Access by the biometric product marketing expert bredemarket.com/mark
Tag Archives: fingerprint
Communicate with the Words of Authority
Biometric marketing leaders, do your firm’s product marketing publications require the words of authority?
Can John E. Bredehoft of Bredemarket—the biometric product marketing expert—contribute words of authority to your content, proposal, and analysis materials?
I offer:
- 30 years of biometric experience, 10 years of product marketing expertise, and complementary proposal and product management talents.
- Success with numerous biometric firms, including Incode, IDEMIA, MorphoTrak, Motorola, Printrak, and over a dozen biometric consulting clients.
- Mastery of multiple biometric modalities: friction ridge (fingerprint, palm print), face, iris, voice, DNA.
- Compelling CONTENT creation: blog posts, case studies and testimonials, LinkedIn articles and posts, white papers.
- Winning PROPOSAL development: managing, writing, editing for millions of dollars of business for my firms.
- Actionable ANALYSIS: strategic, market, product, competitive.
To embed Bredemarket’s biometric product marketing expertise within your firm, schedule a free meeting with me.
Is Your Content Up-to-date?
Are you a technology marketing leader who lies awake at night worrying about the following?
“Keeping up with the speed and complexity of the digital landscape.”
Well, maybe not that exact phrase. That sounds like something generative AI would write.
And in fact, my buddy Bredebot wrote it when answering a question about Chief Marketing Officer pain points relative to content.
But I’m not going to let Bredebot write an entire post about it, because I’m going to write it myself.
The human way to reflect the sentiment above is to ask whether your content is up-to-date, or is as dated as a Pentium.
And that’s something that a marketing leader DOES worry about, because they (usually) want their firms to be perceived as innovative, not old fashioned.
Let me give you an example of outdated content that persists today.
SEO, AEO, GEO…I believe they’re different
For years we have been discussing search engine optimization, or SEO. The whole point of SEO is to ensure that your content appears at the top of results when you use Google or Bing or another search engine to launch a search. (Ignore “sponsored content” for a minute here.)
In case you haven’t noticed, fewer and fewer people are using search engines. Instead, they are searching for answers from their favorite generative AI tool, and now the new term the kids are using is answer engine optimization, or AEO. Or perhaps you can follow the lead of Go Fish and refer to generative engine optimization, or GEO.
Now some people are continuing to use SEO when they mean AEO and GEO, under the theory that it’s all just optimization, and it’s all just searching but just with a different tool. Personally, I believe that continuing to refer to SEO is confusing because the term has always been associated with search engines.
Plus, the concept of keywords is fading away, as Lisa Garrud noted in May.
“Unlike traditional SEO, which focuses on ranking for keywords, AEO concentrates on providing comprehensive, authoritative answers that AI systems can easily process and deliver to users….
“Think about how you use AI tools today. You don’t ask for ‘electrician Auckland residential services’, you ask, ‘What’s causing the flickering in my kitchen lights?’ or ‘How much should it cost to rewire a 1970s house?’ You want answers, not search results.”
But forget about XEO and let’s return to the content YOU create.
How do you keep YOUR content up-to-date?
Let’s say that you’ve reached the point in your content calendar where you have to write a blog post about pop music.
And let’s also say that you’re old enough to remember the 20th century.
You may have a problem.
For example, when you see the words “pop music,” you may immediately spell the second word with a “z” and a “k” when you TALK ABOUT.
Or if someone mentions INTERPOL, you immediately respond with Deutsche Bank, FBI, and (und?) Scotland Yard.
And now that I’ve lost half my reading audience, you can see my point. While personas are approximations, you need to refer to them when crafting your content. If your hungry people (target audience) tend to be in their 20s and 30s, they’re probably not going to understand or respond to songs from M (Robin Scott) or Kraftwerk.
There are other things you can write that are obviously old, such as “fingerprint identification decisions are infallible.” That statement was questioned back in 2003…BEFORE the whole Brandon Mayfield thingie.
So how does a marketer ensure that their content is not dated? By remembering to ask, then act. Question your assumptions, do your research, write your content, then check your content.
