mm » Marketing

Have me at Hello – Site Home Page Comparison

mark — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:10:30 +0000

Derek Perez posted a great site comparison comparing Earth Class Mail vs Zumbox. Unfortunately ECM comes off second best. But I have to say I absolutely love Zumbox’s home page. I’m sure the video actor and production cost a fortune, but I’m guessing they’re getting some serious ROI from it. The first time I saw this integrated video pitch was on brand guru Martin Lindstrom’s website, the author of Buyology. He’s changed the site around a little but he’s still pitching you in person when you arrive. Here’s Derek’s comparison.

More great headlines that get traffic

mark — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 16:56:00 +0000

My bro (in the literal sense) Nick is on the home page of Reddit this morning with an article about the chopper crash yesterday. As always, it’s all in the headline:

Can you Believe they are Charging the Fugitive Driver for the Deaths in the Press Chopper Crash?

Writing headlines of pure genius like this is going to rapidly become a very desirable skill.

Brand Authority and the Milgram Experiment

mark — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 21:07:38 +0000

I had a great chat with Tony Wright yesterday evening over a few drinks. Tony has a degree in psychology and is a fellow entrepreneur and we got chatting about the Milgram Experiment and its applicability to branding. Here’s a video summary:

The experiment found that few people have the resources needed to resist authority, even when the authority figure is telling them to do something in violent opposition to their moral judgment.

Brands carry a level of authority. Take a startup for example:

It’s founded by two Stanford postgrad students. +2 authority
It’s published on Techcrunch as the hot new thing. +1 authority.
It gets Angel funded by Larry Page, one of the Google founders. +7 authority
It gets a first round of VC funding from Sequoia. +5 authority
It gets published in the NY Times also as the hot new thing. +5 authority

You don’t yet know what this brand does, but you’re already dying to become a user – simply because the brand has a ton of authority and because your Milgram susceptible brain is telling you you to obey. [Or perhaps you fall within the 35% of Milgram participants who didn't kill the learner]

This is the reason I signed up for Joost very early on – because it’s founded by Niklas Zennstrom, one of the Skype founders.

I’ve seen startups do an excellent job of creating this authority using big marketing budgets and great PR firms without any product to speak of. Users wind up (to use a British expression) gagging for it and they don’t even know what the value proposition is.

On the flip side, many great products lack the brand authority to get the user adoption they need. For companies on a tight budget run by first-time entrepreneurs, this is a challenging hurdle. I don’t think it’s insurmountable though – it simply takes more time and careful growth.

Simply realizing that your brand has authority that needs to be grown is a great start.