On the face of it, Benihana is a pretty simple restaurant which ought to mean just one thing in the mind of its customers: teppanyaki, the form of tableside cooking/entertainment for which they are famous.
I like the notion of businesses owning one word in the mind of the customer. While I'm not sure where it originated, Ries and Trout are big believers in this marketing concept. See, for example, Positioning, The New Positioning, virtually any of the Immutable Laws books, or the recent book by Jack Trout (not to be confused with the flyfishing guide) In Search of The Obvious: The Antidote for Today's Marketing Mess.
Examples: Volvo means/meant safe. Siebel meant sales. PeopleSoft meant HR. At this point, I think Oracle means software. I'm not sure what Microsoft means. To me, Sun meant struggling. SAP meant ERP for a long time; I'm less sure what it means now. They would like it to mean clear, but there's often a difference between what marketing puts in the ads and what sticks in the mind of the customer. LinkedIn means colleagues, or maybe jobs. Facebook means friends. Twitter means tweets, an example of inventing your own word which can work really well or be a total catastrophe such as fahrvergnügen.
I understand why teppanyaki doesn't work in terms of word ownership for Benihana. The word is not well known, it's hard to pronounce, and it's harder to spell. There's also the confusion with the word hibachi, which the restaurant seems to foster. So I get why perhaps teppanyaki doesn't work as Benihana's word, but I don't get how Benihana came to mean birthday instead.
Many years ago, my kids started taking/dragging us to Benihana on their birthdays. I didn't think much of it at the time. But now that I've done it multiple times/year for several years, I can say first-hand that every time I got to Benihana virtually every table (of eight) has at least 1 and sometimes 2 people celebrating a birthday. And, by the way, the place is always jammed.
How did this come to pass? Frankly, I don't know.
Yes, they do an allegedly bi-lingual happy birthday song and free photo for those who claim/admit it's their birthday. But that certainly can't be enough to reposition the entire restaurant from "the place for wacky tableside grilling" to "the place for birthdays." Yes, if you dig around you can find a $30 coupon for use on your birthday, but I doubt that's it, either.
For now, it appears to be a great mystery of organic repositioning. For no matter what they're trying to do at a marketing level, somehow they have been positioned in the only place it counts -- the mind of the customer -- as the place for birthdays.
Tuesday, January 05, 2010
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Mark Logic Hosts Webinar to Respond to Oracle XQuery Attack
On Wednesday, January 6th, 2010, Mark Logic will host a webinar where two of Mark Logic's XQuery experts will respond to Oracle's recently published white paper (PDF) which attacks Mark Logic and its implementation of XQuery.
The webinar features:
If you're interested in the facts then please attend this webinar. We will cover not only our responses to Oracle's objections, but we will also mention a few of the reasons we think prospective customers should use MarkLogic Server over Oracle XML DB.
For registration information, please go here.
The webinar features:
- Mary Holstege, PhD. Principal Engineer at Mark Logic and member of the W3C XQuery and XML Schema working groups. Mary's PhD dissertation at Stanford, Marking and the Design of Notations, addressed the explicit and implicit meaning of documents and the application of computational linguistics to help determine them.
- Stephen Buxton. Product management director at Mark Logic, member of the W3C XQuery working group and a founding member of the W3C XQuery Full-Text task force. Stephen co-authored the book Querying XML which he wrote in conjunction with Jim Melton of Oracle. Prior to Mark Logic, Stephen worked in full-text and XML product management at Oracle for over 10 years.
If you're interested in the facts then please attend this webinar. We will cover not only our responses to Oracle's objections, but we will also mention a few of the reasons we think prospective customers should use MarkLogic Server over Oracle XML DB.
For registration information, please go here.
Eight Predictions for 2010: Guest Post for VentureBeat
Following is the full text of a guest submission I did for the Enterpreneur Corner section of VentureBeat.
Given the tumultuous events of 2009, it’s easy to forget the world didn’t come to a standstill. Life continued and Silicon Valley kept innovating. Here are my predictions on eight trends that will surface next year:
Corporations deploy technology for advantage, not cost.
As the economy recovers, organizations will for the first time in nearly a decade, look to information technology as a means of gaining competitive advantage as opposed to a means for simply reducing cost.
Social networking divides.
People settle into a pattern of using different social networking platforms for different purposes.
The notion of a single social graph for work, personal, and other activities separated only by the friend-type of the linkages is dead.
