Apple’s Big Mistake (and the solution)

Apple’s recent release of the iPhone 4 saw the Cupertino company make a blunder usually seen from other consumer product companies, rarely seen from Apple. The first rule of successful product development is to design your product the way people will use it, not how you want them to use it. It is an ongoing argument I have with most developers I’ve worked with. They see a simple solution to a user interface issue that will require users to learn how to use the interface in a different way than they had been. My retort is always: “But that’s not how they will use it”. We consumers are not stupid, but we don’t like to learn new things. When we do learn new things we want it to be a seamless approach, otherwise we balk. Apple forgot this lessen sometime in the last year.

Apple’s iPhone was certainly a new class of product; it used multitouch, it had sliding screens, no multi-tasking. But it was intuitive. My 1 1/2 year old’s favorite pastime is flipping through pictures or typing on both my iPhone and iPad. Despite the fact that multitouch was new, it was intuitive Even turning the device on for the first time was intuitive: you click on the big button, slide the button that says slide, and you’re in. Flipping the pages of your iPhone was like flipping the pages of a book.

The recent release of the iPhone 4 goes against the intuitive design sense that we’ve come to expect of Apple: if you hold it wrong, you’ll lose signal.

Now, according to Apple this is only happening to .5% of users and the media is blowing it up. (The takeaway from this should be that early adopters have big mouths, hate when things don’t work and are very adept at showing their displeasure through social media.) Steve Jobs says all mobile devices suffer from the same issue of signal degradation when a user cups the phone in it’s hand. Well, it didn’t have that much effect on my old Sony Ericsson that I discarded 5 years ago. Even if this is true as many antenna experts claim, the signal degradation was minimal or this would be old news. Apple’s second claim is that users, when holding the iPhone incorrectly, bridged the 2 antennae that make up the infrastructure of the phone. That makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is Apple’s assertion of users holding the phone wrong. This goes back to user experience and intuitive design: users will hold the phone the way they want, designers must make allowances for this behavior. Whether you’re a lefty or a righty we all hold a cell phone in a similar way. This doesn’t come from comScore or PEW, just a brief survey of people I know with cell phones, Apple or otherwise.

For some reason Apple decided to break up their 2-antenna frame at a key point where human hands would be gripping their product, thus causing the signals to be bridged and not work effectively.

It seems to me that common sense, with a healthy dose of real world observation would have given them a pretty obvious solution to the problem: change where the antennae break is located to a location that isn’t normally a point of contact for the human hand. Now, I don’t know much about mobile device development or antennae, but the problem, at least from reports from techblogs and Apple itself, seems pretty simple: avoid bridging the antennae. Does this help?

Tweetdeck Goes Mobile

I‘ve been a big fan of the Tweetdeck desktop application for Mac for awhile now. It’s a RAM hog, but what power tool isn’t. It has become my default Twitter tool for personal and client accounts, for engagement, monitoring, and research. On iPhone I’ve been favoring Tweetie. I’ve long argued that a marriage if their functionality would be perfect. The key feature being multiple accounts. I’m currently managing a half dozen personal and client accounts.

The release of Tweetdeck for iPhone last night may change all that. From what I can see so far the app has all if the functionality if the desktop version, with a few proprietary iPhone features such as shake to change columns.

The app is free in the iTunes store at the moment. Here are some screenshots of the UI:

Brand Permanence

Brand Permanence is an important strategy that many companies tend to forget, especially when changes in the advertising industry, consumer behavior and world economy are on all of their minds. Companies may change their identity, not just what their logo looks like (Pepsi), but what their company is all about (Dunkin’ Donuts’ paninis). Many companies are adopting new business models and communications tactics in the wake of the socialization of the web (web2.0). Many are significantly pulling back on their marketing efforts during the economic crisis. Not all of this is good.

What is Brand Permanence? It is a simple matter of staying true to who you are as a brand and staying relevant and present in consumers’ lives.

Obviously, pulling back on marketing may seem smart from a purely numbers perspective, but once your brand leaves the collective conscience, your competitors fill the space. The precedent for this couldn’t be anymore clear. Not to say that brands shouldn’t be looking at ways to reduce costs, just that they shouldn’t axe their marketing, stick their head inthe sand, and hope that things will go back to the way they are.

