Author Archives: bredemarket

Marketing and writing services.

Speak the Truth: Convert By Getting Your Differentiated Message Past Talkative Competitors

Are your talkative competitors eating your lunch?

How can you speak the truth about your greatness to your prospects?

  • Compelling CONTENT creation.
  • Winning PROPOSAL development.
  • Actionable ANALYSIS.
Speak the truth.

Differentiation equals conversion. When Bredemarket creates content for an identity, biometric, or technology client, my primary focus isn’t on copying what the competition is doing.

My primary focus? I ask why you do what you do. (And how you do it. And five other questions.)

Then I act.

Then your prospects pay attention.

As my converting Bredemarket clients can attest:

  • The complete go-to-market campaign, including both customer-facing and internal-facing content, that I created for one client. With additional go-to-market content for this and other clients.
  • The over $2 million of winning proposals I have written for multiple consulting clients since 2020.
  • The analyses, covering everything from market competitors to NIST FRTE results, that I have written for other clients.

What’s next?

I’m John E. Bredehoft, product marketing consultant at Bredemarket. And I’ve differentiated products in the identity, biometric, and technology sector for 30 years, generating over $50 million in conversions for my employers and consulting clients. 

Take the first step to end your company’s silence. Let’s discuss your whys, and we can work out the hows in a free 30 minute consultation.

(Stop losing prospects! Use Bredemarket content for tech marketers)

Stop losing prospects! Use Bredemarket content for tech marketers

The NHIs Are There, But We Don’t Know What They Are Doing

Permiso has released its 2026 State of Identity Security Report, and the results aren’t pretty. The first data point of interest:

“95% [of surveyed organizations] say AI systems can create or modify identities without human oversight”

Which is OK, provided that the organizations have the proper controls. But that brings us to the second data point:

“Only 46% have full visibility into all human, non-human, and AI identities”

This is…not good.

Zoom Right Past AI, Which is Often Unhelpful

One of my clients has scheduled a meeting with me at 9:30 via Zoom.

And Zoom, like anything else, is now AI-powered.

Which means nothing.

Zoom AI helps me prepare for the meeting with buttons such as “What are some meeting icebreakers?”

I had to see this. And after reading the material below, I will never trust Zoom AI again. My client and I have work to do.

  • Here are some meeting icebreaker ideas:
    1. Two Truths and a Lie: Each person shares two true statements about themselves and one false statement. The others have to guess which one is the lie.
    2. Human Bingo: Create bingo cards with different traits, characteristics, or interests (e.g., “has traveled to another country”). Each person needs to find someone who fits each description and get them to sign the corresponding square.
    3. Word Association Game: Have each person say a word related to a specific topic (e.g., “teamwork”). The next person has to say a word associated with the previous word.
    4. Scavenger Hunt: Create a list of items or challenges that people need to complete during the meeting (e.g., “find someone wearing the same color shirt as you”).
    5. Would You Rather: Present two difficult choices and ask each person which one they prefer (e.g., “would you rather have the ability to fly or be invisible?”).
    6. One-Word Introduction: Ask each person to come up with a word that describes themselves, such as “creative” or “adventurous.”
    7. The Name Game: Have each person introduce themselves and share a unique fact or interest that starts with the same letter as their name.
    8. Team Trivia: Prepare a short quiz with questions related to the team or company.
    9. Creative Show and Tell: Ask each person to bring an object that represents something about themselves or their work, and have them explain why they chose it.

Montana Fingerprinting Laws…and Costs

School volunteers aren’t free…especially when they need background checks.

Montana Public Radio explains that the state imposed new fingerprint-based background checks for school volunteers. 

At $30 a pop, the costs add up. Missoula is spending an additional $20,000 a month to fund this.

Bozeman isn’t paying for this. It’s making the volunteers pay.

Helena was already fingerprinting volunteers and therefore isn’t incurring any additional costs.

Content Without a Point of View is a Waste of Time

Burrett’s opinion

Benjamin Burrett’s advice is targeted toward white papers, but truly applies to any content.

“Writing that presents a strong opinion is always more interesting to read – even if it’s an opinion that the reader doesn’t share.”

