Tag Archives: Technology

Why customer experience is king in marketing

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Many of us have experienced the excitement of launching what we believe to be the best and most innovative new digital and mobile propositions to the market.

Typically this would have included the creative challenge of turning a technical solution into a consumer friendly marketing proposition and communication – including the obligatory social media content to whip up the excitement levels with potential customers.

It would normally also include a rush to get it out of the door before your competition. Some of us would have also experienced this focus on speed rather than customer experience can have sub-optimal effects on our marketing success.

That was the case with the Jawbone Up when they first launched it in 2011 but whose success was quickly brought to a halt by soaring product returns and customer complaints due to the technology in the wristband breaking.

Jawbone quickly and bravely withdrew the product from the market – providing full refunds for all customers that had bought it – and went back to the drawing board to create a much improved customer experience.

Not only have they completely redesigned the technology of the product on the inside but they have also been busy making sure that the app and digital content it provides are really slick and a delight to use.

Well I believe that Jawbone are about to prove that an absolute focus on providing a fantastic consumer experience will ultimately win the day in market success. It may have proven to take longer and cost more than originally planned but in the medium term I think it will be the best thing they could have done to continue to build their brand reputation and ongoing commercial success.

Not only that but their dedication to creating such a great experience provides the quality of stories and digital content that marketers love to have to drive social engagement.

We all want to emulate some of Apple’s success and I believe it is their own focus on delivering the ultimate customer experience (think original iPod click wheel rather than iOS6 maps) that has been pivotal. It’s using and sharing our experiences of their products that has had a more profound impact than their advertising or social media activity.

Jawbone look set to provide the most elegant and fun way to track your sleeping, diet and exercise – and it will be the great experience that will really get it’s customers talking.

The power of innovation – recycling cycling

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Sometimes you read something and you go ‘wow’. This week I was reading about how a designer called Izhar Gafni has designed a rather cool looking bicycle made largely from recycled cardboard and aimed to be produced for under $10!

As someone that has recently got into the cycling boom in the UK and having spent well over £1000 on a lovely carbon fibre bike I’m intrigued about the potential of a bike that weighs about the same and yet could cost much, much less.

Clearly the bike isn’t designed to win the Tour de France but it has the potential to be truly great because it addresses a number of key innovation success criteria:

  • An inspiring and exciting story that will be rapidly shared - ‘surely you can’t cycle on a cardboard bike’. Clearly both the intrigue and fantastic design create a really exciting story that has the potential to generate huge amounts of media coverage and of course offers the sort of ‘talkability’ that many brands aspire.
  • Unique position in a large growing market - I’m assuming that there are not too many folk as creative and determined enough as Izhar to have been spending the last two years in their sheds creating the perfect cardboard bicycle. I trust he has also been smart enough to protect the IP then he could enjoy a unique position in a large market for some considerable time.
  • Keeping the offer simple - Not only is the bike design beautifully simple but the idea itself especially the low-maintenance aspects of the bike are fantastically simple. It’s easy to know what this offers and of course how a sales person can sell it.
  • Opens up big new customer market opportunities – not only could this address the obviously large market potential in developed and developing markets for ‘low-cost’ bicycles but the additional angle of ‘easy maintenance’ hits another massive consumer need for convenience. Not only that but the more environmentally conscious audience opens up yet a third key customer target group.

Not only am I hugely impressed by the innovation in the product itself and the massive potential market opportunity but mainly I’m struck by the sheer focus and determination of this great innovator to prove that the impossible can be possible.

Whether this cardboard bike would really survive the often wet and pot-holed roads of the UK or even ever be produced at such aggressively low costs still remains to be seen but this is the kind of simple but challenging innovation that gets me really excited.

Good luck to them.

Can your brand bet on your customers?

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The internet and increasingly the mobile internet are continuing to drive massive changes in our lives. As consumers we are spending more and more time happily tapping away at our smartphones and tablets engrossed in a myriad of exciting content.

At the same time as marketers we are constantly looking for new ways to use digital to add greater value to our own consumers, finding ways to differentiate our offering from competitors and of course hoping to find the holy grail of also increasing revenue/arpu for the business.

One really interesting area that is changing fast and opening up new commercial opportunities is online gaming and potential linkage with betting.