Facebook, assuming they don’t continue to make heavy-handed privacy mistakes, ends up owning friends. LinkedIn owns business colleagues, but has to share status’ing with Twitter. Boutique networks own other activities, perhaps with Ning as the underlying platform across those networks where users don’t mind and/or desire a common profile.
But social network fatigue sets in.
While teens will continue to use social networks as telephones, social networking amongst the middle-aged and working crowd will lose of its luster. Despite Facebook succeeding where Classmates failed, the novelty of reconnecting with long-lost high school friends will fade as will the “I’m at Safeway in the meat department” status message.
In some ways, social networks settle back more into the Plaxo vision of permanently connected address books than the hipper vision of a constant communication platform. Twitter suffers and it’s not just from the Iranian Cyber Army.
Cloud computing hype peaks.
Passing Gartner’s “peak of inflated expectations,” Cloud Computing begins to dive into the “trough of disillusionment.”
The types of cloud (e.g, public, private, virtual private) begin to stabilize as does the number of as-a-service acronyms.
Strategic cloud consultancies like Appiro and cloud interconnection companies like CastIron begin to clean up as pragmatic customers seek to define sensible cloud strategies that leverage the best of many options and combine them.
The database market siege builds.
The attack against the once-sleepy $15B market controlled by Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft will continue to build. While Oracle will reluctantly honor its MySQL promises for the European Union, Postgres will gain momentum among those worried about MySQL’s mid-term future.
Specialist database systems from vendors like Aster Data, Mark Logic, and Streambase will continue to eat the edges of the market while new database-as-a-service cloud offerings will commoditize the core.
The NoSQL movement will continue to gather steam, leveraging Hadoop as a “un-database” for those frustrated with either classic relational database technology or high oligopolistic pricing practices.
Google shows signs of weakness in search.
As spammers gain ground in the cat-and-mouse game of search engine optimization, it will continue to get harder and harder to, for example, find a dishwasher on Google.
With substantial investment, some impressive technology, and a good deal of persistence, Microsoft will do some damage to Google with Bing.
While a long way from death by-a-thousand-cuts, the first hundred cuts or so will come from Bing, “decision engines,”such as machine-learning upstart Hunch, and human-powered “answer engines” like Mahalo or AskVille (formerly, AnswerVille) from Amazon.
The XML silent revolution continues.
Without a shot fired, XML take over as the principal underlying file format both within the enterprise and across the Internet.
As the latest suites from Microsoft, Adobe and others continue to penetrate the market, more and more information will, often unknowingly, be stored in an XML format.
New industry standards such as XBRL for financial reporting and HL7 for health records are driving the need for information infrastructures that mange both traditional data and this reservoir of XML-based unstructured content.
Yes, this is good for my company but the dynamic opens the door to a range of tools and services to help companies extract greater value from data.
Mobility takes off.
With the combination of new devices, higher-speed mobile networks and new location-aware technology, mobile applications continue their ascent.
Augmented reality goes mainstream by combining the camera, the screen, and the GPS in the devices turning one’s mobile phone into not only a communication and web surfing device but also a head’s up display to guide you through life.
Last year around this time I wrote about e-books taking off thanks to the Kindle. Now, Sony and Barnes and Noble as well as Amazon have stoked demand into the mainstream.
Regardless of how these 2010 predictions play out, we know one thing with certainty—
The tech industry will always bring challenges to the status quo.
About the Author, Dave Kellogg
Dave Kellogg is CEO of Mark Logic, an information infrastructure software company serving industries such as media, government, financial services and healthcare to name a few. Prior to Mark Logic, he was senior vice president of marketing at Business Objects. Dave blogs at http://marklogic.blogspot.com/ covering topics ranging from venture capital to the business of software.
Given the tumultuous events of 2009, it’s easy to forget the world didn’t come to a standstill. Life continued and Silicon Valley kept innovating. Here are my predictions on eight trends that will surface next year:
Corporations deploy technology for advantage, not cost.
As the economy recovers, organizations will for the first time in nearly a decade, look to information technology as a means of gaining competitive advantage as opposed to a means for simply reducing cost.
Social networking divides.
People settle into a pattern of using different social networking platforms for different purposes.
The notion of a single social graph for work, personal, and other activities separated only by the friend-type of the linkages is dead.
Facebook, assuming they don’t continue to make heavy-handed privacy mistakes, ends up owning friends. LinkedIn owns business colleagues, but has to share status’ing with Twitter. Boutique networks own other activities, perhaps with Ning as the underlying platform across those networks where users don’t mind and/or desire a common profile.
But social network fatigue sets in.
