My friend Mark has a post up riffing on the whole "we don't need your bloody marketing" thing that web 2.0 types tend to wax poetic on. And the post sorta makes me want to scream and shove sharp objects in my eyes.

Why? Because Marketing is, and near as I can tell always has been, the basis upon which virtually any good business has been built, and it misses the point completely. For the record, a-gain: Promotion is only a part of Marketing. An important part to be sure, but jeez louise people, it ain't the whole thing.

When I read things out there in the big world like "to be successful you have to have a product that meets a need, regardless of the marketing" or "the marketing was good, but they didn't get the distribution they needed" or "they had great marketing, but it was too expensive" it drives me batty. Marketing is all of those things. Anybody who thinks that somehow you can create something and then foist it on an unsuspecting public with enough ads and it will work must have a penchant for making their lives a living hell.

Marketing is, at its' core, recognizing a problem and then doing everything to profitably solve it. The best businesses stay completely focused on solving that problem in a way that resonates with their market. So for you webby startups out there, that's the thing to remember. It's not whether or not you can avoid spending money on advertising, it's how well you are making your customers' lives better.

Fact is, if you are doing real Marketing well, everything will be easier.

Tags: marketing

Congrats to the Farecast gang for moving out of private to public beta today. Though, with mentions on TechCrunch and BoingBoing, among others, it's not like my little heads-up here matters. That's some serious b-sphere coverage. Nicely done Mike and team.

Now their challenge is to prove that the whiz-bang, P.R.-friendly airfare predictor feature is more than the flavour-of-the-month, and to continue to build on the solid start of their metasearch tool. Oh, and to move into hotels because that's where the cash is. No small task.

Tags: farecast

...these things, which I will dive into more later.

1. Is it the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end? With all the people jumping off to "do their own things" (Tara, Scoble, Om) it sure feels like one of those.

2. Some other former Expedia folks are a part of a team which has launched a group travel site called TripHub. I am going to check it out and report back.

3. A good friend and the former President of Expedia Corporate Travel, Matt Hulett, is now doing a shopping start-up called Mpire. Another one to check out and report on.

4. There are a lot of Canadian online travel sites starting to advertise. I was driving along and heard 3 radio jingles in a row. Great that they are promoting themselves. But too bad they still suck.

Tags: tara, om, scoble, triphub, mpire

Tara Hunt, one of the keynotes at mesh, announced that she is leaving Riya, her employer, to do her own thing to grow her Pinko Marketing brand.

While I certainly wish her well and think she's tremendous, I have to wonder about the wisdom in leaving a hot pre-IPO start-up where she has been instrumental in pulling in boatloads of users and heading off on her own, child in tow and TN-1 visa in hand (yikes).

She says that she and Riya have grown apart, and that sure does happen, but I hope she knows what she's doing.

Break a leg, Tara.

Tags: tarahunt, riya, mesh06, web2.0

Sorry, but with due respect to the folks behind this now-defunct AJAX homepage (uhh...and the world needed another one of those, why, exactly?): When you chose that name, um, what did you expect?

See also Mark Evans.

Tags: fold, goatrodeo