Undifferentiated

begging to differ

My renewed credit card arrived recently so I called to activate it. And I spoke with a human being. Credit card companies, among others, have become good over the last few years at leveraging their time on the phone with people.  They attempt to up-sell and cross-sell. They also do research into their customers which makes them smarter.

On this call the woman was doing research and she asked me a simple question: “you’ve been a  card member for a long time, what’s one thing you like about the card?’

A good question.

Radio silence on my end.

It’s a card.

I have it because I have it. There may be a few practical reasons why I have this card vs. any other —- none of which run very deep. But I realized, in my moment of silence, that I have no feelings at all towards the card.

Credit cards are commodities really… like a lot of products.

But they needn’t be. And probably shouldn’t be. If I ran the company and the graph on the answer to the question had a high number of “huh?”s, “I dunno”s and “whatever”s, I’d want to do something about it.

BTW, the card in the matrix above is not my (apparently rather generic) card brand. That’s an actual generic card graphic by kjelle20.

Digital Threat #4: Shooting Yourself in the Foot

I gave a talk (link in Spanish) in Barcelona the other day in which one of my slides contained the following graphic.

My point was that while the digital era is bursting with opportunities (a number of which I outlined and which I will post here in video form once I get the files back), it’s also filled with THREATS. And that it’s quite possible to get f–ked by digital technology. I outlined three threats:

Threat #1:  There are so many more messages being put in front of customers now—and this is greatly accelerated by digital… so it’s just tougher, by the numbers, to be noticed.

Threat #2: Customers can get hold of a range of “tune-out” technologies so that they never even see your message.

Threat #3: Your competitors might well be getting savvy at leveraging digital to connect with customers … and as they get smarter and smarter at it, well you know where that leaves you

I just recently came across what you might call Threat #4: being kinda lame!

I’ve been loving the creative and competitive energy in the Mac vs. PC wars. Microsoft is really going for it with their strong Laptop Hunters campaign in which they ping Apple on price.

But here’s what I saw the other day when I tried to watch one of Microsoft’s ads online. Click the image for actual-size frustration.

I have a bit of sympathy for Microsoft. They have many competing goals … a number of which play out in this screenshot. One group wants you to buy PCs which means you buy more Microsoft Windows. Yet another group wants you to install their Silverlight software … so you must install it to see the ad. Then you have some third group that decides to conduct a survey on the site with another popup window!

The resultant experience is in NO WAY more than a sum of its parts.

Here are a couple of the videos in the Mac vs PC wars… you decide for yourself whether it’s worth the effort to watch the Microsoft ad: Lauren (Microsoft) vs. Megan (Apple).

BTW, some believe Microsoft shouldn’t be engaging Apple in this game at all. That they should stick to their software.

The Quiet Conference… Less Content, MUCH More Communication

I just had a very interesting and valuable  four days on what is known as the “quiet” Balearic island of Menorca. It’s quiet compared Mallorca and Ibiza.

The conference is Menorca TechTalk and is hosted by tech entrepreneur Martin Varsavsky. He gathered a number of really smart, successful entrepreneurs and investors (and young and upcoming startuppers) from around Europe, Latin America (he’s originally from Buenos Aires and is now based in Madrid), Asia, the States.

techtalking

I prefer to network one-on-one… visit people at their offices, go to breakfast, take walks with people. I guess you could say I like the quiet approach. And that is why I liked this quiet conference. The ratio of organized content to total time was an astonishing 3 content hours to 48 total (waking) hours (with waking hours varying by person). Most people were in attendance for four days).

Slow and quiet is good for communicating. I really enjoyed experiencing the interactions and connections with people unfold over four days. I learned a lot. I was able to help people as well. Different small groups and interactions formed, then broke apart. Informal demos were given, ideas and advice explored…

My gut is that the relationships I made (or reinforced)  in Menorca will have a different quality to them more quickly than others made at louder, more content-heavy conferences. And the information I gathered and was able to impart was better too.

Quiet is good for relationships and information.

Are Apps the New Lattes

Trading places?

Nokia’s answer to the iPhone’s appstore has launched. Many (here, here and here) slagged the launch itself as bungled (wrong link sent to the press, overwhelmed servers, etc.).

Regardless… apps are here to stay and are growing beyond the relatively small (but very watched) world of Apple. They’re here as moneymakers, as ways to connect with customers, etc. etc.

This isn’t a literal graph… but it does capture some truth. It seems that, even in these difficult economic times, some people still don’t seem to mind dropping a few dollers/euros/pounds on a little trifle they can hold in their hand that they don’t really really need. It’s just that what that little trifle is, is changing.

I Think I’m Turning Swissonese…

… I think I’m turning Swissonese, I really think so.

There must be something about the Swiss. Brands, it seems, want to be Swiss.

There was a time, I recall, when everybody, it seemed, wanted to the the Patek Philippe of their industry. “We want to be the Patek Philippe of mobile phones” … “of set-top boxes” … of …

You never actually own one

Nowadays it seems to be Davos. I just got an email inviting me to the Davos of Twitter conferences. And it’s not the first time lately that conferences have been refererred to as the Davos of __________.

Ideas Worth Spreading — to 4.5B More People

The smart people who put on the TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference — but who actually are also becoming a very interesting digital media brand —  announced something interesting today. It is now possible to either translate yourself or view translations of any of the many interesting videos (AKA “Ted Talks”) at TED.com. The idea: make the talks useful to the 4.5 billion or so people who don’t speak English. To quote head-TED Chris Anderson:

The TED Open Translation Project will enable thousands of volunteer translators to use subtitles to make TED available to their own communities. To do this the right way has taken a year of preparation. But now we’re ready.

The site is filling up with  what they call “interactive transcripts”. They allow you to click on any word in English or a translated language — and actually make the video of the given talk play from that word on.

This is all very good for making the site and videos people-friendly to many more people. But it’s also very good for TED.com’s search engine friendliness… talks are searchable and findable, increasing the site’s profile on Google and other engines.

BTW, here, per TED, are the languages with the most talks translated in them, as of this posting.

Source: TED.com

Smart. Or, if you like, inteligente, интелигентен, 智能, חָכָם, لبيب, วิทูร

Secrets of the Web’s Most Popular Video EVER

Distribution, Distribution, Distribution. Photo credit Reed Kavner

In a rather excited blogpost (lots of exclamation points!!… count them) Visible Measures, a company that makes it possible to track video views online, has listed the top viral videos of all time.

Number one is “Soulja Boy Crank That” logging in at 356,300,000 views.

Check out the video. It’s very very smart. Do you think its a coincidence that the most watched online video of all time does the following things so well:

Branding: the song has the singer’s name in it — and it’s no cameo.. “Soulja Boy” basically IS the hook/chorus. This makes it easy to remember the artist, easy to talk about, easy to find again.

Calling people to action: the video is jampacked with imagery of, well, people watching the video. And many times they are watching it together. What a terrific, not-so-subtle reminder to share the video and enjoy it with others.

The thing is built to work. Crank dat.

What Does a Tray Say?

Trays. Photo credit Pathfinder Linden via Creative Commons/Flickr

I was struck by this hook on the front page of nytimes.com today:

Schools are shelving the once-ubiquitous trays in the hopes of conserving water, cutting food waste, softening the ambience and saving money.

Everything communicates. Clearly trays say a lot — like “pile on more than you really need” and they also say “this is a cafeteria vs. perhaps some place a little more elegant”.

Here’s the article by Lisa Foderaro.

BTW.. while searching for a photo to illustrate this post I found some trays that literally say something.