Leo Burnett - Cultural Fuel

I know it’s late, but after all the emotional buhaha and candle-lighting I finally just came across a refreshing take on Steve Job’s legacy from October 6th on SF Weekly. Says Dan Mitchell:

What’s more astonishing still is that Jobs can evoke such feelings despite the fact that he could be, well … kind of a prick. That’s another of his legacies. In recent decades, we’ve finally come to fully realize that even pricks can do great things, because we are all, to one degree or another, pricks.
It all comes down to why we are pricks. If it’s for the right reasons, it can be excused, even applauded.

As a proof, the author uses the fact that those people who support the anti-capitalist “Occupy Wall Street” Movement are the same ones who are dear fans of Steve Jobs, one of the most Insanely Rich Capitalists ever. True, and usually true of geniuses. Pablo Picasso, Miles Davis, and - come to think of it - pretty much all the geniuses in Steve’s “Think Different” campaign were pricks (I dunno about Ghandi, to be honest). But they all cared enough that the world allows them to get away with it, because the return of having these pricks is bigger than not having them.

Congrats to Dan Mitchell on finding the guts to say it like it is in a moment when some Apple Fanboys get all teary-eyed building altars of remembrance.

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The interwebs have been full of eulogies and tributes to Steve Jobs - but some of my favorite articles have been the ones that talk about what people learned from the man behind the Apple.  Because you don’t have to like or own his products to see and respect the many lessons he learned and principles he lived by.

My favorite (and I realize that this might look like an odd choice) was this: 10 Lessons The Restaurant Industry Can Learn From Steve Jobs.

Ok - I know - I’m not in the restaurant industry, and probably never will be, but you can’t tell me that these don’t apply to your everyday work and couldn’t make things better for everyone.

The customer-user experience trumps everything else

Keep the brand simple and contemporary

Get inspired by the small things

No man or woman is an island

And list goes on and on…

It’s sad to have such an innovative leader pass away young, but it may be a comfort to some that he leaves a legacy of powerful business practices we can all learn from.

Photo: Zimbio

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(via)

So I guess we have all probably been expecting this from Google… A Catalog app that aggregates the worlds leading brands and retailers under one little screen, providing a rich, interactive shopping experience, that will also deliver Google a whole new revenue stream

The app allows you to flip through catalogue pages as you’d expect, and extends that to detailing out each product, playing videos and other rich content, while providing a “Buy Now” button to launch the brands e-comm store or “Find A Store” button which instantly maps locations with directions.

So who’s on board so far? Urban Outfitters, Williams-Sonoma, Sephora, Macys, Bloomingdales, Crate&Barrel, Lands’ End, Nordstrom, Patagonia, UGG and many many of others!

Aden Hepburn

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While Apple is busy planning its new grandiose headquarter offices in Cupertino and celebrating its recent successes, some voices have words of admonishment. Using the example of the lack of success of the iAd platform, Brandt Dainow points out:

The point is Apple runs a restricted, tightly controlled environment in a world that loves the free market. History has shown us, over and over again, that free markets always win out over closed ones.

A rule, that most people seem to have forgotten when it comes to Apple. So far the exceptional innovation culture at Apple has delivered products that people finally really wanted, more or less making people forget that they are buying into a closed system.

Now, Apple is protecting questionable aspects of their innovations, such as the rounded corners on iDevices by filing patent law suits. Is this a sign of having reached their innovation plateau, or is it just good business practice?

Granted, there are many more companies that should worry about their state of innovation than Apple, but, still, in a sense, Apple has reached a plateau that may require a look at its purpose beyond having revolutionized the consumer electronics space. With having proven they can, what is the next thing we can expect from Apple? I doubt creating more types of iDevices or living from iOS updates is the topic here. Some say, in the midterm, Apple could deal with the much neglected enterprise and B2B markets, but that doesn’t necessarily mean new revolutionary innovation on the scale we have witnessed with the introduction of iPhone and iPad.

And maybe, just maybe, with whatever the “next thing” is for Apple, it will have to be a bit more open.

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Have you heard about the planned amusement park AppleLand? Or perhaps have you seen already in the supermarkets Apple Water? What about App Store Express? Which is the fastest way you can give your money to Apple.

Well, if you haven’t heard anything of the above, you have been missing the big news. Fake, but still news.

Either a lover or a hater of Apple products, the Scoopertino webiste is definitely a fun place to check for the latest unreal Apple news. Give it a try!

AppleLand. Source: scoopertino.com

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Saw a video by Hubble Innovations, via Florian Geiger today.

The video outlines the well-know problem of traditional media’s slowly but surely failing business models and claims to be able to solve it.

The Future of media brands - Case Study from Hubble Innovations on Vimeo.

