Startups

I was asked by a respected colleague from the technology world this question: What is marketing? Mind you, this is a guy who is involved in, and gets marketing. As anyone who works in marketing knows, this is a difficult question to answer. But when I provided some thought on the question, I found that my answer is now longer what it used to be. Hence, I thought I would share it here. I’ve broken it up into 3 parts. The first in order to provide a baseline definition and context. General simplified thought: The development, distribution and promotion of products and services to suit a specific audience in order to achieve business objectives. Unlike what many lay people believe it is neither about selling or advertising, and is much more about business management in totality. Or even more simply, marketing is a fancy word for business. Marketing Then: The tools of marketing which flowed naturally from this were know as the 4 P’s. Product – Solution Price – Value equation Place – Access Promotion – Communication Historically the job of the marketer has been to strategically organise the 4P’s of marketing (the marketing mix) in order to deliver a sustained commercial outcome between the brand and the audience. But it does feel like this is just not enough…. especially not when all of the factors we deal with are being disrupted via technological revolution. Marketing Now: If we want to be a great marketer in 2013 then I feel like there is much more to it today. With the process being non-linear all the forces interact more strongly. Our interests need to be broader than that of the marketer from 1950-2000. I feel there are 4 areas we need to be interested in. And only when we are interested in these areas, will we have the intellectual arsenal to develop an effective marketing mix, regardless of which industry we are involved in. Anthropology: A genuine interest in and study of modern day human movement and historical evolution. The ability to understand and spot patterns based on changing macro behaviour. Being able to see the movement of the collective sentience. Technology: A solid understanding of where technology is taking us in the medium term. Not just understanding how to use what has already arrived, but knowing what is coming next. Knowing the implications of disposable technology, ambient computing and internet everywhere. Believing in this and integrating it into everything you market. In an age of exponential change there is no choice. Finance: A solid understanding of what makes industries and the economy function. A financial brand which goes beyond COGS (Cost of goods sold) and marketing budget parameters. We need to be adept in raising capital, investing and ratio analysis…. all forms of finance are integral in what A grade marketers need to know. Commerce: A true understanding in the art of connections. The why and how do certain parties transact with each other. How are they connecting now, and how will they connect tomorrow. It goes beyond distribution points and pricing models. It digs deep into need scopes and relative utility. It’s the real side of human interaction where commerce facilitates life goals and money is just the way we keep track of who is doing what. A lot of this might sound meta physical, and it is. But like all forms of evolution, new layers get added – and these four elements are the layers which will define how the successful entrepreneurs and business people of tomorrow need to think.

July 9-10, 2013 San Francisco, CA Tickets On Sale Now The main thing MakerBot CEO Bre Pettis wants you to know about his company’s merger with Stratasys is that, no, MakerBot is not selling out. “We’re a growing company. We’re out there to make 3D printing easier and more accesible to more people, and this will help us do that,” Pettis told me earlier today. While it’s barely four years old, MakerBot has quickly established itself as the most hippest, most interesting 3D printing company around. This, as you might expect, automatically made it an attractive target for the 25-year-old 3D printing giant Stratasys, which, like any industry incumbent, could always use some new, innovative blood in its veins. To put it simply: Stratasys, which is focused on the industrial end of 3D printing, had a consumer market-shaped hole in its product line. And MakerBot was the perfect fit for it. The move is a smart one for MakerBot as well. As any hardware startup founder can tell you, scaling your company’s manufacturing operations is hard work – particularly if you’re manufacturing something as intricate as a 3D printer. By working alongside Stratasys, MakerBot finally has a viable way to decrease the days-long lead time for its 3D printers, which, in turn, means getting its printers in the hands of more people. Stratasys’s acquisition may finally give MakerBot a chance to decrease the lead time on the manufacturing of its printers. The other thing to keep in mind is that MakerBot will do most of this without Stratasys breathing down its neck. During my interview, both Pettis and Stratasys CEO David Reis stressed that, while MakerBot is now a part of Stratasys, the company is still going to do its own thing. “We admire and like the way MakerBot operates. It’s a fast-growing, energetic company with a different go-to-market strategy and we’d like to keep it that way,” Reis said. Still, as Reis pointed out, there’s going to be a lot of room for so-called “synergies”, where both companies can combine their respective strengths to accomplish some larger goal.  