Merry Christmas from ckwrites
Merry Christmas
IBM isn’t a nimble company. But if we tell our story very simply and be relevant and timely about it, we can create a lot of value.
Event Marketing
2015 Experiential and Event Marketing Forecast from ckwrites 12.13.14
IMAGE: FLICKR, HAKEE CHANG
The great French scientist Louis Pasteur said that “Fortune favors the prepared mind.” There is a lot to prepare for. 2015 will be a pivotal year in experiental and event marketing.
Four megatrends are driving the change:
- Events play a unique role in the marketing mix. Ever-more empowered customers are choosing to engage with sales and marketing later in the purchasing cycle. Face-to-face meetings offer a powerful way to personalize the conversation. And rich experiences are essential to promoting sharing.
- The old meeting/conference model is officially broken. Over the past few years, the technology in each attendee’s pocket has changed it from “one to many” to something like “all of us to each other, all the time.”
- Most corporate audiences are now a subset of the social media audience. The crossover creates a huge number of touch points, each of which needs to be optimized to ensure that the customer journey is relevant and consistent. Integrating this will put increased demands on event managers and bring new players to the table.
- Metrics are the new normal. The unlikely combination of social media and Big Data have picked up where direct marketing left off. Season with KPI’s and if it’s not being measured, it will be soon. Marketers no longer have to rely on opinions, they can (and will) now demonstrate their value to the C-suite with numbers.
For this post I have assembled 7 forecasts from some of the best thinkers I follow. My goal is to provide you with context you can use to prepare for the year ahead.
The State of B2B Event Marketing 2014
Despite the title, this survey by Regalix is as much a look at the year that will be, as the year that was.
B2B Event Marketing continues to be viewed as a critical thrust area in a company’s overall marketing mix. Of the executives surveyed, only 4% say events are not significant.
As many as 57% of marketers find Event Marketing extremely significant in accelerating lead generation and growing the sales pipeline.
The top 4 objectives (percentage of respondents) are revealing.
- Lead generation – 80%
- Brand-building – 80%
- Customer engagement – 64%
- Customer education and training – 36%
My Prediction: The availability of content online 24/7/365 is changing the raison d’etre for event producers and attendees alike. The opportunity to network and interact is the new reason to attend. Clients and their agencies will have to learn how to further their own agendas, while creating experiences that enable the audience to accomplish their sometimes competing goals.
Download the complete report here.
Digital Transformation: A Year in Review
A knock-out big picture piece from Brian Solis at The Altimeter Group.
Looking beyond post-PC devices, what digital transformation is really about is the impact of new devices, networks, apps, pervasive internet, et al on you and me, how we knowingly or unknowingly change and what companies need to do to get in front of it.
In the face of disruption from not only new competition, but also customer behavior, what do businesses do differently moving forward?
There is a lot more available on the Altimeter site including The 2014 State of Digital Transformation which delineates how this process is unfolding within the enterprise.
My Prediction: The report goes to great lengths to point out that this must be a cross-functional initiative. But one clue is that more often than not, the transformation is being led by the CMO.
Brand Experience Report: 5 Hot Trends for 2015
Great report from the UK that really sums things up. Here are the 5 trends with my comments:
- An ‘active’ audience – enabled by social, this is a recurring theme in all of the forecasts.
- Mobile first – ditto.
- Blurred lines – between events and social – one of the 2015 megatrends.
- Measurement – absolutely unavoidable – way beyond ROI – this will increasingly be all about customer experience management.
- Technology in the back seat – had to happen.
There will be a definite move from technology being at the centre of the experience to technology being a facilitator that allows brands to create connections with the target audience.
Top 6 Disruptive Marketing Trends for 2015
This post is by Bryan Kramer, the CEO of PureMatter, an award-winning global digital agency based in Silicon Valley. He recently wrote Human to Human #H2H.
Bryan writes “I’ll be focusing on how, why, when and where we share and how it will change the way customers do business with people and brands.”
He has identified 6 disruptive trends:
- Video Becomes Experiential
- Shareable Experiences
- Invective Marketing
- Transmedia Storytelling
- Personalized (Human) Marketing
- The Narrowing of API’s
KEY TAKEAWAY: Sharing will be at the epicenter in 2015. We have the tools and technology right now – the challenge will be to exercise our own human ability to change the paradigm of how we tell stories, tolerate inhumanity online and exercise discernment in how much we let technology lead or control how and what we communicate.
My Prediction: This one is easy. Sharing will continue to permeate the pre, on-site and post-event experience. (The next article discusses some of the tools that will enable this.)
From a business perspective there will be an increased demand to create content and experiences that customers and prospects value enough (or just like enough) to share.
8 Ways Technology is Changing Events
I featured this story in the new ck Curates section of the website. Written for Mashable by James O’Brien, it is a savvy look at how technology is changing the way #eventprofs will plan and attendees will experience #events.
- Audiences are now engaged.
- Social media enables shared planning.
- Audience now interacts with presenters.
- Data is personalized.
- Increasing use of augmented reality on the show floor.
- Wearable technology changes how data is shared.
- Mobile is mainstream.
- Drones are on the horizon.
My Prediction: Not if – but how much and how soon.
How Marketers Will Win
Six marketing visionaries describe how in five years marketing will be transformed.
This is a stunning series of interviews. Plus the design makes it a must see as well as a must read.
The Economist gathered an eclectic group.
- Seth Godin: Make things worth talking about (Ed Note and who will be back with the last word.)
- John Hagel: Attract, assist and affiliate.
- Gavin Heaton: To see five years ahead, look ten years behind.
- Aditya Joshi: The modern marketer: Strategist, technologist, analyst.
- Marc Mathieu: Find a truth and share it.
- Jim Stengel: Marketing is at the center of strategy.
Conclusion: Passion trumps everything Marketing processes, skills and technology will continue to evolve over the next five years. Not every marketer is ready for every change. But at the end of the day, those who want to adapt and win have the power to do so.
10 Marketing Predictions for 2015
Wheelhouse Advisors is a consulting firm that is technologically savvy, data driven and focuses on the intersection of sales and marketing. They created an infographic to present their 10 predictions saying that:
Established brands are struggling to create awareness and interest as they are competing with an increasing amount of noise.
So how do you make yourself heard?
The infographic is offered as an aid to people preparing 2015 budgets. It’s a clever way to get in the “wheelhouse” where command decisions are made.
Three of the predictions are particularly relevant to event marketers and their agencies.
#1 The continued rise in popularity of content marketing. Content is one of the top 3 reasons that people follow brands. As to that, B2B firms that blog generate 67% more leads than those that do not.
Which is why this bubble is nowhere near ready to burst.
Wheelhouse predicts that spending will continue to increase beyond the ~25% of their budget most (many? some?) marketers already allocate to content marketing. Hard to say which budgets all of these content dollars are being taken from, but the likely donors are advertising and events.