Burrett is trying to guard against white papers that are sleep-inducing. Feature lists don’t even excite the engineers, and definitely don’t excite your prospects. As part of the “don’t sleep” attempt, Burrett suggests that the product marketer ask some probing questions.

“Push your colleagues to go beyond simply what the product does, to understand the philosophy behind it, the true benefit for the user, and how this connects to larger, topical themes.”

Questions are good.

Bredemarket’s seven questions.

In Bredemarket’s seven-question exploration system, this not only relates to the obvious questions of “why” and “benefits,” but even to related questions such as “emotion.”

Densmer’s spine

And Benjamin Burrett isn’t the only person saying this. Look at what Lee Densmer just shared.

“[A company] built a ‘thought leadership’ campaign they were so sure would break through. It involved internal experts, the writing was high quality and covered all the ‘hot topics’ in their space.

“But the results were embarrassing. Traffic and engagement was flat. Everything was technically ‘on message’, but it was also vague, safe, and unmemorable.

“The messaging they’d written didn’t stand for anything. There was no strong point of view. There was no spine.”

So how do you inject a spine into content?

Bredehoft’s money

After my draft 0.5 of this post, I rewrote it to inject emotions that may resonate with the reader…or may not.

  • If I go pure 100% sage and dispassionately discuss the adverse consequences of emotionless content creation, you’ll turn me off in a nanosecond. And rightly so.
  • If I tell you to inject emotion into your content, then you will energize your readers and make some money.

And money is good.

Your content should make money.

So let’s help Bredemarket make some money. If I can help you with your identity/biometric or technology content, proposal, or analysis needs, set up a free call with me and we’ll discuss.

Not Only Amazon Stale (not Fresh), But Also Amazon Zero (not One)

With all the news about Amazon Fresh closing and more Amazon layoffs taking place, I missed a bit of news about the Amazon One palm-vein technology. But first a bit of history.

Amazon One in 2021

I believe I first wrote about Amazon One back in 2021, in a “biometrics is evil” post.

2021 TechCrunch article.

In that year, TechCrunch loudly proclaimed:

“While the idea of contactlessly scanning your palm print to pay for goods during a pandemic might seem like a novel idea, it’s one to be met with caution and skepticism given Amazon’s past efforts in developing biometric technology. Amazon’s controversial facial recognition technology, which it historically sold to police and law enforcement, was the subject of lawsuits that allege the company violated state laws that bar the use of personal biometric data without permission.”

Yes, Amazon was regarded as part of the evil fascist regime even when Donald Trump WASN’T in office.

Amazon One in 2025

Enrolling.

Which brings us to 2025, when Trump had returned to office and I enrolled in Amazon One myself to better buy things at the Upland, California Amazon Fresh. But the line was too long so I went to Whole Foods, where my palm and vein may or may not have worked.

Amazon One in 2026

From https://amazonone.aws.com/help as of January 29, 2026.

And pretty soon we’ll ALL be going to Whole Foods since Amazon Fresh is rebranding or closing all its locations.

And when we get there, we won’t be using Amazon One.

“Amazon One palm authentication services will be discontinued at retail businesses on June 3, 2026. Amazon One user data, including palm data, will be deleted after this date.”

You know the question I asked. Why?

“In response to limited customer adoption…”

Of course, in Amazon’s case, “limited” may merely mean that billions and billions of people didn’t sign up, so it jettisoned the technology in the same way it jettisoned dozens of stores and thousands of employees.

The June date may or may not apply to healthcare, but who knows how long that will last.

So what now?

In my 2021 post I mentioned three other systems that used biometrics for purchases.

There was the notorious Pay By Touch (not notorious because of its technology, but the way the business was run).

There was the niche MorphoWave.

But the third system dwarfs them all.

“But the most common example that everyone uses is Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, or whatever ‘pay’ system is supported on your smartphone. Again, you don’t have to pull out a credit card or ID card. You just have to look at your phone or swipe your finger on the phone, and payment happens.”

And they’re so entrenched that even Amazon can’t beat them.

Or as I said after the latest round of Amazon layoffs:

“This, combined with its rebranding or closure of all Amazon Fresh stores, clearly indicates that Amazon is in deep financial trouble.