In UK at least, and despite the ongoing economic hardships with 17m people now considered to have wealth below the acceptable living standard we continue to see a significant rise in the propensity for people to gamble. In May Paddy Power reported a 28% increase in revenues driven largely by an increase in online betting and a UK survey by UK Gambling Commission saw a 15% increase in Gambling from 2007 to 2010.

Gambling/betting is increasingly socially acceptable to the point where I was almost surprised last week when we couldn’t place bets for the rowing races at Henley.

Where does this trend and opportunity leave us?

Many brands are looking to create exciting content including online games to drive greater engagement with their customers. At the same time online games are increasingly being integrated with ‘virtual goods’ to buy (it is estimated that over $4bn will be spent on virtual goods on Facebook by 2013) offering exciting new and highly profitable revenue models for those brands who can get this model to work.

Now this shift in brand and consumer behaviour may take a step further with a new betting service to be integrated into online games and mobile apps.

So the question is – can your brand tap into this increasing trend of providing online content to not just engage consumers but to give them exciting ways to spend their money online through either virtual goods or even providing a competitive gaming experience that supports elements of gambling/betting. Can this be a new and fun way to increase your interaction with your customers as well as increasing your profits?

This is of course is a difficult area for many brands to consider and won’t be right for many. But don’t be scared to at least look at how you could get this ‘new world’ opportunity to work for you.

At a time when consumers’ use of digital games are changing rapidly, their attitudes to gambling/betting are becoming more acceptable and you’re under increasing pressure to innovate and bring new profits into your business there really could be opportunities for you to take a considered risk too.

Just think this is another exciting new opportunity in the marketing proposition toolkit for us to consider as part of our innovation growth agenda.

Getting physical – the best way to engage

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As highlighted in some of my earlier posts I am really excited about the opportunities new technologies allow smart companies to provide a greater experience of interaction with their customers – in essence creating the hallowed ‘greater engagement’ through gestures and physical interaction.

This new app from Bump allows you to simply share your photos between users simply by tapping your smartphones together. Not only that, you can store them on your computer by simply tapping your phone on the spacebar.

No more digging out the cables. No more hooking up the WiFi. No more uploading & downloading. Simply tap the two together and your photos will be easily sent across.

This is not about replacing Instagram and Facebook that have their own great photo sharing benefits for those far and wide. It’s about providing another simple way to address the need for an instant and physical share of the photo.

The new breed of smartphones with ever improving accelerometers and NFC will allow us to take this physical interaction with your brand to new levels as Barclaycard’s current PayTag campaign reminds us.

There are many benefits to this more physical gesture approach. Not only is it normally more simple that finding your way through a string of menus but we know that physical interaction is normally a fun and enjoyable experience.

As a marketer it allows us to focus on creating a more emotional connection with your brand and service. We know that if well executed this is a strong driver of brand satisfaction and desire.

There are many ways that we can look to use this and create more physical engagement with our customers.

Recently I have been asked by a couple of marketing agencies to think about the new opportunities for brands to connect with consumers and store staff using the emerging mobile and digital technologies. Needless to say that many include a simple and fun physical interaction that delivers a much richer benefit.

Of course these are still early days but a great time for you to plough a little investment of budget and time to think about ways that you could put more smiles on your customers’ faces by creating a valued physical interaction with your brand.

In the meantime, if you want another opportunity maybe it’s a good time to invest in companies that produce mobile phone screens. :-)

The winners of the 5th screen will be …..

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….. probably not the advertisers as discussed on this piece on ’5th screens’ on Fast Company. I maybe wrong or simply short-sighted but I think the commercialisation of these screens just needs to be different.

The 5th screen’s role in life is simple – to tell you something useful and in a way that is easier and more beneficial than just getting your smartphone out of your pocket. It has to be designed to be useful in even more fleeting glances than the ever increasing times we spend engrossed with our smartphones.

So the winners in the 5th screen device market will have learnt from the 3rd screen (smartphone) and 4th screen (tablet) and be those that get the user experience right so that consumers actually want to view and in this case actually wear their screen.

As someone lucky enough to have used the Sony SmartWatch for the last couple of months I can tell you how important it is to get the design and navigation right. This is pretty cool but you really don’t want to be spending time fumbling around with your watch and looking a geek. This needs both a good resolution display and of course simple software UI.