The solution isn’t exactly new: it’s a super-aggregator idea that totally personalized to me, my location, my social network and content/event preferences. Even though they claim rights to the idea, it’s preposterous. This idea already exists in partial solutions already in existing synching and SM integrator solutions. In fact, some could argue: “Isn’t this what Facebook is slowly becoming anyway?”

My take on this is: The concept is a fairly logical and tempting conclusion based on the insight that people would like to have everything in one place and like location awareness. Apart from the title of the video being a misnomer (it doesn’t address the future of media brands but rather paints a picture of a desired user behavior), it will still take quite a while to build its proof of concept.

1. First of all, as we have seen with previous aggregator solutions, it takes a while for people to completely disband their existing behaviors of going to single source. For example, even though RockMelt had a pretty good start through social buzz, actual usage after initial sign-up have dropped. People tend to go back to their fragmented user behaviors until the user experience has matured. For complete adoption of an aggregator idea, the individual moving parts AND their respective user behaviors have to be quite mature. I don’t think this is the case just yet for this concept.  But it probably will in the future, after some other ideas have trailblazed these behaviors, failed on the way, and generated learnings that will ultimately benefit some 20-something entrepreneur who will become a billionaire, again.
2. Apart from the fact that the idea remains quite abstract and hidden behind a fancy animation, it also fails to address how exactly this is supposed to save traditional media, or at least revolutionize or evolve the media and publishing space. Who in fact would be a qualified media partner to build and propel this concept?  The concept does mention how people will pay for this experience, but not who gets paid for it and how. Assuming that the concept can repeat an Apple-like success of starting to pay for content (which is lofty enough), I still think this is the key point in terms of business maturity that will make or break this concept. Which content producers (old media or new) will come together how, produce how, and get paid how. In fact, since so much of news, information and entertainment is based on actual people (users) sharing and producing content without getting paid for it, wouldn’t you have to find a way to have them get a share for their content production and dissemination activities (see flattr) as well? So much of their behavior is about sharing (old) media content that the benefit of doing it just in one place might not be enough (ironically, in a way they are actually responsible for keeping those traditional publishers in business through their activities). In fact, this important social sharing aspect would probably have to be addressed as part of the business model, otherwise it will just remain one more aggregator solution. A solution that until now has no user base (such as Facebook) or no real competence in traditional content creation (such as NYT) and no competence in new content creation (such as Gizmodo or Mashable), and which is my point: no real strategy on HOW to pull it together. It’s a user experience vision, not a business idea, is my point. And, unlike other aggregator and synching solutions such as Read It Later, Instapaper, Dropbox and others which very defined user goals they serve, this solution would have to solve for it all. And we know how many attempts it takes for even the big players (think of Google’s long list of abandoned Betas) to pull it off and how many product ideas need to fail before maturity sets in. So keep trucking, but prepare to wait a while.
3. Also, the concepts just assumes people will behave this way. But when you look at those early adopters who are responsible for initial successes of of new web offerings, you can quickly see that they are quite different from those who come in when a certain maturity has set in. In fact, early adopter behavior is (to some extent) one of not managing and aggregating their experiences, but rather seeking new ones, so that those become trends that then lead to being reaggregated in new experiences again. Therefore, the game facebook plays is a type of tug of war of those users that they need to innovate, while maturing an experience for the large mass to keep them happy while also making sure the innovator group doesn’t get bored.  Facebook has, by and large, played the game the best in comparison to for example local market solutions in Germany and other places. The point is, aggregation happens after innovation. And they are different things to different types of users at different maturity levels. The concept fails to address this (at least in the video). There seems to be no go-to-market strategy.

So, in conclusion: thanks for the video, but a) aggregation itself is not an idea, it’s about how you aggregate, with who and when, and b) the big players have been working on it for a quite a while anyhow and c) you can’t pull it off if you don’t have some background at being expert in at least one area that is key to business success: i.e., producing worthwhile content, or making people pay for content, or innovative payment technology, or maturing a user experience for disparate user behavior profiles.

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A lovely selection of Christmas music using iPhones and iPads at North Point Community Church.  Yeah - it’s a little gimmicky, but they really did a good job picking out the perfect apps to pull this off.  Enjoy!

Via: IntoMobile

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Okay, it’s pretty hard to have gripes with a successful brand like Apple, and I don’t want this to be about product strategy or marketing in general. But there’s a really annoying thing Apple does in Germany that I find silly, unwarranted and possibly harming to what is otherwise an awesome brand.

The harmful thing is fake proximity where people do not want it, need it or expect it. In Germany, Apple uses the informal “Du” instead of the formal “Sie”  to address a person in all of their communications. Even when you walk into an Apple store.  When they talk to you, it’s like complete strangers you are trying to have a business transaction with addressing you like a potential drinking buddy you just met at some bar.

