Summer Dog Days

I can tell it’s near the end of summer here in the Northern Hemisphere, its hot and humid outside or what is known as the “Dog Days” of August.

It?s also the time of the year when many are on their final summer vacations or getting ready for the fall and back to school shopping. It?s also a busy time of the year with vendors trying to get a jump on their competition by making their major announcements while people are still on vacation in advance of a packed fall show and conference schedule.

For me its been a busy time of the year trying to get some relaxation time (the fishing has slowed down with the summer heat) in between all of the vendor pre-briefings, consultations, speaking and key-noting at events as well as some other projects Im working on that you will be seeing and hearing more about in the months to come.

Some of the vendor announcements have already occurred, some have occurred and perhaps no one made mentioned or covered, or if they did, the response has been where’s the news or where’s the “Beef” as if you showed up for a BBQ and forgot to have something to put on the hot grill, that is assuming you are not vegetarian. Yet other vendors are busily getting their NDA and embargoed pre-briefings completed or scheduled.

Sitting through many of these briefings during the dog days of August can be a real chore particularly the ones that are flash and animation laden while being extremely heavily scripted and practiced extreme is some of the scripting, that should the oppourtunity to ask a question occur other than the obligatory ?Do you have any questions?? at the end of the briefing, should a question be asked, the response all to often is a sales pitch, a canned scripted response that you can get off of a website, or, a request for a follow-up call. Not all of the briefings are drudgery, there are the fun ones where a slide or two are put up or even better, sent out in advance and the time is spent in two-way off-script discussions.

With the recent batch of announcements and pre-briefings, some are under true and real NDA and embargos, the type of embargos or NDAs that are actually honored by all parties concerned. Then there are the all too common requested NDA and embargos that usually end up with the story appearing somewhere on the web or elsewhere well in advance of the actual announcement.

As a standard practice, I honor both signed and verbal NDAs and embargos so I can not tell you what will be announced, when or by who as you can probably find that on some other sites in advance of the announcements. However, what I find most exciting and interesting about this falls line up of news and announcement is how many will be industry firsts or the only one in the industry or revolutionary or best in class. Some of the commonly used phrases for this fall include the time proven:

“Industry First”
“Industry Only”
“Market Leader”
“Revolutionary”
“Best in class”
?Game changer?

While these phrases are always used and in some cases true, there are many that forget to add some clarification or qualification. For example, adding one or more of the following as part of the above statements or phrases:

?As far as we know?
?According to our research?
?For us in the industry?
?For us or our company?
?In our opinion?
?To our knowledge?
?Based on what someone told us?

Enjoy the rest of your summer and enjoy the fall product lunch blitz and I look forward to seeing some of you at the various shows, conferences and other events over the next few months.

Cheers
Gs