Graeme Thickins on Tech

Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.

Category: Marketing/Branding/PR (Page 25 of 29)

Some of the Great People I Met at BlogHaus and CES

January 17, 2007 / / 6 Comments

As a final wrapup of my experience last week in networking of the face-to-face kind — in and around the largest trade show in the country, CES — I thought I’d do what I often do after these things: list the people I met. Most of the these were due to BlogHaus, which is the main reason I made the trip, and where I spent most of my time Sunday through Wednesday noon. Bloghaussign_1 I also attended an event called Storage Visions over the weekend, a press event called Showstoppers on Monday evening, and a party on Tuesday evening sponsored by Blog Business Summit. (See all my previous BlogHaus and CES posts. And my Flickr set, such as it is, you can find here. My friend Doc Searls’ set is sooo much better, and I actually show up in one of his shots. Also see Thomas Hawk’s great photo-documentary of the event on his very own photo-sharing site, Zooomr — and I’d encourage you to sign up for the service.)

Anyway, back to all the people I met — at least the ones I remember (apologies to those for whom I didn’t get a card to remind me!):
• From PodTech:
– John Furrier
– Linda Furrier
– Robert Scoble
– Maryam Scoble
– Valerie Cunningham
– Jeremiah Owyang
– Chris Coulter

• From Seagate:
– Bill Watkins, CEO
– Julie Still
– Brian Ziel
– Woody Monroy

And these others, in no particular order:
– Gabe Rivera, Founder, Techmeme
– Andru Edwards, CEO, GearLive
– Lionel Menchaca, chief blogger, Dell
– Thomas Hawk, Founder, Zooomr
– James Courtney, Skype Journal
– David Berkowitz, 360i.com
– Nicholas Butterworth, Diversion Media & Travelistic
– Oluf Nissen, HP and GeekTieGuy.com
– Betsy Weber, evangelist, TechSmith
– Paul Loeffler, PR, Palm
– Mark Plungy, PR, Yahoo!
– Mike Terpin, CEO, Terpin Communications
– Jennifer Fader, Terpin Communications
– Teresa Valdez Klein, Blog Business Summit
– Sam Abadir, CEO, Broadclip
– Al Carlton, Coolest-Gadgets.com
– Sal Cangeloso, XYZcomputing.com
– Sarah Browne, TheDailyBee blog
– Sandira Calviac, TechAgnostic.com blog
– Rick Calvert, CEO, BlogWorldExpo.com
– Kristian Rauhala, CEO, H2Oaudio
– Dave Botherway, President, Melbourne PC User Group
– Susan Fitzpatrick, CEO, Dateline Media
– Ron Nissen, investor, Bluebox Devices (Melbourne)
– Robert Yearsley, CEO, Bluebox Devices
– Benno Rice, Chief Architect, Bluebox Devices
– Angus Robinson, CEO, AEEMA (Australia)
– Barbara Adams, Australian Trade Commission
– Annette Ahern, US Consulate, Melbourne

At the Storage Visions event:
– Lee Gomes, Wall Street Journal
– Mark Walker, Seagate
– John Freeman, Strategic Marketing Decisions
– Tom Coughlin, producer of the event
(whom I already knew)
– Jim Porter, Disk/Trend (ditto)

Others I also knew but ran into again:
– Doc Searls
– Buzz Bruggeman
– Keith Shaw, NetworkWorld and DEMO
– also met Jason Meserve of NetworkWorld

Whew! I met a lot of great people on this trip. And I look forward to staying in touch with them. I know I’ll be seeing some again very soon at the DEMO ’07 event — for example, PodTech, the developers of the wonderful BlogHaus concept! What a super idea they had, and what a great client they have in Seagate who agreed to be lead sponsor. It was indeed a marketing and PR coup for them! Thanks again to both organizations.

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MEETUP! Before Guy Kawasaki’s Talk This Friday…

January 15, 2007 / / 9 Comments

To everyone I know or anyone who reads this blog: meet me at the University of Minnesota McNamara Alumni Center at 11:30 am this Friday, January 19th. Let’s get to the Guy Kawasaki talk early and schmooooze!!! I blogged about the event earlier here. (It starts at 1:00 pm.) The event quickly sold-out, but I’m sure many of you already have tickets. Even if you don’t, show up anyway! You can always try for standing-room-only space, or maybe you can nab somebody’s no-show ticket. Hey, Guy’s worth it! He packs ’em in everywhere he goes. Guykawasakistanleycup

We can talk about all kinds of stuff in advance of the talk: why Guy would come from California when we’re freezin’ our asses off here right now (it’s to play in the U.S. Pond Hockey Championships on Lake Nokomis)….what his topic is (it’s his classic “Art of the Start” talk)….or anything else you want to talk about, including my BlogHaus experience in Vegas last week. And getting there early should help us get locked-in for the best seats, or maybe those of you who need tickets can get on the list early for the no-shows.

