marketing-strategy on S Anand

Things I Learned - 01 Mar 2026

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This week, I learned:

unidown is a Rust CLI tool that converts Markdown to Unicode characters - useful for LinkedIn.
3 years into Nestle, Sangeeta Talwar (who was selling Maggi soup cubes) took the “Maggi Instant Noodles” (popular in Malaysia), changed it to “2-minutes”, realized that noodles are fun for kids to play with, invented the masala flavor, positioned it as easy for moms, distributed hanging baskets (rodent-safe, brand visibility) at stores, marketed on TV and in stores, etc. Gemini
Nano Banana Pro 2 is out. Better text, better instruction following.
codespelunker is a fast CLI code search tool. Just run cs for an interactive search. It feels light and fast, like ug. lobste.rs
Shadow IT is unpaid R&D, not a security threat. When frustrated marketing or sales teams secretly buy their own software tools and bypass the IT department, traditional companies try to ban them. Transformed companies study them. “Shadow IT” is a highly accurate heat map pointing exactly to where your current systems are failing and where the immediate business value lies. Source: CIO.com, Gartner: Business-Led IT
Coding agents have introduced a “Usage” page to check your usage: Claude usage and ChatGPT usage. Both have weekly limits and 5 hour rolling limits - with Codex’s being more generous. This aggregates usage across the coding agents as well. Codex has a separate GitHub Code Review quota separate from this, however.

Why ad agencies do not advertise

Wed, 03 May 2006 12:00:00 +0000

Why Don’t Ad Agencies Advertise?

Comments

Sai 4 May 2006 10:39 pm: Thats hogwash Anand. Just my opinion.
Sudheer 5 May 2006 5:50 am: Seems more like a crib article more than one which gives answers…
S Anand 5 May 2006 6:09 am: I wonder, though: isn’t it true that ad agencies, in general, don’t advertise? Why is that?
Sai 15 May 2006 11:16 pm: Don’t you think the reason they do not advertise in mainstream media like newspapers & tv is that it is catered to the b2c crowd. But i have always thought that Ad firms do advertise in magazines and such read by decision makers, thought that was the case.
S Anand 17 May 2006 12:27 am: Quite possible. Even so, it looks like they advertise less than other industries. And that is odd…

Shrink a market

Wed, 12 Apr 2006 12:00:00 +0000

Grow by shrinking a market.

For every dollar of revenue Microsoft made, it took away six dollars of revenue from their competitors. Every dollar of Microsoft’s gain caused an asymmetrical amount of pain in the marketplace. They made money by shrinking the market.

PC iTunes downloads

Wed, 22 Oct 2003 12:00:00 +0000

PC iTunes hits 1 million downloads.

Apple also announced a promotion with PepsiCo Inc. starting in February in which 100 million winning bottle caps on certain Pepsi drinks grant the winner a free song.

When I read that, I said, “That’s 99 million dollars!”
Then I said, “No, it costs just the royalty… which may be a fixed cost anyway.”
Then I figured, “Lots of people will buy Pepsi. Maybe Pepsi paid Apple for it.”
Smart move, Jobs.

Presidential letters to the editor

Sat, 18 Jan 2003 12:00:00 +0000

Letters to the Editor. Except that they’re a marketing campaign. By the President, no less. via Scripting News