Do This, See This, Buy This: Anki OVERDRIVE

Do This See This Buy This is a SteveFeyer.com feature about great products and services for marketers

Some marketing phrases become so overused they lose all meaning. Yet when I say that Anki OVERDRIVE is “the future of entertainment”, it’s no exaggeration. OVERDRIVE is the future made real.

Anki OverdriveAnki uses the kind of technology that might drive full-size cars in 2050 to make, simply, the best toy you’ll see this year. And it goes on sale today.

OVERDRIVE is the culmination of years of research in robotics and artificial intelligence. It combines the best elements of slot car racing and video games into one package. I’ve seen 5-year-olds and 50-year-olds enjoy Anki’s first product, Anki Drive, so I have no doubt this toy will appeal to everyone in the family.

There are a lot of reviews already that include gameplay details and visuals. My favorite so far comes from Forbes.

Anki Overdrive Thermo racecarOVERDRIVE is being compared to other physical-to-virtual concepts like Skylanders, but in reality there’s no comparison. Most other toys use the physical element as a gimmick. At Anki, the real and the onscreen are intimately and seamlessly connected. You’re not just plugging in a hunk of plastic. With OVERDRIVE, you are battle racing with real robots.

Like last year, when Anki Drive was widely sold out in December, I expect OVERDRIVE will be the hit toy of the holiday season. If you want to make sure you have one under the tree, you’d best buy it now. But good luck keeping it under wraps for three months.

This is the year of the future, so take the money you were saving for a hoverboard and get Anki OVERDRIVE instead.

Buy OVERDRIVE.

Anki Overdrive action

Product images courtesy of Anki.

Disclaimer: I used to work at Anki.

Dreamforce Day 3: Making It Rain At The Cloud Expo

Dreamforce is a product marketer's dream

After Day 1 of Dreamforce, I wrote about the most effective booth giveaway that I saw at the Cloud Expo. After Day 3, I have some questions about three more giveaways.

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Being The Cool Kid – For All The Wrong Reasons

I discovered another reason why a giveaway of socks is clever. It’s something that your booth visitors will use and remember, but it’s not so generous that demand will overwhelm your booth.

The disadvantage of great swag occurred to me as I passed MuleSoft’s booth again. As usual there was a long line, even though the expo was fairly quiet. Booth visitors were hoping to win a sweatshirt.

The line ran all the way past the MuleSoft booth. It took me a minute to work my way into the half of the booth not devoted to the giveaway. There, a single staffer was manning an empty demo station.

Are a lot of people asking you for demos? I inquired. What is it MuleSoft does, anyway?

He told me that the company makes APIs, and he thought about 25% of visitors sought him out after winning their prize. They would have had to seek him out – with this crowd, the demo was cut off from the trade show floor.

Is MuleSoft getting good value with its generous giveaway? The people in line are only there for the sweatshirts. Writer David Raether coined the term “swag hog” for an attendee who is more interested in free stuff than in business.

If the person in your booth isn’t interested in what you have to say, why give them a valuable item and (more importantly) your valuable time? Is MuleSoft getting enough brand value from people wearing their hoodies after the show?

MuleSoft is the cool kid of Dreamforce, but possibly for the wrong reason. They are attracting swag hogs who are there to take, not to engage. Perhaps the company is okay with this. Either way, it’s a good lesson for the rest of us thinking about our future promotions.

What is the balance between a good giveaway and a too-good giveaway?

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Your Two Cents? Times 100

I bent down to pick up a trade show giveaway I saw on the ground. It was this.

SalesLoft had this viral guerrila marketing stunt

The landing page is a tongue-in-cheek petition to elect Marc Benioff president created by SalesLoft. A $2 bill meets most of the tenets of the MEDICAL method and, as part of a guerrilla campaign, earned some viral attention today. So on one hand, well done.

On the other hand, I’m not certain if this approach is informative. I assumed this was the promotion of an agency or other creative, when in fact SalesLoft provides prospecting automation. As of this writing, this campaign has 106 sign-ups – which may or may not be a good number of prospects with one day left in the show. And there’s a (remote) risk as well.

So I honestly can’t decide how I feel about this one. What do you think – brilliant, or flat?

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A Robot On Replay

Robot was not differentiatedOn Tuesday, I noticed this robot and couldn’t discover what it was promoting. I figured it out today.

