5 Great Marketing Activities in 2015

This Press Announcement from Slack

Slack has actually done an amazing job at being discussed near constantly in the press in 2015. They’ve done this by fundraising:

He wanted a $1 billion valuation. If Slack couldn’t get that, he wouldn’t raise anything. The cachet of the figure is meaningful in an intangible way, he says. It means “we’re a part of that conversation about companies worth $1 billion.”

As anyone thas has worked with the press can tell you, they are primarily interested in exclusive product launches, and fundraising announcements. Something as juicy as a 2 year old company being valued at One Billion Dollars is a sure way to not only have plenty of press coverage, but provoke the internet into debating you endlessly.

There is really no equivalent to having the entireity of the internet debate if you are valued at $1 Billion. No product or marketing announcement can prove to be as controversial: people talked about it for days, it was on NPR, Hacker News were livid.

It made a wonderful but really relatively generic SaaS product be discussed more than any consumer product.

Slack did this kind of announcement again with their $80 Million fund. $80 Million is such a tantalising amount of money, its ludicrously high, it plays perfectly into the “are we in a bubble?” discussion: it ensured that the internet discussed it repeatedly.

The difference of “Slack launches a fund to invest in it’s platform” vs. “Slack launches an $80 Million fund to invest in it’s platform” is precisely what makes Slack extraordinary at Marketing.

This Product Marketing from SDR Traveller

The best Product Marketing is so differentiated and thoughtful that you cock your head and ponder if this is an elaborate ruse or an authenticity from an esoteric mad man.

What resonates more:

• This waterproof bag carries $1M in cash.

or

• This waterproof bag carries 20 litres of stuff.

SDR Traveller continues making products in USA, designed for Somalia, used by people that want the best.

This Service from Svbtle and Clearbit

Firstly, a fantastic side project from Clearbit: Give them a URL and they’ll return the companies logo. Not only does this fit perfectly within the grand vision of Clearbit, but it is also useful enough that it’ll gradually be cemented into day to day usage by developers.

Secondly, this small product that enhances signup forms. As 2014 and 2015 have demonstrated, the march of Marketing becoming more and more of a technical discipline (required reading) is accelerating, as part of that it is spawning an entire cottage industry of SaaS products that are specifically focussed on improving these technical marketers lives.