Benjamin Bloom - thoughts and analysis of digital strategy, cloud based marketing solutions, and consumer experiences.
Digiday has a nice look at "product builders" at Time, Inc., who in their independent existence (free of the Time Warner mothership) begin with an idea and a landing page, find some early adopters, and refine their products. The "Cooking Light Diet" app appears to be one example.
Under SVP digital Kevin Heery (it appears) that a team of 4 product managers, who work in conjunction with the editorial staff have figured out how to build interesting products - not just more pageviews.
Apple's identity (account and Touch ID) stategy comes into focus here in this Chart via BusinessInsider.
The meta-battle is now:
# of exclusive SKUs, Total SKUs, and ease of purchase. Apple might have the digital content piece (apps, movies etc) but Amazon and Paypal have the physical (and second-hand) universe on lockdown.
TouchID certainly is going to help with ease of purchase, and the rest of the battle is: how can we get consumers to buy ____ with Apple.
I was pleased to be quoted in the Ad Age "Relationship Issue" about how brands are increasingly using enhanced strategies to cull insights and marketing intelligence from Facebook Data. The article about marketers use of Facebook data appeared in the same issue as my colleague Gregg Hamilton who commented very real possibility of consumers owning shares in brands.
Building an application, as I noted in the hypothetical example of an airline, is one way to go, and as long as the value is there for the consumer, the financial investment is probably sound. But strong consumer insights are key to making sure this is about value delivered to the consumer, not just meeting your marketing goals.
Peter Kafka of all things D wrote The Apple in The Room in 2006 (also re-posted it this morning on Twitter), but with the rise of social media, it’s become more and more true. Companies have an end around CES.
Some have lamented the departure of Microsoft from the show. If anything, Microsoft’s departure as the anchor of CES shows its decline but also how far behind the curve MS really can be.
Since companies create their own media channels, they have much more flexibility about when and how they communicate product news- both big and small. An age of real time and more transparent corporate comms also means companies can publish and shape a message all year long, at will.
The article's points about the smart devices, really the Internet of Things trend, have changed the important players. Meaningful, differentiating innovation – the kinds of WOW I WANT THAT features consumers want – happen so frequently outside the pavilion or dates of the show.
CES used to be an event for the journalists to carry the message to consumers. But now consumers don't need the journalists (not exclusively, anyway) to tell them what is cool this year. Also, important industry announcements are increasingly coming at places like TC Disrupt and the Launch conference. So yes, CES failed to keep pace with the industry but I am not sure it had a chance against the tide.
My experience at SXSW last year was very different from the previous year. In 2010, it felt like being at the center of the universe and the cusp of very important trends. At SXSW 2011, we saw more or less the continuation of the same trends, but the Interactive festival has gotten so crazy, so big, so commercial, I wonder if the big brand dollars that have flocked to the event have sapped it of some of the weirdness that made it great.
And trade shows have been replaced by Brand Shows: the biggest games like World of Warcraft and Call of Duty are now so large they have their own conferences. These events are media channels, concentrated pockets of support for the product, hungry for news. The attendees are motivated and they want to BUY STUFF. They are powerful message multipliers. The scale and style of these kids of gatherings will vary by brand but if you have that, why wait for CES?
This is the kind of multi-media experience I believe any brand can undertake with the right people approaching a high-profile event. While you would do lots of things differently to reflect your brand, the skeleton is here. Chris Brogan's post on Griffin is excellent, here are excerpts:
Summary:
Dave Delaney and his company, Griffin, put on quite a great little project with CESBound. They took an old VW bus, after hours, and restored it, and then drove it from Nashville all the way to Las Vegas for CES. Along the way, they made media, met friends, told stories, shot photos, froze a bit, played music, and had a blast.
Key takeways (from the bottom of the post):
Kudos to Dave Delaney and thanks as always to Chris Brogan for calling out a rockstar story.