Question your assumptions
Before you write your content, ensure your premise is correct. For example, I didn’t assume without questioning that “keeping up with the speed and complexity of the digital landscape” was a pressing issue. I KNEW that it was a pressing issue, because I encounter it daily.
Do your research
Next, take a moment and check what you are about to say. Was your assumption about fingerprint examiner infallibility affected by the NAS report? Was your assumption affected by activities that occurred after the NAS report?
Write your content
At some point you have to stop asking and start acting, writing your content. Write your draft 0.5 to get your thoughts down, then write your draft 1.0. And keep your personas in mind while you do it.
Check your content
Once it’s drafted, check it again. Have your dated assumptions crept into your writing? Did you use the term “SEO” out of habit, by mistake? Fix it.
The results of up-to-date content
If you do all these things, you’ll ensure that your competitors don’t laugh at your content and tell you how out of touch you are.
Ideally, you want your competitors to show how out of date they are.
“Look at WidgetCorp, who doesn’t even know how to spell! Their writer’s left finger slipped while typing, and they typed the so-called word ‘AEO’ rather than ‘SEO’! Everybody know the term is SEO!”
Which gives you the opportunity to write a succinct reply to your bozo competitor.
I’ll give you the joy of writing it yourself.
Unless you want Bredemarket to write it, or other content. Book a free meeting to discuss your needs. https://bredemarket.com/mark/
The Benefit of Multimodal Biometrics
(Part of the biometric product marketing expert series)
Even if a person alters their face to look like another person…
…they’re not going to modify all ten fingers.
Or their irises.
Go multimodal.
IB360° Launch Week Recap
(Imagen 4. A slight hallucination.)
Here’s a recap of all IB360° online content as of Friday September 12.
Integrated Biometrics (IB) public-facing IB360° content
The IB360° product page is here. It also includes the following downloads:
- IB360 Overview
- IB360 for Integrators: IB360 for Software Integrators | IB360 for Hardware Integrators | IB360 for Systems Integrators
- IB360 Build Your Own Biometrics: IB360 SW BYOB | IB360 HW BYOB
- IB360 Interviews: IB360 Spotlight Werner Cilliers
The IB360° press release is here.
The IB360° article “Navigating Identity Market Evolution with IB360 Software Integrator Solution” is here.
Bredemarket commentary on the above
Yes, I have commented on the items above.
Bredemarket posts to date are listed below, and can also be found at the IB360 tag.
- “Build Your Own (Integrated) Biometrics with IB360°,” September 10.
- “Identity Market Evolution,” September 11.
- “IB360° Product Marketing Must Address as Many Target Audiences as A Spartanburg Buffet,” September 12. This is a follow-up to the non-IB Bredemarket post “Your Product Marketing Must Address as Many Target Audiences as A Las Vegas Buffet,” September 10.
Other commentary on the above
For those of you with a keen eye, Biometric Update mentioned IB360 over a year ago, back in September 2024.
Identity Market Evolution
(Imagen 4)
(Part of the biometric product marketing expert series)
I previously promised that I’d discuss why Integrated Biometrics felt the need to introduce IB360 for its partners.
Integrated Biometrics has identified four evolutionary changes in the identity market that prompt the need for such a solution.
I’m going to limit my thoughts to two of the four changes that Integrated Biometrics mentioned.
Decentralized systems
When I started in the biometrics industry in 1994, an automated fingerprint identification system (AFIS) was usually a centralized system. Tenprint and latent examiners at the state capital (there was no federal IAFIS back then) would work in buildings at or near a huge minicomputer that held the state’s fingerprint records. Perhaps there may have been a few remote tenprint and latent workstations connected by modem, and perhaps there were some livescan stations scattered around, but for the most part these client/server systems had a single server in a state computer room. (Well, except for the Western Identification Network, but WIN was ahead of its time.)
Fast forward 30 years, and while this model may work in the United States, it may not work elsewhere.
What if you don’t have internet or cellular communications? (Yes, cellular. Modern edge devices are a topic addressed in the Integrated Biometrics article that I won’t go into here.)
