I picked up my iPhone this morning and thought “it’s just about perfect, except it could be bigger…”
I guess I’m not alone – it seems the good folks over at Cupertino have been on the same thought. And, as regulars on this blog will know, I’ve been a consumer of ebooks on my iphone for a long time.
There’s been a lot of discussion in the media about how the iPad may help publishers embrace the digital era – especially this excellent post over at Gizmodo, which identifies that Apple are trying to do what they did with the iPod: not haggle about the early adopter audience who’ve already bought a Creative JukeBox (or Kindle in this case) but rather reach the rest of the world. Those regular consumers who just like great kit that works.
The impact on marketing is huge. The transition of apps from the iPhone to the iPad will be an enormous opportunity for marketers who’ve succeeded in engaging their customers to the extent of committing to a download. This might be content driven – or commerce driven – or other ‘marketing as a service’ approaches. And yes, I’m look at you, fashion retailers, banks and other service providers.
My colleagues at my new employer, Lyris, are working on an app for a fashion retailer that already looks great on the iPhone. If the high net worth customers of this brand do, as I suspect they will, end up with iPads to do their surfing, they are almost certain to use it to do their online fashion shopping.
Are you ready for that?
Many years ago I spent some time discussing online & mobile marketing plans with Blockbuster in the UK, trying to figure out how to apply an appropriate business model for their relatively unusual marketing requirements.
The sticking point for them was what was termed the ‘anticipation of disappointment’. The scenario is this:
- you are on the train home and decide to reserve a film to view – it’s 2002, so the DVD I want to rent is Minority Report.
- my local Blockbuster has a dozen copies of this film to rent out
- there is no way to link (in real time) in-stock DVD rentals with the web (or mobile for that matter
So I’ve decided that I want that film, but I know from experience that I cannot guarantee to get it. As my train journey progresses, I’m anticipating disappointment – and planning for what I will do if all the copies are out.
Now Blockbuster put a lot of time, thought and resource into countering that problem, but is is a significant issue for the business – and they needed a strategy to encourage people to deal with it without losing future custom.
There are whole categories of business that do this really well. Luxury brands are high on that list: Chanel have released a Jade nail varnish that has been the buzz colour of the year:
Similarly, Swiss watchmaker extraordinaire, Jean-Claude Biver, who runs Hublot strongly believes in creating scarcity. In boom times he under-delivered against orders for his highly prized – and priced – watches.
Hublot has significantly outperformed the Swiss luxury watch market even in the past year – a period that has seen brutal declines of sales figures for his competitors.
Tchibo is one of Germany’s leading retailers. It’s an extraordinary business to British eyes: they completely revise their product range each week on totally different themes, stocking low-cost versions of popular products from luxury watches to laptops to kitchen appliances and clothing. Some of their sales items are enormous bargains, and consumers go out of their way to try and buy one… only to discover that they have sold out, Chanel-style, in the first 40 minutes.
This anticipation of disappointment is part of Tchibo’s brand proposition. It’s the trade-off against exceptional value. I’ve met many Germans who LOVE Tchibo.
I’m sure I don’t need to elaborate on the high-profile exploitation of scarcity in supply for items Sony Playstations or Xboxes. Variations on the same themes.
But there is a common thread through all of these: the disappointment is part of the brand promise. It underpins part of what makes the brand proposition work. And it is reinforced by a degree of exclusivity: other people make green nail polish, but it’s not Chanel Jade. Other games consoles are available, but it’s the PS3 I really wanted. The difficulty of buying a new Ferrari is part of the mystique around owning one.
Most retailers or suppliers have a different problem. In the Blockbuster case, their answer was to carefully balance supply and demand so that during the first couple of weeks of release, there were sufficient copies of a title on hand to meet the initial surge of interest. They then sold off second-hand copies that were surplus to later requirements… aided by the delay between rental release and full retail release.
Other retailers are less able to deal wtih the problem: my local cornershop in London routinely runs out of the weekend newspaper I want to buy before 10am. The result? I no longer trouble to go there at the weekend because I’m anticipating disappointment. But there is no trade off, just pure frustration.
Too many other organisations fall into this trap. And it breaks the brand promise.
I’ve long thought of First Capital Connect’s ‘thamselink’ service as the train line that time forgot. So I was quite surprised earlier this year when they launched a potentially great Twitter service, promising that, if you tell them where you travel to and from, they will direct tweet service announcements that affect your journey.
