is not a straight and unique path. You want to take so many variables into account.
Is the trip long? Am I going to be there on time and are you sure of that? Am I going to die during the trip? How can I make good use of that trip time? Can I cancel the trip at the very last moment? It goes on and on…
Modularity is the concept behind all that (before we discover teleportation of course). each mean of transportation has its benefits and drawbacks. In France, we are very lucky to have the French Railway(SNCF), which has extensive coverage, good frequency and interesting fares. Air France is threatened by that competition and also by the Low Cost carriers (Easyjet is now going to Lyon-Toulouse and Bordeaux-Lyon!).
Those three possibilities – I will not talk about hitchhiking- have different parameters, but you would choose according to the ones you are most sensitive too.
Interesting enough, SNCF is marketing train as a place to meet people (” accelerateur de rencontres”) , whereas Air France focuses more on the service side. For easyjet, the driver is value for money at the expense of flexibility and additional frills.

So going from point A to point B can be complex.
There is so much to consider, and so much data… that Google is surely going to invade that juicy Market. And they clearly show their ambition.
They know how to extract and use meaningful information from complex data, they have loads of cash, and the foundators were known to have a keen interest in that matter.
Google earth is the first step linked with Google Maps (How expensive is a satellite?).
An army of Google Cars is currently roaming in America, putting everything in pictures, media…
Google Sims are going to boost their 3D rendering technology. As well GooglePhone will put a physical device in the hand of everyone so that they remain connected and get the Google reflex.

Google Transit is Google’s first answer to the transport problem. There is no worldwide coverage, not all means of transportation, but they are definitely going to be big players in the market.
People will find their tickets on Google, and maybe one day, they’ll have their own airlines with Google’s operating systems, and manufacture their own Cars and Aircraft.
The Google Phone is the first move to the physical world. But will Google survive a move to the “Real world”. Search is their core business. We all search for something don’t we.

They could go into the dating business and challenge meetic.com and match.com or adultfriendfinder.com. They could give you jobs orientation, help you search for an appartment.
Google shares are so high at the moment, financial analysts are really confident in the opportunity arising with Google.

Not only that, but Google has so much liquidity that it invests in small innovative start-ups and give them opportunity to grow. And acquires them if needed.

So what is the best path from point A to point B ?
Let me ask Google…

Joel Comm is making a free online reality TV. It is called the Next internet millionaire.
Basically it is a mix of Survivor (see my post about it) and the apprentice.
People want to get rich on the internet, they take crash courses and and they get eliminated until one remains and can make a Joint-venture with that guy on the picture.
The show is pretty off the mark, business-wise, and some friends of that guy come and turn their lessons into obvious marketing for their firms.
The trials are the stupidest I’ve ever seen (and I doubt they prove any business skills any time): eat worms (that’s a classic, now), play ping pong, poker, answer questions about one Joel Comm’s friend’s firm (oh la la).
And participants get to have lame gifts such as free software subscriptions if they win.
Wow. I am impressed.

But what brio! What marketing! Bravo!

The reality show is an obvious marketing machine, but it works really well, whatever you’re doing Joel. The show is somewhat entertaining, and the characters are interesting.
Just hope nobody takes it too seriously.

See ya guys.