While teens will continue to use social networks as telephones, social networking amongst the middle-aged and working crowd will lose of its luster. Despite Facebook succeeding where Classmates failed, the novelty of reconnecting with long-lost high school friends will fade as will the “I’m at Safeway in the meat department” status message.
In some ways, social networks settle back more into the Plaxo vision of permanently connected address books than the hipper vision of a constant communication platform. Twitter suffers and it’s not just from the Iranian Cyber Army.
Cloud computing hype peaks.
Passing Gartner’s “peak of inflated expectations,” Cloud Computing begins to dive into the “trough of disillusionment.”
The types of cloud (e.g, public, private, virtual private) begin to stabilize as does the number of as-a-service acronyms.
Strategic cloud consultancies like Appiro and cloud interconnection companies like CastIron begin to clean up as pragmatic customers seek to define sensible cloud strategies that leverage the best of many options and combine them.
The database market siege builds.
The attack against the once-sleepy $15B market controlled by Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft will continue to build. While Oracle will reluctantly honor its MySQL promises for the European Union, Postgres will gain momentum among those worried about MySQL’s mid-term future.
Specialist database systems from vendors like Aster Data, Mark Logic, and Streambase will continue to eat the edges of the market while new database-as-a-service cloud offerings will commoditize the core.
The NoSQL movement will continue to gather steam, leveraging Hadoop as a “un-database” for those frustrated with either classic relational database technology or high oligopolistic pricing practices.
Google shows signs of weakness in search.
As spammers gain ground in the cat-and-mouse game of search engine optimization, it will continue to get harder and harder to, for example, find a dishwasher on Google.
With substantial investment, some impressive technology, and a good deal of persistence, Microsoft will do some damage to Google with Bing.
While a long way from death by-a-thousand-cuts, the first hundred cuts or so will come from Bing, “decision engines,”such as machine-learning upstart Hunch, and human-powered “answer engines” like Mahalo or AskVille (formerly, AnswerVille) from Amazon.
The XML silent revolution continues.
Without a shot fired, XML take over as the principal underlying file format both within the enterprise and across the Internet.
As the latest suites from Microsoft, Adobe and others continue to penetrate the market, more and more information will, often unknowingly, be stored in an XML format.
New industry standards such as XBRL for financial reporting and HL7 for health records are driving the need for information infrastructures that mange both traditional data and this reservoir of XML-based unstructured content.
Yes, this is good for my company but the dynamic opens the door to a range of tools and services to help companies extract greater value from data.
Mobility takes off.
With the combination of new devices, higher-speed mobile networks and new location-aware technology, mobile applications continue their ascent.
Augmented reality goes mainstream by combining the camera, the screen, and the GPS in the devices turning one’s mobile phone into not only a communication and web surfing device but also a head’s up display to guide you through life.
Last year around this time I wrote about e-books taking off thanks to the Kindle. Now, Sony and Barnes and Noble as well as Amazon have stoked demand into the mainstream.
Regardless of how these 2010 predictions play out, we know one thing with certainty—
The tech industry will always bring challenges to the status quo.
About the Author, Dave Kellogg
Dave Kellogg is CEO of Mark Logic, an information infrastructure software company serving industries such as media, government, financial services and healthcare to name a few. Prior to Mark Logic, he was senior vice president of marketing at Business Objects. Dave blogs at http://marklogic.blogspot.com/ covering topics ranging from venture capital to the business of software.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Quick Thoughts on the Oracle Hatchet Job on Mark Logic
It's one way to know "we've arrived," I suppose.You can now find, on the very first link under "technical information" on Oracle's XML DB homepage a link to an Oracle-authored comparison white paper (and I use the term loosely) that compares Oracle 11g XML DB to Mark Logic Server.
There's a lot to say in response and because it's a busy time of the year (and we don't have 50,000 employees) it's going to take a few weeks to publish an opposing white paper. But we do plan to put some of our XQuery experts on a webinar before that in order both to respond to Oracle's claims and -- since they started the fight -- to make a few of our own.
Meantime, you might check out Stephen Arnold's interesting ramble that discusses Oracle's move: Oracle Feels Heat, Tries to Redefine Kitchen.
Or you can take a look at some slides I threw together with my own thoughts, below.
Oracle Hatchet Job on Mark Logic
View more presentations from Dave Kellogg.
Friday, December 11, 2009
ZL vs. Gartner: If At First You Don't Succeed, Try, Try Again
As previously covered, email archiving vendor ZL Technologies of San Jose, California sued leading IT market researcher Gartner for $132M earlier this year for its treatment in one of Gartner's vaunted magic quadrants.