#5 Adoption of video. Being numbers guys, Wheelhouse has a kind of deadpan style asserting that “Video has become a useful part of marketing.” The factoids they use to support this statement reflect the new metrics of utility by which everything is judged.
- Salesforce added a video to their homepage and increased conversions by 20%.
- High quality videos are increasing shopping carts by 174%.
- 75% of executives watch videos one or more times per week.
They predict that more firms will commission videos to enhance the user experience and support lead generation.
#8 Microtargeting and hyper-segmentation. The advent of usable Big Data is leading to a much better understanding of audiences and interests.
We expect the ways to target audiences to increase and the sizes of the end audiences to decrease in 2015.
My Prediction: More and more effort and thought will have to go into taking what was traditionally a one-to-many mass event, and making it feel like it is one-to-one.
Take a look at results from the Preferred Access Pass concept that Scott Schenker and his team at Microsoft tested at their recent Convergence event. Hint – the people who bought the premium passes were also the people who were the most satisfied with the event.
What’s Next?
The purpose of predictions is not just to tell us what might happen. It is to get each of us to think about what we want to happen.This post from Seth Godin sums it up as only he can.
What’s next?
What does a good day look like? A good week?
Who do you want to work with?
Who are you trying to please?
What sort of feedback brings you down?
What’s your tolerance for being misunderstood? By whom?
Is it about process or projects?
Which part of the project makes you happy?
At the end of the project, what would you like in return?
What diminishes the work?
How high do the stakes need to be?
How close to the edge do you need to dance? Risk? Resources? Failure?
What will you take? What will you give? Who will you connect?
How much freedom will you sacrifice to get what you want? How much commitment will you promise?
What are you measuring? Smiles, comments, traffic, cash, media response, friends, peers, insiders, outsiders?
Will they miss you when you’re done with this?
Love to hear what you see up ahead.
The Christmas Book List from ckwrites 12.06.2014
Note to self. Next year send this before Black Friday!
A thoughtfully chosen book makes the perfect gift for any and everybody – friend, child or business associate. So throughout the year I keep an eye out for interesting lists I can share with you to ease your Holiday angst.
But before I get to the lists, I have to do a quick shout out to Seth Godin who just shipped his latest book.
What To Do When It’s Your Turn
Seth’s newest project is out in time for Christmas and Christmas giving. No one does Seth like Seth, so I’ll let him explain what his new project is all about:
This is an urgent call to do the work we’re hiding from, a manifesto about living with things that might not work and embracing tension when doing your art.
What To Do When It’s Your Turn is a full-color book in the form of a magazine, without ads, but with heart and soul and speed.
I hope you’ll consider buying multiple copies at the discounted price to share with friends, co-workers and people on your team. It’s the shared copies that make this project work, and it’s the shared copies that will help create the change you seek in the people around you.
The book is back from the printers, and we’re shipping orders now. It’s really beautiful…
I am waiting for mine to arrive.
Get In The Spirit(s)
If you thought this list would be dry, you don’t know me very well. The Tasting Table Drinks Editor Jim Meehan has put together a list of the Season’s best books on spirits. Says Meehan, “The quality of the new material is remarkable. Publishers have cast generic overviews of the ABC’s of mixing drinks aside for detailed manuals and guides such as Jeffrey Morgenthaler’s The Bar Book which are destined to become go-to’s for amateurs moving forward.”
One that caught my eye is Liquid Intelligence: The Art and Science of the Perfect Cocktail. I figured it must be good because it jumped to the Number 1 spot in Alcoholic Spirits on Amazon in less than a month. Lavishly illustrated, I am much taken by Dave Arnold’s Introduction:
Taking cocktails seriously, as with all worthy inquiries, puts you on a lifelong journey. The more you know, the more questions you raise. The better a practicioner you become, the more you see the faults in your technique. Perfection is the goal, but perfection is, mercifully, unattainable.
With all due respects to Sting, that is a message in a bottle.
The Best Children’s Books of 2014
One of my guilty pleasures is reading Maria Popova’s blog Brain Pickings. Please don’t ask me how she manages to read so much, and write so much, and write so well because I don’t have a clue.
Popova introduces this years Children’s Book list saying that:
Books that bewitch young hearts and tickle young minds aren’t “children’s books” but simply great books — hearts that beat in the chest of another, even if that chest is slightly smaller. This is certainly the case with the most intelligent and imaginative “children’s” and picture-books published this year.
There are 15 titles on the list and links to her lists from 2010-13 so you can find just the right thing. Illustrations are an essential part of many children’s stories and Popova liberally laces her reviews with them. While this is probably meant to make picking the perfect book easier, the illustrations are so wonderful that it actually makes things harder for me. I want them all!
The Lion and The Bird offers some insight into the kinds of issues these books tap into:
One autumn day, a lion finds a wounded bird in his garden. With the departure of the bird’s flock, the lion decides that it’s up to him to care for the bird. He does and the two become fast friends. Nevertheless, the bird departs with his flock the following autumn. What will become of Lion and what will become of their friendship?
– The Lion and The Bird by Marianne Dubuc
The 5 Best Writing Books No One Ever Told You About
If you want to write, you need to read. And surprisingly if you want to write well, you need to read about writing. Daphne Gray-Grant writing for Ragan.com eschews the sacred cows by King, Lamott and others in favor of some less-known authors noting that:
I read them all years ago. I’d like some fresh inspiration, thank you very much. So here’s my list. Five authors you probably haven’t heard of. Five books that are always filed, ready for action, on my writing bookshelves, if not already in my hands…
When this post first appeared in March, I bought Sin and Syntax: How to Craft Wickedly Effective Prose by Constance Hale. I bit because Hale was the former editor of Wired – a magazine I have long admired for its visual style and crisp writing.
Hale also wrote Wired Style: Principles of English Usage in the Digital Age – a whacky spiral bound, slip-cased gem that Newsweek proclaimed “The Chicago Manual of Style for the new Millennium.” So much has changed since it was published in 1996 that it is in need of a technology update, but it still offers interesting clues about how our language has evolved to meet the needs of all things digital.
At Wired we write geek and we write street. We insist on accuracy and literacy, but we celebrate the colloquial voice… True colloquial writing doesn’t just reflect the vernacular of your reader – it limns the lives and speech of the characters you write about… – Wired Style by Constance Hale
40 Books To Read Before You Turn 40
This list is by Jason Wachob, the Founder & CEO of MindBodyGreen. Jason’s goal is to inspire people around the world to live healthy lives, by making informed choices about how they treat their minds, bodies, and the environment. Says Jason:
It’s the list I wish I had before I began the journey of becoming an entrepreneur and creating MindBodyGreen.
