Oops.
Gemini just told me that Spotify Wrapped and Spotify Unwrapped are two different things. Most companies won’t do an “unwrapped” (“50% of our employees are job hunting because of our RTO policy”).
Author Archives: bredemarket
Marketing and writing services.
How Jumped is Unwrapped?
My product marketing observation: “Bredemarket Unwrapped” would be pretty pointless.
For those who DID create their own “Unwrapped” product promotion, congratulations on looking just like everybody else does with your lack of differentiation.
When everyone heads down, you should head up.
(Image from Google Gemini. This wildebeest doesn’t use ChatGPT.)
Getting Around the Warring Standards (Lightning vs. USB-C)
I’ve talked about standards to death, but what do you do when there are two standards? Do you support standard 1, or standard 2?
Yes.
If you need to charge both USB-C and Lightning mobile devices, Native Union has the cable for you.
The ultimate cable you’ve been searching for is finally here. Solve all your power needs with a faster, more sustainable, more durable cable. Designed for superior convenience and versatility, this unique 2-in-1 connector houses both USB-C and Lightning connectors in a single head and is strong enough to withstand the most active all-day, all-device use.
As you can see from the image above (upper left corner), you can choose either the Lightning adapter or the USB-C adapter.
Sounds great…
…except that Apple is slowly discontinuing use of Lightning, to comply with European Union regulations in 2022. The 2023 iPhone 15 doesn’t offer Lightning at all, and over the next several years Lightning will go away as older Apple devices become obsolete.
But for now it’s a good cable.
Medical Fraudsters: Birthday Party People
I’ve talked about Protected Health Information (PHI) before. Sadly, the health information is not not protected that well, since fraudsters can acquire PHI very easily in some cases.
Sometimes REALLY easily.
For example, I could call a medical provider or go to a pharmacy and say that my name is Donald John Trump.
Do you know how many medical practitioners verify identities?
By asking for the person’s birthdate.
So there is the possibility that a medical practitioner, after I say that I am Donald John Trump, will simply ask for my birthday without a second thought.
I would reply “June 14, 1946.”
And some of these medical practitioners would immediately grant access!
Of course, the number of successful fraudulent accesses goes up substantially when the real person is NOT well known.
Yet birthdates are considered an acceptable form of security in some parts of the medical world.
Scary.
Repurposing My Competive Analysis Analysis
I recently wrote a non-published document explaining, among other things, how I would perform competitive analysis as a product marketer for a particular firm.
Since the firm elected not to use my product marketing services, I will now publish a very small portion of my document, with proper redactions, explaining how Bredemarket (or I as an individual) could perform competitive analysis for YOU.
Background
I recently applied for a product marketing position with a firm outside of the identity/biometrics industry (“Firm X”). This required extensive research on the firm and the industry.
Objectives and Key Results
I framed this research using a tool that I learned about through Phyl Terry’s Never Search Alone program. Specifically, the “Job Mission with OKRs” tool.
You draft your OKRs (objectives and key results) yourself, while you are still interviewing for the job. Sure they may be off—when I performed a similar exercise in early 2022, I assumed I would have to create social media content, but subsequently discovered the firm had a very talented social media manager. But even OKRs that are only 25% accurate are better than no OKRs at all.
Not a fit
Returning to 2024, I started drafting my “Job Mission with OKRs” for Firm X’s product marketing position before I went to my first interview, and iterated it through the second one, creating OKRs for seven key areas.
I planned to iterate my OKRs through subsequent interviews with peers and non-marketing executives, then present them to the hiring manager before my offer.
Unfortunately, I never got the chance. One day after my second interview, the Firm X recruiter sent a personalized letter to me.
While we really enjoyed getting to know you, and after careful consideration, we have determined that there is not a fit at this time, and we will not be moving forward in our process.
I know its not the news you were hoping to hear, but we appreciate your interest….
Have you ever written something and then found out it’s not needed any more? Well, now I had these seven OKRs and no immediate use for them…
…except for one of the OKRs that ties into something I’ve discussed before.
I excel at competitive analysis
One of my seven OKRs dealt with competitive analysis. And I have a lot to say about that.
Tips from the wildebeest
Earlier this year I started a LinkedIn newsletter for Bredemarket called “The Wildebeest Speaks.”
The July 12 edition of the newsletter was entitled “Three Tips That Show Why Bredemarket Excels at Product, Market, and Competitive Analysis.”
As you can probably guess from the title, the tips in question are Excel-specific and relate to how I format my investigative workbooks. So they’re more nuts-and-bolts than high-level.
Despite this, early this morning I reshared those Bredemarket tips on my personal profile, just in case someone from Firm X happened to take a look at my LinkedIn profile. (They didn’t.)
Sadly, my wildebeest discussion of competitive analysis confined itself to nuts and bolts, and I needed a higher level discussion of how Bredemarket performs analysis for its clients.
It turns out I had already written it, when I described to Firm X how I intended to perform competitive analysis for them.
So here’s a redacted version of the competitive analysis OKR I prepared for Firm X, last revised yesterday, but never shared with the firm.
