commbasics

The vision of the market most companies have is akin to a many walking toward a cliff holding a full-length mirror in front of them. Everything looks great until they run out of land. I got some interesting feedback on my post regarding UBM’s #EELive event both negative and positive reactions.  I said I would have more to say on this and here it is. It’s not UBM’s fault if your industry conference goes bad.  It’s yours. UBM fought the good fight to deliver to B2B industry what it needed, which was an independent source of news and analysis for many years.  About five years ago, it decided to give their customers what they demanded, which was a place to repeat the same marketing collateral they send out to their customers, both on line and in person.  UBM found this a much more profitable business as they saw their marketing services eclipse editorial in revenue.  Today, editorial brings in about 7 percent of the total revenue and trade shows generate a w...

I went to the latest incarnation of the Embedded Systems Conference, now #EELive. This was, at one time my favorite trade show because of its diversity. This reboot, the third in five years, was more diverse, but that seems to be working against it now. It has seven distinct tracks : embedded systems, internet of things, FPGA, security, hardware startups, Android development and C++ development. None of it seemingly attracting the core audience or engineers, however, because there were not many people there. At least not as many as there use to be. I went to the latest incarnation of the Embedded Systems Conference , now #EELive. This was, at one time my favorite trade show because of its diversity.  This reboot, the third in five years, was more diverse, but that seems to be working against it now. It has seven distinct tracks : embedded systems, internet of things, FPGA , security, hardware startups, Android development and C++ development.  None of it seemingly a...

Trade shows, especially trade shows in the technology world, have been the bane of my existence for a couple of decades. I hate them and think they are a terrible waste of money. That doesn’t mean I think they are useless, but how companies use them makes them so. I almost think there should be a minimum entrance requirement. In the past couple of years there have been some changes that give me hope. One is the introduction of social media into the effort and the other is specific focus. UBM seems to have discovered that secret. UBM’s Design West conference in 2012 served as an umbrella for seven different conferences, ranging from Android development to sensors. Attendees could focus directly on their interest, rather than wander about over several days trying to figure out what to do. The recently concluded ARM TechCon, run by UBM and heavily sponsored by ARM, broke up the three day conference and expo between semiconductor design and software/systems design bringing in compl...

Got an email today from a company shilling an upcoming trade show asking a bunch of leading questions designed to get me to agree to come to the show.  The plan didn't work because I didn't answer they way they expected.  But in the process, I think I got some grist for us all to grind on today.  Here are the questions: Most productive opportunities are generated by connecting with decision-makers Executive participants have the majority of the decision-making authority Face-to-face meetings are the best marketing channel to create opportunities The deal was if answered those questions with "fact" then I should come to their conference.  But I said they were all false.  Here's why: "Most productive opportunities are generated by connecting with decision-makers." Decision makers rely on influencers to make decisions.  They don't respond to in-person sales pitches but take what they hear and go back to their influence...

In part one of this series I talked about how Gen Y (and everyone else since then) are the first people in history to not need formal organized gatherings to maintain relationships. Those gatherings include religious groups (churches, temples, mosques, synagogs), political parties and, trade shows. Does that mean those gatherings are going to disappear? Not necessarily. There are enough baby boomers with enough buying power to keep those things going for another 10-20 years, but those efforts are going to die out altogether unless they make some significant changes. Right now, as the economy seems to be leveling off, the attendance decline in trade shows has flattened, but should there be another dip, look for popular events like CES to start nosediving again. Where you will see growth is where companies approach these gatherings with a new perspective. Most companies gear up for their primary trade shows, many target only one now, and they pour the lions share of the marketing budget ...

Today's entry is going to be completely different than what I had planned all because of a lunch meeting I had yesterday with major media mogul.  It does follow the theme, however. I approached the first part in the context of the trade show , and how the current generation of customers is more comfortable with social media than traditional media, and I'm going to continue that is part three.  But my lunch conversation yesterday was very enlightening. An independent survey for a major media house showed that the electronics/semiconductor industry sector is the worst in transforming leads into sales.  In some cases, companies participating in the survey had no idea if any leads developed in any venue - advertising, PR, direct marketing or trade shows - had been developed into sales.  Now that's pretty amazing considering that every company I know and have worked with translates marketing success into the accumulation of leads.  This is more than a breakdown of th...

As I said in the introduction, I attended the annual meeting of a major religious denomination last week to give a presentation on social media and one of the attendees came up and said he finally understood what the social in social media meant.  The day after that, I met with a colleague who told me I need to write a book on how I define social media because it "seems much clearer" when I talk about it.   Maybe not a book... but definitely fodder for this blog. In the terms of this denomination, these ministers gather every year to hear about the state of the denomination.  They meet for three days, renew old acquaintances, meet new ones and learn some stuff.  Most of the people they meet they won't hear from again for another year.  In the terms of most industries, company representatives attend a set number of annual events where, over the course of one or more days, they gather to hear the state of the industry, renew old acquaintances, etc.  Same basi...

This week, John Cooley published an email I sent him regarding DATE on Deep Chip and stirred up a load.   The bottom line is I said I heard that the Design Automation and Test Exposition (DATE)  was not long for this world.  This is based on what I was told a couple of years ago when EDA Ltd. was bought by TechInsights.  TechInsights decided they did not want DATE, so they allowed EDA Ltd employees to take it over, including the binding contracts with Munich and Nice in 08 and 09, and see if they could make a go of it.  Well the report from Nice was that DATE had a 47 percent drop in attendance from 2008.  This was the second straight year of decline. My statement was a response to Cooley's previous report outlining the decline.  Before I wrote to John, I visited the DATE website where it had a headline. DATE'09 conference was a huge success I thought it was a weird headline considering what John had reported on the attendance, so I thre...

Wanted to give my homies at RTC a shout out about the upcoming schedule of EDA Tech Forum Events  announced last week, primarily because I wanted to point out that this is yet another evolution of marketing that I think we are facing. With travel budgets being cut dramatically, it's getting harder for engineers to get justification to go to many of the traditional shows unless they can show relevance.  Organizations like RTC Group and Techinsights are trying to provide that justification, but in very different ways. Techinsights has made a strong effort to compartmentalize their big event, ESC , so that attendees going for specific purposes can find what they are looking for more easily, and vendors can better target the right customers.  This way engineers can go to the bean counters and say, "Look, just what we need." RTC, on the other hand, is taking the conference to the street where you live with multiple sites and very specific topics, and with majo...