My Two Cents on Why the iPad is Game Changer

I remember a while back when Xbox, Playstation and Nintendo fanboys were duking it out on message boards on what system was the best. As the systems evolved into more powerful iterations, the target audience for the systems changed. Nintendo started to target a different type of video game player - the casual gamer and Microsoft and Sony stayed with the "hardcore" gamers who have grown up from their 80s 8-bit systems to be adults who demanded more involved and graphic games.

The result? The Wii system sold over 70 million consoles with the Xbox 360 at 42 million and PS3 at 38 million (figures approximate).

I believe what Wii is to the console video game market is what iPad is to the mobile computing market now. You hear people complain that the iPad can't do this or do that, but I don't think Apple is targeting the person who wants an all-in-one computer. Apple is targeting the "casual" computer user.

Case in point - my friend has a MacBook Pro and recently bought an iPad. When we visited her over the summer, I did not even see the MBP, just the iPad. All her needs were met including reading blogs, checking Facebook and playing games.

When I had the iPad for a few weeks, I found myself picking up the iPad to pass the time instead of powering up my laptop. I believe this is what Steve Jobs was aiming for - a computer for casual computer use - not to replace the working computer.

And that is why I think it is a game changer and make Apple millions of dollars.

What are the implications of this for your organization?

Questions for my team to wrestle with:

• Will students access our sites using the iPad more than traditional laptops and desktops?
• Is the iPad mobile enough for students to carry it everywhere they go? Should it be included as a device to consider in a mobile strategy?

Photo credit: ahhyeah and geehail2

Fearing Complacency

Complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth

A.W. Tozer, Pursuit of God

In a recent blog, Google, the company, was being compared to Pixar. The comparison came in light of Google transitioning to a mature phase of their core business and strives to expand. Pixar has a string of 11 straight blockbuster hits and shows no sign of slowing down. What can Google learn from Pixar?

It is the fear of complacency that is part of the DNA of the whole company. This results in a continual evaluation process of their work and direction and leadership that identifies new problems to be solved to be discussed openly and in humility. This has great application to all companies and organizations that had some past success. "Success hides problems" and leads to complacency and resting on their laurels.

I believe spiritual organizations having their foundation on God and His Word can learn from Pixar. We are not just organizations, but spiritual movements dealing with spiritual adversity. If complacency is allowed to happen in our personal relationship with Jesus, our spiritual growth is flat-lined, and in some cases even becomes a decline. Tozer argues that we have lost our acute desire for Christ - the worshiping, seeking and longing for Christ and is due to the present state of the church expecting that the leaders do the worshiping, seeking and longing for us.

This directly relates to the effectiveness of the organization or church we work for. If we are complacent in our relationship with God, our organization/church that is founded in God will be complacent as well.

Are we complacent? Do we fear complacency in our relationship with God like how Pixar fears complacency in making animated movies? What do you need to do to guard against complacency?

I need to:

• Make sure I am continually seeking, longing and worshiping God (John 15)
• Continually evaluating, in God's grace, how I am doing in obeying and applying God's word
• Keeping the organization's vision fresh in my memory and actively communicating the vision to all stakeholders
  

Photo credit: VerismoVita

How Twitter has added value to my life the last month

In addition to the many uses Twitter has (e.g share resources, communicating within a tribe), Twitter is an evolving tool that continually surprises me on its usefulness - and I have found some more this past month.
Twitter binds a community together via an event by collectively learning and commenting on what is happening live. This past week, i attended two conferences in which we used a hashtag to keep track of tweets for the conference. Not only did it help keep relevant quotes and main points fresh in the mind of tweeters, it helped give useful feedback to conference directors. One example of collective learning is a colleague who noticed that I tweeted a quote (tweets with conference hashtag were displayed at the beginning and end of main sessions) that he wanted to use for future work and can now find it on Twitter. Another example are conference attendees lobbying conference directors to invite a keynote speaker for next year's conference.

Twitter communication to the crowd can be very effective. A colleague needed quarters during a strategy session and said he would believe the power of Twitter if he gets quarters if someone tweeted his need. Within 10 minutes, a fellow conference attendee appeared with quarters for him. He now reactivated his Twitter account.

