Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Nano is the Real Deal, So Figure Out How To Think Small

David Falato, partner at Jack Nadel International, jacked a lot of folks on LinkedIn’s Marketing Search Group when he announced a USB drive made out of paper that can be inserted into a brochure or even a magazine ad. “It is definitely one of the more unique ideas to come along in the promotional product market in a while. Great for tradeshow handouts, brochures, company catalogs, sweepstakes. magazine ads. We can also gather valuable marketing data, for example we can tell how many people actually plugged the USB drive in and what pages they visited on the website that the webkey directed them to.”

Nano is an extension of the niche and local trends I blogged about earlier. Predictably, this year technology will push nano into new product areas and up its influence on marketing strategies.

In its strict scientific definition, nano is controversial – probably for good reason. But that’s a different nano. In the Marketing Brillo sense, nano means close-up, personal, tailored-to-fit, squeezed comfortably into small spaces, common-denominator savvy, highly pertinent, devoid of the extraneous, and relevant.

In October 2006, the ever-prescient Anne Holland, Marketing Sherpa founder, dubbed the term nano-niche." Anne’s talking about segementation on steroids. “Divide your marketplace into nano-niches. Only do two or three to start as a test. (I wouldn't test just one because it might be the fluke niche that isn't worth the work. You need to try several to discover what makes a winning niche.” Sound advice that worked well in 2009.

No surprise, nano is happening to our stuff, too. As the world gets more crowded, big products need to get smaller: cars for example. The Renault Twizy and the Tato Nano are ultra-small, ultra-cheap, and eco-friendly.

And then there's Twitter, wee words of marketing, news, opinion, and gossip. And smart phones, the big ALL in a palm shell. And SMS, the sales message without form. Powerful.

What’s on your Little Plate this year?

-- scrubbed by Marketing Brillo

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