Everything started with the iPhone announcement on January 9th 2007 at the Macworld. Everyone remembers the great show that Steve Jobs gave us, and the horrible show we got to see from Cingular CEO Stan Sigman. (A wrap-up about their presentation style can be found at the Presentation Zen)

Check out Steve Jobs’ presentation:

And here is Stan Sigman’s presentation (starts at 4:50):

Then the expected hype set in which resulted in an amazing coverage of the iPhone as can be seen by this analysis from Valleywag. They performed an analysis about mentions of “iPhone” in the news which can be seen in the chart below (iPhone news mentions are shown in Black).

Reasons for this incredible hype are that:

• Everyone was speculating about the iPhone but Apple kept quiet
• The final product has blown away everyone and set expectations tremendously high
• Everyone was speculating whether Apple has set expectations too high with the iPhone
• and of course: because it’s Apple

From looking at this, here comes my….
Lesson 1:

Keep quiet until the latest possible moment then make the best product presentation you can. If someone questions whether your product can live up to its expectations – keep quiet.

PC World summarizes the iPhone Hype and The Washington Post analyzes what might happen if the iPhone can not live up to its expectations. The following picture shows clearly how high Apple has set the expectations with the iPhone. This is a collection of various “user-created” designs what the iPhone might look like. And we know the story: Apple has excelled these expectations with the iPhone’s technology and design.

Nobody knows how closely Apple was following these designs but you can be sure that if Steve Jobs ever saw one of these, he would have said: “Nice, but not enough”.

Which brings me to…

Lesson 2:

Listen to your customers expectations not just to meet their expectations but to exceed their expectations.

In one of my previous posts I was asking the polemic question if Apple is really that innovative and the key insight is that at the end of the day it doesn’t matter whether innovation comes strictly from within your organization or whether it is the result of “assembling” technology and knowledge to deliver a great product. The article that I was citing in the previous article was from Businessweek: Lessons from Apple.

An article in the International Herald Tribune titled “Who really makes the iPod” nails it why Apple earns $80 on each iPod. “Those clever folks at Apple figured out how to combine 451 mostly generic parts into a valuable product. They may not make the iPod, but they created it. In the end, that’s what really matters.” And you can be sure it is the same story with the iPhone.

Therefore my ….

Lesson 3:

Focus on a few things you are really good at and let others do the rest.

These are the lessons that I take away from looking at the iPhone launch. Did I miss anything? Then go ahead and leave a comment!

If you are interested in learning more about Apple and the concept of open innovation I recommend the following books:

Closed Innovation describes an paradigm where innovation should only come from a firm’s R&D. This has been the dominating strategy in companies like AT&T, IBM and Xerox in the 20th century. Some of these companies have made the transition to “Open Innovation”, those that didn’t are gone. So what exactly is Open Innovation then?

Open Innovation is a paradigm in which companies ask themselves two questions:

1. How can I profitably use others ideas in our business?
2. How can I profitably allow others to use our ideas in their business?

With this approach you accept that there are smart people (and innovative companies) out there as well and you change your innovation management process to answer the two question above. One of the best examples for Open Innovation is Cisco. Just look at the list of companies they have acquired in the last 17 years.

Apple: Not invented here, but very welcome

But let’s look at Apple now – and especially at one article in The Economist. Titled “Lessons From Apple” the key message of the article is that the main reason for Apple’s innovations is the use of strategies that support the Open Innovation paradigm.

What the article say about the iPod:

The idea for the iPod, for example, was originally dreamt up by a consultant whom Apple hired to run the project. It was assembled by combining off-the-shelf parts with in-house ingredients such as its distinctive, easily used system of controls.

And about the iTunes:

And it was designed to work closely with Apple’s iTunes jukebox software, which was also bought in and then overhauled and improved.

The article concludes:

Apple is, in short, an orchestrator and integrator of technologies, unafraid to bring in ideas from outside but always adding its own twists.

An addition to this is the discussion about the iPhone. Remember there is already a multi-touch phone on the market. The Prada Phone.

But does being an orchestrator also mean, that you are an innovative company? What do you think?

So I am asking myself what is the reason that an organization (and it’s employees) are treating their customers as if they were you? The reason is a certain mindset within the organization which could be summarized as:

• We know better than our customers what is good for them
• Our organization is so great/innovative/creative that our customers just have to love us
• If they don’t want our products or services, they simply don’t get it

So what it takes to deliver a perfect customer experience is humbleness. I don’t mean cringingness – what I am talking about is the presence of a mindest within the organization that first of all the customer is always right.

But is the customer really always right? YES HE IS! Because the customers’ perception is reality.

• using information about its customers to determine the most important, highly valuable customers
• deploying dedicated employees whose task is to “monitor” these high value customers
• actively working to deliver a remarable customer experience by ensuring that their product or service offering is delivered in the best possible way

Here are Steve’s experiences:

Number 1:
Halfheartedly, I approached the counter and said that I had a seat on this plane, but it was probably long gone. The woman behind the gate, Carlene Boyd, replied, “Is your name Steve Levitt?” I said, “Yes.” She said, “I thought you might show up. So I saved your seat until the last second. Here it is, feel free to board.” I didn’t think to ask her why she thought I would show up so late. But that one simple act was enough to make me loyal to American Airlines until the end of time.