Twitter increases customer service. I stayed at a Westin hotel and my wife and I noticed cigarette smoke smell wafting into our room. I called front desk to report it hoping they would track it down. After a second call, they sent someone to the room to confirm the smell - but their explanation wasn't convincing.. I tweeted the incident using the hashtag #westin and within 20 minutes, i received a reply from @Starwood Buzz, the organization that owns Westin hotels. They asked me to direct message where I was staying to them. Within 10 minutes, the express service manager called me to see if things were resolved. At that time, the smell subsided. But when the smell came again later on that evening, they sent 2 engineers to check it out and found out our neighbor was smoking inside the room. As a result of missing the cause the first time, the on duty manager sent us a card and a fruit plate - a nice personal touch to an apology. What a great use of Twitter for enchanted customer service.


Twitter helps me find lost items. In the rush of things, we left our camera bag with the camera and expensive lenses inside. After a futile search, I finally tweeted asking if anyone in our bus saw a bag left behind. A team member did see it and was about to get but then security stepped in and claimed it thinking it was a security threat. Andrew called me to tell me security got it and I immediately contacted lost and found and sent them an online message (hooray for free wi-fi at airports). They are now couriering our camera back to our home.

What other useful applications you are finding Twitter is useful for?

Photo credit: 7son75

Being with people

When working in Operations, it can be easy to be holed up in a room and do everything virtually, especially when the people you support, collaborate with, and enable are all over the country. However, I have found that interacting with the people I support and help out in the organization on an operational level on a physical, face to face, personal level does a lot to bring trust and goodwill into the working relationship.

This can be achieved in many different ways including giving seminars at a conference, eating meals together with the staff, playing teams sports and having an impromptu question and answer time with the people you help out with. However, I found that playing a game of RISK 2210 A.D. the most effective and enjoyable time to build trust and goodwill.

What are some ways which you find helpful in building trust and goodwill with clients and staff who you support and help?


Photo credit: Matt Sklar

Bottlenecks

I was recently at a Diary Queen buying their buy one Blizzard and get a second one for 25 cents sale. The Diary Queen was quite busy and the line long. I didn't mind - as long as I got my Blizzards. However, in observing how the workers served the customers, I noticed two things:

1. The employees never offered anything with the Blizzards - just a spoon
2. There was no self-serve of napkins, lids or any extra thing that a customer might need

This led to customer after customer asking for a lid, napkins or even a tray from the employees that disrupted their service of the next customer and increased the wait time for those who are waiting for their Blizzard.

If the manager could just stand back and watch this unfold, they could have identified the bottleneck (employees serving a customer a 2nd or 3rd time to give them extra stuff) and make a self-serve table where customers can get these items. Or at least have all employees ask whether customers want a lid or napkin too when they hand over the Blizzard.

Do you take the time to step back to identify the bottlenecks in your organization? Are there areas in which the people you serve can serve themselves?

photo courtesy of ToastyKen on flickr

Burger King Cologne and thinking big

This is a series of posts on the Art of Marketing conference. This one is based on Max Lenderman's session.

There have been a lot of companies that have thought big to reach a wider audience. For instance, Burger King went out of the box by releasing Fire Meets Desire Burger King cologne. Not only did the cologne sell out, the marketing reached a lot more people than just regular Burger King customers.

They also partnered with Microsoft to create $3.99 XBOX games that they sold at regular BK restaurants. They sold out all that were made and kids and adults played games featuring the goofy looking King mascot at home.

Burger King went big to invest in their brand and generated acceptance into people's consciousness (i.e. I used to hate the King, but after watching the cologne add and being exposed to the quirky mascot more, I'm not so much hating anymore). What are you doing to think big?

What my team needs to do:

This is a more difficult issue to apply for non-profits as expanding the core audience is tricky when the organization doesn't want to confuse what message they are sending. However, big thinking can tap into the emotional side of people to identify a need (this idea comes from Switch, by Chip and Dan Heath of which I will blog more extensively on soon) and draw them in.

1. Partner with a humanitarian partner, to appeal to the emotional side of people who agree that the oppressed need to be defended and to bring justice to those who are exploiting the poor. Launch a campaign that will couple the message of Jesus with human freedom.
2. Re-think how we promote our brand. Currently, we barely creep above the threshold of awareness with our audience. What can we do that keeps up there on par with more prominent organizations that reach our same audience?
   

photo courtesy of zieak on flickr

Rising above the fake: be authentic

This is a series of posts on the Art of Marketing conference. This one is based on Max Lenderman's session.