Using techniques developed at IDEMIA, Incode, and Bredemarket:
- Identify true competitors (approximately 20 possible competitors identified as of 11/26/2024).
- Perform feature comparison to indicate closeness of competitors, [FIRM] strengths, and [FIRM] failures.
- Identify key collateral required for each competitor (SWOT analysis, one-page battlecard, messaging/positioning document).
- Identify key competitors (high, medium, low).
- Complete collateral for high competitors.
- Complete collateral for medium competitors.
- Complete collateral for low competitors.
- Revisit collateral on a regular cadence, revise as necessary.
- Identify new competitors as necessary.
Now that I have the chance, let me elaborate on two of the points.
Identify true competitors
Have you ever heard a company say “we have no competitors”?
Bull.
Every single company that sells something ALWAYS has one competitor: “do nothing.”
And many companies have competitors that are not always apparent at the surface. For example, your average U.S. satellite television network (CBS, Fox News, Game Show Network, whatever) doesn’t only compete with other satellite television networks, but also competes with YouTube, TikTok, and other sources of information.
But no company has a truly infinite number of competitors. Yes, one could argue that a View-Master is a legitimate competitor to a U.S. satellite television network…but how much market share will View-Master steal from CBS?
So you need to identify the POSSIBLE competitors to your product, and then see if they TRULY compete.
Perform feature comparison
One way to do this is to compare the features of your product against the features of other firms’ products.
But you have to do it right.
If you are completely enamored with your product, you may choose to ONLY list the features that YOUR product has, and compare only those features against possible competitors. By definition, your product will have every feature in the comparison, and therefore it’s the best product ever.
Perhaps you can start with this…but then you need to look at your competitors’ features and determine which ones your product DOESN’T have.
For example, your product may be the best on-premise solution ever, but if your competitors offer SaaS implementations and you don’t, that’s one way in which your product sucks.
Once you have a true feature comparison, you can proceed with ranking the competitors as high, medium, or low, then with enunciating your benefits and closing your weaknesses.
How do my competitive analysis strengths benefit you?
If your knowledge of your competitors is lackluster, perhaps I can help.
- Even though my consulting contract didn’t explicitly allow it, I regularly fed one of my consulting clients information about its major competitor. This allowed the client to respond to questionable statements the competitor made.
- Two of my employers directly benefited by my competitive analysis, not only by identifying key strengths and weaknesses of their competitors, but also by knowing who their competitors actually were. One company’s worldwide sales force competed against dozens upon dozens of competitors, and the headquarters had no idea…until I asked the salespeople.
Does your firm want to employ me to spearhead your analysis services? Contact me on LinkedIn.
Or, if you only require my services on a consulting basis, contact me through Bredemarket’s “CPA” page. Unless I’m employed by one of your competitors.
Are You “Everybody Else”?
“Everybody uses ChatGPT.”
“Everybody uses the STAR method.”
Are you everybody else?
Not Everybody Uses ChatGPT
I’m sure I’ve tried ChatGPT at some point during the last two years.
But I don’t use it on a regular basis.
Even though whenever someone talks about generative AI, they usually talk about ChatGPT and nothing else.
So if I want to be like everybody else, I would use ChatGPT just like everybody else does. After all, I am a human and I need to be loved.
But if I were to use ChatGPT regularly, that would require me to create an account.
And I have too many accounts already.
Why not use the credentials of one of my existing accounts for generative AI work?
Not Everybody Uses the STAR Method
And if you want to send a prompt to ChatGPT, ask it to reformat a story based upon the STAR method.
For the few who don’t know what that acronym means, you’re obviously behind the times because everybody uses the STAR method.
The acronym STAR stands for Situation, Task, Action, Result. You can apply this in many situations: for example, during a job interview, you could describe one of your past accomplishments using this format.
After all, it only takes four steps.
But what if I can accomplish the same, um, result in THREE steps?
- Problem
- Solution
- Result
That’s the format that Bredemarket used when writing a dozen case studies for an identity/biometric client.
And it worked just fine.
The client’s prospects didn’t stop doing business with the client because it didn’t differentiate between the situation and the task, or the task and the action, or whatever.
The prospects wanted, um, results, not a deep outline.
Not Everybody Fails to Differentiate
I’ve railed about a lack of differentiation before, but for some odd reason the billions of workers in the world don’t listen to me.
They still think the key to success is to copy what everyone else is doing.
But if I were to intentionally adopt a yellow website them and wear retro glasses and sing a lot like Ray of Social’s Georgia Williams, that doesn’t mean that I can achieve the same results that she can.
For one, if you call her to have a natter about your mish, she probably won’t talk about wildebeests at all.
But she’s still doing OK.
You need to adopt your own tone of voice. I was just discussing this with a Bredemarket client regarding a critical piece of content that needs to be in the client’s own voice. Not mine. Not Georgia’s.
So communicate your way, use your preferred generative AI platform, and use your preferred storytelling method.
Addendum about this post
Someone scheduled a half hour meeting with me this morning. While waiting for the person to show (they never did), I completed most of this post.
