I have just read a fascinating piece that suggests that 74% of users are very satisfied with their Apple iPad but only 54% with the Amazon Kindle Fire.
The fact that the iPad is so popular isn't perhaps a huge surprise - after all that's what Apple does - creating brand recognition - making devoted consumers devoted to their devices with the ultimate user experience. Now the survey was not huge - around 200 tablet owning Americans, and I guess that the Kindle team have not quite made the leap from black and white e-readers to tablets (at least according to this study.)
The really interesting point was that many Kindle users expressed unhappiness with the location of the on/off switch! At first thought that seems pretty trivial switch it on - use it - switch it off - there seem to be bigger issues with the user experience. However, on deeper analysis it reminds us how critical all aspects of user experience are in determining customer satisfaction. I am pretty sure that the Kindle team thought about all the buttons probably did some focus groups; but they still got it wrong for a sizeable number of respondents. Smaller companies would probably do a water cooler satisfaction study and then change the decision based on feedback (=resistance to changing the design) from the engineering team.
For software based products life is a bit easier - it is simpler to change the design of user interfaces and in some cases it makes sense to constantly offer slightly different versions and to constantly analyse performance and to tweak the product. See this great piece for a more in depth analysis.
Hardware or software, consumer or business product it is critical to get all aspects of the user experience exactly right; and as far as possible to constantly fine tune the product. At all times the focus must be customer centric. The product team needs to understand the customer segments, and to keep their understanding updated. Go to Market is a tough call balancing lots of conflicts and pressures and it's often hard to go the extra mile with RD and to meet the other constraints like time and budget.
User experience is critical; the survey didn't say how many users would not buy the product again because it had switched them off, but, given social media, peer reviews and recommendations - a poor user experience switches the competition on.
Showing posts with label brand recognition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label brand recognition. Show all posts
February 7, 2012
January 25, 2012
The Economic Value of Social Media
Regular readers of the JET blog will be aware that we are great believers in the power of Social Media. We recommend that Product Managers and Marketers get involved in Social Media even (or especially) for industrial products and not just photos of you kids, kitten or favorite film. See for example Social Media Revolutions
A couple of items caught my eye this month - The Daily Telegraph reported that Facebook contributes over 1Bn GBP to the UK economy and supports over 18K jobs, in the EU the estimated contribution is almost 13Bn GBP. The major beneficiaries are in the small and medium business. The study was performed by Deloittes and I guess their estimates are far from being a precise science, however, it does give some indication of the staggering reach and contribution that social media is making to business.
In a similar article The Times ( link is members only content) discussed why businesses try so hard to get you to LIKE them. The estimate is that each Like costs $1.07 in marketing costs - apparently for no immediate reward. On the other hand Facebook itself has 586M Likes and Coca Cola as the most liked product has around 36M Likes and needs to have its own internal Facebook management team.
Some marketeers regard a Like as the ultimate word of mouth - influencer recommendation.
Facebook claims research showing that customers who Like also spend more. The machinations of Facebook (and perhaps impending IPO) are out of scope of this article, but it does show how seriously some of the largest and most successful brands regard Facebook & we haven't even got started on Twitter, Google+, professional social networksand all the rest.....
Your product may not be consumer orientated and it may not be as bubbly as Coke, but, it still needs a home in social networks as way of getting the attention of your customers and influencers.
A couple of items caught my eye this month - The Daily Telegraph reported that Facebook contributes over 1Bn GBP to the UK economy and supports over 18K jobs, in the EU the estimated contribution is almost 13Bn GBP. The major beneficiaries are in the small and medium business. The study was performed by Deloittes and I guess their estimates are far from being a precise science, however, it does give some indication of the staggering reach and contribution that social media is making to business.
In a similar article The Times ( link is members only content) discussed why businesses try so hard to get you to LIKE them. The estimate is that each Like costs $1.07 in marketing costs - apparently for no immediate reward. On the other hand Facebook itself has 586M Likes and Coca Cola as the most liked product has around 36M Likes and needs to have its own internal Facebook management team.
Some marketeers regard a Like as the ultimate word of mouth - influencer recommendation.
Facebook claims research showing that customers who Like also spend more. The machinations of Facebook (and perhaps impending IPO) are out of scope of this article, but it does show how seriously some of the largest and most successful brands regard Facebook & we haven't even got started on Twitter, Google+, professional social networksand all the rest.....
