Marketing | Business | Life
The things we fear are probably feared by others, and when we avoid them, we’re doing what others are doing as well.
Which is why there’s a scarcity of whatever work it is we’re avoiding.
Said another way – fear often will show an area of opportunity.
Jobs was able to use his own personal magnetism to direct your attention at the lovely gadget he held in his hands. Without a personality like that to focus on, Apple fans will have nothing to react to but the product.
So, the success of Apple so far was due solely Steve’s charisma? That’s a little shortsighted.
If that’s what Lance is saying, it’s irresponsible.
If that’s not what he was saying, that’s a poor choice of words.
Sure, Steve Jobs was the face of Apple. Apple’s success was largely due to his vision, but to make a statement like that, seemingly implying that even bad products would be seen as success simply because Steve Jobs was presenting them is irresponsible.
Does anyone think that Apple’s success is owed to anything other than making amazing products?
There is danger for any business if they tie themselves to any one person to closely. Certainly, Apple was tied to Steve Jobs – that’s undeniable. But to say that their success is so tied to that one man that he could enchant people enough to buy Apple products even if they didn’t stand up to critique is ridiculous.
In fairness, Ulanoff does say that he “directed your attention at the lovely gadget that he held in his hands.” But saying that Apple fans will now be forced to react to the product alone (in my mind) implies that people didn’t focus on the product before because they were hypnotized by the show that Steve put on.
Did people love the polish of a Steve Jobs keynote? Absolutely.
Was Steve the biggest champion and evangelist for Apple products? You bet.
Were Apple products widely adopted because of Steve’s chrisma? Doubtful.
There are many extremely intelligent people using Apple products and I struggle to think that they were duped into using them. If the products didn’t hold up to Steve’s hype, there’s no doubt that they wouldn’t have been as successful as they are.
The lesson here is that a charismatic leader can provide a jump start for a company, but the product they are promoting must stand on its own if it is going to be successful.
I think that we can confidently say that the iPad 3 and many Apple products to come will do just that.
But, with all this change I firmly believe that we still need journalism. We need long form, highly researched and fact checked stories on all sorts of topics. We need photo journalists capturing the moments of our time and shining a light on things people don’t want us to see. Audio and video reports from all corners of the globe and close to home need to continue to be produced and shared.
Agreed, but the delivery mechanisms of those stories will vary drastically from what we see today.
Kip Tindell:
Take care of employees better than anyone else and they will take care of customers better than anyone else.
So true.
via: John Moore
Yesterday, Andy Ihnatko had an interesting take on this cartoon.
He explains that the cartoon makes two points – one intentional and one unintentional. First, the intentional.
Consumers couldn’t make their desires any more clear. We’ve got money to spend on TV and movies, but now we’re looking for it on iTunes and Netflix and through all other kinds of network-connected devices. If a distributor shows up in any of those places with a product we want, we’ll buy it.
Added to clarify: and if they don’t show up in those places, they’re making torrenting that much more attractive. They’re just feeding the monster they’re trying to fight. That’s crystal-clear.
Then, he goes on to the unintentional point.
The single least-attractive attribute of many of the people who download content illegally is their smug sense of entitlement.
and
The world does not OWE you Season 1 of “Game Of Thrones” in the form you want it at the moment you want it at the price you want to pay for it. If it’s not available under 100% your terms, you have the free-and-clear option of not having it.
I sometimes wonder if this simple, grown-up fact gets ignored during all of these discussions about digital distribution.
Not surprisingly, this has polarized his readers – as evidenced in the comments from the post.
There are those people who say, “You go Andy! No one is entitled to anything other than what the distributors make available and anyone who thinks otherwise is an idiot.”
Those comments are quickly followed with retorts like, “But, I can’t get it because of ‘X’ so I have to Torrent it!”
I fall somewhere in the middle of this argument – I think that not having something is an option and not having ready access to it in the format you want is not a right and shouldn’t be treated as such. I think that people can get selfish and feel entitled just because they can’t get what they want on their schedule.
But, I think there’s a broader point to this argument that wasn’t raised. Are the distributors making the right choice in handling this issue the way they are?
Regardless of the sense of entitlement that people feel, the content producers are missing the boat in *not giving people what they want.
One comment by “J.” on the post summed up my feelings pretty well.
The thing is, your next to last paragraph about something not being on our terms…It’s consumers pushing for our terms that helps drive innovation and forces companies into these new paradigms. What if we all set back and didn’t ask and push for digital music? We’d still be on CDs. The record companies didn’t want to move to digital. We forced them to.