Customer loyalty is hard enough to come by without muddling your brand. Both Pepsi and Tropicana (owned by Pepsico) have recently changed their logos, the later of which was recently rturned to the original once it was found that it confused customers in stores. When a consumer thinks of your brand, they think about your logo, your product history, your customer service. If they aren’t consistant, neither will your customer loyalty be. Coke’s logo was created in 1885, Pepsi’s was created in 1898. Since the late 1800′s the Pepsi logo has changed 11 times. Coke’s logo has never changed. Guess which is considered the #1 carbonated beverage?

It would seem strange that a product with a logo designed by a bookkeeper in 1885 would still appeal to the youth of today, but that was the original intent of the Coke logo and it’s simpe red and white scheme. Apple computers has had, essentially, the same logo since 1976, the bitten apple. While the color scheme and stylized treatment has changed slightly, the essential, simple, bitten apple has remained the logo for the company for over 30 years. But it isn’t just Apple’s logo which has remained consistent. Apple’s commitment to building better digital products to enhance users lives. From the first bulky desktop to the latest version of the iPhone, this committment to enhancing customers’ lives through electronic devices has remained intact as has their committment to customer service.

These last two points are the most important: staying true to your core product or service values and customer service. BMW and Mercedes Benz have long been considered consumer favorites and maintain Top 10 slots as European brands. BMWs 1917 logo design remains, as does Mercedes Benz’ 1909 logo design. But their consitency as quality engineered luxury vehicles is what helps them dominate mindhsare.

New England born Dunkin’ Donuts has been a favorite of coffee drinkers since I’ve been alive. They have remain loyal to their original logo, but recently havee been trying to compete with Starbucks and Panera. From all accounts (I don’t drink coffee), adding paninis to their menu and fireplaces to their stores, has only made their coffee worse, and their donuts stale. So, despite arguements to the contrary, Dunkin’ Donuts has muddled their brand permanence by changing their core values.

In 30 years Microsoft has made one change to their logo, but at times has been confused by it’s core values and faltered in customer service. That has helped Apple, take a bit out of Microsoft’s mindshare. Google, who, in just over 10 years has only removed an exclamation from their logo, but has consistently improved their product and brought more services under the auspice of providing users with easy to use access to outside data. We’ll see how they and Microsoft stat true to their core values, honor their brand, maintain customer service, and stay visible over the coming decades.

While most of the brands mentioned will weather these debacles, if only because they’ve been around so long, they offer lessons to new businesses. Your branding, at least the part you control (the perception of your brand belongs to the user), isn’t something to slap together. Really focus on your values as a company, create a mark that will represent your goals and identity, be consistent with how you interact with your audience, and always maintain good customer service.

Mobile Consumption Doubles in 1 Year

Of the 63.2 million unique users who accessed news and information using a mobile device in January, 22.37 million did so on a daily basis. This 35% represents a 107% increase in the number of mobile users who access the mobile web on a daily basis from last year. These numbers from comScore show that not only are more mobile users accessing the Internet via mobile, a growing third of them are doing so on a regular, daily basis.

“The increase is driven, first, by widespread improvements and dissemination in technologies that have created better consumer experiences – 3G, smartphones – but also very capable high-end feature phones and, second, lots and lots of content and applications being provided by first-tier publishers and others,” said comcScore SVP of mobile, Mark Donovan.

Those who accessed the web using mobile devices on a weekly basis grew 87% from 10.31 million to 19.28 million, meaning that it’s not just a small group of early adopters. Monthly unique mobile web usage was up 71% from 36.87 million to 63.18 million since January of 2008.

What are mobile users doing?

Daily social network and blog traffic was up 427% from 1.76 million to 9.28 million.
Daily stock trading and financial account traffic was up 188% from 1.14 million to 3.27 million.
Daily access of movie info was up 185% from 1.08 million to 3.07 million.
Daily interest in business dirctories was up 161% from 939,000 to 2.45 million.
Access of entertainment news on a daily basis was up 160% from 2.1 million to 5.47 million.

While the popularity of iPhone apps and text searches and 22.3 million application downloads drives the increase in mobile Internet usage, 70% of this traffic is from regular phones rather than smartphones.

Get the full article here.

