When I talk about Viewpoint, the first question I usually get is, “well, who does this well?”

The godfather of Viewpoint in the new era of cloud computing is clearly Salesforce.com.   As I have written here,  SalesForce.com’s “The End of Software” created a unique and compelling Viewpoint that aligned with the aspiration and frustrations of their target customers who needed faster and easier visibility into sales pipeline and performance.  As they and the market have matured, they have adeptly shifted to “The Social Enterprise”, seeking to capitalize on the technology, environmental and business shift to social computing.   So far, this seems to be a big win again for Benioff and team as even conservative Gartner Group now calls this category “Social CRM” .

But everyone calls out Salesforce, so I wanted to find a few maybe lesser know examples of companies who are staking out a Viewpoint which gets them attention, leads and business.  Here’s a few:

Zuora – The Subscription Economy – By building the business around the Subscription Economy, Zuora has created a fertile ground for discussing their billing solutions in a context that matters.  Rather than simply an accounting solution for selling term licenses, Zuora has effectively planted a flag of leadership.  They’ve even committed a whole website to the discussion of this Viewpoint.

FireEye – Sometimes a Viewpoint is as simple as saying “the world around you has dramatically changed, have you responded?”.  This is exactly what FireEye has done with their Next Generation Threat positioning.  By elegantly articulating what their clients already knew, that the bad guys were changing faster than their current defenses, FireEye positioned themselve as the expert to define and deliver what a next generation threat protection solution.

VirginAmerica –  Flying should be painful, crowded, stressful and miserable.  Right?  Wrong says VirginAmerica.  Experience the difference.  A great example of a Viewpoint which takes conventional wisdom and throws it out the window.  Backed by delivery of the promise of a new and differentiated service.  Cool!  Let’s book today!

By creating a unique Viewpoint, we create the space or the context to deliver our unique value, creating impact, the first stage of accelerating to Velocity Marketing.  What’s you Viewpoint?  (check out this blog for a starting framework… or join me for my Velocity Breakthrough Marketing Workshop in Boston on October 25th…)