Breakthrough Marketing

http://br82.com

What is it?

Breakthrough Marketing is the development and deployment of an external service or campaign that generates a huge return in usage, traffic, or exposure. Such programs typically are unique with little competition, and are free, viral, and social. As a result they quickly spread to a large market.

What it is not:

• The product itself or a feature of the product
• A common or obvious program like advertising, a blog, or broadcast
• Creative media. Awesome video, audio, or copy CAN generate incredible results. But that's dependent on creative concept and execution, which is different from what's involved here.

There are hundreds of examples. The following are a few that I find interesting. Feel free to email me with your own.

MarcFreedman

vision@the-future.org

(972) 200-3490

Developing a breakthrough program

I typically work on retainer for a day a week, oftentimes as the de facto CMO for smaller businesses. Developing a breakthrough program combines strategic thinking to understand industry ecology and customer behavior and attitudes, and tactical expertise to know and successfully deploy programs.

Program selections takes 1-3 months. It starts with Program generation. I profile all aspects of your business, product, market, competition, and customers to develop a preliminary list of programs.

The next step is Program evolution. Generated programs are evaluated based on resources, implementation, benefit, and cost. They are then refined, crossbred, and culled in a Darwinian process to select one or a few opportunities that are unique and create a bang

Finally Program planning is ready. We work with you to develop and then implement a project plan to deploy your breakthrough project.

Breakthroughs

Color Thesaurus

http://h20325.www2.hp.com/blogs/color/archive/2007/10/29/4914.html

Simple and unique. Will receive a great amount of incoming traffic.

Web Trend Map

http://www.informationarchitects.jp/ia-trendmap-2007v2

Got consulting? The map makes it simple and literally shows you "get it". Demand has been fabulous,

Rate My Implants

http://ratemyimplants.com/

Current site is for an adult site but still has ratings. The original site was for a plastic surgeon and then for a lead service for cosmetic surgeons. It was a brilliant program that drove millions of page views a month, while at the same time providing visual standards of quality surgery and the trickle down effect of generating leads for a high-end service.

Hotmail

http://hotmail.com

The original Hotmail is the prototype for viral marketing. It spawned an idea that is common today, but was innovative 12 years ago. Transfer the concept of freeware/shareware to the web. Develop a valuable service. Distribute it free. Include a branding tag at the end of every message so every recipient of every email will see the unique offer and is only one click from getting their own account. Tens of millions of users later Microsoft bought Hotmail for $400 million.

Grand Central - now Google Voice

http://www.grandcentral.com

Unified communications, follow-me calling, and VoIP have been around for 20 years with many cool features. But it's been a painful industry as a business with limited consumer adoption.

Grand Central turns the business around. It doesn't follow you, which means delays as the system tries to find you. Instead it saturates you and calls ALL your listed phones (home, office, mobile). It connects the call to whatever phone of yours picks it up.

What makes it a breakthrough is the innovative integration of telephony, Internet, and usability (similar to what Apple did with digital music). I use Grand Central for long distance calling to any phone from my office that is faster, cheaper (currently free for long distance), more convenient (I'm already at my computer), and more powerful (integrated with online address book, automatically adds phone numbers from previous calls) than picking up the phone to dial. Plus I can put their widget on my web site for free so that visitors can call me for free (they just enter their number and it dials us both, calling all my phones).

Grand Central was started by Craig Walker who also founded Priceline. The company was bought by Google.

Not breakthrough ... but worth noting

The corporate world co-opting social networks

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/21/business/media/21adco.html?th&emc=th

"Making Social Connections and Selling Cookies." Pepperidge Farm is creating a Web site devoted to social

networking and targeted at women who are looking to improve their social lives.

Online scavenger hunt

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