On November 4th, the case was dismissed, but have no worries. Armed with a seemingly endless legal budget and apparent certainty in its position, ZL is back at it. One month later, on 12/4/09, ZL filed an amended complaint (PDF) in US District Court of Northern California, naming both Gartner as well as the lead analyst for email archiving, Carolyn DiCenzo, as defendants.
After a quick read, it appears primarily to be more of the same story, just better and more clearly argued.
They assert that:
Part of me likes this offbeat little company trying to buck the system. Gartner is very influential, no doubt. As someone who's worked with analysts for 20 years, I can say they're not always the easiest people with whom to work. Discussions about magic quadrants (and imitations thereof) and the factors that drive them can be frustrating. But every company, including Gartner, has its flaws and every industry has its movie critics.
So a bigger part of me thinks that ZL's just plain nuts. They are breaking glass all around them and spending real money to do it. If their software really is as good as they claim, then if they'd simply done a better job at marketing then they probably could have avoided all of this.
Because -- and I agree with Gartner here -- the best product / technology doesn't always win. It takes a great business, too. And suing Gartner is, frankly, not something that I've seen many great businesses do.
Put differently, you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar. And ZL is dropping vinegar on Gartner right now like a helicopter dropping water on a forest fire.
For those who enjoy reading source documents, I've embedded the complaint below.
ZLFirst Amended Complaint
On November 4th, the case was dismissed, but have no worries. Armed with a seemingly endless legal budget and apparent certainty in its position, ZL is back at it. One month later, on 12/4/09, ZL filed an amended complaint (PDF) in US District Court of Northern California, naming both Gartner as well as the lead analyst for email archiving, Carolyn DiCenzo, as defendants.
After a quick read, it appears primarily to be more of the same story, just better and more clearly argued.
They assert that:
- ZL has superior products and services
- Gartner dominates IT research with make-or-break power over vendors
- Placement in the niche vendor quadrant is basically a fate worse than death
- Gartner's marketing creates the impression that analyst statements and reports are facts rather than opinion. Recall that freedom of opinion was Gartner's defense, so this claim strikes me as pivotal.
- Gartner's business model contains an inherent conflict of interest and therefore its reviews are not unbiased third-party opinions
- Gartner labeled ZL a "niche player" every year from 2005-2009. (Ouch. Now we see where the anger comes from!)
- Magic quadrants are not based on objective, verifiable fact but on subjective opinion. (Here ZL seems to be arguing against itself. As I understand the law, we are all entitled to our opinions and we have the right to be wrong. What we can't do is assert known falsity as truth -- that's defamation. But if the magic quadrants are opinion, then Gartner's allowed to be wrong.)
... statements were false, malicious, fraudulent, oppressive, vile, base, contemptible ... made with malice, hatred, ill-will, improper and malevolent purpose, reckless disregard, and knowledge of falsity ... exposed ZL to hatred, contempt, ridicule, and obloquyOK. What the heck is obloquy?
Part of me likes this offbeat little company trying to buck the system. Gartner is very influential, no doubt. As someone who's worked with analysts for 20 years, I can say they're not always the easiest people with whom to work. Discussions about magic quadrants (and imitations thereof) and the factors that drive them can be frustrating. But every company, including Gartner, has its flaws and every industry has its movie critics.
So a bigger part of me thinks that ZL's just plain nuts. They are breaking glass all around them and spending real money to do it. If their software really is as good as they claim, then if they'd simply done a better job at marketing then they probably could have avoided all of this.
Because -- and I agree with Gartner here -- the best product / technology doesn't always win. It takes a great business, too. And suing Gartner is, frankly, not something that I've seen many great businesses do.
Put differently, you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar. And ZL is dropping vinegar on Gartner right now like a helicopter dropping water on a forest fire.
For those who enjoy reading source documents, I've embedded the complaint below.
ZLFirst Amended Complaint
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Slides from Mark Logic Digital Publishing Summit
I'm at the Mark Logic Digital Publishing Summit at The Plaza Hotel in New York. While I'm not sure what the "official" means will be for sharing presentation slides, based on a few requests at lunch I've uploaded my slides and David Worlock's slides to SlideShare and embedded them here.
Great event, over 550 registered, almost ran out of chairs at lunch. Thanks to everyone for coming!
My slides:
David's slides:
Great event, over 550 registered, almost ran out of chairs at lunch. Thanks to everyone for coming!
My slides:
David's slides:
The Road To Network Publishing972003
View more presentations from Dave Kellogg.
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