Your product may not be consumer orientated and it may not be as bubbly as Coke, but, it still needs a home in social networks as way of getting the attention of your customers and influencers.
September 22, 2011
Social Media Comes of Age as an Advertising Platform
Social Media is a theme here at JET and we are great believers in the power of Social Media and think that Social Media is an important or rather a critical tool for businesses of all sizes.
Even in large organisations we think that product managers and marketeers should be out there engaging with the customers - talking to them but also listening and learning. It is an easy and significant way to be relevant to our customers and customer centric. It is no longer a secret that social media can drive revolutions and depose dictators and in this recent post on Social Revolution we looked at some fascinating work by Shirky - Here Comes Everyone about how we all play a part and engage and how Social Media gives us an accessible low cost platform to share information. We also looked at how Social Media allows us to recommend and find information to and from our social circle - a knowledge enabler perhaps on par to the invention of the printing press - See Social Media - Changing Society Forever
The next stage of Social Media is to use it as a direct advertising channel - and many companies do use the social media platforms in their ad mix. The platforms also provide some great on board tools that are useful, accessible and affordable even for very small businesses. In this fascinating article it seems that Social Media has now come of age and for the first time a mega company - British Airways will be launching their new campaign on Social Media rather than on the more traditional media and advertising channels.Yet at the same time Sir Martin Sorrell the advertising legend, questions the value of large brand social media advertising. He also makes the very valid point that social media is now the new letter - its the way that we talk to each other and so advertising in this context makes it the wrong channel. Sir Martin also believes that their should be a subsidy for quality journalism (Sir Martin's speech) - surely a sign that opinion, blogs and personal news sources are having an ever increasing impact.
Sir Martin is not a person to be taken lightly and many have commented on how difficult it is to get advertising right in a social media context. However, successful ads have always had the ability to engage our imagination and provoke discussion outside the delivery channel. There are a handful of ads that were popular on British TV 20 years ago where many of us still remember the slogan and joke about them today - ultimate success in brand recognition. Social media just makes it easier and more engaging to share and provoke the discussion. Many ads on social media will flop, but the clever ones will do exceedingly well - ultimately Social Media will be a channel that succeeds. I am sure that the BA ad in question cost a small fortune to produce - but the entry threshold for producing slick, clever and successful ads on social media platforms driving brand recognition and customer engagement is so low that even moderate success will make it compelling for many businesses. At a small business level we have found that relatively cheap and unsophisticated text based ads from Google are very effective at driving quality traffic to our Israel travel website.
Even in large organisations we think that product managers and marketeers should be out there engaging with the customers - talking to them but also listening and learning. It is an easy and significant way to be relevant to our customers and customer centric. It is no longer a secret that social media can drive revolutions and depose dictators and in this recent post on Social Revolution we looked at some fascinating work by Shirky - Here Comes Everyone about how we all play a part and engage and how Social Media gives us an accessible low cost platform to share information. We also looked at how Social Media allows us to recommend and find information to and from our social circle - a knowledge enabler perhaps on par to the invention of the printing press - See Social Media - Changing Society Forever
The next stage of Social Media is to use it as a direct advertising channel - and many companies do use the social media platforms in their ad mix. The platforms also provide some great on board tools that are useful, accessible and affordable even for very small businesses. In this fascinating article it seems that Social Media has now come of age and for the first time a mega company - British Airways will be launching their new campaign on Social Media rather than on the more traditional media and advertising channels.Yet at the same time Sir Martin Sorrell the advertising legend, questions the value of large brand social media advertising. He also makes the very valid point that social media is now the new letter - its the way that we talk to each other and so advertising in this context makes it the wrong channel. Sir Martin also believes that their should be a subsidy for quality journalism (Sir Martin's speech) - surely a sign that opinion, blogs and personal news sources are having an ever increasing impact.