"Authenticity is the key paradigm of how we do marketing in the future, on how the brand talks to the consumers..." (Lenderman)

Anything can be knocked off - just look at China. I recently read that for every Blackberry sold in Indonesia, many more Chinaberries are sold. But yet the originals seem to survive the onslaught of knockoffs and cheap fakes. Why? Because what can not be replicated is a user's experience with the brand - and this is the heart of authenticity (an iPhone can be copied, but Apple's Genius Bar can not replicated).

So the question is how can we improve authenticity in relation to our product or message? Some have proposed that Social Media can increase authenticity. Threadless is a good example of how this is done. Not only do they use Twitter and Facebook to interact with their customer base, they have created a community on their site to host pictures of their customers wearing their favorite Threadless t-shirts and uploading their designs to be voted on to see what should be printed next.

What can your team do to improve authenticity?

My team needs to:

1. Have staff in place to interact with students in the Social Media realm to have authentic conversations and interactions
2. Train staff and students on the importance of authenticity and not robotic presentation of our message and the gospel
   

"By creating brand experience virtually or real is the key to render authenticity." (Lenderman)

photo courtesy of Samout3 on flickr

Getting the 15% bump

This is a series of posts based on the Art of Marketing conference. This one is based on Max Lenderman's session.

Experiential marketing and advertising usually gives a 15% bump in sales and is second only to online marketing. We yearn to be with people.

Experiential marketing is where potential consumers are immersed in an experience related to the product or message. In India, telecom companies hire Bollywood-type actors to act out a 30 minute drama to educate the growing middle class on how to use mobile phones and sees 43% of people who watch the show buy a mobile phone.

The North American equivalent is event based marketing.

The US Army travels to festivals, air shows, and car drag races and sets up a tent to allow people to virtually experience what it is like to be in the army. They have a virtual reality game where anyone can get in a Hummer or a Jeep with a mounted machine gun and shoot down the bad guys. If they have a good score, they ask them if they want to shoot bad guys for the army.

As a result, the US Army hit its target goal for recruiting 3 years in a row and it was so successful that they opened a brick and mortar store inside a mall to recruit people into the army using the virtual reality game.

When thinking about communicating a message to students on campus, what kind of experience can we offer that immerses them in a life changing message?

"Your brand isn't what you say it is..."

This series of posts are reflections from the Art of Marketing conference. This one is based on Mitch Joel's session.

"... it's what the search engines say it is. Forget your website." (Joel)

A lot of time and energy is invested into a website so that you can get the branding and right message across to your target audience. But that has changed. With search engines, social media and other content creation tools, other people can speak into your message. Whether that be employees, customers, potential customers, trollers, competitors, your webpage is not the only place people will know about your product or message.

As I wrestled with this reality, I realize that making sure a product and/or message needs to be promoted and communicated well by an organization. However, equally and if not more important is being informed how stakeholders and related parties promote and communicate your product and/or message.

I recently came across this tool, Radian6, and I believe apps like these will give an organization the ability to manage their brand beyond just their webpage. Although your webpage may be needed for other reasons, the reality of today is that brand messaging happens not on your own homepage but in the hands and opinions of others.

"You don't control your homepage. Google does." Joel

Action point:

• Are we engaging our community to help them to continue to tell the story or are we trying to control the story for ourselves?
  

It's Not About How Many But Who

This series of posts are reflections from the Art of Marketing conference. This one is based on Mitch Joel's session.

"We are in that war of making sure we get to the right people." Mitch Joel

Often times when we advertise a certain type of event, whether that be on campus, in church or in the public forum, we aim to get as many eyeballs to read what we are promoting. We then sink money into making sure it is of great quality and that it is drawing those eyeballs to the promotion.

But we fail to realize that the most important thing that underlies our success in the first place is getting our message or product to the right people. It is because the right people will do the work to reach the masses in the long run. As a result, there are times the mass marketing strategies overlook the right people and thus fail to connect with them.

I am on teams that this concept applies to like my church.  What we need to think about are:

1. Decide whether we have one message (to promote to non-Christians) or two messages (one for non-Christians and one for Christians).
   