It’s an eclectic collection – everyone from Norman Vincent Peale to Paulo Coelho to Yvon Chouinard and a bunch of doctors on wellness. Instead of summaries, he provides a quote from each book so that you can get an inkling of the tone and style.
Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper. Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure. They’re huge and abstract. And they’re very beautiful.
– Catching The Big Fish by David Lynch
The Best Cookbooks To Give Your Super Snooty Foodie Friend
Leave it to HuffPo Taste to get right to the heart of the gifting problem.
The only thing worse than having someone so difficult in your life is when that person also happens to be food obsessed. Not only does eating out reach a whole new level of snobbery, but gift giving becomes downright impossible. You know they only want something food related, but what to buy that they won’t scoff at?
There are books on the new Nordic cuisine, books by and about Bay Area restaurateurs, books about baking, books about dessert and Liquid Intelligence makes an appearance which I take as a very good sign.
If that’s not enough, at the bottom of the article is a slide show called 10 Great Cookbooks which starts with the 1,360 page classic Larousse Gastronomique.
While I still haven’t unpacked my cookbooks from the last move, I will have to buy Never Trust a Skinny Italian Chef by Massimo Bottura. He is the proud papa behind Osteria Francescana, a three Michelin star restaurant in Modena, Italy. He walked away from the law to open a restaurant studying with the likes of Alain Ducasse and Ferran Adria at elbulli.
The book is a wonder – full of photos of food, setting and whimsy. Fascinating windows into the workings of one of cooking’s greatest minds.” – LA Times
Rolling Stone’s 50 Best Albums of 2014
What’s to say that you don’t already know – not everybody on Santa’s list loves to read…
2014 was another phenomenal year for music, illuminating darkness when it often seemed that the only light was from buildings burning in Ferguson, Missouri. Veterans like U2, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Jackson Browne and Leonard Cohen were showing the youngsters how it’s done, but classic rock was being revived in more unlikely ways too.
There are a lot of familiar names here and some surprises like Miranda Lambert at #5. But as I sit here watching U2 be introduced by William Jefferson Clinton on World AIDS Day, it is with great satisfaction that I see that their album – the great Apple giveaway that powered my most popular posts this year – is Number One.
There was no bigger album of 2014 – in terms of surprise, generosity and controversy. Songs of Innocence is also the rebirth of the year. Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. put their lives on the line: giving away 11 songs of guitar rapture and frank, emotional tales of how they became a band out of the rough streets and spiritual ferment of Seventies Dublin.
#onestep4RED celebrates what can only be considered a tremendous accomplishment in the global fight against AIDS. It is a celebration and a metaphor of what we can all do, if we do it together. Which is why it is fitting that the Boss carried it for Bono. Jersey for Dublin. It’s another reminder that together we are the world. Get well soon Bono.
Click on the photo to see what you missed:
World AIDS Day Concert @ Times Square
Happy giving!
The Jolt! from ckwrites 11.19.2014
I’m weeks behind schedule but we are finally down to the last bugs in the new templates and RSS feeds. There are some great articles on the ck Curates page that I wanted to share today.
Looking at the rest of the year, I will be dark for Thanksgiving, then back with 3 more posts with the new Saturday morning delivery. I’ll start December with a collection of book lists to inspire your Christmas giving, then depending on how the content shapes up, I’ll do a collection of the best Christmas spots and a mash-up of 2015 predictions. And that will be it for 2014.
To kick-off the Holiday thing, I am pleased to announce that Julius Solaris, founder of The Event Manager Blog has just published a new book, Social Media for Events. He describes it as:
The complete and free resource to successfully implement Social Media at Events. 130 pages of research, tools, tips and resources to start using social media at your event today.
And it is free. Find out more and download the book here. Oh and for all you trend spotters – not even an email address is required! Thank you Julius!
This first article is an important step in defining how experiential marketing integrates into a marketing program. It’s something I have never seen articulated quite this way before. And it is really good news for event and experiential agencies
Public Purpose: Why Brands Should Embrace Experiential Marketing
Today’s smartest brands aren’t marketing themselves; they’re championing a purpose. It’s why Red Bull organizes events instead of only sponsoring them, and it’s why Converse creates recording studios instead of only television ads. Brands that take this principle to heart also tend to have successful experiential campaigns.
Call it a genuine approach. The case studies that Sparksheet has selected show that some marketers understand that their brand and products alone are no longer enough to connect with their target audience.
They recognize the need to do more and they are figuring out how to combine the reach of digital with the high-touch of experiential marketing.
One case study is Converse (yep the black hi-top people.) They discovered (data) that their customers were not just young – but creative. So VP-General Manager of Brand and Segments, Geoff Cottrill (decided? was inspired?) to build a recording studio in Brooklyn, NY that artists could use for free.
Called Rubber Tracks, the idea catapulted Converse to the third most-liked brand on Facebook (40 million and growing) and has been spun off as a music festival in Brazil.
Speaking on the Experiential Marketing Panel at the 2013 Forbes CMO Summit, Cottrill said:
Our hypothesis from the beginning was, do something really good for your core consumer, don’t ask anything in return, and watch what happens…
In a recent AdAge interview he added:
It’s less about putting a number on it and more about realizing that people have always been media. We’ve provided musicians with experiences they’ll never forget. The measurement is that. We’re building ambassadors for the brand. By doing something good for them, we see over and over again that they speak on our behalf.
Something that you’ve been reading here for a long time.
5 Key Take-Aways from ITSMA’s 2014 Annual Conference
I always look forward to this report. It’s short, it’s punchy, and it’s one of the few things ITSMA gives away. It confirms what I’ve been feeling all year – there is no going back anymore.
What do I mean? The pressure is on marketing to deliver. The advent of data big and small has made it literally impossible to hide poor performance and ineffective programs. At the same time, to a greater or lesser extent the sales and marketing functions have been disintermediated by buyers taking things into their own hands.
Malcolm Frank, EVP of Strategy and Marketing at Cognizant Technology Solutions said that:
I don’t care if my next-door neighbor knows who Cognizant is, but I do care if my 10,000 potential customers know.” This isn’t just about understanding their motivations and predicting their behavior. It’s about having something relevant and meaningful to say to them.
And consider this line:
The CMO’s new job is to improve digital engagement.
I think that the event industry needs to focus on Points 3 and 4.
3. Understanding buyers and personalizing their experience are critical to engaging them.
4. We must refocus what we do to be meaningful and relevant to our chosen audiences.
Keynote speaker Larry Weber told the audience:
We’ve finally recognized that marketing is a verb, not a noun, and that it’s never done.
Here are a few short bits that I think you will enjoy.
Building A Complete Tweet Index
Falls under the category of if you can’t beat them, join them. And really Big Data.
In this post, we describe how we built a search service that efficiently indexes roughly half a trillion documents and serves queries with an average latency of under 100ms.
So why am I posting this authentically geeky piece?