So, say you walk into an Apple store and buy an Apple product for 300 EUR (a risky investment you expect high rewards from) and, after 2 weeks, find out you have an issue with one of their products. Knowing that Apple, unlike other more faceless brands, allow you to walk into any Apple Store and deal with your issue, you do exactly that: you walk in and say: the battery on this ipod touch dies after 30 minutes. The response: “Hey Buddy, let’s see if we can get you an appointment”. Shocking. Culturally inept. Addressed like this, I do not feel taken seriously. In fact, I feel like I have to do yet another favor for the aloof brand Apple, the cool kid in the school yard I am not cool enough to be with.

A brand like Apple does not need to pretend to be best buddies with you. It needs to finally deal with the fact that it has become mainstream and act accordingly. Dear Apple, you are not selling to to just 3% of the PC market anymore, you have created a movement that has become a currency in the social fabric. Act like it! Especially when people have an issue with their investment in terms of time, money or attention to your brand. It’s part of growing up as a brand. Duh! People EXPECT things and want them to be FORMALLY fulfilled. People already come to you with a high level of perceived risk and do not want to be “buddied down” to a level where you feel like you are doing the brand a favor by reciprocating the informal mode of communications.

Grow the F up.

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Most of you have probably seen the recent Steve Jobs presentation which included a few minutes on their planned iAds platform. (watch it here, starts at 44:00).

Now, apart from this being a pretty cool thing for everyone involved who wants to make ad money (marketers, developers, agencies) there are three things which come to mind:

1. Do conventional online ads experiences really deliver no emotion and won’t iPhone ads have the same problems with click through?

Okay, first off all, unlike Steve says, I believe there have been many examples of emotional ad experiences in online ads. The real question, though, has always been: are they all relevant in the user’s context? As always, people hate being interrupted in what they are doing when they go to an online portal. So how will this be different on iPhones?

Sure, click-throughs will improve because there is now a seamless transition in the app to ad and back to app. However, let’s not muddy the issue: this is just fixing a problem apps have while online portals really don’t so much (You can easily go back to the portal from an ad). Still, the human behavior of not wanting to interrupted in my task flow by advertising will probably stay the same. And apart from the fact that you always have your phone with you and it’s location-aware, it’s not like iPhones ads (and the examples he showed) are much more interactive or interesting than stuff you used to get on a Microsite anno 2000. This is solely a function of how creative the brand or their agency wants to make their app (or in old days, microsite) experience.

I think Steve just pulled the “more emotional” trick to make iAds look more interesting to brand managers, who are driven by the notion that Advertising has to be emotional and creative. Also, he is attaching this promise to an amazing track record in creating new platforms for brands to which no brand manager can say no, especially because there is a lot of frustration in the online marketer community on online metrics and really understanding what to do. So, if he can make his community happy through delivery of a simple to use platform,  he will make a lot of money. (see point 3).

2. Do people really not use search on iPhones when they really want to find something?

There is no doubt that when you have a content and subject matter related need that is covered by one of your apps, the chances are high you are going to use Yelp, Qype and the like to “search”. For that to be true though, those apps have to be highly embedded into your lifestyle. How many apps do you have on your iPhone that you don’t even use? On my iPhone it’s 80% of my apps I don’t regularly use. It’s like this: you liked the idea of them, downloaded them but you haven’t made part of your daily behavior. So, yes, for apps you use regularly use this works well. But for free apps (mainly games) getting people to branded content is still just advertising (see point 1).

So I really don’t know how that argument even helps with Steve’s case. I doubt people who search stuff in a topic area that is not embedded in their lifestyle that will first try to find a matching app in the Appstore, make the purchase decision, evaluate the app and then use it to search.  Therefore, for everything else people will use Google Maps on the go. Rest assured, we are going to do some UX research to check this out.

And to be absolutely blunt: aren’t apps just like web portals and iAds just like online advertising? Think about it. When you go to your few favorite news, sports, and topic of interest portals it’s like your few favorite often used apps on the iPhone. And Ads? Well, there’s ads that try to interrupt on those portals you go to. And now, they will be everywhere on the iPhone. Brilliant. Advertising has paid the livelyhood of all mediums so far:  print magazines, radio stations, tv stations, and online portals. In the future it will pay for app development.

Only difference is: this channel is owned only by Apple, the way to create for the channel is owned by Apple, the delivery and distribution platform is owned by Apple, and guess what? The media agency is Apple (see point 3). Well done.

3. Only 60% revenue goes to the application owner?

Imagine you had to pay 40% to your media agency for letting you use their media buying, and imagine that this media agency doesn’t actually have to do anything for you because you will still need to actually still do the stategy, creative and program the frigging ad. Wow. Granted, iPhones users right now still represent are very interesting and affluent target audience. But still, 40% percent?? If anyone can pull this off, it’s Steve Jobs.

So yeah, old wine in new skins, where the new skin is a single platform business and license to print money. Genius.

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Genius product placement…

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