Same thing here. We shouldn’t sit back and wait for companies to put their stuff out in a format we want to buy. I’m not saying it’s ok to pirate. But that is what’s pushing companies to move to a paradigm that we want to consume.
That’s the key.
Sure, these companies aren’t required to deliver content to us in the way we want, but they’re stupid not to.
I think if they spent less time and money in lawsuits and more in delivering content in the way people want, much of the piracy problem would be solved. Instead of forcing people to fit in your way of delivering your content, try to package your content in a way they want. We’ve shown we’re more than willing to pay if you give us to option to get what we want.
This discussion shows how critical the “Place” part of the marketing mix is.
Take a look at your business. Are you forcing people into your way of doing things rather than adapting to (or at least considering) theirs? Sure, there will always be parts of doing business with a company that are dictated by the company, but it’s the organizations that work to deliver their products and services in a way the customer prefers that will succeed in the long run.
It worked for music, there’s no reason it can’t work for movies.
Sure, it’s wrong to take that sense of entitlement and use it as an excuse to steal content, but there’s something to be said for pushing distributors to re-think their traditional ways of operating. That’s how most innovation happens.
THAT is what we should be working towards. It’s not about the logo. We need to make all that we do about the EXPERIENCE. That way your expensive design work will stand in reference for something. And that’s worth paying for.
Gavin points to a video of a five-year-old and how she recognizes brands by their logos.
I was struck by the same thing as Gavin. How closely she associates her experiences with those brands she recognizes with the logo. (Incidentally, I was surprised – but not totally – by the brands she did recognize)
Don’t we all do that? Associate the feelings of experiences with a brand when we assign a meaning to that brand? That is the goal of branding – have people tie a positive feeling to your brand. It’s just not always that easy.
On Daring Fireball today, John Gruber quoted a 2003 interview with Steve Jobs in which Jobs said:
“Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it’s this veneer — that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
The whole post is great (like most of Gruber’s work), but that quote especially (and much of the middle section) strikes me as how many people have viewed marketing historically. Businesspeople and consumers alike have seen marketing as something that comes after all the “real” work in building a product or service is done. It’s the veneer that makes something look pretty, or the camouflage to hide its shortcomings.
I contend that, for businesses to succeed in this changing world of business, they need to see marketing as more than veneer and view it as essential to product development from the earliest stages.
For years, marketing was just that last step – the polish – that you added on before releasing a product or service into the wild. It was the, “make it pretty,” or “present this in a way that hides that.” It was the, “ok, the product is built, let’s make an ad to get people to buy it.
In the world of mass media, that way of thinking often worked and many large businesses were built on the back of that strategy.
Then, along came the internet, social media and the ability for consumers to talk to each other.
Now, brands can no longer hide behind a fancy ad or slick packaging. They can’t put some fluff in a brochure that means nothing and expect people to fall all over themselves to buy. Marketing has changed from being something that is added to a product to what a product is. Because people talk, how a product or service works is as much (and probably more) of the marketing as any ad ever was.
The problem comes in that, while consumer expectations have changed and the ability to spread the truth about a product has advanced, many brands’ views of how to market their products hasn’t changed. They still see marketing as something that makes things pretty, rather than one of many lenses that a new product should be viewed through during the development phase.
Gruber also said about Jobs’s view of design:
What Schiller is telling Isaacson is that prior to Jobs’s return to Apple, design was what happened at the end of the engineering process. Post-Jobs, engineering became a component of the design process. This shift made all the difference in the world.
That’s what needs to happen for marketing to be taken seriously and for brands to succeed in this new world of business. We need to look at our products and services through the eyes of the customer. Both in the marketing department and the engineering department, we need to realize that how people interact with a product is as important to the marketers as it is to the developers, and both views need to be considered.
Rather than seeing marketing as an add on, view it as the voice and eyes of the customer within the organization. It’ll make the sales process much easier and may just help avoid some decisions that would have held back your efforts from truly succeeding.
One of the many things that Apple’s obsessive focus on design and experience does is builds the marketing of their products right in as they’re being developed. Whether intentional or not, by building such beautiful, easy to use products, Apple is making something that essentially markets itself.
That should be the function and goal of all marketing.
We should strive to build our products and services in a way that allows for them to market themselves. Essentially, that’s what word of mouth marketing is. Building things so great that people want to talk about them.
This can only happen, though, when marketing is seen as more than just polish or spin, but is taken into consideration throughout the entire development and design process. The copmanies that take that to heart are the ones that will position themselves for success in this ever-changing business world.