Because I want you to think about what this can mean to your business.
- Got a hot prospect? Show them what people said about last years event – if anything…
- Got a loyal client? Give them the ammo to show their team how much impact you’ve had.
Watch: An Hour of Saul Bass Title Sequences
And now something for the creative spirit. Saul Bass was one of our most gifted graphic designers. His work spans four decades and he has opened for everyone from Preminger to Scorsese. And as reader JD pointed out, you also get to hear some great scores.
What a lot of people in the event industry may not know, is that few people have had the influence on corporate branding that Saul Bass did. For instance when he did the Bell System logo redesign way back in 1969, he had a van painted to drive out on stage at the shareholders meeting to introduce it… Yep, 1969.
I had one meeting with him when I got out of grad school in 1974. What he said informed my career.
Here is a link to a film of Bass presenting the design to AT&T executives. His remarks are still relevant today:
“In the new look, each impression contributes to the whole. Each signal, one piece of a mosaic, operated as a national visual communications system. It will introduce into every town in this country a new Bell look of excellence.”
And one to send you off to the Holidays with a smile on your face and a bounce in your step.
20 Inspirational Sales Quotes From Don Draper
Don Draper might deal in print ads, billboards, and radio spots, but his ideas about how to advertise, sell, and market still resonate today.
All of them are wonderful but I particularly like the irony of #1 in the face of Big Data and marketing personas….
People tell you who they are, but we ignore it because we want them to be who we want them to be.
Almost a Casey Stengel-ism! Or group thinking
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.
7 Winning Ways of the Event Food Waste Warrior
Virtually every green event checklist includes a call to curb food waste. Here on Event Manager Blog we’ve shared a few ideas to consider. But how does a meeting planner practically implement a food waste reduction program? After all it’s not all about checklists. What process steps do you… Read more
Source: www.eventmanagerblog.com
I don’t mean to preach but… For many years I did the marketing for Angel Harvest and America Harvest. The Harvest movement – which is global – is all about saving good food from events, restaurants and other places food is served and getting it to people who are hungry. If you are interested, the article offers a good point of departure.
Content Discontent – The Jolt! from ckwrites 10.15.2014
Despite the proliferation of content marketing specialists, content marketing still presents a significant opportunity for event marketing agencies. When given a chance, I argue that event marketing is one of the birthplaces of content marketing – especially case studies and other forms of customer success stories. Here are 5 stories about individuals and teams who are not content with average content.
If you want the thirty second lift on this whole post, it’s that the best content brings value and insight to the reader. It’s about them, not you or your client.
The Anatomy of Content Marketing for Ad Agency New Business
This article from agency business development guru Michael Gass, provides an excellent framework for understanding how to use content marketing effectively.
The core of your content strategy should be to consistently deliver beneficial information to prospective clients.
But what is that? Gass suggests that your content marketing strategy should be built around topics that appeal to your target audience and differentiate you from your competitors.
I recommend a niche blog. It provides agencies with the perfect platform to build awareness and a positioning of expertise that is appealing to a specific target audience. It also allows them to have a clear point of differentiation from their competition.
He points to Sheehy + Associates, a small advertising agency in Louisville, KY. Their primary target audience are big retail chains who are constantly opening new stores. As their expertise is in grand openings and new store starts, they built their content around the idea of The Store Starters: Marketing Resources for Great Grand Openings.
The post concludes with three specific recommendations. The first one is:
Prospects are also looking for expertise. If you want to be positioned as an expert, you must write.
‘We Always Give People a Path Into Our Technology’: Inside IBM’s Incredible Content Marketing
Few companies have as many stories to tell and campaigns to leverage as IBM. From “I’m an IBMer” to “Smarter Planet” to “Watson,” to the recent triumph at the US Open, IBM has helped to define the content marketing space. I was fascinated by this quote from a presentation by Ann Rubin, IBM’s VP of branded content and global creative:
The case study of from South by Southwest is a classic example of bringing the possibilities to life. Using Watson, they created the #IBMfoodtruck.
Together with chefs from the Institute of Culinary Education, Watson came up with crazy recipes like Baltic apple pie, Austrian chocolate burrito, and Vietnamese apple kebab. Using specific parameters and input from the chefs, Watson would find an appealing ingredient and offer it up as part of the recipe.
In order to include its Twitter followers in the insanity, IBM began asking them to tweet-reply which ingredient they wanted to see used. The company then reused the recipes and event content created on its Tumblr, and created several close-up videos with the chefs showing how the final recipe decisions were made.
This is a solid article with a lot of excellent examples.
The CMO.com Interview: Karen Quintos, CMO & SVP, Dell
As you would expect, Dell comes at this from a completely different point of view based on their heritage as the first direct-to-customer IT company. Over time they have evolved from a PC company to an end-to-end IT provider. Explaining this shift and demonstrating the benefits has led them to a more traditional case study approach. Said Quintos:
…We have found that customer storytelling is the best way to demonstrate this shift in the brand. A few years ago, we invested in extensive customer research, and we consistently heard across all segments the desire to learn how Dell enabled their customer outcomes. That led us to a new articulation of our brand promise–giving our customers “The Power to Do More.” Over the past couple of years we have celebrated customer achievements and how technology helps them grow and thrive.
The article does a great job of chronicling the evolution of Dell’s use of social media to support their narrative.
So let’s say you are inspired, or at least a bit curious, about how to put it all to work. Here are two things that might help.
Content Strategy for Agencies
This is a free PDF offered by www.gathercontent.com, which makes tools to support and manage the website content development process.There position is that:
There is a symbiotic relationship between content and design. One cannot thrive without the other.
If you take the time to understand your content’s goals, target audience, format, source, structure, volume, frequency, quality, ownership …
… you will make smarter strategic, functional, user experience, visual design, and business decisions.
In essence, the rush to get to design approval without thoroughly understanding the content leads to problems when the design has to actually present the content which is what the whole exercise is about.
A lot of this is common sense that can also be applied to the production of event marketing tools and event content.
35 Kinds of Content Discovery Tools
This is one of those unbelievably rich resources you bookmark, put in Evernote, print out and other use every technique you know to make it possible to find it later. Curated by Robin Good, this page is divided into 35 categories ranging from News Discovery Apps which includes news360, a story search engine and ends with his personal list of Top Content Curators beginning with Maria Popova of Brain Pickings where the lead story today is Happy Birthday Nietzche.
Something for everybody and then some.
Part 3: Apple Rocks On – The Jolt! from ckwrites 09.24.2014
Who would have thought that one product launch would provide us with three weeks worth of entertainment…? But for all kinds of reasons, this one has great legs.
Show Me The Money
Let’s start with the home run. CNN Money reported that Apple sold 10,000,000 of the Sixes the first weekend.