Or what if the communications are so incredibly slow that it would take forever to submit a search to the capital city, and return results to the originator?
This is where decentralized systems come into play. Rather than requiring everyone to ping the same central hub, the biometric database is distributed and synchronized among multiple servers in multiple locations.
Or maybe you’re getting ahead of me here and realizing that “servers” is too limiting. What if you could put all or part of a biometric database on your smartphone, so you can search a captured biometric against a database immediately without waiting for network communication time?
Such decentralized systems were impossible in 1994, but they are certainly possible today. And IB360 lets partners build their own biometric systems with decentralization and synchronization.
Speaking of building…
Demand for speed
As I mentioned, I’ve been in the biometric industry since 1994, and although my early years were spent in a pre-contract proposals role, I’ve seen enough post-contract deployments to know that they take a long time. Whether you were dealing with Printrak, NEC, Sagem Morpho, or the upstart Cogent, it would take many months if not years to deploy a fingerprint system.
- For the most part, this is still true today with “pre-made” systems from NEC, IDEMIA, Thales, and the others.
- And it’s also true if you decide to deploy your own “custom-built” fingerprint or biometric system from scratch.
Either way, there is a lot of engineering, integration, and orchestration that must take place before a system is deployed. You can’t take an AFIS for Bullhead City, Arizona and deploy it in Anaheim, California…or the state of Tennessee…or the nation of Switzerland. You need to perform months of tailoring/configuration first.
Integrated Biometrics asserts that waiting years for a biometric system is far too long.
Other changes
I’ll let you read the Integrated Biometrics article to learn about the other two evolutionary changes: more powerful hardware (I’ve alluded to this), and a myriad of use cases.
All of these changes have impacted the biometric market, and prompted Integrated Biometrics to introduce IB360. To read about this modular software suite and its benefits, visit the IB360 product page.
Level 3
As Google Gemini/Imagen 4 sees it.
Build Your Own (Integrated) Biometrics with IB360°
(Imagen 4. A slight hallucination.)
Now it can be told.
Integrated Biometrics made an announcement earlier today.
But not a hardware announcement about some new fingerprint or palm print scanner named after a 1970s crime fighter.
A software announcement.
I’ve discussed Integrated Biometrics multiple times in the Bredemarket blog over the last five years. Sometimes in terms of hardware, such as Integrated Biometrics’ use of the RepelFlex MBED on its (then) fingerprint readers. Sometimes in terms of (then) cutting-edge software that captured fingerprints using a standard smartphone camera.
But the company’s newest announcement about the availability of IB360° is something else entirely.
Skipping the “leading provider” stuff, we get to this:
“Integrated Biometrics (IB)…formally announced today the launch of IB360, transforming the speed and cost to deploy identity systems. The IB360 platform is a low-code toolset of SDK-based software modules that allows our partners and integrators to more efficiently create biometric identity-based solutions with minimal development cycles.”
Hence the “build your own biometrics” tagline.
But why do partners and integrators need IB360?
I’ll cover that in a future post.
Your Product Marketing Must Address as Many Target Audiences as A Las Vegas Buffet
Messaging. It’s what B2B product marketers do. And it’s also what proposal professional professionals do, as we shall see.
But even the simplest B2B product suffers with one-dimensional messaging.
Why? Because even simple products often require many types of people to get involved in the purchasing cycle.
Marketers often talk about target audiences. I personally believe that term doesn’t describe the concept properly, so I prefer to refer to hungry people.
Which brings us to the Las Vegas buffet.
Variety for hungry people
Las Vegas is a destination visited by over 40 million people per year from all over the world. And the casino hotels know that they’re hungry for food, and they hope the hungry people will stay on property.
So do they serve Caesars Burgers?
Um, no. 40 million people don’t eat the same thing.
This becomes very clear if you visit the Bacchanal Buffet at Caesars Palace, with over 250 items prepared in 10 kitchens.
“From Roman-style pizza to Carne Asada Tacos inspired by the food trucks of L. A., there’s something for everyone. Find a world of flavor at our nine live-action cooking stations. Indulge in originals like slow-cooked prime rib, smoked beef brisket, crab, and wood-fired pizza. Or try something different, like whole Ahi Tuna Poke, roasted duck, or Singaporean Blue Crab and seasonal agua frescas.”
