AbleBrains

Apple's Unique Place in the Market

Charlie Wood writes a thoughtful piece on why Apple (AAPL) doesn't face the classic Innovator's Dilemma posed by Clay Christenson in which:

Incumbent vendors typically compete by continually adding performance (typically in the form of new features) eventually overshooting the requirements of their target market and providing an opportunity for upstart competitors to provide a lower-cost "good enough" solution

Charlie posits that Apple has found a loop hole in the Innovator's Dilemma by competing on Design rather than functionality alone.

Their products feel right. And to their customers, "good enough" design will never be compelling, regardless of how high Apple sets the bar.

Yes, Apple leverages design.  But I believe Apple is placing a premium on something else, not Design.  To my way of thinking the that factor is the Apple Customer Experience. The company has truly put the customer at the center of everything that they do, from product development -- yes using design to create compelling, cool, and fun products that make the customer feel good - to customer support -- how much fun is it to go to a "Genius Bar" and oh by the way, continuing to immerse customers in Apple lore, culture and products throughout the experience, to the overall experience of visiting an Apple Store - either brick and mortar or online.

Design only gets you part of the way there.  Enterprises can create compelling hardware and software designs and can leverage design thinking to create novel solutions to big problems.  But if you leverage design with the ultimate goal of creating an innovative customer experience, that's the holy grail for building sustainable, innovative enterprises. Because when you put your customers at the center of everything you do, even things like product innovation which pleases your market, comes easier.

Only Marketing With Demographics? C'mon add some Fries to that Order

Robert Gorell over at grokdot.com  makes the argument that Social Ads leveraging Demographics for targeting is "silly" in that it really doesn't provide you with the precise targeting you require to drive the conversion rates we expected to see in this rich social world of ours. 

I was at the Facebook launch of Social Ads last November. Robert reminded me in his post of what  Zuckerberg said,

With Facebook you will be able to select exactly the audience you want to reach, and we will only show your ads to them. We know exactly what gender someone is, what activities they are interested in, their location, country, city or town, interests, gender [etcetera, etcetera]

Now, I've been a big proponent of Social Ads and the types of demographics it serves up for targeting.  However, its missing a critical element.  Attitudinal Segmentation.  Yeah, yeah, here goes Steve talking a about segmentation again, when will he stop.  I won't :) After all its not really a big deal that I have all these demographics at my finger tips to market to my constituencies. If I can't segment then into groups on a continuum of not only how likely they are to buy from me but also understand what personalized and relevant messaging they need as part of their conversation with me, then I'm flushing money down the marketing drain.

Attitudinal segmentation is the most powerful arrow in the marketing quiver today.  So why is it under-leveraged?  Because its actually the most scientific of the marketing sciences and its not very "creative" in the way we typically think of marketing.   So I think old school marketers tend to shy away from it.  In the B2B high tech space companies like Microsoft, Dell, Apple and SAP use attitudinal to find  not only the companies most likely to buy from them but also to understand what's critical to say during those conversations.

C'mon, what do you have to lose? Just customers.

Elemental Marketing: Designing Sociable Media

Ever have a term buzzing around in your head, & not sure why? Well I do now and I'm actually writing this post ass backwards, starting with the title and seeing where it takes me. You see, I'm praying in front of the laptop god hoping it takes me some where good, and I've been praying for guidance :) as I compile the strategies and tactics around SAP's marketing social media strategy. 

Out of this naval gazing, I've come to realize that this really is a an exercise in Elemental Marketing.  What media components and tactics should be combined at their most elemental - most fundamental levels to create something new and drive greater intimacy between SAP and its customers.  And these Elements align to what David Armano likes to call Micro interactions.  Like David, I'm a firm believer that an experience a customer has with a brand or with any one for that matter is the sum of the cumulative interactions (check out my post on the value of micro-experiences) they have with that brand over time.  Each micro-experience has to deliver value and provide an incrementally positive state of being for that customer.

