Re: The bigger they are, the harder they fall

No, it's not a paradigm shift, Ron -- more an attitude shift.

Graham Sharp has never been a fan of tradeshows and refused for years to take Avid Europe to IBC when he was at the helm there. As I said in another post, he had the highest numbers and best results in the company, hence his new position and title as Top Dog Numero Uno in the Video Division.

Graham believes in "taking it to the streets," not only because of the influence that obviously that great Doobie Bros album must have had on him, but because he knows guerilla marketing quite well and has the numbers to back up his assertion that his methods work. Because of this, he has been able to get the company and the Board to follow his lead.

I say bravo to it all as I have believed for a long time that tradeshows are a thing of the past. Gone are the days when tradeshows really mattered as the source for getting your cutting-edge knowledge and information about new things in the market.

The Net holds sway when it comes to learning about new things and today, most users get their information on the Net.

Graham takes that a step further and combines that knowledge with the belief that Avid customers want to dig down with someone who can really answer their questions as to what the systems really can and cannot do. They have huge systems to maintain and massive budgets to account for and they cannot afford to be told by some kid answering the phone at 1-800-AppleCore that "Yeah, this system can do that" -- only to find out in the crucible of real trench work that it can't.

Graham believes that the litmus test of true marketing is getting in front of your real customers.

Even Tim Wilson tells me that his efforts at NAB were largely with people that mostly knew what he was saying already. What's the point of spending $2 million to accomplish that?

If a paradigm is shifting, it is one in which the long-perceived purveyors of all knowledge are having to see their longtime customers make use of the web instead.

Combining that with direct customer contact gives Graham Sharp & Team a $2 million budget and war chest to draw on for these efforts.

Me, that's the change that I see and it long overdue in my book, seeing that we get 5-times the traffic of NAB 12 months of the year. Even at its peak traffic, we still get 2- to 3-times the traffic of NAB.org and for the month of April, we will do 5-times their floor traffic with our unique visitors here at the COW.

I think guys like Graham are starting to figure out that the market has changed. He is not the first and he surely will not be the last. But to date, he is indeed the biggest fish to jump out of the pond and look for better waters.





Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom
creativecow.net
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