This week I heard on the radio while traveling to Germany that the small (revenue 40 million EUR) German high-end teddy bear company Steiff decided to move production back to Germany from China. Reasons mentioned were long transportation (up to 3 months), initial startup costs, among others. This news had its impact as many media picked up the story and helped Steiff's CEO Mr. Frechen with this PR campaign. Steiff needs this PR desperately as they have to fight low cost competition and it is key to them to develop a strong brand similar to the fashion labels.

I must admit that I also fell into this PR trap and started thinking if this could be a general trend now or what impact this would have. This morning I did a little research on Steiff's CEO and found that he told back in January already in public, see FAZ, that he would bring production back to Germany from China. At that time it did not have the PR effect he was hoping for, so now they brought it up again (I assume they have hired a PR agency to do so) and recooked this old story again.

While I can see lots of resentment in countries like Germany where jobs are lost and new ones created in China, it is also clear that the future cannot be in competing with low cost manufacturing locations but in innovation and excellent product marketing. This is true for consumer as well as for ICT industries. Thinking differently would be fatal and also Steiff is BTW manufacturing in Northern Africa where total costs (transportation included) are similar now to China I think. Lastly what Mr. Frechen will also learn over time is the fact that building a solid brand takes time and cannot be done with fake PR news. People today want authenticity, good content, interaction and not propaganda. See our new PR Services website on this topic...

Take a look at this on-stage holographic video conference PR show run by Cisco's CEO John Chambers. They have100 systems installed at Cisco , he says, and this on-stage PR show makes you even think Cisco would be the mastermind behind this technology. But the credit for it goes to the UK company Musion Systems LTD. Musion holds the intellectual property for holographic video and licenses it through a comprehensive list of resellers across the world. What Cisco did is not unique, though. as there are plenty of other large companies doing the same "trick" as you can see in the Musion portfolio website too. Virgin's Richard Branson is of course the ideal person to do such a virtual show, being "beamed in" from his Caribbean island to a London digital megastore opening event. To top things, you can also let people come back to "life" again and have them appear in a live concert. Done so in Japan: "The untimely death of charismatic guitarist Hide in 1998 not only put any such plans on hold but sent Japan's leading rock band into hiatus for ten years. Hide was "brought back to life" at Tokyo Dome in March 2008 using Musion Eyeliner Holographic Projection System."

Redherring, the US tech startup magazine (with European location in Zurich) announced the winners of its Redherring Europe award. Awards are an excellent way to market yourself, both for the startups nominated and even more so for the ones who are among the winners and of course for Redherring itself. The magazine also makes a lot of money inviting startups and venture capitalists and a few service providers to this yearly event; this year they gathered in the European hotspot Malta. Attendance is not cheap. Companies pay 2350 EUR per person (1800 EUR for secondaries) and are then allowed to attend a few days of panel discussions and meet the startups, VCs and a few service providers.

Now all good in theory - watching the Mediterranean Sea over a nice candlelight dinner, listening to the waves and feeling the nice warm breeze (we have not attended this event so this here is pure fiction) - but what do things look like in the morning with a little headache from the red wine the night before?

First of all, every single Redherring 100 winner will display prominently on their home page the Redherring winner logo. Nearly all of them will write a press release saying how proud they are to be a Redherring Winner. And surely they can be proud since they made it to the top 100 startups in Europe, where such celebrities like Skype, eBay and also Google once were winners (the last two in the US of course). So it is a nice PR event for everyone and of course in particular for Redherring (nothing wrong about that, everyone needs to market themselves and that is totally legitimate). Now comes my point. What would someone like me or, as I am already convinced, a potential client (let's assume the startup is aiming to sell to large clients, not all do but most of them) think about seeing a Redherring 100 logo on their website?