How Being a Social Network Butterfly Can Help You Land a Job and Improve Your Career

This article was originally written as a 3-part piece for Talent Zoo. I got enough positive feedback (and found it slowly getting buried beneath new blog posts), that I thought I’d re-post it here in it’s entirety. Since this was written alot has happened with Social Media, social networks and the job market. This has not effected the overall message in the blog post, as a matter of fact, it has made it even more important to get involved in social networks.

It’s no secret that Social Networking is huge. It’s also obvious that it is continuously changing. Friendster gave way to MySpace, which is fighting to retain users that are quickly immigrating to Facebook, all the while; many of us have snuck off to Twitter and FriendFeed. If these are the only sites you know, you only know about 1/10000th of what makes up the social network universe. Don’t feel bad, few can wrap their head around the breadth and depth of SoNets, and no one is omniscient enough to have even heard of most of them.

SoNets are a fact of life and business. If you’re reading this, you’re on Talent Zoo, which means you’re looking for a job or an employee. Businesses can feel free to hire me to consult with them about SoNets and Social Media (SoMe), this one is for the job hunters.

So you’ve got your resume perfect, it gives a brilliant overview of your skills, talent, and experience. You’re already a step ahead of me! You’ve briefed your references so they talk about your strengths and not what you did at the last company outing. If you’re a creative, you’ve got your portfolio book, site, or iPod full of your best work. That should do it right? Not exactly. What happens when your future employer’s HR staff Googles you? They’ll get to know you really well or not. They may find nothing, not a big deal; unless you’re a creative, marketer, advertiser, programmer, you get it. If you’re in the business you’d better be online. ‘Why’ should be obvious, we’ll get to ‘where’ later. Let’s talk about ‘how’.

How you present yourself online, in SoNets or otherwise is as important as how you present yourself in person. Even more so since this may be your first impression to potential employers, and you know what they say about first impressions. This goes not just for job hunters involved in advertising or interactive, but for everyone. Most savvy employers won’t hold your MySpace pictures against you, some may. The Internet is public domain. Everyone can see anything you’ve posted online. So those party pictures, blogs about Star Trek and forum rants are just a click away for anyone who wants them. If you want be treated as a professional, take care to establish a professional persona online. Keep your comments, blogs, etc. professional. This isn’t to say you can’t be yourself online. On the contrary, be as personal and wacky as you want. Just do it with a non- related screen name that you only share with friends. Speaking of which, if you’re on Facebook, get two accounts. One for friends that’s private and one for professionals. Don’t let friends or non-business contacts friend you. You’d be surprised how inappropriate your college buddies or that girl you just met might be on your Wall! (update: soon you’ll be able to use Gathr.me, so you won’t need multiple accounts. Just one account and multiple public pages)

For those thinking, ‘this is such a pain, why bother’, remember that first impression I mentioned? By presenting a skilled and experienced face on social networks, you can get a jump on the competition. By getting involved in professional forums you can position yourself as an eager learner, a helpful pro, even as an expert in your field.

You can get much more from social networks than just a chance to show your mettle. SoNets are a great source of education. Other users can help you solve problems, point you to tutorials and other resources, turn you on to industry news and events, even hook you up with contacts.

“Okay, I get it, give a little, get a little, put my best face forward. But where?” There is no right answer. If I was talking just to 3D artists, I’d suggest niche sites like CGTalk.com. You’ll have to spend a little time Googling to find the best niche networks to get involved with. For SoNets that aren’t so niche, a good place to start is our old friend Facebook. FB has a great many groups, some as random as My Name Is Durwin (of which I am a member of course), or as obvious as Design & Typography. Professional groups aren’t just on Facebook though, MySpace and others have some worth joining. There are a bunch of great sites dedicated to professionals only, chief among them, LinkedIn. If you don’t have an account here, you’re, quite frankly, nuts. Talent Zoo is a great site for job searching. Not only does it offer great articles (feel free to agree below) and job boards, but also gives you a chance to interact with colleagues and potential employers.

If you have a unique interest, alot to say, or ADD (all of which I’m very proud of), consider subscribing to or starting a blog. There is no end to the number of general and niche industry blogs, from technology to job hunting, advertising to life hacking. Got something on your mind? For free you can create as many blogs as you like with sites like WordPress, Blogspot (which somehow became Blogger when I wasn’t looking), to name a few. It’s as easy as using Word. Much more than an online diary, it’s a great way to discuss your ideas and get feedback from readers. If you want to develop a larger social network, consider using Ning to launch a blog that can turn into a fill-fledges, multi-member social network. D.C. Insider Ariana Huffington turned her blog into a multi-author, political blog network worth millions.

