Reed: Marketers should stay in touch with technological developments

November 6, 2000

BY MICHAEL KRAUSS

This is one of an ongoing series of articles on interactive marketing leaders who are doing things other marketers can learn from. They're not yet household names, but will be in the headlines tomorrow. They're the emerging leaders of an emerging marketing discipline

Name, rank and serial number: David Reed, 48, independent consultant since 1996; advises companies from New Age start-ups to Fortune 500 organizations. Bachelor’s degree, electrical engineering; Master’s and doctorate degrees, computer science and engineering, all from Cambridge-based Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Previously a senior scientist at Palo Alto, Calif.-based Interval Research Corp., founded in 1992 by Paul Allen and David Liddle. Vice president and chief scientist for Lotus Development Corp., where he championed Lotus Notes and ran product development for Lotus 1-2-3. Vice president of research and development, and chiefscientist at Software Arts, where he helped invent VisiCalc, the first electronic spreadsheet. Former assistant professor of computer science at MIT, where he helped design Internet protocols (TCP/IP) and contributed to MIT’s original token-ring LAN architecture. “I’d like to be known for the contributionsto the architecture of the Internet and the group-forming network ideas.”

Mantra: "Value is created by letting individuals interact with each other and form groups with each other rather than having people relate to businesses that sell them things."

A technologist’s advice for marketers: "Brands matter more than ever. The way you build brands is not by broadcasting advertisements, but by inventing your brand in the space that people live in. (And) people live in the network rather than just turning it on every once in a while."

How products will be different in the future: "Physical products are going to blend network components into themselves. Products won’t just be in a package—they’ll have extensions in the Web space. If you buy a stereo, associated with that stereo will be items on the Web. The marketing opportunities are much more interesting because they’ll persist longer than the physical box."

Why marketers should care about technology: "I think marketers are going to have to listen to the technology more—be aware of what’s new, what’s different, what’s going to be different. Marketing will still be about focusing on people, but it’s going to be focusing on people who are much more intimately related to a whole set of technologies."

He suggests living with or visiting the places where the technologies are evolving, such as MIT’s Media Lab.

Ways to stay in touch with technology: "A lot more technology is being developed virtually. The first sign of this is what’s called the Open Source Movement, where technologies (such as Linux) are being built by loose collaboration on the Web. That makes it possible to participate and watch from the background and see what’s happening without having to go somewhere."

Some starting points worth visiting: www. slashdot.org or www.opensource.org.

Michael Krauss is a partner with Diamond Technology Partners in Chicago.
He can be reached at news@ama.org.