Brian Giese's Blog

The New I (made-a-mistake) Phone

What's a name worth? Looks like Cisco and Apple will spend millions of dollars in a high-stakes battle to find out -- and the winner will walk away with the rights to the coveted name "iPhone."

In a lawsuit filed last Wednesday, Cisco asked a judge to forbid Apple from using the name "iPhone," a Cisco trademark since 2000. The case hinges (mostly) on whether Apple's new phone could confuse shoppers looking to buy Cisco's iPhones, which is a Linksys product line. Patent and trademark attorneys seem to think that Cisco will likely win IF the case goes to court. Who knows. I have to believe that Apple is smarter that that. Or are they?

iWoz, a must read.

Steve Wozniak (co-founder of Apple) and Guy Kawasaki had an interview for the Commonwealth Club in Silicon Valley on November 16, 2006 as part of his iWoz book tour. I really like these guys, the discussion is really well done and very intimate. If you’d like to watch a video of the interview, click here. 

New stuff for marketing

AdAge published its annual Largest National Advertisers report. Great info for every marketer and any company that is using an advertising business model.

ProBlogger published an A to Z list of products, services, tools, etc. for bloggers. Interesting stuff if you’re into blogging. Also get Debbie Weil's new book on business blogging.

An interesting article from DM News on "Pay-per-text" about the montization of text messageing. A new, emerging and soon to be profiable frontier.

CMO's Have 23 Months to Die

I just read this interesting article in Advertising Age about CMO job churn. Here's an exerpt...

"The shorter tenure is in part a reflection of the change from failing traditional-marketing approaches to less-defined and more dynamic approaches," said Jeff Bell, who jumped from Chrysler Group to become corporate VP-global marketing of Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Business this month.

No kidding. Marketing is moving to the Web and digits are meant to be measured. How about CMO's doing what their sales counterparts are doing and measure all activites that contribute to top-line revenue? Sales (and thier Marketing brothers) are accountable for results.  Those marketers that create closed-loop measureable campaigns will stay in the C-suite and those that can't shouldn't have been there in the first place.

Assembling the Pursuit Team

This is an podcast from Chapter 2 of my book I.T. Sales Boot Camp: Sure-fire Techniques for Selling Technology Products to Mainstream Companies. Enjoy!

Mapping the Sales Battlefield

Information Technology (I.T.) continues to be the fastest growing sales industry in the world. If you’re one of the millions of people worldwide involved in selling I.T. solutions, you need to give yourself an edge.