Month: February 2011

Great story about how Apple gets more technology headlines than any other tech company.

It wasn’t all that long ago Apple was in danger of going out of business yet now they are the world’s second largest company (in terms of valuation) and are within striking distance of becoming first.  A lot of that has to do with mindshare. And Apple has earned mindshare to spare.

The most amazing element of all this is how Microsoft formerly the world’s largest technology company, has not only lost marketshare but also mindshare.  While Apple garnishes 12% of all tech news stories, Microsoft is only at 3%.  So while Apple owns about 10% product share vs Microsoft, Apple owns 4 times more marketing share than Microsoft.  Divide those ratios and it says that Apple is 40 times more efficient a marketing machine than Microsoft.  And of course when people buzz about you (good or bad) your stock rises.  (Literally: Apple’s stock is up about 40x what it was before the iPod launched).

In fact, Apple has become rather infamous for it’s superior marketing machine. Numerous consumers have noticed that Apple does not provide a superior good, yet it wraps it in such an attractive package, so to speak, that despite selling for a higher price than most of its competitors, people are still willing to purchase it. So next time you wonder what coupling great design with great marketing can do for a company, just look towards Apple.

DotA is a WarCraft III scenario that exploded in popularity and became it’s own unique RTS gametype which is commonly used in tournments and played online, and has been expanded on and modified throughout the years. It initially began as a single custom map out of tens of thousands of maps customized and made by fans who sought to maximize their WCIII experience. Over the next few years, DotA fiercely beat its opposition to the ground, and became the #1 undisputed most popular map on WarCraft III, being even more popular than the original game of Warcraft which was developed by the professional team of Blizzard.

It has been 9 years since WCIII came out, and DotA still commends a gaming audience of around 22 million people, which is very impressive. DotA is essentially a free map, people can just download it off the web and play it on Warcraft III. However, Valve (a separate firm from Blizzard) has seen an opportunity to target existing DotA players, which is quite a substantial market. As DotA is not officially affiliated with Blizzard, Valve was able to recruit the developer of DotA by the username IceFrog to work under their firm. As such, DotA 2 is being released, which will not be free but will need to be paid for. Personally I found Valve’s marketing strategy very smart, as they were able to take advantage , of DotA’s popularity, which was party due to its free nature, in order to gain a large segment of new customers. Speaking for myself, I would never pay for another game as I am a university student and do not have too much time for gaming, in contrast to when I was still in high school. However, since I have developed an interest of DotA, I am considering purchasing DotA 2. I am sure this is true for many other DotA fans as well. They are also operating a blog, which is a viral marketing strategy in order to keep in touch with fans. One of the many strengths of the original DotA was its strong fan support and connection with gamers.

Internet companies have been high profile and considered the ‘next big thing’ since the tech bubble of the early 2000s. These days it is indeed the ‘big thing’, and with the possible exception of Apple, there are few other sectors that are growing faster than internet companies. The main source of revenue for firms like Google, Baidu and Facebook is online advertising. Websites as diverse as Goal.com (soccer) and SeekingAlpha.com (financial news and opinion) host ads in order to make money.

As a habitual internet user, I will confess that I have not once willingly clicked an advert from Google or Facebook or from any other website. Speaking from a personal point of view, online advertising does not work. Either it is too conspicuous, which means that consumers do not even notice it and are able to do what they wanted to without being hindered by the ads (meaning they are able to successfully ignore it), or else it is too blatant that it annoys the consumer, putting them in a bad temporal state and a foul mood, which makes them less likely to click on the advert. Either way, the firm loses.

On the seeking alpha website, there is an advertisement on the top of the site promoting another financial advice and news website providing financial reports which they presumably hope to sell to the consumer. Whilst Seeking Alpha is a reputable site, the other site seems less legitimate to me.  With sensational eye catching headlines, it definitely seems more of a tabloid site, which is a failure of promotion considering its intended audience. Furthermore, what does the firm think they are doing advertising themselves on another website which provides the same product (with arguably more legitimacy, quality and diversity) for free? It just does not make sense to me.