Tensilica: giving credit when credit is due

Yesterday and today this blog has had several thoughtful responses/comments to the past two posts from Grant Martin and Paula Jones of Tensilica.  Because this blog generally has a lot of my bitching about how bad marketing is in technology niches I thought it would be worth making a mention of just how good Tensilica's is.

The most public face of Tensilica is Grant.  He writes a lot of stuff and not necessarily about Tensilica.  He's involved in scads of technical committees, speaks, presents, sits on panels and is pretty much an industry advocate.  Paula develops and implements marketing and communication strategies.  The company overall is dedicated to marketing in an industry that is almost wholly focused on sales.  Their efforts have been so good that Tensilica is almost an industry niched in itself.  It is both vendor, customer and researcher to the general public.
Grant and Paula find great value in technical conferences, advertising, PR, direct mail, social media for one reason: they do it right.  They understand that not everything can be measured, but they do take time to do a lot more measurement than most any tech company I know.  Like everyone else in the industry, business is not great, but at the same time, Tensilica's business is not really as bad as most everyone else.
So just to be clear, the reason Tensilica still sees value and gets value out of traditional forms of marketing like trade shows and PR; the reason the company seems to be as visible and successful as they are is because they have invested in real marketing and they are always on the look for something new.
If more companies followed their lead, we'd all be in a lot better shape right now.

Comments

  1. KrewellMay 21, 2009 at 11:52 AM

    If Tensilica is doing so well, why did they lay-off chief evangelist Steve Leibson?
    http://www.edn.com/blog/980000298/post/220043822.html

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lou CoveyMay 21, 2009 at 12:15 PM

    Never said they were doing "well." I said they were not doing as bad as everyone else. As to why Steve was let go, your guess is as good as mine, but I'm not up to making that kind of conjecture.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Paula JonesMay 21, 2009 at 2:17 PM

    Luv ya, too! Keep on your campaigns - we really enjoy your writing.
    Paula

    ReplyDelete
  4. lwirbelMay 23, 2009 at 4:16 AM

    Paula's comments in the previous post indicate precisely why Steve was let go, and why any former journalist employed in marketing might be considered expendable by top management. All companies, including well-managed ones, have cut below the bone and into muscle. Leibson being let go does not mean that Tensilica is struggling, or that Paula or Grant are any less than what Lou said they were. It means the entire industry is surviving in gasp mode. I wouldn't anticipate an journalist's job as an insider to be safe through 2009.

    ReplyDelete
  5. dark_faustMay 23, 2009 at 3:37 PM

    Loring comes closest to the truth on this one. The ramifications for any editor who has mingled his/her brand with a particular corporation are serious. Conversely, editors who have provided full disclosure should be fine - even if they suddenly find themselves beyond the ever-shifting corporate boundaries.

    BTW: Lou - your comment posting mechanism is lame. I had to fill out far to many questions to register for yet another blogging account. If it was anyone else, I wouldn't have spend the time.

    ReplyDelete
  6. lwirbelMay 25, 2009 at 5:16 AM

    Wow, John, I wonder if that's a new bug/feature. When I signed up in the TypePad kingdom a while ago, it only seemed to be about as onerous as Blogger. Maybe they;'ve been taken over by Rupert Murdoch?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Lou CoveyMay 25, 2009 at 8:20 AM

    Boy, you go away for a couple of days and all hell breaks loose.

    Thanks for the great discussion, everyone. I think we need more of this and maybe we've caught it in time to actually do something about it.

    ReplyDelete

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