Messaging is often pointed at a “target” (ew) and notably focused on the demands and desires of brands. “Let’s drive traffic” is heard on a near infinite loop.
I wonder what it’d look like for these “campaigns” to focus on accomplishing their goal as a good chauffeur would.
image via gamikun
It seems we like things prepared for us.
We can get water from the tap and yet if bottled is available we often choose it. We can just bring the clothes home as they were presented on the store rack, just slipped in a bag but often we allow tissue and maybe a sticker to accompany them. Webapps on the iPhone were all we had for quite some time but now we have downloadable ones and often we’d rather have those.
What do we make of this? I think we desire to be cared for, to have things prepared for us. What can you prepare for someone today?
Above are just three examples. How many can you think of?
It’s a question I asked myself while driving today. Retail products assume a lot. They know the problem they intend to solve and are packaged, marketed and placed on the shelves as such.
What if you’re working on something unique? Many teams are. To build unique things the common stuff needs to be placed together in new ways. Or, uncommon things will need to be organized and leveraged in accessible and scalable ways. Neither approach starts with a retail like disposition.
Do you want uniqueness?
I received new Moo cards today. This time I got the big ones. Not my choice. I am fond of the small ones for their easy to carry features. So, I was looking to hack. How could I make carrying the big cards with a little fun and easy? I figured I’d make a holster out of the box. Viola.
Now, maybe it’s unrealistic… maybe unprofessional. Sure. Maybe. The office overwhelmingly suggested I was a geek. I think it’ll be notable and fun. We’ll see how it goes.
I think Apple described the iPad as “… the internet in your hands” in their Keynote on Wednesday because they described the iPhone in similar form. “It’s the internet in your pocket,” they said of the iPhone and “It’s ___ # of songs in your pocket” they said of the iPod. I think they are making a mistake. Or, we just don’t really understand what they mean of the statement yet.
It’s an underwhelming set of features, the iPad. It’s just a huge iPod TOUCH at first glance. Who cares? And if you’re using it while standing at a high table or sitting in a recliner chair or couch your golden like the presenters at the demo were. Anywhere else and hello neck pain (sitting at a desk without a keyboard)? So, its seems like the device has a limited numbers of use cases because of form. Maybe. Or we’re missing something when we look at it and it’s specs only.
A huge difference with the iPad and iPhone to my mind is pent up and experience educated demand. When the iPhone was released I remember people, including myself, so fed up with their mobile phones that they were overjoyed Apple, the maker of tasty user experiences, finally brought their touches to relinquish the pain of other devices.
Not so with the iPad. We don’t hate our laptops or even our other non iPhone mobile “smart” phones like we used to hate our pre-iPhone phones. We’re happy for the most part. So, when we see the iPad it’s not easy to see that the CRUX of the product is that it’s a huge screen and NO MOUSE! The thing does not have a mouse! It removes the pain many of us have learned to live with, namely, that a # of applications on our computers are annoying hard to use. Remember the last time you’ve known what you want to make and not how to make it on the computer? The iPad is a huge step in the direction of reducing the number of times that thought comes up. It will force the redesign of user experiences and user interfaces to make it easier to make things.
This is huge! I really did not light up to this until I watched the QuickTime of the Keynote on Apple.com. The first half I was underwhelmed. The second half where they show the redesign of the User Interface of Mail, and the iWork apps was totally invigorating. With the iPad Apple is dramatically upgrading the potential for an entirely revamped workshop of digital tools! Every application, every tool can now be made better for users to use! It’s about fingers.
There are an untold number of things I wish Applications would do differently to make them easier to LET me just do what I want to do. Excel is one that comes to mind. Where are all the buttons to get what I want to get done done? Apple redesigned Numbers for the iPad! There are so many other applications like this. The work flow for many (if not all) apps is dependent on a mouse now. The iPad work flow can’t depend on a mouse! It all needs to be redesigned and re-imagined with touch as THE access point.
Welcome to the world of computing much more like working in a workshop where all the tools you need are right where they need to be for you to work on what your working on. They’ll have to be. All you have are your fingers! The tools for things will need be visually connected to what your trying to work on, right there along side of them.
So, as it turns out it is about your fingers. But, it’s not necessarily all about the internet.
The next most interesting and maybe more obviously connected to monitory gain of an entire industry is that the iPad comes “pre-installed” with banner ad blockers! If users shift their work flow to the iPad the multi-billion dollar industry of banners ought to WAKE up. Build something, build HTML5 banners, build something different. The behavior of users and the characteristics of their devices will again drive change in business.
Back to the iPad specifically. It’s about your fingers!
It’s a simple question easily answered by brands in the past. Be Us. Be true to our brand everywhere. It’s comforting. It’s what we do. It’s what we’ve done. It’s even better (nearly necessary) if we can find great (measurable and effective) ROI. Be us in every place we can control (everyplace we care about) and trumpet (force) our message. In fact, there really was no provocation to the question of who to be. Be Us! Be stable, confident, tastefully arrogant. Hail to the brand.
The question is real now. The unsolicited opinion and desires of the customer for what they think and what they think a brand should be is manifold in most cases, public and easy to access. Should brands be “true” to who they think they are OR should they be who the people they want the kind favor of think they should be?
It’s a current struggle for many as the assumptions of what is possible and best practice for a brand are changing all around. The messaging and communication landscapes have proliferated, time-shifted, gone geographically agnostic and become ubiquitous effectively to the degree of infinity. Tons of stuff that once worked either doesn’t or works quite differently. So now what? Does this change how a brand behaves and therefore influence it’s identity like moving to a new culture would?
I think on one hand, yes. On the other hand, no. Where do you see the lines?
First off, it’s early. Second, there is:
-Lots of opportunity to be solved for.
-Lots of implications to be embraced.
-Lots of “best practices” to discover.
-Lots of behaviors to change.
-Lots of culture to shift.
image via Wallie-The-Frog
Let’s assume we know HOW to engage the crowd. Then what? To my mind the question is then, WHEN to engage them.
Give it to the crowd when:
-You don’t care about some aspect and want the crowd to decide.
-You have an idea but need it vetted.
-You perceive you don’t have enough time or money.
-You’re curious.
-You’re one of the best brief writers on the planet.
Do you see or know of additional conditions for WHEN to engage the crowd? Please, toss them in the comments. Or maybe it’s the case that we should always engage the crowd. In that case, we better all be amazing brief writers!?
image via //solidether
I know it might seem obvious. I know. However, “social media” is just media that happens to be social. Right?
Media is text, still images, moving images, and audio. It’s just media. We’ve had media in these forms for generations now.
In the past, few made media. Few distributed it. Many experienced it. Now we all can create it in all it’s forms. It’s easy. The barrier to entry is remarkably low. We’re all publishers now. Or rather, we all have the potential to be. Many of us are.
So what makes media social? To my mind the subject and the mechanisms for distribution are on the top of the list.
When the subject of media is a person’s life or relates to it or that of those they know it’s quite understandable that we’d want to share it. We’re social beings. But it’s still just media.
When the sharing apparatus — the distribution channel — is structured to make promotion easy it’s reasonable to expect the media to seem to amplify itself. But, remember, it’s just media.
So when media about people is easy to create and distribute in a way that makes it easy to share you get an explosion of media that happens to be social.
Maybe what is more important than the tool or the object of sharing is that we have an explosion of the inclination for social activity. That seems more core than the tools themselves.
Now the question is, how good are we at it?