As Reis points out, one of these goals is finally providing Stratasys’s customers with a true end-to-end 3D printing product offering. “We want people to buy from one company all they need,” Reis said, noting that Stratasys can now sell consumer printers, professional printers, and everything between. In all,  the move seems like a big win for all parties — including New York City and Brooklyn, where MakerBot was founded and continues to operate (and where it  recently opened up a new factory). “We are so proud to be growing in Brooklyn. We live here and manufacture here that’s not going to change,” Pettis said.   Filed under: Business .boilerplate-before .event-boilerplate-mobilebeat { width:278px; margin:0px 0px 10px 20px; padding:10px; float:right; border:1px solid #e4e4e4; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; color:#000; } .boilerplate-before .event-boilerplate-mobilebeat .logo-date-wrap { width:100%; display:block; float:left; margin-bottom:8px; } .boilerplate-before .event-boilerplate-mobilebeat img { float:left; } .boilerplate-before .event-boilerplate-mobilebeat .date-location { float:right; font-size:12px; line-height:14px; text-align:center; padding-left:7px; padding-top:5px; padding-bottom:3px; border-left:1px solid #e6e6e6; color:#585a5b; } .boilerplate-before .event-boilerplate-mobilebeat .cta { display:block; clear:both; width:100%; border-radius:5px; border:1px solid #1864b1; color:#fff; text-shadow: 0px -1px 0px rgba(0,0,0,0.3); text-align:center; text-decoration:none; font-weight:600; font-size:18px; line-height:17px; padding:4px 0px 6px 0px; background: #1f80e4; background: -moz-linear-gradient(top,  #1f80e4 0%, #1862ae 100%); background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%,#1f80e4), color-stop(1

July 9-10, 2013 San Francisco, CA Tickets On Sale Now Shopping for clothes online can easily turn into a downward spiral of frustration. “Buying engine” TheFind has unveiled its new iPad app that seeks to turn e-commerce into pleasant shopping experience. TheFind was founded in 2005 back in the early days of e-commerce. It applies machine learning and semantic search to shopping, crawling the web and collecting information on over 500 million products from 500,000 stores. Shoppers enter search terms and filters and the system will surface what you are looking for and provide product comparisons. Sources like Amazon and Google feature content based on advertising, while e-commerce sites like Fab, Polyvore, Wanelo, and Zazzle rely on social activity to make recommendations. TheFind’s goal is to help shoppers find exactly what they are looking for, along with relevant discounts. TheFind gets 18 million unique visitors a month. Director of Corporate Communications Usher Lieberman said in an interview with VentureBeat that 30 percent of TheFind’s traffic is now mobile and its iPad traffic has grown by more than 250 percent in the last year. He said that the iPad will become the device that people use to shop but there are no apps yet that make the most of this opportunity. “An app like this will be destructive in e-commerce,” Lieberman said. “Tablet shopping has exploded, but shopping in the browser just isn’t going to cut it. Our app can fundamentally provide a better experience by cutting across all stores with personalized search, making check out easy, and storing your information. We want this iPad app to become the defacto starting point for shopping and ultimately a daily habit.” eMarketer found that global e-commerce sales topped $1 trillion in 2012 and the numbers are continuing to rise. Mobile commerce is an important part of this trend. Gartner predicted that by 2015 more tablets will be sold than PCs and the Bank of America forecasted that American and European shoppers will spend $67.1 billion on smartphone and tablet purchases in 2015. Despite this momentum, mobile commerce is still held back by a few key obstacles. Many retailers do not offer sites optimized for tablets and checkout is still frustrating. TheFind put a lot of focus into a creating a user-friendly, secure, and seamless checkout process within the app to create an overall experience that encourages browsers to buy. Behind the scenes, natural language processing technology helps to identify and cluster products so you only receive relevant results. By combining metadata about each product with your own preferences and social graph, TheFind could ultimately show you things you want, without even knowing you wanted them. TheFind is based in Mountain View, California and has raised a total of $26 million from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, and Cambrian Ventures. Filed under: Business, Lifestyle, Mobile .boilerplate-before .event-boilerplate-mobilebeat { width:278px; margin:0px 