Tag Archives: Apple

Gauravonomics TV Episode 8: Only If My Nokia E71 Had an App Ecosystem

Wednesday, August 27th, 2008

Many of you may know that I record and upload my vidcasts exclusively from my Nokia E71 smartphone. I also use my E71 almost exclusively for reading my e-mail and 150 feeds, and accessing the only four social networks I am really active on — YouTube, Flickr, Twitter and Facebook. If you add to that my compulsive calendering and my total reliance on GPS even to navigate two blocks, you can imagine how big a role my E71 is playing in my life right now. In fact, I would say that the E71 has been my main computer for the last two weeks. For the most part, it has been great and I totally love it.

However, a phone is as good as the app ecosystem around it and there is no app ecosystem around the Nokia E71. It comes with half a dozen pre-installed apps and apart from the mainstream web services like GMail/ GoogleReader/ GoogleMaps/ YouTube/ Yahoo/ Flickr/ Twitter/ Facebook, pretty much nothing else works on it. As much as I love the E71, I can’t see it getting traction against the iPhone unless Nokia gets developers to write apps for it.

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The Three Laws of the Marketing Chain of Being

Friday, December 7th, 2007

Quick Summary: Read about the five levels in the Marketing Chain of Being, and the three laws that govern how brands move between them.

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In an earlier post, I had written that, like the Renaissance Chain of Being, there is also a Marketing Chain of Being.

The Marketing Chain of Being

In this post, I’ll explain the five levels in the Marketing Chain of Being, and the three laws that govern how brands move between them.

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The Five Levels in the Marketing Chain of Being

There are five levels in the Marketing Chain of Being –

1. Commodity Hell, in which brands basically focus on price and channel promotions to sell more (think groceries).
2. Differentiation, in which brands highlight product features and benefits to command a price premium (think automobiles).
3. Engagement, in which brands use service (in both its customer service and conversation meaning) to develop relationships with customers (think Dell).
4. Cultural Currency, in which brands become shared social objects and help customers define their individual and group identities (think Nike+iPod).
5. Meaning, in which brands become the tools that customers use for self-realization or restoration (think Google).

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Is Customer Service the New Marketing? Of Course Not!

Friday, December 7th, 2007

Quick Summary: Read about how engagement is only the middle level in the ‘Marketing Chain of Being’ and how social media and customer service are only tools to create engagement.

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The topic of the week in the marketing and public relations blogosphere is whether customer service is the new marketing, so much so that there’s even an upcoming event on the topic.

Most of the posts on the topic have focused on how social media is causing customer service and public relations to merge into each other to form the fabric of a new marketing paradigm.

I’m a brand manager, not a PR practitioner, and I can’t but feel that the above statement is rather simplistic. Yes, customer service is important. Yes, word of mouth is important, and, by association, public relations is important. Yes, good (or bad) customer service is an important factor in creating favorable (or unfavorable) word of mouth. Yes, social media gives customers the tools to amplify word of mouth. Yes, yes, yes and yes. But that’s only part of the story. Let me tell you the real story by going back to my post on the Marketing Chain of Being.

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Nike Helps Customers Create Cultural Currency With Nike+

Friday, November 9th, 2007

Quick Summary: Read about how Nike is helping customers create their own cultural currency with Nike+.

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The Economics of Free

In an earlier post, I wrote about the ‘economics of free’ —

Free content -> Attention -> Free product -> Lock-in -> Paid bundled services -> $$$

The Economics of Free

The ‘Free content -> Free product -> Paid bundled services’ model is an extreme example of a trend we have been seeing for a while now — marketers bundling services with basically undifferentiated products in order to build a differentiation.

Free Content Can Convert Brands Into Cultural Currency

Take Nike as an example.

In spite of all the technology that supposedly goes inside a typical sports shoe, if you take away the logos, it’s almost impossible to differentiate between a Nike, a Reebok and an Adidas (or Puma or New Balance or…) shoe. So, Nike/ Reebok/ Adidas have instead focused on differentiating themselves by converting their brands into cultural currency. We have started talking about marketers becoming publishers and using free content to grab attention only now, but Nike/ Reebok/ Adidas have been doing it for decades. What’s more, it has worked out brilliantly for the sports shoe industry — even non-athletic types like yours truly have four pair of sports shoes — one for jogging, one for trekking, one for cross-training and one for tennis.

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The Secret Success Formula of Apple Store Employees

Thursday, November 1st, 2007

punching-in

How do Apple store employees help sell $4,000 worth of product per square foot per month?

They explained to customers that they had some questions to understand their needs, got permission to fire away, and then kept digging to ascertain which products would be best. Position, permission, probe. (Alex Frankel in Epicenter)

Also see: Fast Company and The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs.

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The Ultimate User Generated Content Wet Dream Come True

Sunday, October 28th, 2007

When 18 year old English student Nick Haley created a commercial for the iPhone using video clips taken from Apple’s website set to a song titled “Music Is My Hot Hot Sex” by a Brazilian band CSS, he didn’t know he had struck user generated content gold. Marketing executives at Apple saw the commercial on YouTube and, in the typically Apple ‘Think Different’ way, asked their agency TBWA/Chiat/Day to invite Nick to work with them on a broadcast-ready version of his spot. The commercial is now ready for worldwide release and Nick is a mini-celebrity (New York Times via Epicenter).

Apple and TBWA, of course, are milking the maximum possible PR value of the episode with Lee Clow, chairman and chief creative officer at TBWA Worldwide, making Steve Jobsesque statements like:

People’s relationship with a brand is becoming a dialogue, not a monologue.

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Google’s Personalized Homepage is Now iGoogle

Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007

igoogle.JPG

Google’s Personalized Homepage is now iGoogle!

Looks like Eric Schmidt is spending too much time with Steve Jobs as a director on the Apple Board.

iPod > iTune > iPhone > iGoogle! Heh!

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Six Levels of Web 2.0 Participation

Monday, April 30th, 2007

According to the the Forrester Research Social Technographics report, social technology, or web 2.0, behaviors can be categorized into a ladder with six levels of participation (via ZDNet) -

- Creators (13%): Publish web pages or blogs, upload videos to video sharing sites.
- Critics (19%): Comment on blogs, post ratings and reviews.
- Collectors (15%): Use RSS, tag Web pages.
- Joiners (19%): Use social networking sites.
- Spectators (23%): Read blogs, watch peer-generated video, listen to podcasts.
- Inactives (52%): None of these activities.

The percentages don’t add up to 100% because, apart from the inactives, the other five levels of participation overlap with each other.

Forrester recommends that instead of looking at Web 2.0 as a list of technologies to be deployed on an ad hoc basis, marketers should first analyze where their customers are on the Social Technographics ladder and then create a Web 2.0 strategy to transition them to the next step.

Here are my top of the mind thoughts on the Social Technographics report -

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What Killed Microsoft?

Sunday, April 8th, 2007

Q. What killed Microsoft?

A. Google, Ajax, Broadband Internet and Apple (from Paul Graham via Hugh Macleod).

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The Latest from Steve Jobs - the Apple iRack

Saturday, April 7th, 2007

Even though I love my iPod, drool over the iPhone and dream of owning the iReader, I couldn’t but laugh out loud at MAD TV’s wicked sketch on the latest from Steve Jobs - the Apple iRack.

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