Sir Martin is not a person to be taken lightly and many have commented on how difficult it is to get advertising right in a social media context. However, successful ads have always had the ability to engage our imagination and provoke discussion outside the delivery channel. There are a handful of ads that were popular on British TV 20 years ago where many of us still remember the slogan and joke about them today - ultimate success in brand recognition. Social media just makes it easier and more engaging to share and provoke the discussion. Many ads on social media will flop, but the clever ones will do exceedingly well - ultimately Social Media will be a channel that succeeds. I am sure that the BA ad in question cost a small fortune to produce - but the entry threshold for producing slick, clever and successful ads on social media platforms driving brand recognition and customer engagement is so low that even moderate success will make it compelling for many businesses. At a small business level we have found that relatively cheap and unsophisticated text based ads from Google are very effective at driving quality traffic to our Israel travel website.
January 18, 2011
Promoting a Brand - Some thoughts from Richard Branson
I have recently discussed the product aspects of the Nike 10K Night Run. One of the issues that I raised was the value of a brand and how the race was designed to enhance and promote Nike as a sports brand. I also mentioned that Adidas managed to get in on the act by taking advertising space along the route.
I am reading “Screw it – Let's Do It” by Richard Branson the founder of the Virgin group. It is a fascinating book describing how he started out as a school boy entrepreneur and how he developed Virgin. The book itself will be the subject of a future blog.
I am reading “Screw it – Let's Do It” by Richard Branson the founder of the Virgin group. It is a fascinating book describing how he started out as a school boy entrepreneur and how he developed Virgin. The book itself will be the subject of a future blog.
However, in this blog I want to discuss Branson's insights into branding. The chapter is called Sex Appeal and true to the title he discusses how to make the brand irresistibly attractive. His concept of sex appeal is “A good brand has sex appeal .... the customer falls in love with it, desires it, wants it and buys into it. Sexy is youthful, fun, trendy, cool whatever your age.”
Now at the outset I will concede that I don't think that Branson is just a regular guy doing a regular marketing job – he is a real visionary (there are over 330 Virgin companies) and now that he has success he commands marketing budgets that are, well how shall we say it? – Enough to completely fund the development and launch of 5 or 10 of our best ideas, and a certain fame that brings attention (if not success) to almost whatever he attempts.
Branson also admits that he has enjoyed the stunts he has pulled – from record breaking hot air ballooning to being suspended above Time Square in nude bodysuits. He recounts how one of the pioneers of alternative air travel Sir Freddie Laker encouraged him to be the face of his product, and make the personal commitment.
So I accept that for all of these reasons Branson is not just a regular guy. He is frequently promoting consumer brands rather than the next new killer widget; and so there are many many differences between what he does and what many of us do day in and day out. None the less there are some clear lessons in his messages.
Branson says that he advises all entrepreneurs
“whatever your field, you must be passionate about it and create excitement in everything that you do. Beat your drum, and look beyond the obvious. .... I fully believe that the presentation and image of one's business should reflect the fun as well as all the hard work behind it. In my opinion there are no limitations on what is possible or what should be attempted.”
I think that in 2 or 3 sentences Branson has summarised what Nike were trying to achieve with the night race (notice the similarity between the Nike slogan and the title of Branson's book.)
Of course the brand has to act as a real differentiator the product has to be instantly recognisable - “I will stretch the parameters every time because there is so much competition, you have to stand out from the herd.” However, the promotion and branding must remain faithful to the product - “be true to the product. Don't make it something it's not. Take a good luck at the image you want to promote and go along with it”
Branson also discusses that the products must back up the brand. Having brand alone without the products to match will not work. He describes how he is constantly taking a personal interest in what both the customers and the staff think (“... it is real market research...”) and how the potential for damaging the brand is substantial with poor products. “At Virgin we want to create the most respected brand in the world... but a brand is only as good as your products.”
Part of his philosophy is accountability and engagement – he believes that people need to acknowledge their mistakes, but to engage in the debate and not be debated with no defence or leadership. He comments “it makes me angry to see organisations in crisis that with tens of thousands of employees hiding behind 'no comment.'”
So it is actually pretty clear what the race was all about. It was engaging the customers and making them part of the fun, passion and commitment that they are trying to achieve for their brand and for their image. It was a way of leading the debate, getting their customers involved and trying to stand out from the crowd (ironically, since with 15K runners there was a very strong herd effect!!!)
I think that here are some of the secrets of successful product development and especially product marketing – it needs to be fun, passionate and full of hard work and we need to break down the barriers – so that there are no limitations. Sure there are budget issues and product readiness status, but, we need to work to make sure there are no limits.
Our brand needs to be true to the product and the product needs to be true to the brand. Both the product and the brand need to stand out.