The achievement is remarkable, considering that China wasn’t a part of this year’s opening weekend.Apple (AAPL, Tech30) sold 9 million iPhone 5C and iPhone 5S smartphones during the first three days of sales a year ago — a weekend that included Chinese sales.
By all accounts the Plus ‘phablets’ are in high demand. I mean why not. What’s another $100 on a two year contract?
And please. Indulge yourself. Because according to Bloomberg who commissioned a cost analysis:
It costs an additional $15.50 to make the larger iPhones, according to a breakdown by researchers at IHS (IHS). So Apple pockets an extra $84.50 on each iPhone 6 Plus.
The total margin of an iPhone 6 Plus comes to just over 71 percent, compared with 69 percent for the iPhone 6 and now just under 65 percent for the iPhone 5S.
Phone sales are not the only thing that Apple watchers (pun =) are tracking. iOS8 adoption is another bellwether that reflects the installed base as well as the Sixes. iClarified is reporting that
Apple has announced that iOS 8 adoption reached 46% on September 21, 2014…. (this) is impressive considering iOS 8 was just released on September 17th. Before the release, iOS 7 adoption was over 90%.
49% of users are still using iOS 7 and 5% of users are on earlier firmware versions.
Part of the attraction might be based on the promise of enhanced privacy.
In a blog post, Apple says that iOS 8, which began rolling out Wednesday, has new encryption that will no longer allow the company to bypass a customer’s passcode to access the data.
“So it’s not technically feasible for us to respond to government warrants for the extraction of this data from devices in their possession running iOS 8,” it said.
Please, Show Me More Money
This was seen at my local mailbox. And yours…?
Citi to Integrate Credit and Debit Cards with Apple Pay
With a single touch, pay with a Citi credit or debit card using iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus…
Deep Six
Long, long before Jony Ives discovered Biondi Blue, Apple led the way in design for manufacturing. It’s not just a matter of getting everything to fit – it’s a matter of getting it to fit so that units can be assembled quickly with a minimum of fasteners and other costly parts.
So it wasn’t long after the first Sixes hit the street, that people began tearing them down to find out just what makes a Six tick. iFixIt presents the very cool The iPhone 6 Plus Teardown Review.
Things start to get interesting at Step 6 when the team announces that it’s “iSclack time.” In case you’re wondering the iSclack “allows us to easily shuck the display assembly from the rear enclosure.”
It took the fearless explorers 22 more carefully annotated steps to complete their work. The result? An “iFixIt Repairability Score of 7.”
We have slain the giant. The iPhone 6 Plus earned a respectable seven out of ten, an improvement over the iPhone 5s.
But seriously – who wants to endure a repair if you can avoid the experience. Fast Company Design guessed that what you really wanted to know was The Best Way To Protect Your iPhone 6 Without Destroying Its Design. And the promise is one I wasn’t expecting…
YOU DON’T NEED AN IPHONE CASE. HERE’S A KILLER DESIGN TRICK FOR PROTECTING YOUR IPHONE 6 WITHOUT OBSCURING ITS DESIGN.
Spoiler Alert – well you do need some stuff – just not a whole case. The argument being that you really shouldn’t need to protect it from the slings and arrows of daily life. This is newsjacking at its best.
It’s All About Tim
Boy was I proud when this weeks cover of BusinessWeek read “Tim Cook’s Apple.” Because you so absolutely read it here first two whole weeks ago in “It’s Tim Cook’s Turn.”
Tim makes much the same point I did:
…The lines between hardware, software and services are blurred or disappearing. The only way you can pull this off is when everyone is working together well… (when) they are so focused on a great experience that they are not taking functional views of things.
But who doesn’t think that Steve would be beyond verklempt over this cover? As with all things Apple, the new normal requires not mincing any words.
Fast Company took a seemingly indirect approach with “Why Businessweek’s Ugly Tim Cook Cover Is Subversive Genius:”
To say that the design of Bloomberg Businessweek‘s latest cover has raised eyebrows is to underestimate the ability of human eyebrows to literally rip themselves off of the skull to which they are attached.
After the announcement of the iPhone 6 and Apple Watch, Businessweek put Apple CEO Tim Cook on the cover, flashing the most shit-eating grin in history.
OK – I know you’re having a hard time believing that anybody could contribute anything more to the discussion but you would be wrong. BoingBoing noted that:
A graphic designer at Bloomberg Businessweek instantly ascends to world grandmaster of not giving a f__k.
Yup, they used the f-bomb so it must be true. But wait, there is one more person in the Fast Company story to be heard from:
I asked Businessweek Creative Director Robert Vargas if the intention was to send a message to readers about Tim Cook’s credentials (or lack thereof) by choosing these specific colors and typeface for the cover. Perhaps not so surprisingly, Vargas stuck with Bloomberg’s official (making of) story that the only intent was make Tim Cook look like a happy, fun-loving CEO.
“We were really happy with the spirit of the cover photo, and how it’s the antithesis of the formality and seriousness you might expect from a portrait of a powerful CEO.”
All right then – please try marching your antithetical seriousness into your local C-suite, and be sure to write if you lived to tell the tale.
Nope, It’s All About U2
You know this is actually painful… Because it’s all too easy to imagine a bunch of (old white) guys sitting in a conference room for at least an hour thinking of ways to end the greatest launch on earth. (Yes, if you’re tracking with my reference, Tim should have called Mick.) But the Infinite Loop speed dial is set to U2.
And you know what – I would have pitched it.
- You’ve got surprise.
- You’ve got the live performance reminding you why an Apple event is the hottest ticket in town.
- You’ve got gift of unimagined largesse… though I would have liked it better if Bono would have said all the money went to his charity, Red. Perhaps the rest of the band didn’t agree?
- You’ve got an ad campaign that is vaguely reminiscent (though not nearly as good) as the Black Eyed Peas “Hey Mama” spot for the iPod 3G (2004) that started it all. You’ve got a lock on the Guinness Book of Records.
- And if that wasn’t enough, you’ve got some world class bragging rights about your ability to reach out and touch your installed base.
Given a chance I would have rocked it. Heck. I could have made it sound sane.
That said, anyone who has ever endured picking an event headliner, knows that everything about it is high risk, low reward. (This is especially true when the CEO’s wife or kids have the deciding vote.) Because there is simply no way that you can fool – or please – all the people, all the time.
The fact that not everybody was delighted is neither surprising, nor IMO much cause for concern. Hey – these guys haven’t put out an album for 5 years – might that be a clue about supply and demand?
In fact I suspect that the band may well have appreciated the challenge since they started teasing a cut from the album in February on the Tonight Show with a spectacular rooftop performance.
