“Benjamin Gauthey |Microsoft | Startup Business Accelerator | Marketing Technopologist “ is my signature. Many people inside and outside Microsoft ask me to explain it… Here is the explanation from the Wall Street Journal:

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB122884677205091919-lMyQjAxMDI5MjA4MzgwNDM2Wj.html

Find a 'marketing technopologist.'

So who should direct a company's forays into Web 2.0 marketing? A number of managers identified an ideal set of skills for an executive that go beyond those of a typical M.B.A. holder or tech expert. We coined the term marketing technopologist for a person who brings together strengths in marketing, technology and social interaction. A manager said, "I'd want to see someone with the usual M.B.A. consultant's background, strong interest in psychology and sociology, and good social-networking skills throughout the organization."

Foot soldiers need to be carefully selected as well. One large technology company weighs employees' proven skills to choose writers for blogs that are read by consumers. The company has long used blogs internally to help employees discuss technical issues, products, and company and industry topics. When it decided to use blogs to raise its profile online, it recruited those who had shown the most skill at blogging within the company. The company currently has about 15 employees who blog publicly, mostly on technology trends, and is recruiting more the same way. Meanwhile, the bloggers plan to meet occasionally to share the lessons learned from their experiences.

Officially, I’m a digital marketing manager at Microsoft but as my background is not marketing but about technology, I really think Marketing Technopologist is more accurate to me, a good mix of Marketing and technology…. it seems perfect in a software company, no :)

I’ve just finished to read the excellent book: “Purple Cow” from Seth Godin! This book explains how transform your business by being remarkable, being the purple cow!

Through this book, many different case studies on different markets, audiences… After reading this book, I tried to remember what was the last Purple Cow that I saw… Actually, It was in France, some months ago. If you’re looking for a phone number you can call many different services but one did something different from the others, a purple cow. Based on their Ads(a dumb song), you were able to call the service “118218” and in addition to find a telephone number, you were able to ask them to sing the song from their ads, here the result: :)

Stupid? maybe but actually I would be curious to know how many people just called to test if it was true… At the end of the day, everybody remember 118218 telephone service…

And you, what was the last Purple cow that you’ve seen? :)