| Date: | March 29, 2007 / year-entry #111 |
| Tags: | non-computer |
| Orig Link: | https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20070329-01/?p=27443 |
| Comments: | 13 |
| Summary: | The great thing about Marketing is that you get to use words and phrases that normal human beings never use. Here's an example from over a decade ago: XYZ fit the installed base of web browsers we were targeting, and worked well in an awareness space. I have no idea what an "awareness space" is.... |
The great thing about Marketing is that you get to use words and phrases that normal human beings never use. Here's an example from over a decade ago:
I have no idea what an "awareness space" is. The punch line? This sentence came from a person whose title was "Director of Communication"! |
Comments (13)
Comments are closed. |
Interestingly enough (as a coincidence at least from my perspective), on Tuesday during my Introduction to Marketing class at university we learned about some key aspects of targeting customers for new products, and "Awareness" is the first step in the ‘social adoption of innovation’ process… So the phrase probably made PERFECT sense to the person, and probably was intended to bring along with it a whole range of other positive connotations.
I guess the failure in communications therefore came from the director forgetting that while ‘basic principles’ might indeed be extremely basic and easy to understand, if no one has ever taught them to you, they still don’t make any sense. It’d be like talking to a non-programmer about loops and functions and interrupts; it’s all basic to us, but to the outsider, not quite so much!
Still, isn’t that what communications directors are supposed to think about? ;)
(and, in the end, I suppose that’s probably the point you were making in the first place, making this entire comment somewhat redundant)
Marketing: The art of taking anything negative about a company or product and making it sound/look like a postitive feature.
JamesNT
I have no idea what "Director of Communication" is.
Think of "Director of Communications" as it is 1984 style newspeak.
Dan > Sounds like "Head of PR" to me.
But then again it could be a telephone switchboard operator – "how may I direct your call?" ;)
the awareness space is actually the blanket that is covering discoverability, I thought everyone knew that by osmosificationalism
"I can’t approve this until it’s been more socialized."
Figured it needed a red flag with a hammer on it?
Grouchy Smurf: "Me, I don’t like marketing!"
Back when I worked on a helpdesk, some of the dumbest support calls I ever got were from IT directors. You would expect an IT director of a large company to know how to turn on the laptop, log ni and read email… but no.
I’m a marketing guy (for better or for worse!) and even I will admit that this quote sounds like a Dilbert cartoon gone bad…
From what I remember in the entrepreneurial computer science course at university, selling things is a process of 4 things: AIDA, where
A stands for Awareness
I stands for Interest
D stands for Decision
A stands for Action
This is part of what is called the "sales funnel", look it up. From what I remember, this is something every salesman should know.
Could you tell more about the context of that sentence… where was it uttered, who was in the room, etc.?
Did they only test it in ONE awareness space?