Should be plenty of room to gather in the lobby area that’s closest to the auditorium where Guy will speak. (Check the signage on the way in.) And maybe we can even get coffee there…

Please spread the word to your lists and communities!
Let’s show Guy we’re one great startup community here in Minnesota!!! Indicate your interest here on my blog by adding a comment, and I’ll forward the whole thing to Guy beforehand. One of my VC friends tried to get me into a special lunch being held for Guy prior to the talk, with the local U of M muckety-mucks, etc, but I missed the cut. Who cares! This meetup will be lots more fun for me — and you! And maybe we can even continue the blog comments afterwards to tell Guy what we thought of his talk… See ya Friday!

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Hello, Cingular? This is AT&T – We Just Killed Your Brand

January 12, 2007 / / 1 Comment

The new AT&T next week will start phasing out the Cingular brand it acquired full control over recently, this after several billions of investment in brand advertising over the years, a Reuters story reported last night. Attcallingcingular It quoted a highly placed AT&T official and said the process is expected to play out over the several months, with communications in the interim showing dual Cingular-AT&T identity.

So, I guess the naysayers of Cingular being the choice of carrier for the iPhone deal now have something else to talk about. The brand slate is in essence being wiped clean, with the “new” AT&T really just building its brand. That’s nice for Steve Jobs and Apple, in my opinion, being partnered with a fresh new face in the cellular brand space. What’s ironic is that Cingular actually acquired the old AT&T Wireless, which had been a good early player but began having problems with an aging network. That company, however, has no connection at all with the new AT&T — which is really the old SBC. Got that? I can personally relate to this whole thing because I was an AT&T Wireless customer for many years, then went through the changeover to Cingular, and now will go through the changeover back to the AT&T brand.

Hey, how about that AT&T? What do us round-trippers get for hanging in there all these years? How about a free iPhone? [HAH! The cellular industry treats loyal customers like trash. All they care about is sucking in new customers, offering them the world.]

But where I really relate to this story is this: I was one of four consultants involved in the Cingular name development process, hired by their branding firm — back in ’99, I believe it was. That was fun. No, Cingular wasn’t one of my name ideas. Mine were much better… 🙂 I came up with some 50 of them — all coined, clear name candidates. I originally thought the word Cingular sucked (naturally), but then absolutely loved what the company did to build meaning around the brand — which was the work of their outstanding advertising agency, the New York office of BBDO. I thought it was really stellar branding work, one of the best new brand development efforts I’d seen in years. Of course, they had the budget for it, too, and they poured on the bucks — including Super Bowl ads. It was the kind of thing I’d put in the class of Apple. And, for that reason, I wasn’t surprised to hear in Jobs’ iPhone announcement that Cingular was part of the deal. Both firms get consumer branding, bigtime. Now I guess we’ll see how much the new AT&T (nee SBC) really does.

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CES Post 8: Whoa! Cisco Sues Apple

January 10, 2007 / / 1 Comment

Well, I guess it’s one more post from the airport. Cisco just sued Apple over the iPhone name, according to this Wall Street Journal alert that just hit my in-box here in the sports bar:

TECHNOLOGY ALERT from The Wall Street Journal — Jan. 10, 2007 — Cisco sued Apple for trademark infringement over the “iPhone” name Apple chose for its new cellphone, unveiled yesterday. Cisco obtained the iPhone trademark in 2000, and had been in talks with Apple over rights to the name.

“Cisco entered into negotiations with Apple in good faith after Apple repeatedly asked permission to use Cisco’s iPhone name,” said Mark Chandler, Cisco’s general counsel. “There is no doubt that Apple’s new phone is very exciting, but they should not be using our trademark without our permission.”

Iphonelogo_1

I was just talking about this situation with some guys last night at the Blog Business Summit party. I said Podtech had reported a source told them Apple had reached some sort of licensing agreement with Cisco for the name. Guess they were wrong!

I said I still didn’t understand why Cisco did a PR announcement of their iPhone line a few weeks ago, if they were in fact negotiating with Apple to let them have the name. One guy I was talking with last night said the December announcement was obviously them posturing to pressure Apple in paying more for the name — that is, to actually raise a higher awareness of the name being associated with Cisco, in an attempt to hold up Apple for more bucks. I said back in late December that I thought it was a really lame, kind of rushed-looking marketing intro. But, at that moment last night, I thought that guy might be onto something. He said they probably reached some 11th-hour agreement with Jobs since then for Apple to buy the rights to the name. But then I still wondered how Cisco would retract, or correct, that recent introduction of their iPhone product line…

Alas, this guy’s conjecture was wrong, too! The parties obviously didn’t reach any agreement at all. And it just amazes me that His Royal Steveness would have the cajones to go on stage yesterday and tout this name as his own! But, then, I guess I shouldn’t be. He’s basically just saying, “Screw you guys, then — sue me.” Obviously, he knows the market wants Apple to have this name, feels it’s theirs, and somehow this overwhelming force will overcome all.