The direct tweets generate and email and a text message to give me more-or-less instant notification of problems, so I can plan around them. This is a great customer service/marketing promise… I signed up.
I’ve since had all kinds of updates about stuff happening at opposite ends of their service, on trains that have no connection with my own little branch line. Oh well, you come to expect disappointment from train services I guess. Not the end of the world, just somewhat spammy.
This week, I’ve tried to use their trains on four separate occasions, only to discover that, for reasons that have gone unexplained (unexpected autumn leaf falls?), they have been unable to offer trains. Or, it seems, notifications on their twitter feed.
I’d never seek to discourage organisations from trying new things to improve their customer service or perception – and I strongly believe that the types of service messages First Capital Connect promised show enormous promise.
But if you make a promise, you have to keep it.
My frustration at the cancelled trains is severely compounded by the failure of the train company to keep their notification promise. I’d not have like the cancellation anyway, but would have been impressed with their ability to advise me ahead of time and therfore allow me to make other plans.
In the language of tweets, #fail
*===* UPDATE *===*
(no) more trains?
(12th November, noon) – I’ve found out why First Capital Connect are in such a bad way: they’re suffering from industrial action. They’ve even devised a new timetable. They just haven’t bothered to tell any of their twitter followers (to my knowledge) about this. Genius.
Oh – and it turns out compensation can be claimed at their website. Maybe that’s why they’re not telling anyone?
… but it seems that (some ways of using) Twitter might not be free for much longer..
Amid rumours that Twitter and Amazon are in talks about a potential acquisition, it seems that Twitter are considering how to charge people to use their services.
But surely there is some mistake in this piece over on Brand Republic, who quote SalesForce.com’s charging structure at $995 per month?
Maybe not: the idea is quite an interesting one. You are basically asking Twitter to scour tweets for customer comments about your company – allowing you to then respond directly (and publicly) to people who are complaining, complementing or looking for info about your business.
This reminds me a lot of the things that Jeff Jarvis talks about in his excellent book “What Would Google Do?”. He describes the fall-out from his ‘Dell Sucks’ post(s) a few years back – and the whole question around whether companies should be monitoring the buzz around their brands from blogs. (answer: yes). And lambasting the response that said: “We look but we don’t touch” given by Dell when they were asked about their approach to consumer comments on blogs.
In other words, I (for one) thoroughly welcome this idea. Who knows, maybe customer service will improve generally if companies start listening to their customers?
(I know, radical thought, isn’t it?)
| 3.2 |
Forgive the radio silence from Sandlines. I’ve been head down doing things in the real world a bit – though still twittering @sandlines fairly often.
One of the things I’ve been discussing a lot has been the brou-ha-ha that’s kicked off over the past couple of weeks in the UK and the US around questions of privacy… something of a hot topic it seems.
A couple of separate but linked things that have contributed to this:
- the FTC talking (in the US) about its attitude to (and likely approach to) the sticky question of balancing the privacy of consumers against a desire not to constrict fair conduct of business in the online advertising community
- the IAB (UK) announcing their guidelines for ‘good’ practice in privacy against the backdrop of behavioural targeting
- Google’s announcements about the launch of it’s Google Interest programme.
And then there was the call from a journalist for a respected news source asking me if I thought the online industry was operating in an unregulated ‘wild west’ environment.
Now let’s just hold on a moment. There is a perfectly valid legal structure in place (European Convention of Human Rights (1950)/Data Processing Act (1998)/PECR/EC Directive…). All the principles are there.
What’s in question is how do we apply this to our current – and rapidly changing world, both online and otherwise.
What’s also in question is how much people understand this. If we are finding it so hard as an industry to get to grips with what we can/should/will do, how on earth do we expect to be able to convey this intelligently to consumers? Suggesting that it’s all ok because consumers will benefit from more relevant advertising is an argument that simply won’t wash: witness the furore in response to the IAB’s pronouncement a couple of weeks back.
If you want to find a model of how this can be done, I can’t think of a better one than Tesco Clubcard. There is so much information gathered about personal shopping habits – and then used to target marketing messages (amongst other things) that the current world of behavioural targeting online is still a long, long way from matching. And how do consumers react? With an almost visceral sense of attachment to the reward programme attached to the Clubcard.
That precise approach won’t work online; but it proves a point: people will exchange observed behavioural data if the benefits are right.
| 3.2 |
Sandlines is indebted to @simon_baptist for sharing two links to blogs talking about how Twitter is making some significant revenues for other companies.