“Bezos did say that Amazon would fail some day, but I didn’t expect the company to fall apart this quickly.”

My “Product Marketing” Information Page

Now that I’ve announced this on LinkedIn, I can announce it here.

Before this week, if I wanted to refer people to what I have written about product marketing, I would have to provide the link to the product marketing tag. Which is a massive brain dump of everything.

This week, I created a curated view of Bredemarket’s product marketing content with a Product Marketing information page, similar to my other information pages.

Since these information pages also allow a preface, I also took a crack at defining what product marketing is.

“[Y]ou’re telling stories to bridge the gap between your product and your hungry prospect.”

That’s it. Although in retrospect I probably should have said “telling narratives.”

Well, I provided another definition. Here are my four essential elements of product marketing:

  1. Product marketing strategy.
  2. Product marketing environment.
  3. Product marketing content.
  4. Product marketing performance.

Why make things complex?

And of course if you’re interested in BIOMETRIC product marketing, you can continue to visit my biometric product marketing expert page.

Commit Traffic Crimes in 50 States…Well, 7

How does California know whether an arrested intoxicated person has a drunk driving conviction in, say, Oklahoma?

Or better still, how does Oklahoma know whether a licensed driver also has a driver’s license in, say, California?

Answer: they don’t. Because privacy.

The American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA) provides participating states with a system (S2S) to check such things.

“State-to-State (S2S) Verification Service is a means for a state to electronically check with all other participating states to determine if the applicant currently holds a driver license or identification card in another state. The platform that supports S2S, the State Pointer Exchange Services (SPEXS) was successfully implemented in July 2015. Participation in S2S does not commit a state to be in compliance with the federal REAL ID Act. However, if a state chooses to be REAL ID compliant, the Department of Homeland Security generally looks for S2S to be part of their compliance plan.”

Not all states participate. As it turns out, neither California nor Oklahoma are part of S2S. Oklahoma is slated to join, but this may not happen.

“Oklahoma lawmakers have asked the state Supreme Court to immediately block the transfer of driver’s license and identification card data to a national interstate data exchange run by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA).

“The lawmakers argue that the planned transmission exceeds statutory authority, violates state privacy protections, and collapses a key distinction that Oklahoma law makes between REAL ID-compliant and noncompliant credentials.”

Based upon past history, it’s no surprise that some in Oklahoma oppose big guvmint and AAMVA S2S participation.

But why has California opted out of S2S?

Basically, the privacy of Social Security Numbers. The state doesn’t to share this personally identifiable information willy nilly.

(As an aside, take a moment to think about how a state in enforcing the privacy of Social Security Numbers, which are assigned at the federal level. And also think about how Social Security Numbers are NOT supposed to be a national ID number. The mind boggles.)

So what do the other states do if someone claims to have a California driver’s license, but California won’t confirm this because of privacy concerns? Here’s what Tennessee does.

“All states and jurisdictions in the United States participate in S2S, except for California, Connecticut, Illinois, Kentucky, Nevada, Oklahoma, and West Virginia. New or returning Tennessee residents transferring from these nine states must obtain a Motor Vehicle Record (MVR) from their former state. The MVR be issued within 30 days of applying for a Tennessee license or ID.”

Good to know if I ever move out of California.

Taxes and Tacos

(From Roxanna Gracia in the office of Assemblymember Michelle Rodriguez.)

Assemblymember Michelle Rodriguez is pleased to invite you to Taxes & Tacos, hosted in collaboration with Golden State Opportunity.

Saturday, February 28
10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Mt. Zion Church of Ontario
224 W. California St.
Ontario, CA 91762

This event will offer free tax assistance*, access to community resources, and free tacos while supplies last. We would greatly appreciate your support in sharing this event with your network or community members who may benefit. The event is open to the public, and all are welcome to attend.

Thank you for your continued partnership and support of our region. Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions.

*Tax assistance is available for individuals and families with an annual income of $69,000 or less. Appointments are encouraged, though walk-ins will be accepted as space allows. To secure an appointment, please click here.

Asm. M. Rodriguez Taxes & Tacos FlyerDownload