This will get interesting, for sure. Unfortunately, we may never know how much he pays Cisco to give up the name. But I am definitely NOT betting against Jobs prevailing here.

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CES Post 5: My Head Hurts, My Feet Stink, and I Don’t Love CES

January 9, 2007 / / 1 Comment

But BlogHaus is fantastic! The PodTech people are great, and I got to meet a bunch of really nice Seagate folks last night, too — very cool. I love that company, and the great legacy they have in this industry — and in Minnesota, too, I might add (where they employs thousands). Bloghausentry

I thought for this post I’d just do the quick rundown of my day yesterday, the first official day of CES (which makes me wonder how many more of these days I can take!]…

It’s Tuesday morning now at the Haus, another beautiful, sunny day in Vegas. I was a little later getting to the suite this morning (about 8:30) — I guess because I stayed an hour later last night! (More on that in a bit.) But I was still the first blogger to arrive today….or maybe Sandira Calviac was here just ahead of me, so I defer to the lovely lady… 🙂 She’s from NY and has a cool new blog called TechAgnostic.com. But the best thing of all: she surfs! Learned in Hawaii recently, and came home and bought a wet suit so she could surf Long Island. I love it.

So, anyway, yesterday I attended the Aussie press event, as I blogged about. Being from Australia originally, I just had to… 🙂 Then I took in the Yahoo press luncheon — where I heard all about the new Yahoo Go for Mobile 2.0 service (now officially in beta) and the related Yahoo oneSearch — which they say together equals “the ‘Net in your pocket.” Pretty awesome demo they did. What’s the take on all this? Well, TechCrunch and others position it simply as Yahoo playing catch up to Google’s lead in mobile search. And the carriers they’ve signed up so far are all non-U.S. — so don’t get too excited yet. But one guy next to me (from a NY hedge fund!) was able to download the app quickly during the talk from his T-Mobile smart phone. Try it yourself here.

Then it was back to BlogHaus, where I hung in the conference room, blogging and chatting — mostly with PodTech folks and Lionel Menchacha, Dell’s official blogger, who’s a great guy. Been with Dell going way back.

After chatting with Linda Furrier about the how the whole BogHaus idea came about (a great story — more later), I left around 5:30 to head back to my hotel and get ready for the Showstoppers event at the Wynn Hotel. Huge crowds for this mini event, with what seemed like a hundred small booths (and killer food, drinks, and schwag). The coolest thing I saw there was the whole line of waterproof iPod cases and earphones from H2O Audio of San Diego. Pretty cool — for surfers especially, which the CEO, Kristian Rauhala, is (he surfs Black’s Beach). H2oaudiosurfer

Stayed at Showstoppers till about 8:30, then figured I’d better go grab a cab to get back for the big doin’s at the BlogHaus, with all the Seagate people showing up for a special program. Lo and behold, as I’m walking through the endless casino path through the cavernous Wynn, who do I see briskly walking by me but John Furrier. So, I yells, hey John, I’ll bet you have a limo, huh? He says yeah, wanna ride? So, I join him and Robert Scoble, who caught up with us about then, for the ride back to the Bellagio. We had some good laughs….these two guys are way fun!

Back at the animal house — I mean BlogHaus — the place is starting to rock. And a beer or so later, the Seagate folks start arriving. John does the introductions, they announce the Seagate product giveaway winners (darn, I wanted one), and I had a chance to chat with corporate communications people Brian Ziel, Woody Monroy, and Julie Still. Woody’s a surfer (great name for one! I own a woody car myself…), and he tells me there are a lot of surfers at the company, since their offices in Scotts Valley are so close to Santa Cruz. He surfs generally before work. Later, I met CEO Bill Watkins, who’s a great guy, really fun, and we chatted about Minnesota a bit. See photo below of him being interviewed by one of the vlogging crews.

Here are some of my other photos of last night’s happenings, at least the ones that didn’t start getting blurry like my eyes as the evening progressed… 🙂 Seagatepodtech
Watkinsseagate
Furrierseagate
Scobledrinking We had waaay too much fun. My favorite photo is the one of Scoble going bottom’s up — no, that’s not vodka. 🙂 Seriously, it was an awesome event, with lots of great conversation and laughs. Mega-mega thanks PodTech, and of course to Seagate for underwriting the whole thing — a real marketing and PR coup. And it’s not over yet — the suite goes 24/7 till 8:00 am Thursday…

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