0px 10px 20px; padding:10px; float:right; border:1px solid #e4e4e4; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; color:#000; } .boilerplate-before .event-boilerplate-mobilebeat .logo-date-wrap { width:100%; display:block; float:left; margin-bottom:8px; } .boilerplate-before .event-boilerplate-mobilebeat img { float:left; } .boilerplate-before .event-boilerplate-mobilebeat .date-location { float:right; font-size:12px; line-height:14px; text-align:center; padding-left:7px; padding-top:5px; padding-bottom:3px; border-left:1px solid #e6e6e6; color:#585a5b; } .boilerplate-before .event-boilerplate-mobilebeat .cta { display:block; clear:both; width:100%; border-radius:5px; border:1px solid #1864b1; color:#fff; text-shadow: 0px -1px 0px rgba(0,0,0,0.3); text-align:center; text-decoration:none; font-weight:600; font-size:18px; line-height:17px; padding:4px 0px 6px 0px; background: #1f80e4; background: -moz

Google chief legal office and senior vice president David Drummond got right to the point. Asked in a Q&A session with The Guardian immediately following whistleblower Edward Snowden’s live Q&A, Drummond denied that the NSA has access to Google’s data and servers, as has been extensively alleged via the NSA’s PRISM program. I’m not sure I can say this more clearly: we’re not in cahoots with the NSA and there’s is no government program that Google participates in that allows the kind of access that the media originally reported. Note that I say “originally” because you’ll see that many of those original sources corrected their articles after it became clear that the PRISM slides were not accurate. Now, what does happen is that we get specific requests from the government for user data. We review each of those requests and push back when the request is overly broad or doesn’t follow the correct process. There is no free-for-all, no direct access, no indirect access, no back door, no drop box. This is much, much clearer and more specific than any of the company denials from Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, AOL, Yahoo, and other companies accused of indiscriminately sharing data with the NSA. Those earlier denials seemed strangely similar, and seemed to offer big holes via which data sharing could still be taking place. This is a good message to hear from Google, which has seen its users’ confidence shaken significantly with the PRISM accusations. We heard “no direct access to servers” before. We haven’t heard “no indirect access,” and we haven’t heard “no back door,” or “no drop box.” What that means — assuming Drummond is truthful and in possession of all the facts — that PRISM is not the program that we initially thought it was: a program by which Google and thousands of other companies were potentially supplying shadowy government agencies with vast quantities of what was supposed to be private data on American citizens. The message squares with what NSA director General Keith Alexander told Congress yesterday, saying that NSA surveillance programs were were limited, legal, and necessary for the protection of the U.S.A. And Drummond reiterated his truthfulness as well as Google’s in response to a Google’ user’s question about whether he was lying: We’re not in the business of lying and we’re absolutely telling the truth about all of this. Our business depends on the trust of our users. And I’m an executive officer of a large publicly traded company, so lying to the public wouldn’t be the greatest career move. Hard-core conspiracy theorists will have their doubts, of course. And you don’t have to be anywhere near hard-core to have significant concerns and questions about PRISM and other NSA activities, and public U.S. companies such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple’s involvement with them. Drummond talked about Google’s legal attempts to force the government to allow it to reveal the extent of data-sharing that it has been obligated to do. We should all hope that that attempt is successful. Image credit: Daniel Proulx/Flickr Filed under: Big Data, Business, Cloud, Enterprise, Security

July 9-10, 2013 San Francisco, CA Tickets On Sale Now Facebook page owners have long yearned for more insight than PTAT — Facebook’s people talking about this metric — offers. Starting today, they’re getting their wish. Facebook announced today that the statistics and numbers that make up PTAT are now going to be available, by default, in their individual elements, along with other metrics on page owners’ Insights overviews. That includes: Page likes People engaged (people who have clicked on, liked, commented on, or shared something from your page) Page tags and mentions Page checkins In addition, the former Page Insights virality metric, which Facebook says is often used as a benchmark for post quality, is getting more data. Clicks on post links, which have not been included in virality measures, are now being added in, along with the existing count of how many people saw your posts. Since clicks are being added in, Facebook is tossing the “virality” monicker and substituting “engagement rate.” Facebook is also adding new metrics and data around page