Peter Thomson on social media in real life.

 

I propose a new social media KPI known as TFA, or "Time to First Apology". In this case it was 48 hours which was good but the video has now had 4.3 million views. There is also a video response from FedEx but it's a bit forced and looks too scripted.

The apology will likely fan the flames and make the original video more widely viewed. But it also diffuses the core worry of the viewer that FedEx just doesn't care.

If you ever get caught in this situation then you need to be able to respond fast, but you also need to carefully consider how to respond without making things worse.

PR Week's Top 50 UK based PR Agencies that are embracing Digital and Social Media.

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Google's new operating system is offering a completely new business model. Business users and educational users will be able to rent the hardware and software for a monthly fee. I'm picking that it won't be long before consumers join them.

Leasing for IT has been around for years but its always been an add-on to the physical product. With Chromebook the monthly arrangement is integral to the experience.

Tim Brown from Ideo has been exploring what a post-product and post-consumption economy means for a while. The Chromebook is the first wave in this new economy. I call these types of arrangements the Product-As-A-Service model. The Software-As-A-Service industry  has already explored some of the pros and cons of these new relationships. Advantages of Product as a Service:

• No replacement costs for the user.
• Incentives for producer to make the product durable, repairable and modular. No more Planned Obsolescence!
• Match expenses to income. No more saving for an iPad.

Disadvantages of Product as a Service:

• User sometimes doesn't take as good care of the product as they should.
• Monthly contracts can hide true costs and create opportunities to confusopolies (See Scott Adams of Dilbert fame). Try choosing an iPhone contract with a subsidy to see PAAS gone wrong.

Imagine a world were you own almost nothing. Your laptop, phone, car, bed and furniture can already be rented, leased or hire-purchased today. In the future the pay-per-use, pay-per-month arrangements will be a core part of the experience. It will also become more socially acceptable to rent as status moves from ownership of expensive technology to the status from using the latest technology.

My favourite part of the change is the incentive to create better products. New European legislation requires car manufacturers to accept cars back at the end-of-life and reuse and recycle parts themselves. Suddenly they are designing at the most granular level for engine blocks that can be dismantled easily and bolts that can be reused. The sustainability benefits are profound.

But beware of the "confusopoly". If Google offers the Chromebook on a monthly contract but wants you to sign up for a minimum contract then be careful. Ask yourself, if the price is a fair value for every month then why lock me in?

Orcon Broadband in New Zealand and PlusNet form Yorkshire in the UK have positioned themselves with "We don't need to lock you in, our customers stay with us because they want to." Expect to see more of these offers as PAAS grows.

Chromebook will change the fundamental thinking behind an operating system and signs are that iOS for iPhone and iPad are going the same way. Both with more cloud features. These are a sideshow compared to the deep cultural changes created if we begin to move our consumer durable purchases over to a completely new economic model.

Chances are that your broadband router came bundled as part of your contract. It's a physical product, but you pay for it monthly. It's the first slice of Product-As-A-Service in your home. Google wants your laptop to be next. But it's only the beginning.

Image Credit (Forbes Blog)

Oliver Blanchard's post at his BrandBuilder blog, about the bad service he got at Ford's Oyster House, made me so angry that I needed to create my own post in response. It seems that the perpetrators of Oliver's bad lunch are now complaining on Facebook that they shouldn't be subject to adverse customer reviews. 

The highlight so far is the owner's comment that: "If all businesses were subject to social media it would be a scary world." I woke my girlfriend, asleep in the other room of our London apartment, by shouting at the screen: "They are!"

The "We've just opened, please cut us some slack" attitude is exactly what I railed against in my SlideShare presentation "Execution Eats Strategy for Breakfast."

 

I do still believe in Lean Start-Ups, Kaizen and Rapid Prototyping. But a "soft launch" is no excuse for a "bad launch". People mis-understand the concept of a "soft launch" because they miss the details in successful soft launches they see around them,

For every seemingly thrown together iPhone App that goes viral (with only half it's final features) I will show you:

1. A late night argument amongst the founders as to which features were really essential for launch. 
2. An obsessive focus on making those reduced features amazing.

You need to go through the same process for launching any new project, venture or brand. Decide: 

1. What is the minimum necessary for an end-user experience that delights?
2. How much can we deliver and execute at a standard that impresses and delights?

Keep reducing number (1) until it matches (2). If you can't make the two match, don't launch.

I've been to a London cafe that soft launched with no hot food, only a skeleton crew, no menus and no signage. The only thing they sold was coffee. And months later I still go in almost every day for that coffee because it was so good at first and still is. Now they have all the trappings of a full cafe but when they launched they focused on the small things that they could get right. They executed on the strategy.

 

Once upon a time, there was a forest. This one spread forever. Its canopy of branches covered the land. Up in its living-roof birds flitted through greenness and bright air, but down between the trunks of the many trees there were shadows, there was dark. When you walked this forest your feet made rustling sounds, but the noises you made were not the only noises, oh no. Twigs snapped. Breezes brought snatches of what might be voices. Lumpings and crashes in the undergrowth marked the passages of heavy things far off, or suddenly nearby. This was a populated wood. All wild creatures lived here, dangerous or benign according to their natures. And all the other travelers you had ever heard of were in the wood too: kings and knights, youngest sons and third daughters, simpletons and outlaws; a small girl whose bright hood flickered between the pine trees like a scarlet beacon. And a wolf, moving on a different vector to intercept her at the cottage. Each traveled separately, because it was the nature of the forest that you were alone in it. It was the place in which by definition you had no companions, and no resources except your own uncertain self. It was the Wild.

