Millenium Marketer

What is it like in your city?
I live in Silicon Valley and it is a little bit crazy. I don’t know if there are other places like this in the world, because my other point of reference is Wales where people end the day at 4 or 5 and go straight to the pub. I know they are nothing like this. But then Hong Kong and Tokyo are a bit crazy too, and not like this. Silicon Valley’s word is Geeky. There are girl geeks here too.

Silicon Valley is like a mad scientist’s haven, everyone here is obsessed with creating or funding a new innovation or providing a service (PR, consulting, accounting, coffee houses, entrepreneur launchpads) that is the oil to keep innovation engine running.  There are engineers who spend their days dreaming of owning their own start-ups, lots of  emerging companies who want to make it big. It’s the only place I know where is possible to meet entrepreneurs as young as Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook, or even younger, like Mark Levie at Box.net. If you’re not working in these companies, you’re writing about them in VentureBeat, TechCrunch or ValleyWag.

We have a ton of venture capital companies here: Sequoia Capital, Garage Technology Ventures, GRP Ventures, Elevation Ventures (where Bono of U2 is a Managing Director). It’s so real that I have shaken hands with Kawasaki once at a movie theater event, met wild eyed Levie briefly, and yes, worked at hi-tech PR firm supporting an emerging VC funding start-up. I have friends who own tech start-ups, dodged the Google IPO or have experienced a start-up acquisition. It’s that real.

Housing prices can go as far as the millions, in my area, the average housing price is $2,343, 246.  Renting is cheaper than buying, a concept that profoundly confuses my Taiwanese family abroad.

It’s practically Darwinian the way we are filtering out folks who aren’t necessarily interested in this innovation madness and all this blinding brilliance. To stand out, it appears that you have to either attend Stanford to shortly quit like Page and Brin, get an MBA, learn a technical skill like Photoshop or javascript, OR tweet like mad  @SocialMediaClub.

New products start with E, like the WD e-Book or i as in iPod and iPhone.

It’s the only place I know where people will turn down an impromptu invitation to dinner because they are on leave from Google to work their side hustle, or promise to teach you to be rich. Unless, your obsession IS food and you’re cooking the latest celebrity chef dinner.

If you live in Silicon Valley, is there something else you would add?

Is it like this elsewhere?  What drives the engine of young professionals in your city?

When choosing the name of your brand, it’s important that you know its character better than your consumers, especially in a world that is increasingly international. In business, a brand can make or break your business, no matter how good the product. (As was the case with the Chevy Nova in Latin America, as “No Va” means “No go.” Who would want to buy a car like that?)

That said, as being very much Taiwanese American, I couldn’t help but rant when I came across a few words in Mandarin while watching an episode of Top Chef.
Often, when a chef is talking about their experience in the competition, their name will come up on screen with their restaurant name.
Angelo Sosa, Xie Xie.

[I should also couch this in terms of while I can absolutely respect Mr Sosa for trying to cook and win. I respect the trials and travails of what it takes to make food that people love. This is not a personal analysis or a stab at Sosa, but rather an attempt at constructive criticism of his brand. I have never tried the food, so no complaints there.]

The bottom line:
1) Create intentional positive associations for your brand.
2) Do your research: if you are going to stray away from what you know, make sure you become absolutely wrapped up in the character of the brand you want to create.
3) Be real: the story that you make can and should in many ways embody its owners.
Continue reading

Today was one of many days that I have taken Caltrain, the SF Bay Area commuter train that runs along the Peninsula.

Caltrain used to have a courtesy policy. The policy stated that cell phones were not allowed on trains, among other things, and the bike car is reserved for bikers only. I learned today that they have since rescinded these rules because it became a political issue. Boy, as of today, I found out just how much of a political issue it really is.
Continue reading