This is what I think will define the winners and the good news is that that it doesn’t have to be Apple. I say this because:

  1. The smartphone user base is now much bigger than just iPhones given the massive rise in Android
  2. Hopefully enough players have hooked onto simple & smart UI design and can develop as quickly as Apple would need to for this new type of device

As an entrepreneurial lover of technology and gadgets I think it’s great that the Allerta Pebble smartwatch has raised so much funding to hopefully secure a successful launch. It does appear to have taken further steps in the right direction but the areas that I think need to be delivered by whomever wins in this area are:

  •  provide us something compelling that will genuinely get us to value this over a normal watch - This could be as simple as easily changing/personalising the clock/calendar but obviously has scope for other applications such as messaging, location, etc.
  • simple content presentation without too much scrolling around - you really don’t want to be pressing too many buttons or dragging content around the screen otherwise you will simply get your smartphone out!
  • battery life has to be good and easily charged - I love the built-in USB charger on the Nike Sportswatch that just plugs into computer, charges and updates apps
  • do not do what is inferred by the FastCompany post and clutter my watch experience with adverts - my watch is arguably more personal than even my phone and is definitely going to be smaller so a completely new thinking of commercialisation needs to be considered.
Sure, I recognise that monetisation of the business model can happen and potentially subsidise the cost of these sexy 5th screens in the same way as my post on monetising smartphones but let’s start by creating rich services that consumers would be willing to pay for rather than simply seeing it as another screen to serve adverts.
In my opinion this should be more ‘experience value driven’ by offering things such as a golfing GPS app or running/exercise app than by seeing it as another screen to monetise with adverts. Of course there are many other great opportunities for brands to get involved and build value into the experiences like this and use this to drive their business.
But do this in the smart way of adding value to the consumer on their new 5th screen rather than trying to find the right way to shoe-horn your advert onto the screen!

The power of dreams – not quite yet

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As someone who would pay good money for a better night’s sleep I was drawn to the exciting news of the new Dream:ON app that helps to influence your dreams and give you a better sleep.

I’m not sure about you but I have had many nights’ sleep ruined by my dreams being distracted by thoughts of work, things I have forgotten to do and other mundane things. I certainly know that I sleep better when the dreams are about enjoying a relaxing family holiday, shooting a 68 at Pebble Beach or of course doughnuts if you’re Homer Simpson!

What a beautiful and simple innovation – giving people better dreams and helping them improve their sleep. How much would you pay for that as a business proposition?

But can this dream become a reality? At the moment the Dream:ON service is linked to a study at the University of Hertfordshire so isn’t really a commercial venture but I tried it myself last night and here’s my thoughts:

Well initially I was struck by the simplicity and ease of use of setting up the service. I wasn’t too sure how the 2 free soundscapes would influence my dreams but I went to bed excited about the night’s sleep ahead.

Sadly, I guess you can argue that it didn’t work! I didn’t get to hear any of the soothing music and I certainly didn’t get any better dreams. In fact, I actually had a worse sleep as I was worried about my iPad laying on my bed and even had to rescue it when it fell off and smashed against the bed side table.

However, looking at it optimistically I can see that there is real potential for developing the service whereby it works better both functionally and commercially based on a few tweaks:

  • using a specialist device such as the Jawbone UP to monitor your sleep patterns rather than leaving your mobile phone or tablet laying on your bed. This should give much more accurate results and save you worrying about your phone as much. It would also allow the service to work on memory foam beds!
  • having the Dream:ON app working with wireless/bluetooth speakers so that the music can be played via your existing bedside audio system
  • a simpler business model that gives a two-week free trial to a wide range of dream soundscapes so that consumers get happy the service works for them before then charging a small monthly fee – something I would happily pay for a proven way to better dreams and sleep!
So I won’t be using Dream:ON again tonight as I try and catch up on some sleep.
However, maybe the guys at Jawbone or anyone else that has a potential interest in this exciting new proposition can dream something up so that we can all sleep a little bit more peacefully!

Tapping your customers up with NFC

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As someone that likes thinking of fun ways new technology can be used to provide better customer experiences it is sometimes depressing that so much of the talk surrounding the fantastic NFC (Near Field Communication) technology that is built into my new smartphone (and will probably be in your next one too!) is based upon the notion of us using it as a mobile payment system.

I’m sure that this will definitely happen over time and will indeed offer us a simpler way for us to make many of our lower value purchases. However, given that this technology is now literally getting into many of our hands I think there is great opportunities for brands to use this to drive their own innovation and creativity with customer propositions and communication.