Of course, everyone is talking about Twitter now. It has actually become my #2 news source, after CNN and tied with the Huffington Post. I’ve made tremendous contacts and learned an enormous amount of helpful and professional facts, as well as a tremendous amount of inane and personal facts! “Isn’t that where geeks go to talk about their latest podcast and what happened on Heroes?” Of course it is. But it’s much more. There is nowhere that the conversation is more raw and to the point than Twitter. In 140 characters, you’ll get everything from Red Sox plays to the latest on the McCain and Obama campaigns, behind-the-scenes images and commentary from industry events. You’ll also get help with technical problems, employee referrals, heads-up on new products, new sites and new jobs. There is a fun movie on Twitter.com that explains the service. Your best bet would be to begin by following some people whose user name you know (like mine) and see who they’re talking to. Pick the ones having interesting conversations and follow them, then see who they are following. It’s as exponential as it is experiential. Twitter isn’t just for online chat. I’ve met dozens of the people I converse with everyday at industry events. As a matter of fact, that’s how I found out about the event in the first place. Even out-of-town Tweeps come into town; they get treated to a Boston Tweet-up!

Twitter is not a place to join and start begging for jobs, or beating people over the head with your CV. LinkedIn is not the place to start Friending everyone at a company you’ve never worked at in hopes of getting an inside referral. In any social network, just like when visiting a foreign country, get to know the local customs. See how people interact, what they are interested in. You may find it’s not the right place for you. But, don’t worry, there are so many social networks, you’ll very easily find one that suits you whether you are job hunting, trying to change careers, or looking to hire.

If, like me, you find it difficult to focus on several disparate social networks, or find time to run or keep up with a blog, you may want consider microblogs. Twitter us the best known, but Pownce and Jaiku offer similar services. Twitter’s limited 2 140 characters, so u need 2 learn 2 Twitter shorthand + b concise w your comments 2 fit them in2 1 microblog submission. Everyone using these services is restricted to the same limit, but despite, or perhaps because, of this, you can very quickly pick up some gems. Just this evening I learned: of new OpenSource training videos, that Twitterers rather than major media first broke the news about the LA earthquake, and found a colleague in need of traditional and online branding experts to write for her new site. Looks like I’m going to be spending more late nights typing away at the virtual keyboard of my iPhone while watching man-movies on Spike (Jaws 2 finished, I’m on to The World Is Not Enough)! Like any SoNet, there is great deal of irrelevant junk, but, thanks to Twitters newly purchased search engine and third party sites like TwitterPacks, you can search for subjects and people of interest and Follow (subscribe) to that person’s feed. Who knows, you may gain your own Followers. I’m following 170 people ranging from CNN to Digg’s Kevin Rose and Robert Scoble and am being followed by 184. Just remember, even in microblogging, keep it professional or at least make sure you don’t say anything you’ll regret.

Everything I’ve mentioned will work to increase your search engine visibility, your networking possibilities and your name recognition. Kind of like building a brand isn’t it? Brand YOU. Brand “you need a job”, brand “you are an asset”. Use these channels to promote yourself but don’t spread yourself too thin. Some networks are a great place to just sign up and post your resume and contact info. Some are full of colleagues and friends that will overrun your inbox. Decide which require minimum effort and stay on top of the ones that require more. Above all, make sure you keep your contact info and resume up to date.

There will be a lot to manage at first but you’ll get the hang of it. Don’t worry, relief is on the way. There are a few people, including myself, that are working on ways to aggregate, or bring together many of these social networks into one manageable tool.

Remember:

Don’t mix business with pleasure – keep your private-self jus that, private, and make your professional-self public.

Find the way to interact online that best suits you – join a SoNet, subscribe or start a blog, Twitter away.

Be easy to find, be up to date – Spread yourself around to as many SoNets as possible without spreading yourself too thin.

Always put your best face forward – be professional, don’t say anything you’ll regret.

Image by Stephen Poff

BMW Shoots Viral Piece, Does it Hit or Miss?

