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The following blurb is a snippet from our correspondence with one of the brighter members of the marketing universe. You might want to send a copy to your marketing team.

When we help companies with their marketing, we usually focus on the fact that a public company has a number of audiences who need distinctly different messages. Hot Jobs has great stock performance because they understand how to work the analysts. Good market valuation allows them to fund advertising and projects that they otherwise couldn't afford. Customer satisfaction isn't second to them, it's equal. Without decent market valuation, they can't plan to satisfy their customers over the long haul.

We think that approach is an order of magnitude more sophisticated than the one you've articulated. Again, we suggest that you are articulating a self-fulfilling prophecy. When you describe "a lack of insight by many of the journalists and analysts who are covering this suddenly topical industry", you are describing a marketing failure. Are they supposed to learn all about your view of the world without your active intervention?

The audiences that the marketing department serves are:

• Paying customers
• Journalists
• Market Analysts
• Job Hunters
• Investors
• Company Employees

It really is the job of the marketing department to make each of these constituent groups successful in their own terms. In other words, it's not good enough to broadcast a single message. We (and all other journalists/analysts in the space) get buried in useless PR. It always tells one side of the story and focuses on minutia that is only interesting to the company who sends the release. The winners do it differently.

They imagine that each of the groups are 'customers' who depend on the company for success. As the company delivers on that promise, its 'stock' (as a brand or a tradable commodity) rises.

If people are failing to see the value you offer, perhaps you aren't taking responsibility for the success of your communications. Being a 'victim' is not good marketing. Being completely responsible for the company's image, while harder to sleep with, is the job of the marketing team.

We are reasonably sure that our last bit of advice will completely irritate you. We'd urge you to consider it carefully. Although we don't expect it (and that may explain your difficulties), you may well thank us for this in the future.

Here we go:

Stop whining. What you see in the press is a reflection of your approach. You are causing the problem you are complaining about.

Part of the problem is a seeming inability for major partnerships to grow and flourish in the industry. As operations like RecruitUSA take the customer mantle (by providing ad distribution and single invoice billing), the job boards are left to distinguish themselves in a tightening noose. Increasingly, a database and a matching system are not enough to enable one to see differing brand identities. While we see the potential for hundreds of horizontal and vertical relationships, they never seem to gain traction.

Part of the problem is price point. While an average $150/posting price tag makes a useful sales tool, it builds businesses that can not afford the kind of research that allows them to break out of the box. Without a real breakthrough, we're doomed to a perpetual reinvention of the unemployment office.

At the same time, a part of the problem is an extraordinary overemphasis on technology. At its simplest, a conventional job board is a simple to execute application (that's why there are so many of them). However, it seems like the core entrepreneurs are busy refining technical nuances at the expense of a real approach to market positioning.

Additionally, brand segmentation, a relatively well understood discipline, seems to be lost on the industry's major players. Instead of building the capacity within their organizations (see the week's earlier articles), agencies from outside the industry (with no sense of our customers and products) are producing cute but ineffective campaigns that bravely echo Microsoft's intentionally bland campaigns. Microsoft needs to be bland, scrappy companies need to be clear.

We think the shocker will be when players who aren't currently visible move in with networks and traffic that shame the current round of industry leaders. We're often reminded of the early days of the Personal Computer industry. The clear leaders were a company called Ashton-Tate and Lotus. By the end of the second generation the companies had lost their edge. By the end of the fourth generation, they were gone. In those days, no one had ever heard of any of the current market leaders. (At that time, Microsoft was still a footnote!).

The first generation of PC software was exciting to those of us who used it. In spite of its clunkiness, it was better than anything that had come before. Unfortunately, market leadership ruined the success of the market leaders. That irony has been played out over and over in a broad range of industries and settings.

The Gen II systems will not feel huge. Remember that the now defunct National Business Employment Weekly was extremely profitable and influential with a core audience of 30,000 (not millions). Recruiting, in our opinion, happens on that scale. With a clear focused audience, personalization is possible in extraordinary ways. We're betting on the emergence of operations that can deliver an intelligent personalization product at a price point that will sustain small, focused niche audiences. While we haven't seen it yet, we know it's out there.

We've become overnight bandwidth hogs.

While we haven't looked at the statistics in depth (only a couple million residences have high-speed connections), DSL and/or cable modems will lift performance and expectations to even higher levels. As far as we can tell, high speed service is available all around the country. It's just a question of ordering it and having the line installed.(Two services which are definitely NOT high-speed - Ed.) We're betting that high speed internet connections will be the norm in a year or so.

It gives us the opportunity to look closely at things we might have missed. For instance, Headhunter.net has a fairly cool advertising campaign these days. The bits and pieces are displayed in a single page that includes a video clip and snippets of their jingles. Our favorite... The print ad showing why late Friday night work hours might make you want a new job.

Interestingly, our office is suffering from the change.

As "dot com workers" we are all used to multi-tasking driven by web response times. Click on a URL, do something else while waiting, read the page, click, do something else and so on. With the new higher performance tools, it's click and read. It takes a little getting used to.

Although the buzz has shifted and people are talking about "cultural fit", the underlying perception remains the same. With the right formula, a single entity (you name it, company, market, industry, job board) can devise a one size fits all strategy and corner the market. We believe the more likely answer is a universe of nichey entities who simultaneously compete and collaborate with each other.

Here is our simple test case.

Any sophisticated businessperson understands the occasional importance of the "very cranky managers who know how to get things done". You know the type. They restructure ailing firms; manage operations as a representative of the Venture Capital company; kick life into failing projects; make impossible deadlines happen; and so on. Never popularity contest winners, these specialists do not fit in any sort of cultural map. By definition, they work best when they are the opposite of the prevailing culture. They understand that their future includes getting fired once the problem is solved.

Known for a lack of finesse and the ability to wield a club with precision, these executives rarely have long term relationships with their clients. The mercenary nature of their profession makes long term relationships a bit hard to muster. As a result, collaboration amongst peers is unusual. A few executive search firms have a modest practice in the arena. No one offers schooling or professional development for these turnaround artists.

A board that specialized in meeting the needs of these focused problem solvers would be a high profit, high value, easy to protect franchise. Imagine toughturnarounds.com or getitdone.com . Discussion of "war stories" (dumbest culture I ever fixed, sappiest CEO I ever replaced), on the ground tactics (how to fire the CEO's wife), organizational politics and ruthless budget slashing would be enough to make the operation a winner.

The same principle applies to other specialties. The web, we think, resists consolidation in spite of the typical analyst's desire to predict it.

- John Sumser, © TwoColorHat. All Rights Reserved.