engagement, showing not only who you’ve reached by who you is engaged with your content, down to sex, geography, country, city, and language: Perhaps most interesting, however, was what Facebook had to say about getting your posts featured in your fans’ news feeds. We all know that Facebook rewards “quality posts” with greater reach, and that posts with more likes, shares, and comments are more likely to be seen by fans. Facebook said today that one major consideration is the ratio of positive interactions to negative interactions. Which means that posts with plenty of likes, comments, and shares … and no hide posts, hide all posts, report as spam, or unlike page actions will do very well. But if the negative reactions go up, your post dies. In the new Page Insights, Facebook will aggregate all those metrics into a single per-post score card, so you’ll be able to see and evaluate those positive and negative interactions, and fine-tune your content strategy for the future. The changes will be rolling out over the next few weeks and months, and Facebook expects to complete the roll-out by the end of summer. Sadly, there is no waiting list you can sign up on to speed access. Image credits: Jolie O’Dell/VentureBeat, MailChimp® via photopin cc Filed under: Business, Entrepreneur, Media, Social .boilerplate-before .event-boilerplate-mobilebeat { width:278px; margin:0px 0px 10px 20px; padding:10px; float:right; border:1px solid #e4e4e4; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; color:#000; } .boilerplate-before .event-boilerplate-mobilebeat .logo-date-wrap { width:100%; display:block; float:left; margin-bottom:8px; } .boilerplate-before .event-boilerplate-mobilebeat img { float:left; } .boilerplate-before .event-boilerplate-mobilebeat .date-location { float:right; font-size:12px; line-height:14px; text-align:center; padding-left:7px; padding-top:5px; padding-bottom:3px; border-left:1px solid #e6e6e6; color:#585a5b; } .boilerplate-before .event-boilerplate-mobilebeat .cta { display:block; clear:both; width:100%; border-radius:5px; border:1px solid #1864b1; color:#fff; text-shadow: 0px -1px 0px rgba(0,0,0,0.3); text-align:center; text-decoration:none; font-weight:600; font-size:18px; line-height:17px; padding:4px 0px 6px 0px; background: #1f80e4; background: -moz-linear-gradient(top,  #1f80e4 0%, #1862ae 100%); background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%,#1f80e4), color-stop(100%,#1862ae)); background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top,  #1f80e4 0%,#1862ae 100%); background: -o-linear-gradient(top,  #1f80e4 0%,#1862ae 100%); background: -ms-linear-gradient(top,  #1f80e4 0%,#1862ae 100%); background: linear-gradient(to bottom,  #1f80e4 0%,#1862ae 100%); filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#1f80e4', endColorstr='#1862ae',GradientType=0 ); }

When we first discovered that Makerbot was looking to partner with Stratsys I was a bit non-plussed. Makerbot, as I’ve noted before, has a certain indie cred that makes this move a bit unpalatable. But, at the same time, it’s immensely important. Stratasys makes expensive, industrial-quality 3D printers. They are the “big iron” of the 3D printing world. Items printed on Stratasys hardware are as solid as anything produced by, say, injection molding, and the resolution make them indispensable for engineers and designers. In short, Stratasys is making mainframes and Makerbot is making the Apple I. While I’m loath to claim that Bre Pettis is Woz (let alone Steve Jobs), he is a charismatic leader who makes 3D printing fun, something the folks at Stratasys probably could never do. And, like Apple, Makerbot had to ramp up. By signing with Stratasys Makerbot will be able to maintain its breakneck speed and growth. The company recently opened a 50,000 square foot space in Brooklyn where it is assembling machines and it has office space in downtown Brooklyn overlooking the Brooklyn Bridge. They have made it big with very little investment – they recently closed a $10 million round and were nosing around for more before this news – and they suffered from some severe growing pains along the way, especially in employee satisfaction. This purchase gives the company some breathing room, at the very least. Could Makerbot have made it without selling? Possibly, but it wouldn’t have been pretty. Home 3D printing is taking off. It’s not ubiquitous, to be sure, but it’s a method to turn bits into atoms that will become increasingly important in a post manufacturing world. Sadly, VCs are still suspicious of hardware startups (but that’s changing) and Makerbot could have gotten a few infusions of cash to help them glide to cruising altitude. Now they’re already there. Many will say that Makerbot sold out. Many will complain that the company lost open source roots. Many will claim that there are better printers out there. None of these claims are absolutely false, to be clear, but things are not as cut and dry as we like to think. Makerbot took something simple and made it amazing. They sold when they had to, especially considering issues with quality control and support, and I trust Pettis will bring the open source ethos to Stratasys headquarters and tell them it’s off limits. 3D printing isn’t new, just as computing wasn’t new when Apple hit the scene. Makerbot, like Apple, made it accessible. [image via MakerBot]