- Dell has claimed to $1m in revenue last year from Twitter alerts – makes sense to me. Kind of next-gen email alerts.
- A terrific comment on a post about Twitter’s business model: investors are saying that they can afford to take their time in finding the right model. This is not the typical situation for pre-revenue companies in the current economy, to say the least!
| 3.2 |
the price of success
I’ve been twittering on and off for a while now – trying to figure out how it fits in with all my other activities – and gradually finding it more and more interesting over time. Already this year, the buzz around the microblogging service has kicked up several gears: Stephen Fry’s often witty stream-of-consciousness has been a highlight, but I’ve been gradually seeing more and more of my friends and business contacts using it.
Links back and forth with blogs (alerting to updates), Facebook, various IM and LinkedIn status messages seem to have potential.
One of my LinkedIn connections has been using his status to advise media sales people when he is in ‘buy’ mode – I’m curious to learn how this will impact the quality of his media buys.
Twitter has also gained considerably attention in mainstream media this month: suddenly DJs on Radio 1 are talking about it incessantly.
So perhaps it is unsurprising that @gordonm’s tweet yesterday about Twitters desire to monetise their service by charging businesses for using the service in a commercial fashion was essentially a link back to the Brand Republic site.
I don’t know how many followers @gordonm has at the moment, but the suggestion of how effective this can be found in @stephenfry’s history, where his mere mention of a site can bring their servers to a standstill. Mr Fry has over 150,000 followers today.
So how long before Twitter becomes part of the marketing landscape? And how will they develop sufficient revenues so that they can improve their up-time (Twitter.com is down as I write this)?
One interesting example: on Monday my flight from Heathrow was delayed by 2 hours. I tweeted “Desperate rush to h’row this morning was futile: flight delayed 2 hrs +. Grrr.” This from my iPhone.
Almost at once I had a response from Boarding! inviting me to post details of airport to them to meet up with other stranded travellers.
It’s going to be an interesting one to watch: can Twitter do what other social networks are struggling to do and crack the social networking revenue stream conundrum? My guess is there’s a way to make it work via mobile perhaps. AFullerView evidently has some ideas as well.
Anyone else?
| 3.2 |
(from The Economist)
I saw some figures from Comscore today that put the global online audience at a little over one billion people – and showing China taking over from the US at the number 1 spot.
Seems a long time since we were arguing about whether online would ever make it to the position of being a significant part of the media mix for advertisers.
Sandlines is firmly of the view that 2009 will be a (comparatively) good year for digital marketers – in as much as everyone is hurting, we will hurt least, according to the latest Bellwether reports.
For me, the key to this is that marketers need to think in terms of the people they are marketing to: ie people not simply figures on a spreadsheet.
In other words:
- audience not ‘impressions’;
- individualised/targeted messaging (the right message to the right person at the right time);
- conversations that listen, not just ’spray and pray’ broadcast.
The technical capabilities to do this are increasingly there, in our hands. Let’s use them! There’s a billion reasons out there to get it right.
| 3.2 |
the brains behind your shopping expedition?
Over the Christmas break, Sandlines spent some time reading – and one article in particular (from The Economist) keeps coming back to haunt. It’s all about the science of shopping, and suggests that retailers probably know more about what we’re doing inside their stores as we do. And they’re using that information to get us spending more.
Ever wondered why they keep shifting your regular purchases around at your local supermarket? Or putting the most popular items deep in the store? It’s all about getting us to spend more time in the store… and, it seems, it really does result in fuller shopping baskets.
For me, with my internet focus, this again re-inforces my view that, while we expect retailers to study our browsing patterns online and use that data to sell to us more intelligently, their physical outlets probably know even more – with consumers comparatively unsuspecting.
There are lessons to be learnt here!
| 3.2 |
Welcome back to Sandlines for 2009.
As you may have noticed, since the last few days of 2008, I took a brief Christmas break from blogging, while reflecting on the year gone by, and the challenges of the year ahead.
At the same time, I’ve been considering options about what I’ll be doing for a living in 2009 and beyond. I’ll spill the beans next week, but the decision is made and I’m starting my new role on Monday.
Don’t expect any major changes in content here: Sandlines is still fully focused on the changes that technology is bringing to the marketing discipline – and how the current recession plays to that. And more than ever before, Sandlines believes that relevance is the key to unlocking return on investment.
To what extent will marketing expenditure online be positioned as a ‘cost of sale’ rather than a separate budgeting line?
| 3.2 |
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