The Semantic Web Gang met again last week and we
talked to Powerset CTO Barney Pell. You will find the podcast
here. During the introduction by Barney (who incidentally, is in the
room delivering his Powerset presentation as i write this – we are at the
SemTech Conference in San Jose), I grew really interested in his positioning
and messaging, and especially with regard to a well-known, proven web activity:
Search.
While so many of the articles about Powerset
assimilated it to a search engine (see this article as one of the many examples),
recently the company has tried to break away from that association (see that article). Barney made
the point clearly when answering my question on the topic. That is a
smart move. From a business perspective, suffice to say that positioning
oneself against Google would be unwise. From a user perspective, there seems to
be little interest in trying yet another search engine. The next thing in
search needs to be leaps and bounds above Google, and by that I mean helping
you find faster what you’re looking for, from anywhere on the web. Ideally, the
result should always be one click away from your query! No one currently
competes with Google on those dimensions. Granted, Powerset is on to something
with natural language search, which has the capacity to dramatically increase
result quality (and ultimately to accelerate querying speed too - think of the
possible combination with upcoming voice recognition technologies). But let’s
be serious: Google is ready for that long-known threat.
Crossing the search chasm
So, Powerset is right in trying to stop orbiting
Google, but announcing it is not enough, and for now it seems that the search
gravity force is making it difficult for them to break free. They continue to
be described as a search engine (even if not a
Google slayer), still look a lot like a search engine with a homepage a la
Google, and even present themselves as a natural language search engine, a
Wikipedia search engine, or a deep search engine. Anyway you look at it, it
still shouts “search, search, search”. From a marketing perspective, the gap
between Powerset’s claim and its execution is striking. Sure, this may partly
stem from a motivation to sequence their go-to-market strategy, to present
simple benefits to users, which I very much applaud. But whatever you call it,
the direction is still about delivering “search” as the key benefit to the
user.
What Powerset and so many other start-ups in the
online space are struggling with is a well-documented marketing problem. Think
“crossing the chasm”. The difficulty is to invent a value proposition that’s
distant enough from the existing ones so it stands out from the crowd and is
not perceived as a threat by larger incumbents, while being familiar enough
that mainstream people can understand it and try it. At the start of an
innovation wave like the one we currently witness, fitting new paradigms into
old mental models is a make-or-break proposition.
There are well-known solutions too. One of the most
obvious ones is to find a new value proposition and sequence it in small
pieces, ramping up each piece in turn by relying on an intuitive interface and
on early adopters to tip and educate others. What the applications trying to
take advantage of the semantic web haven’t really done yet is the first part:
landing on a compelling value proposition. It must fit the conflicting criteria
of being both new and simple.
Marketing semantics is NOT rocket science, so don’t
ask rocket scientists to do it!
SIMPLIFY is one of the key verbs heard at the
current Semantic
Technology Conference. Flagship applications are or should be
working on simplifying their value propositions: Twine announced it is dumbing
down its interface, Zepheira was told in Q&A that its interface looks
too complex (and it takes some imagination to see how nurses would use
it), analysts like Carla Thompson at the GuidewireGroup report having a dreadful
time trying to explain what the semantic web does to the media, and Reuters’
Thomas Tague suggests that the word “semantic” be replaced and that
applications go out without any reference to the technology that powers them.
Clarify and focus on simple benefits.
It’s worth repeating. Clarify and focus on simple
benefits.
My claim here is that getting that done will take
more than the geniuses who came up with the semantic web in the first place.
And by more I mean, in fact, less. To paraphrase one of my favorite
books, “Made to stick”, most tech-focused leaders face a “knowledge curse”
that prevents them from marketing their ideas effectively: in the conference
session on bringing those technologies to the masses, I made the point that the
people who initially built the semantic technologies are generally not the best
equipped to lead the charge in bringing those to the market, i.e. simplify,
cut, communicate the value proposition. I stick to my point. I saw that again
and again, in fields such as software, clean energy, telecom. Those people know
and care too much about the technology, and have a hard time to let go.
That really jumped out throughout the conference,
where so many founders fell short of describing their value proposition in
simple, memorable ways. Compared to most presentations I attended before from
professional CEOs and marketers in mature industries, the comments made on the
business and customer acquisition side felt well, frankly, unbaked. My
hypothesis is that the mental models needed to develop an innovative technology
are radically different from those needed to bring it to the market, and
especially to land and communicate a clear value proposition (and vice-versa).
Those models take time to cultivate. Technological founders who have them are
rare. Those who don’t can educate themselves and work with people whose job it
is to translate complex technologies into simple solutions.
Salvation for semantic rocket scientists: develop
the right mental models and rely further on “market geeks”
Let’s start with education: to overcome the hurdle
and cross the chasm, it is important that those tech-savvy leaders force
themselves into different mental models that focus on the immediate needs of
the user and not the endless possibilities of the technology. To that end, I’d
recommend especially (again) the book Made to Stick, which offers a clear methodology for
honing in on viral messages. Although it appears less directed towards the
development of value propositions, I believe its core ideas remain very
relevant to that purpose. The process of coming up with a crisp value
proposition really is similar to that of communicating it out. As Thomas Tague
said rightly in his infinite wisdom: “if you have to explain it, I don’t want
it”.
Other reference include classics such as What took you here won’t take you there, Crossing the Chasm and Inside the Tornado will also help. Disclosure: I am not
making any money on any of the book links here.
Learning takes time and motivation. Often, tech
specialists are more motivated in identifying the next frontier rather than
matching those with mainstream customer problems. The solution here is to give
that task to market specialists. Those will be savvy with jobs such as
positioning, messaging, targeting, and fields such as marcom, consumer
discovery, user interface, product design. You need this. We know, because
customer needs is what we do ;) This may sound like a plea for innovation
marketers, strategic marketers (and the emerging concept of “marketing geeks”), but really, it's not. It's a
plea to get more semantic web start-ups off the ground.
The semantic industry is at a point where it needs
to attract such professionals, and give them a leading role in the definition
of application specs, customer acquisition thought leadership and marcom
efforts, supported but not directed by the technology specialists. People in
love with the customers and users, not with the technology, are best equipped
to lead customer adoption efforts.