Francis Spufford 'The Child That Books Built'

Tell US the things you love most? Try:

Tell EACH OTHER the thing you love most (in a setting that we've created).

People don't really want to connect to brands, they want to connect to each other. Brands just happen to help them do so.

Working Style are a great New Zealand brand that makes immaculate suits. Usually I shop at the city branch but once a year I make a pilgrimage to their outlet store for another round of business shirts. It's one of corporate Auckland's best kept secrets.

Or to "friend" it on facebook?

I'm sorry Barkers, but too many emails, too fast.

I love your products and love your brand. I even loved knowing when the sales were on.

But not this often. I'm out. Unsubscribe.

A post at "The Brand Strategy Insider" on Toyota's singular brand strategy struck the raw nerve of an issue that I face almost every day. The issue of brand focus is so important that I had to write my comment on their article as its own post. You can read the original article at their blog. Derrick and Brad correctly identify that Toyota stuck a different path from many car companies by focusing their marketing efforts on a single master brand:

"That concentrated approach has distinct benefits. It fostered the single, united culture that was so important to Toyota's success. It also allowed the company to pump all its marketing investment into the Toyota master-brand rather than its sub-brands for greater marketing efficiency."

I'm a long time subscriber of Brad and Derrick, and normally agree so wholeheartedly with their brand strategy analysis that I don't have anything to add by way of comments. However, their article on Toyota makes a grave mistake by not reminding readers that a diversified brand portfolio can be too tempting for small companies who can't really maintain multiple brands.

The power of brand focus

They take a salutary lesson from the impact of the safety scandals on Toyota's entire brand family:

"Every brand architecture, ... has strengths and weaknesses, and Toyota is about to learn the downside of the one it has adopted. Focusing on a sub-brand approach, in which most of its cars are linked to a single corporate brand, means that a problem with any vehicle at Toyota will not only affect sales of the model in question, but also spread across the whole range."

They are right in noting that the Toyota situation shows a weakness in the "Monolithic" brand architecture relative to "Endorsed" or "House of Brands" based strategies.

Invest in one brand or diversify across several brands?

What worries me is that the vast majority of companies who shy away from Monolithic brand strategies, do so out of fear of risk to their sinlge brand. But, they simply do not have the resources of VW/Audi or BMW/Mini to maintain fully fleshed out set of sub-brands. Instead, of a "house of brands" these small and medium sized companies end up with a "house" of unconnected product names and empty logos. In fact, in Tech companies this fear can even become a 'naming fetish' where every product SKU needs its own logo and identity.

For Toyota the Solo Brand architecture was a big gamble and big gambles pay big, and they also loose big. That's ok.

More importantly, for a small company, hedging your bets out of fear may spread your efforts too broadly to ever be effective. While Toyota is a cautionary tale, the fact remains that: Sometimes it's better to put all your eggs in one basket, and then watch that basket really closely.

Apple's new product is getting considerable hype. If we stop for a minute and look at the iPad from the perspective of behaviorual economics, then we can see behind the hype into Apple's real motivations for some slightly odd announcements. There are 3 insights from economics that really do help explain some of the quirkiest announcements today.

 

Liquidity, The Accounting Cat by John Clarke

To the tune of Macavity, The Mystery Cat by T S Eliot 

Liquidity's a mystery; it's very rarely seen,
It strikes and then is gone again, its getaway is clean,
And despite forensic evidence and great deductive flair,
The conclusion's inescapable, Liquidity's not there!

Liquidity, Liquidity, there's nothing like liquidity,
Its presence gives you confidence, its absence gives timidity,
You own perhaps a property, you own perhaps a share,
But once you've lost your credit card, Liquidity's not there!
Your understated opulence inheres in what you wear,
But in the end, you face the fact, Liquidity's not there!

Liquidity's a nifty term, it's business talk for cash,
It's money not tied up in things or hoovered in the crash,
Investments may return amounts of staggering obscenity,
The vastness of your holdings may explain your great serenity.
In publishing, to take the case of either of the Fabers,
A warehouse full of Larkin and The Bumper Book of Neighbours
Is very well, and when they sell, will satisfy the editors,
But not much use, in real terms, when dealing with the creditors.

Liquidity, Liquidity, there's nothing like Liquidity,
The glint of actual duckets brings respect and dip the lid'ity,
It's likely to self-immolate on contact with the air,
Say 'Raffle' in a crowded room; Liquidity's not there!

In the conduct of a company (proprietary, limited)
There's always a suspicion that the system's maladministered,
In proper corporate planning you allow a little spare,
But when you need the wherewithal, Liquidity's not there!

Liquidity, Liquidity, there's nothing like Liquidity,
In purely economic terms it constitutes validity,
I wish I had a pound for every credit millionaire,
Who completely failed to register, LIQUIDITY WASN'T THERE!
When reputations tumble and the search is on for clues
(I might mention humpo-bumpo, I might mention drinkie-poos)
There's a suspect who can prove he was in Lima at the time,
They can't catch him, he's the brilliant Scarlet Pimpernel of crime!

www.economicsofinnovation.org

The Economics of Innovation is a community of designers, marketers and creative people who need to articulate the business value of design, innovation and creativeity in a hardened business world. I defend them and equip them with the resources to cut through in staff meetings with their boss.

 

Branding is the f-word of marketing. People swear by it, no one quite understands its significance and everyone would like to think that they do it more often than they really do. - Mark Di Soma