The robot belongs to Vidyard, a company that provides detailed viewer data for video marketing. I know because I spotted the robot again at Vidyard’s booth, where the CEO was doing barista duty. He gave me a cup of coffee at a critical nadir in my personal energy levels and told me about the company.

A fairly generic mascot and a totally generic cup of coffee. On Tuesday, I implied that these kinds of trade show tactics were individually not likely to be very memorable. But today, together, they made an impression.

So I was wrong to think they were ineffective. Maybe it’s more important for your trade show tactics to be frequent and varied than to be totally unique. What do you think?

I’m particularly interested to see how Vidyard follows up the show. I’ll report back on their lead nurturing effort in several weeks.

Reading With Steve: Selling The Invisible by Harry Beckwith

Reading with Steve is a regular feature at SteveFeyer.com. Read product marketing and content marketing book reviews.

How is a service business like a product business? According to Harry Beckwith, the question no longer even relevant – every business is a service business.

In his marketing classic Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing, author Beckwith proves this fundamental truth, and reveals what marketers must do to win and retain customers. The content is broken down into 11 thematic sections, each containing a number of very brief anecdotes that demonstrate a fundamental marketing lesson.

Beckwith has a genius for storytelling. He has selected stories that are so compelling they make the resulting lesson seem obvious in retrospect. His skill reinforces these lessons in a way that textbooks cannot, and his consistency and brevity give the lessons more power than any how-to blog. For this reason alone, Selling the Invisible should be on your bookshelf. Pick it up, turn to any page, and gain a valuable piece of knowledge.

I count 162 lessons. If there were 365, a daily flip calendar would be the perfect format (and the perfect gift for any marketer).

selling the invisible is a classic work on B2B marketingThis book is remarkable for its ability to foresee, and shape, future trends in marketing. Though published in 1997, Selling the Invisible anticipates the digital marketing future by imparting concepts we take for granted today: Set your business apart, think continuous improvement, disrupt yourself before your competitor disrupts you, marketing is everyone’s job, improving your service is improving your marketing, market to your core competency, dominate your niche, et cetera. Beckwith proves these maxims without the B-school terminology, and without digital examples. Yet the fact that these concepts are accepted wisdom today, and part of any business school curriculum, points to Beckwith’s influence and foresight.

Most powerful is the core message that every business is a service business. This means that the marketing imperatives of an electronics maker and a software designer are the same. Businesses of all kinds keep customers based on the level of interaction they provide, on their attention to detail, on the strength of their brand. In 2015, businesses also face the leveling plain of social media, with its immediate feedback and direct customer service. Surely Beckwith could not anticipate this coming technology, yet he prepares his readers for it perfectly.

I was pleased to see Beckwith spend time with concepts of organizational behavior (again, he does not use the academic term). The science of organizational behavior uses empirical psychology to show how humans make decisions. Mastery of this discipline gives any marketer a huge advantage. Beckwith uses the section he calls “How Prospects Think” to explain such concepts as familiarity bias, recency bias, anchoring, and the halo effect. He offers the best 15-minute introduction to marketing psychology I have seen.

Even in a universally strong volume, the section on positioning stands out as a tour de force. Start with a fanatical focus on the one thing that distinguishes your business, and then position outward from there. If you cannot find this one factor, look harder until you do find it. Beckwith declares that differentiation is the starting point of any communication strategy. It is hard to disagree with him.

I particularly enjoyed Beckwith’s stories about making your marketing exciting, a concept he terms “vividness”.

With very few exceptions, each story hits home and illustrates its lesson well, but a few fall short by offering a point that is too breezy. For example, Beckwith tells the story of a passionate salesman who wins every deal by being his authentic, charismatic self. This engaging vignette closes with the advice, “You should copy him”. Suppose you are not the natural salesman of this story? What if you are affectless, and not affectionate? It cannot be possible to imitate a presenter whose very power is his authenticity. The story is terrific, however the lesson does not follow so easily. Just a few of the stories fall flat in this way.

Selling the Invisible is visionary, a series of parables that have stood for 18 years with no diminution of their power. I believe this work will still be essential for future generations of marketers.

Remember, Beckwith tells us, that your first competitor is indifference. Your alternative to reading Selling the Invisible is to read nothing at all. That choice would be a mistake.

Buy the book.