I love the way that Stereogum reported it:
Last night was the night Jimmy Fallon finally wrested control of The Tonight Show from Jay Leno’s fierce, demonic clutches. Fallon’s first musical guest on the show was a big one: U2, there to hype up their forthcoming as-yet-untitled album. The band played two songs, and they did both in notable fashion. For their new single “Invisible,” they took over the rooftop at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, performing with the Rutgers University Marching Band at sunset. That is not a huge rooftop, so I’m guessing every last person up there was afraid for his or her life. (NOTE this is pretty amazing.)
Clearly it was the reach out and touch my inbox that provided the chattering class with a whole new definition of impropriety. Personally I think the whole thing is seriously over-wrought, but the reaction is kinda fascinating.
Tumblr had a thread entitled “whoisU2” that is flat-out ugly.
“We’re here to revel in the hysteria” seems a bit more vicarious than may be healthy. Still, it is amazing to me (as an old white guy) how many people posted claiming not to have the slightest clue who U2 is. Really?
In a bid to go a bit more up-market, a blog called B2C – Business To Community – weighed in with Content Marketing Lessons Learned From U2. In their opinion:
…Content marketing should cause consumers to feel like they’ve found your brand—not like you’ve targeted them and hounded them.
The band and Apple left no room for the consumer to play a part, to feel like he or she contributed to the process. There’s no sense of choice here. It simply feels as though a product has been forced upon us…
In other words – it’s always good to maintain a bit of mystery – and to make sure that it’s Oliver who is pleading with Fagan, “please sir, may I have some more.”
Even Forbes weighed in with some of the same comments in Analyzing Apple’s U2 Mistake noting that:
- People want pull, not push. For me this is the important take away for the event-o-sphere.
- Downloads are over. You know what, I hadn’t thought about it but the younger you skew, the truer it is.
- The band isn’t as cool anymore. Hurts to say so but again if you want to target Millenials you need to get your p’s and cues right.
- With no current tour, U2 can’t capitalize on either the album or the current hype surrounding it. This is strictly an insider industry insight – and it does make you wonder.
The Guardian (a UK paper) provides a sorely needed, entirely refreshing counterpoint with How to take this strange protest over Apple’s giveaway:
Maybe the real problem is that the music industry has actually done what every internet critic kept saying it should: find a different business model. Getting Apple to pay for an album is the same process as the Coca-Cola company licensing the Ting Tings for new ads…Perhaps the problem isn’t with U2; it’s with some people’s expectation a few years ago that the music business would roll over and start giving everything away without strings. That was never going to happen – except in the minds of those less imaginative than record executives.
It only seems right to give Bono the last word.
(In an interview in The Mirror) Bono said he was pleased with how many people had bothered to listen to it.
“I’ve just heard that 38 million people have listened to Songs Of Innocence in the last seven days. If you’re a songwriter, if you’re in a band, that’s kinda all you can ask for,” he said.
He went on: “We get people might want to delete it, but believe me, no-one has deleted more U2 songs over the last five years than U2. It’s just a thrill that so many people have heard them.
“All I can say is that there’s a lot of blood, sweat and tears which went into your junk mail.“
That’s it from Taos. Rock on.
Apple Aftermath – The Jolt! from ckwrites 09.17.2014
Thanks to all of you who took time to let me know that they enjoyed It’s Tim Cook’s Turn.
MEET THE IBUCKLE, THIS AUTUMN’S MUST-HAVE WEARABLE
The aftermath of the Apple event has turned into a fascinating study in the art of news-jacking… and that’s the way we are going to look at it today.
Ken Segall, a former CD at both Apple and NeXT was out early with his post The iPhone/Watch event: errant observations. He had a number of decidedly snarky “insider” comments, all good for a smile.
I was surprised by the “plus” word, being a term one normally finds in a certain section of the JCPenney catalog.
I empathize with the Apple writers’ challenge, but I still had to chuckle when Tim so boldly proclaimed “These are the best iPhones we’ve ever made!” Sure hope so. If Apple ever introduced an iPhone that isn’t better than the previous model, I will turn in my Apple Enthusiast badge. That’s a threat.
When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone, the entire world had been referring to it as the “iPhone” for months. The name was expected and appropriate. This time, despite the fact that the world had been buzzing about the iWatch, what we got was the Apple Watch. Shocker!
Not knowing what the bogey was, the numbers appear to be stunning: 4 million units ordered in the first 24 hours. This article has an analysis by Piper Jaffray who projects that the 6 series will top 6.5 million in three days – compare that to the 74 days that it took to sell 1 million units of the first iPhone.
Speaking of a bogey, I would just like to say that it is stunning that I got simultaneous emails Monday morning with the exact same product shot from Apple, Verizon (my carrier) and Best Buy (where I bought my last one) all encouraging me to pre-order.
- If you want to try to determine when the big 6 Plus (is P really for ‘iPhablet’?) will land, you will want to read Photos from Inside a 747 Flying iPhone 6 Units to the U.S. – specifically 195,000 of them.
- If you can’t decide which one is right for you, you need to download How big is the iPhone 6 Plus? Find out with our handy paper template.
- If you’re on the fence, Gear Patrol’s: DECRYPTED: THE IPHONE 6, WHAT MATTERS AND WHAT DOESN’T dives into a number of practical areas that no one else seems to have thought about.
- The august WSJ offers up How to Choose Between iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus noting that the choice is fraught with peril. “Pick the wrong size and you could be left struggling to be productive—or struggling to tuck your phone in your pocket. My advice: Choose a phone the way you choose shoes.” (Really?!)
- And if you want to sell your current model read Where to sell your old iPhone: A comprehensive guide from USA Today.
One of my favorite posts was from the ever elegant, erudite Graham Robertson who wondered Is it time we admit that the Apple BRAND is better than the Apple PRODUCT?
It’s time for us to realize that Apple has shifted from a product driven brand to an idea driven brand. The real reason people buy Apple is the BIG IDEA that “We make technology so SIMPLE, everyone can be part of the future”. With Apple, it has become less about how we think about the product and more how we feel about the brand. While Samsung has a better product than they do a brand, Apple now has a better brand than they do a product.
One of the softly blurred details of the Apple Watch launch is that the watch requires a late-model iPhone as a companion. Some people reacted poorly to this, feeling that Apple was ignoring a larger market.
Cooler, more practical minds stated the obvious – there’s a limit to how much you can pack in to something that still looks and feels like a watch.
Fast Company asked What Top Designers Think Of Apple’s New Smartwatch. The answer probably won’t surprise you…
Whether or not the Apple Watch is a game changer will ultimately be decided through its interaction with the software ecosystem. But as far as just the physical design is concerned, I’m not convinced it’s a clear winner. It’s possibly not even the leader.
Boy toy pub Gear Patrol took the bull by the horns and shouted it out:
LAMENTING THE APPLE WATCH’S MISSED OPPORTUNITIES, WITH THE HELP OF CINEMA.