It is critical to listen to our customers to ensure that the brand and the product continually live up to their expectations. A race is one of the rare situations where you can get the customer to offer the commitment and passion in partnership with you, but, you must always get the customer involved.
As product managers and marketeers we must offer a personal commitment to our brand and product, our energy our commitment and our responsibility.
Finally in Branson & Sir Freddie Laker's words - “If you are starting your own company, a good lesson would be to think very hard about your image and how to brand it. ... get out there and use yourself.”
Screw It – Let's Do It Expanded – Lessons in Life and Business – By Richard Branson 2007 – published by Virgin Books.
The analysis and opinions are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Branson or of Virgin Books.
December 16, 2010
Importance of Social Media in Business
Here is an interesting piece on the importance of social media and the probable disconnect at senior levels in Fortune companies, with almost no CEO's being active in social media. This cuts them off from their customers but also the way their customers are thinking.
It has lessons for all PMM - we need to be engaging with our customers effectively and in many markets this means being active in the social networks. This will drive our brand recognition and our competitive positioning.
A 2009 study found that the CEO’s of top U.S. companies tend to avoid social media, according to UberCEO.com. The study found that most of the Fortune top 100 CEO’s were markedly absent from the social media community, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Wikipedia.
December 13, 2010
Does the Perfect Product exist?
So we all know that one of the hardest things about being a Product Manager is trying to get the product to the market - preferably with most of the required features and in the same decade as the target launch date.
Product timing is critical - often it is better to be in the market with a less than perfect product, getting customers involved and committed than still be in the labs working and missing the opportunity - although a poor offering can do incalculable damage to our product and our brand.
This inevitably forces us to make tough product decisions and compromises on what is in and what is out. We would all like the perfect product, but, in practice we try and define what is good enough. We need to review the product requirements and categorise (in reality recategorise) them into features that are key to the functionality, for example product differentiation and leadership, competitive positioning, key customer commitments (but see this post on balancing customer influence on a release) and usability. There will be many other features, that make sense for the overall product offering, but will not gain customers nor will they loose customers and so sometimes they will just have to wait for the next release.
These calls can be tough and it can take a brave PM to stare down the boss and the market. When Apple introduced the iPhone it was revolutionary (touch screen etc), but at the time it missed some of the key features of a phone that traditional phones already supported (network technology and speed.) Some poor PM in Apple had to make the call and say those features could wait. In this case it worked.
Sometimes, however, the choice is less successful and worse some minor features get delayed from release to release without a solution. So following on from my analysis of Nike getting some marketing issues wrong - here are some thoughts about a place were Google gets it wrong.
Briefly, when you build a website, two of the key stages in launching it are to submit the site to the major search engines together with its sitemap.
Product timing is critical - often it is better to be in the market with a less than perfect product, getting customers involved and committed than still be in the labs working and missing the opportunity - although a poor offering can do incalculable damage to our product and our brand.
This inevitably forces us to make tough product decisions and compromises on what is in and what is out. We would all like the perfect product, but, in practice we try and define what is good enough. We need to review the product requirements and categorise (in reality recategorise) them into features that are key to the functionality, for example product differentiation and leadership, competitive positioning, key customer commitments (but see this post on balancing customer influence on a release) and usability. There will be many other features, that make sense for the overall product offering, but will not gain customers nor will they loose customers and so sometimes they will just have to wait for the next release.
These calls can be tough and it can take a brave PM to stare down the boss and the market. When Apple introduced the iPhone it was revolutionary (touch screen etc), but at the time it missed some of the key features of a phone that traditional phones already supported (network technology and speed.) Some poor PM in Apple had to make the call and say those features could wait. In this case it worked.
Sometimes, however, the choice is less successful and worse some minor features get delayed from release to release without a solution. So following on from my analysis of Nike getting some marketing issues wrong - here are some thoughts about a place were Google gets it wrong.
Briefly, when you build a website, two of the key stages in launching it are to submit the site to the major search engines together with its sitemap.
Now when we built this blog we built it on a Google platform, and naturally assumed that submission to Google would be automatic. Not so - a few weeks on and we realise that we seemingly need to submit and that the submission is from a different set of Google tools and not the blog control panel. Even more frustrating, building the site map probably isn't automatic and doesn't always work the way they say. Or maybe it is automatic - depends who you believe - the Google support guy on one of the forums or the official instructions. Worst of all - this saga seems to have a history judging by the support forums and QA pages.