So the half hour wasn’t completely wasted.
(And it could very well be that the person had a valid reason for not showing. I will, or won’t, find out.)
Another addendum about this post
For those who caught my line
I would use ChatGPT just like everybody else does. After all, I am a human and I need to be loved.
here’s the video. But I want to hear Georgia singing it.
(Note to self: find the “This Charming Charlie” website, in which Charlie Brown cartoons are adapted to contain Smiths lyrics.)
Delivery Packages and Geolocation in Residential Neighborhoods
Today’s musings concern delivery packages and geolocation, and may be pertinent if you receive a residential delivery this month. You know, maybe a present or something.
Let’s say you receive a package at your house, the delivery driver takes a picture of your package on your porch as proof of delivery…and the package is subsequently stolen by a porch pirate before you get it.
“Hey, you’re out of luck,” the company may say. “The package was delivered.”
How long will it be until security professionals advise you to NEVER EVER EVER HAVE RETAILERS DELIVER PACKAGES TO YOUR HOME? Use a locker or a staffed business address, but treat residential delivery as EVIL…just like public wi-fi.
Or perhaps expensive packages could be equipped with geotagging…like your luggage. I know that delivery companies hate geolocation as much as airlines do…but it’s a thought.
(Thanks to the anonymous victim of a porch pirate who inspired this. AI-generated image by Google Gemini.)
Type AI
In conclusion—and I will delve into this later—your beloved AI detector may deliver a bunch of false positives, or Type I errors.
For example, if every word in a post is spelled correctly, that’s an obvious sign the text wasn’t written by a human—correct? In the ever-expanding world of virtual communication, correct spelling is a dead giveaway of non-human content—as is the use of characters unavailable on a standard keyboard. Motörhead made a bunch of £ and € despite not being real. As the band never said,
“Timothy Leary’s dead
No, no, no, no, he’s outside, looking in”
(I had to include one hallucination in this post.)
Use MFAID (multi factor AI detection) to increase accuracy when you claim to detect generative AI.
(Timothy Leary image public domain; lyrics from the Moody Blues, “Legend of a Mind”)
If you want to delve into so-called signs of generative AI writing, see
#honeypot1129
(The original honeypot can be found in a post on my LinkedIn profile.)
As previously promised…
I’ve spent over 10 years in identity and biometrics, and other factors, including one-to-many identification, one-to-one verification, and classification (e.g. how old you are).
But as I have noted in a recent article in the Bredemarket newsletter The Wildebeest Speaks, verifying someone’s identity only goes so far.
(For people reading this on LinkedIn: here comes #honeypot1129, for those paying attention.)
For example, how many LinkedIn users sporting a green banner and an #opentowork hashtag have been approached by a person claiming to be from Company X…who is NOT from Company X?
That, my friends, is #employmentfraud – something that the REAL employees at all the Company X’s out there take very seriously.
Of course, no #fraudster who is doing something like that would be foolish enough to send me a LinkedIn InMail with such a claim…would they?
Or comment on this post and make such a claim?
You’d be surprised…
#fraud
#identity
#knowyourrecruiter
(Pre-Disney image of Winnie the Pooh and his hunny pot from the https://platinumprophouse.com/products/classic-winnie-the-pooh-standee URL)
Saving Money When Filling Prescriptions: Not You, The Companies
Healthcare is complicated. When most of us receive prescriptions from our doctor, either the doctor gives us a physical slip of paper with the prescription, or the doctor electronically sends the prescription to your pharmacy of choice. After that, you deal with the pharmacy yourself. Normally it goes smoothly. Sometimes it doesn’t.
- Maybe the patient’s insurance company doesn’t cover the prescription, or charges an exorbitant price for it.
- Maybe the patient never picks the prescription up. (The industry term is “adherence.”)
There are a lot of companies that want to help drug companies, physicians, and others make this process more seamless and less costly (for example, by maximizing gross-to-net, or GTN).
How many companies want to help? One afternoon I estimated that 30 companies are in this market. Based upon past experience in the identity verification industry (namely, all those battlecards my team created), this means that there are probably really more than 100 companies in the market.
While the companies obviously have to please the patients who need the prescriptions, they’re not critically important because the patients (usually) don’t pay the companies for the improved service.
So the companies have to sell others on their services.
Alto Technologies: “Alto Technologies’ configurable platform integrates hub and dispensing capabilities into an automated and seamless single service provider solution that improves patient experience and reduces administrative burden.”
Medisafe: “Patient support begins with onboarding and continues throughout treatment, with intuitive guidance throughout every encounter. From initial prescription to benefits investigation and authorization to shipment tracking, patients receive streamlined support with educational information and real-time updates.”
Phil: “Streamline medication access for your patients and providers. Our digital hub platform empowers retail and specialty-lite manufacturers with an alternative channel solution…”
Truepill: “Whether you’re an established brand looking to reach your patients directly, or an emerging company planning your go-to-market strategy, Virtual Pharmacy is the digital pharmacy solution built to scale.”
Of course, there are many more.
And they all need to tell their stories…
Bredemarket 