2. Review our strategies to see if they are reaching the right people. Did we plan these events with the right people in mind or were they just good ideas that we think can reach the right people?
   
3. Identify the mass marketing that we do, axe them and divert resources to reach the right people.

Question to think about - Is there a place for mass marketing in today's world?

What do you do when you watch TV?

This series of posts are reflections from the Art of Marketing conference. This one is based on Mitch Joel's session:

40% of people sleep (Joel) - and this isn't due to lack of sleep. It is because the way we interact with media has changed so drastically that watching TV is actually boring.

With all the apps and tools on the internet and mobile devices, we are apt to create and use to doing it. Whether it is commenting, writing blogs and reviews, producing videos, inventing new applications, we are always creating and when we come across a medium that we don't have creative control over, we shut our minds off from it.

How are you promoting your product or message? Is it involving your target audience to respond by creating? Are you allowing them to enter into the creative realm around your product or message?

What my team needs to do:

1. Identify strategies, sites and applications in which we restrict our target audiences' ability to create and be involved in our message
2. Revamp strategies, sites and applications so that we allow avenues of creativity around our message while we promote our message
   
3. Are we allowing multiple avenues of creativity to access our message? Is it just via the computer or are we connecting people via mobile devices, specifically iPhones/iPads, Androids, Blackberry, e-Readers?

Ctrl-Alt-Del

This series of posts are reflections from the Art of Marketing conference. This one is based on Mitch Joel's session:

Joel shared that when Cortes founded Mexico, he burned the ships to signify to his crew that there was no going back. In the same way, marketing has changed so drastically that you have to burn your ships and move forward. There is no turning back to the Old World of marketing.

If you had to Ctrl - Alt -Del your company or organization and create a whole new one, what would you do differently? The reality of today's market (i.e. iPhones, iPads, Kindles, Androids, high-speed internet) is so vastly different than yesteryear that if we don't change, we will be left behind.

Consider the facts:

• More grandparents are on Facebook than high school students (ReadWriteWeb - July 7, 2009)
• 81% of online holiday shoppers read online customer reviews (Nielson Online - Dec 2008)
• 20% of searches every month are new searches that never have been searched before (Google)
• Half of Youtube's audience is over 34 (MarketingVox) - not just teeny boppers watching music videos
• Vooks, iPads, Kindles and MS Courier will be game changers
  

What do we need to Ctrl - Alt - Del to connect our message to a vastly connected world?

1/5 Review

This series of posts are reflections from the Art of Marketing conference. This one is based on Seth Godin's session:

The best reviews are the 1 star out of 5 stars reviews. Those are the ones customers and seekers read the most because those are the ones that often tell the truth. 5 stars reviews are good but 1 star products sell more.

Part of the success is because people trust companies who open themselves up to negative reviews. They trust in their product or message to the point they are willing to face the critics.

Mitch Joel, another speaker, shared that when he went to look for a point and shoot camera for his wife, the review that helped him buy his camera came from a professional photographer who gave the product a 1 star review. The professional opinion was that it didn't have manual focus, lacked dial accessed features and was only good for family photos - it was exactly what Mitch was looking for.

Action points for the team I am on:

1. What is the feedback we are getting on our product/message and are we letting our target audience access to this feedback?
2. Are we trusting we are on the right track to the point we are open to criticism?
3. What is a 1 star review and a 5 star review look like in our organization?
   

We Need to Be Artists

This series of posts are reflections from the Art of Marketing conference. This one is based on Seth Godin's session:

Art gets noticed because art, by its existence, is different from what is normal. People crave creativity and when they find art they like, they share it. That makes you, the creator of the art, more indispensable and your career more secure. You become a leader.

However, in a non-profit environment, job security is not the top of the list - the message is. Are we artists in communicating our message? Will it arise from the humdrum of the million other messages out there? Will we lead out with our message?

Action points for the team I am on:

1. Have a crystal clear message we want to communicate
2. What are we doing that is following a manual or tradition? Identify it and scrap it.
3. Discover a way to communicate the message that is easily shared
   
4. Allow an environment where ideas can be acted upon without instruction by empowering others to lead
   

What do you need to do to create art where you are at?