“Legendary Silicon Valley venture capitalist and former Intel executive Bill Davidow said, ‘Marketing must invent complete products and drive them to commanding positions in defensible market segments.’ The man should know. He wrote the seminal book on high-tech marketing,” Steve Tobak reports for Entrepreneur.
“Funny thing is, Davidow didn’t learn marketing in school. All his degrees are in electrical engineering. Steve Jobs, another brilliant marketer, dropped out of school. I’ve run marketing for a number of high-tech companies and my degrees are technical, as well. Not an MBA in the bunch,” Tobak reports. “So how do great marketers learn about marketing? On the job.”
Tobak reports, “Marketing is like sex: Everyone thinks they’re good at it. There are more posers in marketing than other fields, probably because the demand is strong, the supply is weak, and it’s easy to fake. As David Hornik of August Capital once said, ‘VCs like to think that they are marketing geniuses. We really do.’ The reason, he says, is because ‘we can fake it far more convincingly than in other areas…’ They’re not the only ones.”
“Many thought e-commerce would level the playing field and render branding irrelevant. Not only has that not happened, I can make a case for the opposite being true,” Tobak reports. “Back in the heyday of AOL, Bob Pittman said, “Coca-Cola does not win the taste test. Microsoft does not have the best operating system. Brands win.” Big brands like Apple, Google, Coca Cola, IBM and Microsoft have never been more powerful.”
Read more in the full article here.