And these elements need to be made "Sociable"  -- that is both paid and unpaid media, traditional and non-traditional must be made to work together, to coalesce into a 360 degree experience for a customer. Whether its social media delivering that experience or something else.   Being Sociable is more than being Social its as i said, all elements working together to deliver a superior experience to a customer.  To my way of thinking, Media being Sociable is more important than it being Social.  So my thoughts have moved significantly on this.  I was very focused on delivering a killer Social Media strategy for the Marketing team at SAP. No more. I'm focused on delivering a killer Sociable Media strategy... for sure, Social Media tactics are a key part of this strategy but my focus has shifted to not only the strategies and tactics but how sociable, how they fit together, derive synergies from one another and truly be a Whole greater than the sum of its parts.

What did you do during the 60's???

As a former Dead head I thoroughly appreciated this...

Distilled Learnings

I've been reading over my posts on this blog as well as posts from the Tier 1 blogging friends who I invited to the SAP Marketing Community event, including, Seth Godin, Jeff Nolan, Ze Frank, David Armano, Laura Fitton, David Scott, Zoli Erdos and Dennis Howlett. Nothing invigorates my mind and motivates more than debating with great thinkers. Out of these debates come more cystallized ideas to help my own business run better.  So in as short as space as I can, here's what I've been thinking about...

1. Great content, not great gimmicks is the cornerstone for great marketing success and content must be personalized for the individual who is seeking out your content.  As I've said before content sets the context for any experience your customer will have with you.
2. Make it free, make it easy to share, and unleash it to the world - the whole point is to drive conversation, so putting your content behind deep walls of registration actually hurts your marketing as opposed to helping.  Yeah, I know. "but we need to capture reg data to meet our demand gen objectives" says your DG team.  Yes. I know, but there are right ways to reg and wrong ways to reg.  Do it right, Do it light!
3. For B2B technology companies, viral marketing is an empowering form of marketing but please lets be careful about how and when its done. Lets be intelligent about it eh?  Pick and choose your biological marketing battles.
4. Develop and implement an easy to use attitudinal segmentation scheme... why?  Because in a hihgly competitive, highly commoditized market (such as enterprise software) companies can't afford to spend time talking to folks who just won't buy.  An attitudinal segmentation enables you to identify the high priority segments and members of those segments who you should go after as well as identify those segments to stay away from because they won't yield returns. Attitudinal segmentation, along with buyer personas enable you to truly create a personalized experience based on not only what the buyer does in an org but how is organization buys. Critical!!
5. Be customer centric. Yeah, you've heard me discuss this ad nauseum but I think now is the time to really focus on customer centricity. Why now?  Because we are in an economic downturn and companies need a loyal, loud and large groups of core customers that they can rely on during good times but especially in bad.  (hint: you can use this base to jump into adjacent markets more easily) You can only really do this if you put the customer at the center of everything you do.  Look, its simple, you market to your customers to drive conversation.  Heck markets are conversations.  Those conversations develop into relationships. Those relationships in turn develop into brand affinity - you know, that irrational loyalty for a brand?  I see it the face of Apple customers. Need a B2B example?  Talk to some SAP customers, Heck, talk to some SFDC customers.  In both sets you will see that core.  Why do you need brand affinity. Because!   Because affinity drive revenue.
6. To become customer centric think Employees First.  This is a shameless plug for Danny Meyer's Book, Setting the Table.  But, if you really want to build a customer-centric organization, don't start with Customer initiatives, Start by training and attracting talent that is customer centric to begin with.  That get the notion of putting the customer in the center of what they do, whether its software development, marketing or serving up a great martini.
7. Customers deserve great experiences from their suppliers in fact, its a critical competitive differentiator, yet so few companies actually spend the time to design, develop and deliver great experiences - over the web, on the phone, in person.   Whose your Chief Customer Officer?
8. Innovation - stop thinking its just about your products. If you are not co-innovating with your customers and partners on product, process and institutional innovation then you are missing a chance to be great.

I'll put my soapbox away now.

SAP Virtual Marketing Meeting "Photo Tour"

So, I feel like I'm a tourist, sharing my pics on my trip to Virtual SAP.  Here are a few pics of what I've seen today...

