High Tech Start Up - What has changed ? (Number 3 of a series)

Continuing with my observations of what has changed since High Tech Startup was updated in 2000. Your comments and emails are welcome.

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·         Branding has emerged as the name of the game. I find this to be true for both consumer and industrial new enterprises, as well as information and life science startups. With roots in the personal computer era after the success of the “Intel Inside” campaign, industrial product marketing engineers moved to embrace consumer packaged goods marketing methods. Internet companies quickly expanded the wave of branding. By 2000 it turned into a branding tsunami. Now every startup CEO must understand how to build a brand. The startup world will never be the same. Branding has become a way of life for all startups. In other words, you must study to become a black belt in how to build a world-class brand with your startup idea if you are going to have a chance to win in this branding intensive era.

 

·         First time startup founders do not understand how to use advertising. Advertising has turned into an art form. It is poorly understood and misused by most startup leaders. There are no longer predictable sales results from advertising campaigns of any size, giant or tiny. Instead, public relations (“creating buzz”) is now the weapon of choice for startups launching first products. However, young adults (under 30) have a knee-jerk reaction to advertising: they live in such an advertising intensive world that they expect to their startup to win by spending large amounts of precious cash on ads. They are pre-conditioned and mislead by psychological habits engrained when growing up with a pop culture that feed on MTV, Internet advertising and a branding culture. If you try building your startup brand with advertising, you will be confounded by why advertising fails to build the brand you dreamed of. That was painfully learned by the now-defunct Internet boom startups that went bust. Learn to create buzz without advertising because that is where startup marketing messaging power comes from.

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More tomorrow.

Comments

[Anthony]

John,

I agree. There are many ways to generate buzz and awareness without using traditional advertising (which is costly and I believe somewhat ineffective). A start-up can build a strong marketing message without spending many $$$. Whether it is PR, blogs, e-mail, chat groups, customer or product councils, there are forums out there that are now more trusted than traditional ads.