• there is not much relevant news that they can talk about so they pay to go to an event where they get an award with 99 others
• not having much to tell is a clear sign of an early stage startup with little company and product history
• startups are a high risk to buy from for established companies since if things don't work out people expose themself to internal critique, (buying big blue IBM is always safe)

So in short, instead of trying to hide their immaturity and appear a safe place to buy from, all of them even pronounce their lack of history and tell everyone about it. A startup should try to spend all their efforts and money to win good reference clients. Potentially even "buy" them by offering things for very cheap or low cost so that they can overcome the above mentioned hesitation and can win other key accounts who then pay the normal price. A BIG PR splash then is what should be done. In general we like Redherring as they are one of the very few survivors in the VC, startup magazine scene (their European counterpart, Tornado Insider, had to shut down long time ago) but that does not mean we think everything they do is cool. One purpose of the Redherring event is of course that VCs and startups can meet at one place, get to know each other and then possibly find each other. That is a highly worthwhile thing and could be achieved even without an award. Redherring would disagree I am sure...

The Shell Eco-marathon Europe 2008 competition has been started in France. Goal is to run as far as possible with just one liter of gasoline. This year with gasoline prices three times higher than just a few years back this event will draw even more attention. That Shell is sponsoring it is a clever marketing coup it seems as they of course have profited from the rising prices the most. The vehicle designs are optimized to reach just this one goal within a set of regulations such as min. average speed of 30km/h, which makes sense, as otherwise with solar panels one might be able to run forever. Last year's winner made it 2791km on one liter of fuel. Once again this year you will find fuel cell technologies - plus, of course, totally stripped down vehicle designs that are highly aerodynamic. The drivers are girls as they are lighter, better fit into the vehicles and probably are better at enduring the physical stress of being squeezed in for that long. The teams have lots of fun, it seems, which is great. Maybe one addition should also be to build vehicles that could be used in daily life by adding certain constraints, so that one day maybe Shell might have to rethink sponsoring as it has real impact on fuel savings. Right now it is a nice marketing event.

I was watching one of my favorite movies on DVD last night, The English Patient. While watching I asked myself why it is my favorite movie or more interestingly what makes great movies and is there anything we can learn for product marketing too?

To make the answer more simple although less representative let's see why I like this movie. I simply assume I am not entirely different so we can derive generic clues from it - maybe.

• great story. there are two stories in this movie (in Egypt and in Italy) and they go back and forth between the two. I sort of like it as it challenges you when watching and gives an intellectual touch to it as well. I am sure literary types would be able to explain this better.
• great people. Of course in a movie it is the actors and actresses that make the difference. I am a fan of Juliette Binoche and have seen most of her films. Why do I like her? She has character, at least in her movies. Always playing very convincingly and it seems she is a down to earth person, loves natural realistic roles. I trust that what she plays is also what she thinks. Maybe I would be very disappointed if I were to meet her in real life and if she were not as she acts, but we are talking about movies now. Also Ralph Fiennes and the great Kristin Scott Thomas or the authentic William Dafoe are great. All immersed into their roles with their full heart.
• flying scenes. I am a private pilot myself or at least was one when still living and working in Silicon Valley. The flight scenes in the movie over the dessert get me dreaming of experiencing this beauty myself. I am sure it is part of the reason why I like this movie.
• good entertainment. Love story, adventure, wartime, betrayal, jealousy, gorgeous landscapes, mystery (some), excitement (looking for land mines or looking at great art in a chapel in dark), revenge, English decadence during colonial times, caring for the weak and injured, loneliness, cruelty, men society, danger, fun, technical competency (an Indian guy looking for land mines), personal tragedy, ancient art, sexuality, friendship, natural challenges (sandstorm in the dessert), great story telling, foreign cultures, sexual desire and fascination, guilty conscience, action, bad guys, spies, loyalty, ... (this list I wrote down while watching the movie )
• intellectual challenge: in between, the conversations have good content and one has to concentrate to be able to follow or at least to understand the nuances.
• foreign cultures. It plays in Egypt. Arabic countries have a certain mystery and attraction to me, I admit. Not that I know much at all about them, but I feel I will engage more and try to better understand them.

So I guess with the above list one could assemble a list of required attributes for good product marketing. At the least it was interesting for me to see if it is possible maybe.