The reveal of the Xbox One didn’t go as Microsoft hoped. Gamers loved the system, but hated the absurd restrictions placed on the games. But Microsoft listened and just today reversed its stance on some of the more ridiculous policies. Good for them. Good for us. I mean, the outcry was hard to ignore. The memes, the tweets, the visceral anger was everywhere. Even the talking heads on nationwide morning talk shows were debating the curious DRM restrictions. Gone is the daily Internet check. Gone is the very limited region locking. Games can now be rented and traded and passed among friends just like always. Things are essentially back to normal, for better or worse. This move was clearly to save face and eliminate potential digs Sony and Nintendo could (and would and already did) take at the Xbox One. The last thing Microsoft needs is Sony pointing out that the PS4 doesn’t require an always-on Internet connection like the Xbox One. Microsoft didn’t have to reverse its stance. It could have taken the potshots and rolled out, touting the Xbox One’s features alongside the forward-thinking requirements. After all, the company has historically been pretty good about not responding to consumer feedback in a timely manner. Just look at Windows 8. Or Windows Vista. Or Xbox Live. The company has a long history of doing whatever the hell it wants. Even with the crazy restrictions, the average consumer would have probably purchased the Xbox One anyway. Gaming forums and Twitter represent just a small (if noisy) portion of the One’s target market. And with the One launching months from now, in the midst of the holiday season, the talk would have quieted down before it hit Walmart’s shelves. The Xbox One still requires a Kinect to always be connected, and today’s reversal removes some of the more novel features like game sharing from the system. But at least Microsoft is listening and responding quickly. That’s new. Gamers wanted to love the Xbox One but Microsoft made it impossible. Now things have gotten slightly better. [Image via Flickr/dalvenjah]

The start-up acquisition madness continues, this time with Twitter buying Spindle, a location-focused social discovery engine.Yahoo isn't the only tech giant going on a shopping spree this summer. Twitter announced Wednesday it acquired social discovery start-up Spindle. Twitter will shut down the service and Spindle's team will relocate to San Francisco. No terms of the deal were disclosed in either company's press release. In case you're unfamiliar with Spindle, All Things D's Mike Isaac, who broke the story, calls it a "social startup (sic) focused on the location and check-in space, and discovering local places of interest nearby."Put simply, Spindle hyperactively filters useful data streamed through sites like Facebook and Twitter to make local discovery quicker and more intuitive.Rather than simply display where you are, Spindle shows you what's happening where you are, using data such as the time of day, points of interest like restaurants, and actual keywords found in a business' status update. No word yet on how Twitter plans to put Spindle to use, but expect the micro-blogging platform to get a lot more location savvy.

July 9-10, 2013 San Francisco, CA Tickets On Sale Now After being close partners for the past two years on Windows Phone, Microsoft was reportedly in deep talks with Nokia to acquire its phone business. But now, those discussions have fallen apart, the Wall Street Journal reports. The big issue? According to the WSJ’s sources, Microsoft backed off from the deal due to Nokia’s asking price, as well as its weak position in the mobile industry. Given Nokia’s performance over the past few years though, I can’t blame Microsoft for backing away. Nokia was once the world’s top phone maker, but Samsung ended up snatching its throne a year ago. After failing to come up with its own iPhone competitor, Nokia joined up with Microsoft to become its key Windows Phone hardware partner. That led to Nokia’s Lumia phones, which have typically been critically loved, but ignored by consumers. Microsoft reportedly paid Nokia more than $1 billion to move to Windows Phone, a cost which likely factored heavily into the acquisition talks. Given Nokia’s current $14 billion market cap, snapping up its phone business would have cost Microsoft a pretty penny. With the Surface tablets, Microsoft proved it could make high-quality hardware of its own. The company is also reportedly working on a Surface Phone, which would be a bold way to compete with the iPhone, but would severely diminish Nokia’s standing as the Windows Phone golden child. At this point, Microsoft may just be better off trying to build a phone of its own, rather than taking on all of Nokia’s history and corporate drama. I’m honestly surprised I feel this way — I remember defending the Nokia/Windows Phone deal to hordes of Symbian fanboys. But even though Lumia sales are finally beginning to creep