The first part of personal (to his list) "New Year/letter Summary" from the guy who did/does the marketing for Opera Software (a browser designed to compete with Netscape and Windows - or at least be somewhere on the edge of the ring). The interesting thing about that is that he did all the marketing in completely non-conventional, next to no money ways. The people behind Opera are in Norway. Helmar's in South Africa. He's an interesting guy. I don't know if the general story of how he marketed Opera's still on their web site or not, but if it is, it's worth fishing around for. Interesting...

Anyway, here's the beginning of what he had to say this year:

Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1998 15:27:37 +0200
From: Helmar Rudolph helmar@argo-navis.com
To: helmar@argo-navis.com
Subject: Just when you thought 1998 was over...

Br> ... comes Helmar with his year-end ramblings. ;)

Greetings!

Yet another year is drawing to a close. And what a year it has been! So in these final hours of 1998, I would like to sum it up and even share with you my new year's resolutions. ;)

I haven't checked lately, but I must have written about 20.000 emails this year - some 15secs. and a few words long, others about 1 1/2 hours and dozens of paragraphs - which tells you more or less how I spent most of my day.

Luckily, I did this from my home, a rented little cottage in the shade of the Table Mountain range, not far away from vineyards or beaches. Obviously, I didn't have to drive to work, never mind getting up at a specific time each morning or dressing like a turkey only to please corporate etiquette -- or what's left of it. Perish the thought of me sitting here in front of the screen wearing next to nothing, while 'talking' to someone at the other side of the world about serious business opportunities. ;) Praise the phone and emailer! ;))

But it's been a lonely year, too. Not so much for lack of communication, but for lack of stimulating and refreshing face-to-face communication, as most of the 'higher brain' conversations were entirely done via email, and I would have loved to have a little more diversity in there. But I am busy addressing this as we speak. A first sign can be found at http://www.argo-navis.com/cofsa. Yes, it's another website, but one which will hopefully be 'fuelled' by face-to-face meetings. I am really looking forward to that.

But let's get some chronological order into my scattered and interconnected thoughts here....

Canopus Marketing.... still running on the side, still getting invited to conferences, still doing my discussion group thing. But I don't know to how many more conferences I will get invited, because I don't seem to tell them what they want to hear. ;) And the DBM/RM discussion group's activity or lack thereof is symptomatic for the whole Database Marketing industry: secrecy abound, but no young rebels or courageous leaders in sight, apart from those few already known to me. I don't what 1999 will bring, but having monitored the scene very closely revealed that the basic understanding of the subject matter is still notably absent. Could tell you lots about this, but don't want to bore you with details. May do some changes to both the list and the website http://www.argo-navis.com/competence/, but nothing decided as yet.

Opera Software..... well, 95% of the 20k emails were for OS. Early 1998 we had very little, with v3.0 just having been released and 1997 having been a year of 'first contact with the real world'. The German=speaking market was all but a handful of 'madmen' who registered and paid for a little-known browser from Norway. http://www.operasoftware.com. But at the end of 1998 there were more than 4000 (!) of them. Still small in relative terms, but a huge gain over the previous year, and all that done literally single-handedly. Income in the region of DM250.000 (US$150.000) in packets of 35.- or 70.- DM is not a small feast, particularly considering the fact that we didn't spend a single cent on normal advertising or marketing in a market dominated by two multi-bn dollar corporations, both of them giving their product (our competition) away for free.

Not wanting to pat on my shoulder, but I think it shows how successful one can be if only the attitude, chemistry and marketing approach is right. Ironically, this is actually what I've been trying to tell the folks at the conferences and on the Net for yonks. But they still seem to look for the holy grail when the solution is staring them right in the face. But admittedly, it's easier to look for external quick fixes rather than for holistic and long-term internal solutions which require a serious look inside oneself, too.

-- Anonymous, December 30, 1998