There is literally something for everyone. And the hungry person salivating for Ahi Tuna Poke doesn’t care about the beef brisket.
Which brings us to local police automated fingerprint identification system (AFIS) proposals.
Variety for hungry people
If you had asked me in September 1994 (before I started at Printrak in October) the target audience for local police AFIS, I would have replied, “fingerprint people.”
That answer would be incorrect.
Tenprint and latent people
Because, even if you limit things to the criminal AFIS world, there are (at least) two types of fingerprint people: tenprint examiners, and latent examiners. I asked my buddy Bredebot to summarize the stereotypical differences between the two. Here is some of what he said:
“‘Assembly line‘ comparisons: Because tenprint comparisons use high-quality, known impressions taken under controlled conditions, their work can be automated and is often perceived as a high-volume, less complex task. This is in contrast to the specialized analysis required for latent prints.
“Artistic and subjective: Because latent prints are often smudged, distorted, and incomplete, examiners must make subjective judgments about their suitability for comparison. This has led to the criticism that the process is more of an art than a science.”
Bredebot has never attended an International Association for Identification conference, but I have. Many many years ago I attended a session on tenprint examiner certification. Latent examiners had this way cool certification and some people thought that more tenprint examiners should participate in their way cool certification program. As I recall, this meeting way heavily attended…by latent folks. Even today, the number of Certified Latent Print Examiners (CLPEs) is far greater than the number of Certified Tenprint Examiners (CTPEs).
Other people
But you can’t procure an AFIS by talking to tenprint and latent people alone.
As I noted years ago, other people get involved in a local police AFIS procurement, using Ontario, California as an example:
- The field investigators who run across biometric evidence at the scene of a crime, such as a knife with a fingerprint on it or a video feed showing someone breaking into a liquor store.
- The information technologies (IT) people who are responsible for ensuring that Ontario, California’s biometric data is sent to San Bernardino County, the state of California, perhaps other systems such as the Western Identification Network, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
- The purchasing agent who has to make sure that all of Ontario’s purchases comply with purchasing laws and regulations.
- The privacy advocate who needs to ensure that the biometric data complies with state and national privacy laws.
- The mayor (still Paul Leon as I write this), who has to deal with angry citizens asking why their catalytic converters are being stolen from their vehicles, and demanding to know what the mayor is doing about it.
- Probably a dozen other stakeholders that I haven’t talked about yet, but who are influenced by the city’s purchasing decision.
Feeding the hungry people
So even a relatively simple B2B product has multiple target audiences.
Should product marketers apply the same one-dimensional messaging to all of them?
Um, no.
If you did that, purchasing agents would fall asleep at mentions of “level 3 detail,” while latent examiners would abandon their usual attention to detail when confronted by privacy references to the California Information Practices Act of 1977. (The CCPA, CPRA, and CPPA apply to private entities.)
So, whether you like it or not, you need separate messaging for each of your categories of hungry people.
One time, as part of an account-based marketing effort, I had to construct a multi-variable messaging matrix…for a product that is arguably simpler than an AFIS.
And yes, I used Microsoft Excel.
And I can use my mad Excel skillz for you also, if your company needs content, proposal, or analysis assistance in your technology product marketing operations. Contact Bredemarket at https://bredemarket.com/mark/.
And proposal professional professionals, read this.
Revisiting Friction Ridge
(Imagen 4)
(Part of the biometric product marketing expert series)
Due to renewed interest in my blog post on “Friction Ridge,” and its related Substack post, I’ve ventured back to the ridge.
If you missed my May writings, the friction ridges on fingerprints, palm prints, and elsewhere are used for everything from solving crimes to protecting smartphones.
If your biometric company offers a product that harnesses the power of friction ridges to identify people…do your prospects know about how your solution benefits them?
If your company is keeping quiet about your friction ridge solutions, let Bredemarket help you find your voice and spill your secrets to your buying prospects.
Bredemarket 