Here's our exhibition hall

Then I went to visit Sirius Decisions...

Got some Information a video overview of what they do...

And then started to chat with a rep...

If I'm tired of "walking around" I can go to Conference Center and sit down in any geography and attend a relevant session.

Where I could get the agenda for current and upcoming sessions

The SAP Marketing Community Meeting, An Experiment

On April 8,9 & 10, SAP is trying something unique, something different, yes, we're experimenting!  We're holding a world wide marketing community meeting - Virtually!   That's right, no conference center, no travel, no second rate hotels, no second rate food... all from the comfort of our offices and homes, we plan on bringing the entire community of SAP marketers together to get educated, to get focused and to network.  How are we going to do this?  Well, first off we're going to be using Unisfair as our virtual conference center, where everyone, regardless of geography and time zone can gather. 

If you don't know Unisfair you should check it out.  While we're convinced that we will run into some technical glitches using them the concept of a virtual event environment is the right one for a gathering of over 2000 marketers.  Its also missing some functionality that they need to be more full service such as a true blogging platform.  And boy will there be blogging.  I offered to help with the content flow so I went with what I know best, the blogosphere. We've invited some top tier bloggers and speakers to help drive knowledge transfer to the SAP Marketing Community.   Among those participating are:

• Seth Godin
• Ze Frank
• Dennis Howlett
• Zoli Erdos
• Ross Mayfield
• David Armano
• David Meerman Scott
• Laura "Pistachio" Fitton

We have room for one or two more so if you are interested let me know!  (Don't know if there is more budget but that I can check!).

I'm hoping we can build a great body of third party thought leadership which the SAP Marketing community will come to draw upon regularly even after the event is complete.

I love grand experiments!  Experimentation and Failure Breeds Success!

Are Community Managers Managing Your Brand?

...or asked another way, are your community managers becoming brand managers.  I was on a call with Mark Yolton today who heads up the SAP Community Networks for SDN and BPX and we were talking about stakeholders for some analytics work, VOC etc.  One of the things Mark mentioned was that after SAP product managers and what they were doing with VOC and forum moderation, brand management is top of mind in terms of community management.  And this goes with what new marketing types have been talking about regarding brand management evolving into tribe management.  I paraphrased Seth Godin in a recent internal memo:

Brand management is evolving to include the notion of customer brand evangelism and the brand "tribe". Again, we start with permission, the understanding that the real asset most organizations can build is the privilege of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who want to get them. As I said around trusted referrals, people really want to connect with one another NOT companies. So the permission is used to build a "tribe", to build a community of people who want to hear from SAP or any other company because it helps them connect, it helps them find each other, it gives them a story to tell and something to talk about. Everything the organization does is to feed and grow and satisfy the tribe. People will form tribes with or without us. The challenge is to motivate buyers to join our tribe, work on our behalf and make it something better.

If you have a community manager, he or she should be thinking about how to take the brand to the next level and these folks should be working hand in hand with your brand stewards to make it happen.  Heck your community managers are brand stewards... now that would be an interesting job evolution, taking someone out of the branding team and dropping them into a community management role... gonna have to find the opportunity to try that one.

Verizon opening up its network... well sorta...

Verizon customers will now be able to to choose devices, and use applications, from any vendor or developer willing to meet Verizon's specifications.

Bowing to pressure from federal regulators, customers, and powerful Web companies like Google (NSDQ: GOOG), Verizon Wireless last November announced that it will open up its nationwide network to mobile devices, software, and applications not offered by the carrier. For the first time, wireless customers will be able to use the handset of their choice, and download any software or application to it, as long as the applications and devices are approved by Verizon.

Full piece here

After Reading Scoble's Post About TechCrunch

I have one question...  I sit  here wondering if its hard for the pioneers of social media (you know who they are) to see what social media has become, how its being used or abused (I think back to that Kathy Sierra debacle)? In short, are you satisfied? Or disappointed?  Pleased or dismayed?  After reading Scoble's post I got this itch that its been a bit of mixed bag for him.  Am I wrong?

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