So given that these tools are for the general public - the user experience could have been so much smoother. Maybe there is a very good reason why submission isn't automatic - but it is hard to see why this couldn't have been properly explained and a couple of items included in the blog set up wizard. True in this case they didn't loose me as a customer, but they almost did see me checkout a different blogging platform.
To wrap it up - we need to compromise on our dreams for our products, failure to do so can ruin our chances to get market share, but, we need to make sure that we don't compromise too much. We need to listen to our customers and fix the things that we missed or omitted the first time round, failure to do will also ruin our market share in the longer term.
So given that these tools are for the general public - the user experience could have been so much smoother. Maybe there is a very good reason why submission isn't automatic - but it is hard to see why this couldn't have been properly explained and a couple of items included in the blog set up wizard. True in this case they didn't loose me as a customer, but they almost did see me checkout a different blogging platform.
To wrap it up - we need to compromise on our dreams for our products, failure to do so can ruin our chances to get market share, but, we need to make sure that we don't compromise too much. We need to listen to our customers and fix the things that we missed or omitted the first time round, failure to do will also ruin our market share in the longer term.
November 4, 2010
Product Management & Marketing - The Longest Race
A few weeks ago, I was fortunate enough to run the 4th Annual Nike Tel Aviv 10K night run. Now 10K isn't the longest distance in the world, but it is long enough to enjoy the atmosphere (amazing) and to reflect on many different things whilst running.
Sad to say perhaps, but, whilst pounding the streets I managed a few thoughts on product management.
Organising a run with over 15K runners is a real task - coordination with the city, the police, bands, official running shirts, refreshments, web site for registration and results - clearly a massive project & clearly some top class organisers were behind this event.
However, there were many product lessons to be learnt. The race organisers claimed that the other Nike night runs in Europe have been abandoned this year and that our race was the sole survivor. So clearly we see that there was some effective market segmentation and strong brand/product recognition in the local market.
Sad to say perhaps, but, whilst pounding the streets I managed a few thoughts on product management.
Organising a run with over 15K runners is a real task - coordination with the city, the police, bands, official running shirts, refreshments, web site for registration and results - clearly a massive project & clearly some top class organisers were behind this event.
However, there were many product lessons to be learnt. The race organisers claimed that the other Nike night runs in Europe have been abandoned this year and that our race was the sole survivor. So clearly we see that there was some effective market segmentation and strong brand/product recognition in the local market.
On the subject of brand recognition Nike (not normally slow in these areas) let the competition steal a trick on them - guess which company managed to get its posters on lots of billboards along the route? (So a clue then - Adidas) - so some poor promotion & competitive positioning here.
One of the main questions that we should consider is what is the product and what is the Key Value Proposition that they were promoting? Trivially, this was a race, but probably that isn't really the intention of the organisers; it was probably more along the lines of
So much for the planning and product development, in the next post I will discuss some of the results (product, not my personal time) and suggest some possible conclusions.
One of the main questions that we should consider is what is the product and what is the Key Value Proposition that they were promoting? Trivially, this was a race, but probably that isn't really the intention of the organisers; it was probably more along the lines of
to produce a mass street happening in an important city; promoting an active good time to sporty people who are likely to identify with our brand. The aim is also to attract people who previously would not have taken part in an event like this to participate.
This emphasis makes for a completely different plan driving them towards providing bands and music along the route, promotion on Facebook even the choice of the date - 10.10.10.
The local product management obviously worked hard at getting buy in from stakeholders - both in house (Nike management) and outbound keeping the city interested despite this was no longer a global effort. Not to mention trying to maintain product momentum in keeping the customers (we runners) very happy.
I guess we will never know, but it would be interesting to find out - if with all the cross branding (water, yogurts and granola bars) & other cross product promotion (Nike stores) what were the financial objectives of the event? Did the race actually make a profit - not that this is necessarily the objective. It would be acceptable to under-take a loss making activity in the right context. It would also be interesting to know (given this was a unique event this year) whether there was a process of strategic review of alternatives.
So much for the planning and product development, in the next post I will discuss some of the results (product, not my personal time) and suggest some possible conclusions.
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