For $350 the 21st century man is being offered what Apple claims is part of the future — but really, the watch is a watered-down version of past creations from that wellspring of moral beauty and righteous innovation, Hollywood. There are only two problems left in the life of a modern man (besides removing U2′s “Songs of
ShitInnocence” from his iPhone 6): securing a mate and besting his neighbor. Hollywood already solved them with better wearables.
5 Ways The Apple Watch Changes Marketing is a really smart piece that recognizes that the Apple Watch is nothing more than a second screen for the iPhone – one with its own unique characteristics. Here are 3 of the 5:
1/ Apps – Marketers will need to figure out how to not only market their iPhone and Android apps, but how to get users to download their smartwatch apps as well.
2/ Payments – Retailers that have not yet upgraded their payment systems to accept NFC payments will want to get ready for a surge of young customers eager ditch their credit cards in favor of arm-waving checkouts.
3/ Social Media – It’s no secret that Apple’s target consumers for the Apple Watch are also the biggest consumers of social media content on the planet.
Savvy marketers can take advantage of this future trend by creating content tailored specifically for small screens. That means short, simple communications like status updates and pictures which are much easier to engage with than videos, articles and links to websites.
The idea of creating specifically for the small screen (i.e. dumbing it down to the lowest number of characters yet considered) suggests that Wearables could make the “glance” a new subatomic unit of news.
We are about to enter the era of “glance journalism.”
“Glance” is the name of the feature of the Apple Watch that let Watch-wearers skim through a series of not-quite-notifications. Maybe they are notifications, but only as a subset of a new class of ultra-brief news.
There are concerns of another kind as Bloomberg reported in Apple Watch Privacy Questioned by Connecticut AG Jepsen. Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen wants to know how personal and health information collected by the Watch will be protected.He also said that he wanted to know if Apple will review privacy policies for apps, and if it intends to enforce policies requiring it to reject apps that offer diagnoses or treatment advice without regulatory approval.
When new technologies emerge in consumer markets they inevitably lead to new questions, including questions about privacy, Asking those questions and engaging in a proactive dialogue about privacy concerns before a product comes to market is an effective and mutually beneficial way to ensure that consumer privacy is protected.
Another area of concern is of course the security of electronic payments. In case you’re wondering, a lot of people like Apple’s chances in the payment business noting the combination of size, engineering, technology (learn the word NFC) and brand awareness. And perhaps more importantly, some think that they are in the right place at the right time. None of this seems to be enough to move the stock but that’s the problem with megacaps.
Still CNBC just reported US Banks race to gain Apple Pay card advantage.
US banks are in a marketing race to persuade users to choose their cards as the default option under Apple Pay. Marketing staff from the banks are due to meet at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino on Tuesday, according to people familiar with the matter, to receive strict guidelines on how they can advertise Apple Pay to customers. (ED NOTE More proof that no one is safe from the Apple brand police.)
Meanwhile PayPal launched a pre-emptive strike with an ad suggesting that Money should be safer than selfies, a none too veiled jab at the recent iCloud hack that revealed a lot of nude celebs.
As I noted last week, this is a crowded space with literally most of the consumer dollars in the world on the line, so it’s unreasonable to expect that Apple – or any other single entity – can dominate. Still a little bit of a whole lot (said to be 15 cents per 100 dollars) adds up to a tidy sum.
And finally, U2. It seems that lots of people who work at Apple have spent the past week answering the question “what is this U2 stuff doing on my phone”…?
And wait for it… “U who?”
Want more? Read the CBS News story Apple’s $100 million U2 debacle.
Perhaps, as one writer in Wired put it, the U2 backlash was an expression of a “completely indefensible expansion by Apple beyond its operational purview” that was “worse than spam.”
Or it could be that many Apple users have begun to see what central control of an ecosystem actually means, when you’d be better off depending on the kindness of strangers rather than people you thought were friends.
Apple finally got the message and created a website to allow customers to remove Songs of Innocence from their devices.
Perception is the damnedest thing. I see the U2 ads on TV and wonder how many deadbeats are signing up on iTunes to get something for nothing. Meanwhile the aforementioned Wired article is flat-out scathing (and I mean down right blistering) about the intrusion.
Not bad for a product launch – it’s clear that event marketing is more effective then ever.
And it’s good to know that the Law of Unintended Consequences remains as tricky to negotiate as ever.
Oh gosh – my bad – I forgot to ask, what do you think?!
It’s Tim Cook’s Turn – The Jolt! from ckwrites 09.10.2014
True Confession
When I got up Tuesday morning I had absolutely no intention of writing The Jolt! this week, much less (spoiler alert) one of the longest ones of the year. In fact, I had hoped that you might be getting used to the new format… (Please bear with me, it’s getting sorted.)
The most popular posts I have written all have to do with my times with Apple, Steve Jobs and the launch of the Macintosh. As you might remember, the launch took place at Flint Center in Cupertino, CA on a gray January day in 1984…
When Steve passed, all the wise men figured that Apple’s days were numbered. That his anointed heir, COO Tim Cook, could not possibly lead Apple as Steve had. You see, Tim is an Ops guy. A brain that is all about process, clearly defined goals and relentless metrics to ensure that goals are being achieved, margins expanded and EBITDA nourished. Solid, admirable B-School stuff, but kind of ‘meh’ if your taste in pop culture icons runs towards people who think different.
And Now For Something Completely Different
I didn’t expect much when I tuned in to Tuesday morning. Talk about doing a show when everybody knows what’s coming… But there were a few things I was curious about. The event was staged at Flint Center, the same place we had launched the Macintosh in 1984. That in itself is somewhat noteworthy, as most of the Apple product launches since have been in Moscone Center – a much bigger facility in San Francisco.
Secondly (and sadly) it is almost 3 years to the day that Steve died…
What I saw was something distinctly new and different. Steve-like in its ambition. Decidedly post-Steve in its execution. Tipping the hat to the past while racing forwards.
IMO, Tim has redefined his stage persona to something more comfortable and authentic.
He is not Steve. He was never going to be Steve. He knew that. We didn’t.
The mistake we all made is thinking that the only way to run Apple was the way Steve did.
Wrong.
The Design
First of all, event people please take a look at the graphics feed that accompanied the live cast. Clean, gorgeous. A seamless tapestry of live shots and speech highlights, prepared marcomm materials and factoids, on point celebrity tweets, video clips and more.
Go look and shamelessly steal because the bar just went straight up.
OH. Lest we not cry shame. The video feed had all kinds of problems in the early going – first came the very annoying Mandarin as a second language track – assumedly a live translation to a very important market. Then came multiple breakdowns in the broadcast itself. I thought it was my crummy DSL feed but no, it was a global meltdown… Don’t know what happened but it sure wasn’t pretty. Good thing the graphic feed continued to be updated with all the key points… hmm, redundancy – an Ops concept.
The Phones
Tim said “Today, we are pleased to announce our biggest advancement in iPhone.”