Earlier this year BMW launched a viral video to promote the launch of it’s new model in the U.S. The video was released as a documentary following the stories of a small Bavarian town named Oberpfaffelbachen. The town’s citizens include a stunt driver, over zealous police chief, event promoter and mayor, trying to save the town from hard financial times. They devise a promotion in which they will launch a 300 horse power BMW 1 Series from a 454 meter (1486.5 feet) ramp from Bavaria, across the Atlantic to the U.S. The town has created an entire festival around the event called Rampenfest. Towns folk are turning their houses into gift shops, town managers are tearing down forests for parking. I won’t give away the ending, but obviously something goes wrong. Not as dramatically as I’d hoped unfortunately.

The quality of the video is excellent, the acting, direction and effects (as subtle as the ramp, as obvious as the teeth) as good as a movie. The video has been seen by millions which can give BMW the opportunity to claim a positive impact, especially considering that it was shot overseas and cost far less than a U.S. 30 second spot. Was it successful? It’s hard to say.

As with any viral, guerilla or virtual advertising, it is hard to judge success. Many still talk about the negative impact of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force guerilla stunt, requiring a payout of 2 million to the city of Boston to cover lawsuits and the cost of our crack bomb squad (who apparently can’t tell the difference between a bomb and a light brite!). The press loves to bring up the GM (Chevy) Yukon promotion run on YouTube. Many people made anti-SUV ads from the audio and video clips GM posted in the make-you-own commercial promotion. This brings us to what determines success.

The GM promotion was considered a failure because of the thousands of ads that were created that shed a positive light on the Yukon, there were a few that were negative. But, is that a bad thing? Most people learn by making mistakes or being told they’re wrong. Negative feedback is just as important, if not more important than positive feedback. How will you know how to improve your product unless people tell you what they DON’T like about it? GM learned that there are alot of people that consider their giant SUV bad for the environment and a gas guzzler. If this prompts them to make eco-friendly, gas-conscious improvements to their vehicles, is that a bad thing for the company or the consumer?

And let’s not forget that with the launch of the BMW campaign, the GM promotion was brought up as a failure again. Really? The Chevy Yukon is mentioned in the press for another car manufacturer’s promotion and that’s a bad thing? Sounds like free press to me. Even when a guerilla or viral campaign can’t be measured in sales or doesn’t have quite the immediate impact a company would hope, there is always the fact that it will continue to keep the brand in the public’s conscience for months and years to come.

Brand visibility is the best way to consider whether or not your viral or guerilla campaign is effective. You can’t often track sales back to a campaign like this or even sign-ups. You may get a solid number of visits to your microsite, but when visitors pull down your video, or assets, or talk about it in their blog, it can be difficult to track especially since those co-opted branding placements end up living for months out of your control.

So, how successful will the BMW campaign be? Well, they millions of viewers at the moment. Add on a few million views of the video once people (like me) download the clip to their iPod/iPhone and show it around, upload it to their YouTube, MySpace, Facebook or blog accounts, hundreds of discussions of it in marketing or news related blogs (where I found it) and then it’s recurring mention every time another automaker or major corporation does a viral or guerilla campaign and it sounds like a success to me.

But BMW knows this. They were arguably one of the first to use viral video not just as a tool to sell cars but a way to engage consumers with their brand, and to redefine their brand as cool. I still have a DVD copy of the BMW Movies from the promotion in 2001. The shorts were directed by Ang Lee, Guy Ritchie, John Woo, Tony Scott, John Frankenheimer and featured Forest Whitakker, Madonna, Clive Owen, Mickey Rourke and others. It received rave reviews at Cannes, from the New York Times, and Time magazine. They very successfully hit their middle-age, married, 150k/yr target.

The new spot however, at least in the words of Marketing VP Jack Pitney, was, rather than target a demographic, to target a psychographic. While most companies want to stick to categorizing their demographics by generation, age and finances, BMW is smart enough to know that they can pull an 8 year old boy and an 58 year old woman into their brand halo just by virtue of the fact that they may share common interests, like flashy cars, or mockumentaries.

Despite my feeling that this viral video may be a bit long for most viewers (35 minutes), I’m fairly certain that the folks at BMW will be pleased with the outcome. And I’m happy to help them broadcast their brand (even though I drive the “other” german car)!

Links:
Official Film Site

BMW Films Wikipedia

BMW Films Site (no videos here)

BMW Film “Star” (you can find the rest of the films here as well)

Digg submission where I first found out about the promotion