up, Microsoft needs more than just an incremental upgrade to take on the iPhone and Android. It needs a killer device that makes people instantly want to dump their current smartphone. And despite its tremendous legacy, I’m becoming less and less confident in Nokia’s ability to deliver that miracle device. Steve Ballmer photo: Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat Filed under: Deals, Gadgets, Mobile .boilerplate-before .event-boilerplate-mobilebeat { width:278px; margin:0px 0px 10px 20px; padding:10px; float:right; border:1px solid #e4e4e4; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; color:#000; } .boilerplate-before .event-boilerplate-mobilebeat .logo-date-wrap { width:100%; display:block; float:left; margin-bottom:8px; } .boilerplate-before .event-boilerplate-mobilebeat img { float:left; } .boilerplate-before .event-boilerplate-mobilebeat .date-location { float:right; font-size:12px; line-height:14px; text-align:center; padding-left:7px; padding-top:5px; padding-bottom:3px; border-left:1px solid #e6e6e6; color:#585a5b; } .boilerplate-before .event-boilerplate-mobilebeat .cta { display:block; clear:both; width:100%; border-radius:5px; border:1px solid #1864b1; color:#fff; text-shadow: 0px -1px 0px rgba(0,0,0,0.3); text-align:center; text-decoration:none; font-weight:600; font-size:18px; line-height:17px; padding:4px 0px 6px 0px; background: #1f80e4; background: -moz-linear-gradient(top,  #1f80e4 0%, #1862ae 100%); background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%,#1f80e4), color-stop(100%,#1862ae)); background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top,  #1f80e4 0%,#1862ae 100%); background: -o-linear-gradient(top,  #1f80e4 0%,#1862ae 100%); background: -ms-linear-gradient(top,  #1f80e4 0%,#1862ae 100%); background: linear-gradient(to bottom,  #1f80e4 0%,#1862ae 100%); filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#1f80e4', endColorstr='#1862ae',GradientType=0 ); }

July 9-10, 2013 San Francisco, CA Tickets On Sale Now If you’re a TripAdvisor user, your travel-planning might soon include all the fun stuff you can do at your airport. The company just bought airport information app GateGuru because sometimes the experience just before take-off can make or break a trip. Though many of us plan for the hotels, food, friends, and touring we’ll do on a trip, we usually overlook the airport as a thing we need to get through before we get to our real location. But GateGuru’s app hoped to ease the pain of checking-in, waiting in lines, and, of course, airport food. The company launched in 2009 as an iOS app that helps you find your way around unfamiliar airports. It received seed funding of $800,000 from angels in 2011 and launched its Android app that June. The app, if the location is turned on, can tell which airport you are at or near and will then provide you with amenities and other information about that airport — down to the specific terminal you’re in. People can use the app to find restaurants, shopping, other services, as well as reviews and tips about that airport. It also supplies live flight times, weather information, and user-submission-based wait times for check-in and security lines. TripAdvisor already owns a property called SeatGuru, which is a data hub of seat-plans for almost any plane you can think of. If you have seat 17C and you can’t remember whether that’s an aisle or a window, SeatGuru can help you out. TripAdvisor says the team will continue to work out of New York under the company’s “flights product and SeatGuru brand.” Terms were not disclosed. Airplane image via Shutterstock Filed under: Mobile .boilerplate-before .event-boilerplate-mobilebeat { width:278px; margin:0px 0px 10px 20px; padding:10px; float:right; border:1px solid #e4e4e4; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; color:#000; } .boilerplate-before .event-boilerplate-mobilebeat .logo-date-wrap { width:100%; display:block; float:left; margin-bottom:8px; } .boilerplate-before .event-boilerplate-mobilebeat img { float:left; } .boilerplate-before .event-boilerplate-mobilebeat .date-location { float:right; font-size:12px; line-height:14px; text-align:center; padding-left:7px; padding-top:5px; padding-bottom:3px; border-left:1px solid #e6e6e6; color:#585a5b; } .boilerplate-before .event-boilerplate-mobilebeat .cta { display:block; clear:both; width:100%; border-radius:5px; border:1px solid #1864b1; color:#fff; text-shadow: 0px -1px 0px rgba(0,0,0,0.3); text-align:center; text-decoration:none; font-weight:600; font-size:18px; line-height:17px; padding:4px 0px 6px 0px; background: #1f80e4; background: -moz-linear-gradient(top,  #1f80e4 0%, #1862ae 100%); background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%,#1f80e4), color-stop(100%,#1862ae)); background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top,  #1f80e4 0%,#1862ae 100%); background: -o-linear-gradient(top,  #1f80e4 0%,#1862ae 100%); background: -ms-linear-gradient(top,  #1f80e4 0%,#1862ae 100%); background: linear-gradient(to bottom,  #1f80e4 0%,#1862ae 100%); filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#1f80e4', endColorstr='#1862ae',GradientType=0 ); }