Author Archives: bredemarket

Marketing and writing services.

This Morning’s Camera Fun

This morning I went to join my 6:00 am client / client’s client meeting and found my camera wasn’t working in Teams.

After the meeting I discovered that it wasn’t working in Google Meet either.

So I turned the computer off and turned it on again…still not working.

After exploring a bit, Windows told me that something else was using the camera…and also told me that something had turned the camera off. I assumed the latter was the correct diagnosis.

After exploring some more, including every function key combination, I found a barely visible switch.

Thanks, Google Gemini:

…there is no keyboard button to turn the camera off.

Instead, HP placed a physical privacy shutter directly at the top of the laptop screen.

Where to look and how to use it:

  1. Look at the very top bezel (border) of your laptop screen, right where the camera lens is centered.
  2. Directly next to or built into the glass over the lens, you will see a tiny manual sliding tab.

I slid the tab to the right, and my camera was working again.

I must have slid the shutter to the left yesterday when I transported the computer away from and back to my home.

Learn a new one every day…

You Can’t Market Product With a Lampshade Over Your Head

You can’t market product with a lampshade over your head.

Unless, of course, your product is a lampshade. Yours probably isn’t.

Don’t be a lampshade-wearing wombat. Use Bredemarket to let your prospects know about your identity, biometric, or tech product.

Stop losing prospects! Use Bredemarket content for tech marketers

No One Cares About Features…Or Your Product

With apologies to “experts” who can detect AI-generated text—they know who they are—I want to DELVE into a statement I made in my 9am post.

“I don’t ask for your feature list; no one cares.”

Over the years I have managed or marketed a number of products and services: Omnitrak, Printrak BIS, MorphoBIS Cloud, Morpho Video Investigator, Incode Omni, AEM Resurgence, IB360°, and many others.

All of which had extremely impressive lists of features.

And over the years I slowly realized that prospects and even happy customers didn’t care about ANY of those features.

Because customers don’t buy features…or products.

They buy solutions to their problems.

  • If you’re telling prospects about your 1000 pixel per inch resolution, they will respond “So what?” and ask about reducing their jurisdictional crime.
  • If you’re telling prospects about your certifications, they will respond “So what?” and ask about keeping privacy lawsuits away.
  • And if you’re telling your prospects about your financial integrations, they will respond “So what?” and ask about making money. Lots of money. Loads of money.
Everything counts in large amounts.

Your product marketing shouldn’t talk about your products.

It should speak to your prospects.

Because then your products won’t only make money for your customers, but will also make money for you.

And don’t you want money, rather than a long feature list?

Let’s talk.

Stop losing prospects! Use Bredemarket content for tech marketers
Use Bredemarket content.

Don’t Bore Your Prospects; Compel Them

If your product marketing is so “me too” that you only generate leads for your competitors, how can I help?

I ask, then I act.

The Seven Questions I Ask.

I don’t ask for your feature list; no one cares. I ask to uncover YOUR “why” story that compels your prospects to buy your stellar product, rather than all the products that aren’t as valuable as yours.

Then I act. I create a draft for your review. And you act in reviewing it. And when we are both happy, you publish.

And your prospects respond.

Talk to Bredemarket.

Stop losing prospects! Use Bredemarket content for tech marketers

Before Fingerprints, Words

From “Who I Am”:

“I am John E. Bredehoft, and I have enjoyed writing for a while now. And for a while I’ve been able to make a living at it.”

For a while.

And it has been a compulsion, even today.

“I guess I’m a “you can pry my keyboard out of my cold dead hands” type.”

Although I’m presently using a phone’s virtual keyboard, same difference.

How Much “Privacy First”?

While extremes resonate, they may not be practical.

Take “privacy first.”

Our intuition tells us that a lack of privacy is bad, so companies give us what we want. Privacy.

The privacy first extreme is exemplified by World, formerly WorldCoin. World can theoretically build a database of the irises of millions of people…but by design it does not know who any of them are. Am I eligible to vote in California? No idea.

Another extreme is exemplified by how we respond to ad-related queries. Our responses are understandable.

Google Gemini.
  • When I see an ad that reads, “John, MBAs in Ontario, California are drinking this smoothie,” I wonder what else “they” know about me. (And yes, they know my age.)
  • So I go to the extreme and decide that I don’t want “them” to know anything about me.
  • Seems like a good idea until I start seeing ads for pink miniskirts…and the ads are in Chinese.
Google Gemini.
  • I prepare to complain and ask why I’m seeing these ads, but then I remember that by design, the advertisers don’t know me from Adam…or, apparently, Eve.

So the privacy debate is not Boolean but is more nuanced.

  • What types of personally identifiable information or protected health information will a system store?
  • Who can access it?
  • What happens when (not if) the system is breached?