So it’s refreshing to see that Clinton Cards are looking to make better use of NFC to improve their customer experience and provide greater value. In doing so they will obviously help expedite use of it as convenient payment mechanism also.

My old company Sony Mobile are also looking to drive better customer experiences by providing NFC tags that allow their users to more conveniently programme their phone into customised settings – such as setting GPS, maps and voice activation simply by tapping their phone on a tag left inside the car.

So who are going to be the creative brands that really grasp this new technology and do something simple, fun and mainstream that really gets people talking about their brand in a positive way?

For instance we all know that Facebook wants to drive more ‘check-ins’ and entertainment venues/bars want to drive more customers so why doesn’t someone produce simple Facebook check-in stickers to go doors so you simply have to tap your phone as you enter to immediately activate the Facebook check-in?

We know that brands are struggling to find ways effective ways for using QR codes in advertising and other channels to drive consumer engagement. Basically QR codes are a bit ugly and it’s still not always convenient or attractive to get your phone out and take a picture of a poster. I would propose some start to shift to NFC instead which can offer a better customer experience and at least may help positioning for the brand in a better way.

Other ideas where the simple tapping of a mobile phone to a company’s marketing or actual product may make sense could include store promotions/vouchers, free content, network integration, etc.

Clearly many will want to wait for a bigger critical mass of NFC phones and others may be sceptical that this could be another passing technology that never really takes off.

But I applaud the marketer that can really show the innovation and drive to build their brand by being amongst the first to really embed NFC into their marketing and customer proposition.

At least I will have more things to tap my lovely new smartphone on! :-)

Raspberry Pi – a surprising great British technology success?

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I’m not sure how many of us knew anything about Raspberry Pi until today but it’s refreshing to see that the British Foundation behind it have had such a successful launch that their website has crashed due to overwhelming demand and the first 10,000 units have sold out straight away.

So what the hell is Raspberry Pi and what on earth have they done to create such a demand for launch? Well, for the uninitiated Raspberry Pi is actually just a basic computer board as shown below.

As someone who strongly advocates ‘simplexity’ you may wonder why I am heralding such a product as Raspberry Pi.

The answer is that despite looking like – and actually being – a highly complex technical product the Raspberry Pi Foundation are actually taking some great steps of simplexity to build their launch success.

Firstly, their vision is very straightforward, unique and compelling for a large number of children & parents alike – ‘to inspire a new generation of schoolchildren to programme computers‘.

But why would programming such an unsexy computer board like this be compelling in today’s age when children are spending increasing time consuming various digital media on their multitude of gadgets such as mobile phones, tablets and connected games consoles?

For the children I guess that IT geeks still fall some way behind ‘sports star’, ‘musician’ and ‘B-list reality TV show celebrity’ but I’m sure that the phenomenal success and wealth of people behind digital businesses such as Facebook and Angry Birds, etc. will have an increasing number of kids wanting to emulate them.

For the parents, well wouldn’t you rather encourage your children to learn computer programming rather than have them spending all their time playing games on your iPad?

The Foundation have taken a number of other simple moves to help create their success:

  • There are only 2 variants of the product and both are really cheap – from just £16 for a mini computer which should be within the reach of all families
  • The technical product uses common and cheap format to keep costs down and ensure some future-proofing (SD cards for storage and HDMI for video output to TV)
  • They agreed 2 licensing deals with UK distributors that will hopefully provide (after initial launch success) good online sales and minimised their commercial risk
  • Awareness to date has been built in a simple low-cost way through both a link up with local schools around Cambridge and now what would seem to be a great PR and online push – today being the #1 most shared story on http://www.bbc.co.uk!

Hopefully the Government will help and get right behind this initiative to encourage the use of IT such as Raspberry Pi in schools.

There is also great potential for a wide range of businesses such as BBC, Sony and even Microsoft to provide support and incentives for kids to push themselves to create the most exciting Raspberry Pi programmes. Not only would this be a great corporate social responsibility initiative but they could also get these children more actively engaging with their brand.

This is of course just the beginning and true project & commercial success will only really occur if they can continue to sell 10,000 or more of these every week and get large numbers of children busy creating exciting new ‘Raspberry Pi Apps’ to share with their friends.

But who knows, maybe this simple scheme will soon develop a British child launching ‘Facebook 2.0′ having learnt their initial programming skills on a Raspberry Pi?