The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are drop-dead gorgeous. Yes, in straight market share Apple has ceded ground to the Android/Samsung crowd, but no matter. They got some back – and no doubt held on to some of their existing customers who wanted more real estate..
Here is where things began to become uniquely un-Steveish for me. Because guess what… Tim left virtually all the show-and-tell, the fondling, caressing and drooling over the new shiny phones to top marketer Phil Schiller.
Phil did his usual credible job. He had more than a handful of bullet points to play with – a new processor, a new camera, full HD resolution on the 6+, 240 fps slo-mo video, a new iOS and on and on… The one disappointment for me is that the new screens are not sapphire.
If you want more details, Slate has a good breakdown here.
What Was In Your Wallet?
Next up was the Apple’s long expected entry into the payment market called Apple Pay – which with any luck at all will replace what’s in your wallet with what’s in your pocket…
Tim said “We’ve placed a lot of time and energy into creating an entirely new payments solution,” then hands it off to an exec to pound through the details.
Will lightning strike again in this very crowded field?
Home Depot’s admission yesterday that they have been hacked is making a strong case for something much more secure than the card in your wallet. I got a taste of it this summer and it is a subject of intense concern. I think that the charge will have to be lead by the card companies who will have to convince millions of merchants to move to a new platform. While that happens, Apple will have to rely on their installed base and software smarts to make this go.
Here’s a couple of things that seem as though they might tilt the odds in Apple’s favor.
Everybody who has an iTunes Store account has a credit card on file. And that credit card is incorporated into Apple Pay.
Which will of course be available in iOS8 on the new iPhones – as well as the iPhone 5 series. I don’t know if you’re getting the impression that Apple is starting to hum like a Swiss watch, but I am.
Think about this from an Operations view. Straight out of the box, Apple Pay will work with the banks that handle 83% of the credit card purchase volume. It will initially be accepted at 220,000 US locations.
I am betting that Apple made the deal the Tim way. By offering up the promise of millions of Apple customers – the upscale, early adopters that other marketers mostly dream about.
Another Tick
But wait. Tim says “There is one more thing…”
If you are any kind of techno-fan you know that people have been waiting, and waiting, and waiting for the long awaited Apple Watch. Low key and obliging, Tim says “Apple Watch is the most personal device we’ve ever created.”
This time Tim hands off to a Jony Ive video followed by an on-stage demo. I don’t wear watches but this one is really slick – from the customizable face, to the ability to monitor your pulse, to the built-in Siri voice help, to the new Taptic engine that can subtly give you navigational cues and let you know that “you have mail.”
Of course it comes with a complete SDK called Watch Kit so developers can add Apple Watch apps to the 1.3 million apps already in the App Store. Better yet, the full functionality is only achieved by pairing your Apple Watch with – you guessed it – your series 5 or 6 iPhone. You can do some pretty cool things with that combination.
And talk about calculating potential ROI. I am thinking that Tim made the decision to go-to-market with Apple Watch knowing that there were 500,000,000 people in the world who already own the prerequisite iPhone. Of course like the phones, the watches will also work with Apple Pay.
And no, we are not done yet.
The Play-Off
When Tim comes back out he says “Music is in the DNA of Apple. From the introduction of the first iPod to the addition of Beats, Apple has changed the way we all listen to music.”
First comes a brief nod to the eighth-annual iTunes Festival; a month-long series of concerts streamed free from London to over 100 countries.
Then Tim talks about the relationship Apple established 10 years ago with U2. And right on cue, Bono and the boys walk out on stage to perform a cut from their new album.
When they’re done, Bono explains to Tim that they just finished the album last week. He wonders what Tim might be able to do to help them get the album into as many people’s hands as possible, as quickly as possible. And right there on the original birthing ground in Flint Center – before our adoring, completely mesmerized eyes – Tim gets to do something I am sure Steve always dreamed about.
Presto Mister Zen Master Wizard (which is what Bono called Tim,) the guys high five and the new U2 album is available free as a gift from Apple, to all 500,000,000 iTune Store customers worldwide. Making it not only the largest album release in history, but also the fastest.
Now to be clear – and this is from the New York Times:
Apple paid the band and Universal an unspecified fee as a blanket royalty and committed to a marketing campaign for the band worth up to $100 million, according to several people briefed on the deal. That marketing will include a global television campaign, the first piece of which was a commercial that was shown during the event.
Just log on to iTunes and you’ll find yours there waiting for you. And I bet it doesn’t crash the server farm, because hey, an Ops guy planned it.
For more on the making of U2’s first album in 5 years, here is a story in Rolling Stone.
Insanely Great
What actually prompted me to write this post was the way that Tim coupled strategy and execution to connect the dots and close the event.
“We are” he said (and I am very loosely paraphrasing,) “the dominant product in every category we compete in – computers, phones, tablets, music players, operating systems, App Store, iTunes Store, the Apple Store.”
The headline in Wired this morning reads:
Why Apple Devices Will Soon Rule Every Aspect of Your Life
The biggest thing Apple showed off Tuesday wasn’t a product, or even a product line. It was the way all of Apple’s products—and thousands more from other developers, manufacturers and services—now mesh together. It is like a huge ubiquitous computer now, all around us, all the time. The interface is the very world we live in.
“The product isn’t just a collection of features,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said, announcing his company’s new iPhone, “it’s how it all works together.”
And that gentle reader, is something a great Ops guy can do for you better than anyone.
It is time to forget about what Steve would have done, or what was in the pipeline three years ago. What we saw yesterday is a very thoughtful, methodical guy who can keep all of the personalities moving forward, and all of the trains running flat-out towards a unified set of goals. The result is a juggernaut that does many things well – design, manufacturing, distribution, software as well as entertainment, publishing and lifestyle.
No other company is even attempting this, much less executing at such a high level across such a broad front.
To close it out – in a generous and unpeevish moment – Tim gave a shout-out to everyone at Apple who worked on the new products asking them to stand and be recognized.
“One More Thing. Having the time of my life. It’s a privilege to work with everyone at Apple.”
And that ladies and gentlemen, is how Mr. Tim Cook does a product launch.
And why it’s his turn.
The Jolt! from ckwrites 09.03.14
Hi All –
Hope you had a lazy weekend. I hate to see the Summer go!
Just a quick note about the new email format. No one is complaining which is almost as good as saying you like it.
I am trying to figure out how many times a week to post and would love to hear your comments. My theory is that you’ll look when you’re interested or have time – and skip it when you don’t. I am actually thinking that this might be an instance where more is more.
I am currently looking for a designer to clean up the look a bit.
ck Curates will continue with all the articles ever posted.
And I will continue to post original articles to The Jolt!
One last note. Your subscription is for both this email format and the new one. So if you want to un-subscribe, one will do it.
Thanks for your continuing support.