Number 2:
As I sat down to a dinner of fast food Chinese, my cell phone rang. The caller was a United Airlines employee named Michael. (Sorry, Michael, I can’t recall your last name.) He said, “I see that you’re at the airport and your flight is delayed a few hours. A seat opened up on an earlier flight, so I grabbed it for you in case you wanted it. It leaves in forty minutes, so you’ll have to hurry.”

His conclusion:
I have no illusions as to why American and United are nice to me: I travel way too much and they are the major airlines serving Chicago. I am a good customer. Still, compared to all the other things that airlines can do — serve warm nuts, show good movies, give a few inches of legroom — I would trade it all for a few more instances in which the airline does something out of the ordinary to get me home faster to see my wife and kids.

And this is exactly the point of remarkable experiences: doing something out of the ordinary makes your customers perform better (being at home with your kids earlier) and they will most probably come back next time they need your service.

In order to prepare the masses for the launch they published a few ads on their web-site, the low quality version can be seen below.

Now I can’t help and feel that Apple is setting expections seriously high for the iPhone. Using the mobile phone looks just too smooth to be true (even though consumers are aware that advertisements are staged). Then again – I suppose the marketing guys at Apple know what they are doing and are aware of the consequences, if the real iPhone won’t deliver the promised usability.

Judge for yourself, here are the videos:

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These are chapters in building your brand (and spreading your idea) that can not be written ahead, but in a follow-up post, he comes up with a solution: rewarding brand-building behaviour.

In order to ensure that your customer are using your product in the right way or that the correct brand message gets delivered all you have to do is come up with incentives for rewarding brand-building behaviour. Diego comes up with a few examples for the Prius case and this exercise can be done for any product, service or brand.

Now the question is, how we can create ideas for rewarding brand-building behaviour? Let’s try it with these steps:

1. Identify “good” and “bad” brand-building behaviour situations
2. Identify situations, that would increase the status of your customers
3. Now mix them up and reward “good” brand-building behaviour and provide an incentive for not pursuing “bad”

The result would be a guideline (of course you don’t call it like that ), how to use the product or service and how to “life” the brand. The result is an “army of brand ambassadors” – which would open up countless new opportunities.

It a project-based work style it is necessary to be able to visualize the outcome and the possible way to get there. Nevertheless it is even more important to be able to know the necessary skills that help you get there – the skills to get things done).

This also reminds me of my economics professor that I met while studying in Asia. He always strenghtened the importance for students to be able to ask the right questions and be able to visualize future states and not focus too much on beeing the fastest in performing a repetitive task.

So this means we should think big, act small and always keep in mind to get things done.

Most of the times (at least that’s my experience) the presentations still run very smooth and afterwards you probably think “wow, why have I been worrying so much about it”.

One great example of this is the a presentation of Apple’s Steve Jobs from 1997 announcing they Microsoft bought a big share in Apple stock and that the both companies will be working together more closely in the future.

Just imagine beeing Steve Jobs, lying in bed the night before and already knowing that the audience will not be cheering with this announcement. And if that’s not enough imagine Bill Gates the night before already thinking about the reaction of the audience when he appears on the main screen talking to a fanatic Apple crowd. I think I would not be able to sleep the night before…

But after the initial boo of this hostile crowd and after hearing the crowd laughing when Bill Gates appears on the screen, Steve Jobs manages to get them back in the boat and convices them, that this is the right move.

And after his presentation, what does he get? Standing ovations and he was probably thinking: “Wow, that was actually better than I expected”.

]]> http://www.customer-experience-labs.com/2007/04/18/on-tough-presentations/feed/ 0 http://www.customer-experience-labs.com/2007/04/18/the-pc-vs-mac-battle/ http://www.customer-experience-labs.com/2007/04/18/the-pc-vs-mac-battle/#comments Wed, 18 Apr 2007 20:38:09 +0000 Bernhard Schindlholzer http://www.passionate-marketing.com/?p=14 There has been some buzz on the internet recently about some pretty funny Apple advertisements comparing a PC vs. a Mac. In case you haven’t seen it, click on the movie below for an example or find all movies on Apple’s website.

Bill Gates doesn’t like at all. Actually his response to these ads could come straight from the guy in the movie. Here is what he said:

msnbc.com: How about the implication that you need surgery to upgrade?
Bill Gates: Well, certainly we’ve done a better job letting you upgrade on the hardware than our competitors have done. You can choose to buy a new machine, or you can choose to do an upgrade. And I don’t know why [Apple is] acting like it’s superior. I don’t even get it. What are they trying to say? Does honesty matter in these things, or if you’re really cool, that means you get to be a lying person whenever you feel like it? There’s not even the slightest shred of truth to it.You see, that’s what you call advertising. It’s not about facts, it’s about emotions. And arguing that there is “not even the slightest shred of truth to it” completely misses the point. It’s about role-models in this ad, and not about facts. Some people at Microsoft *kind of* understood what the idea with role models is. But more about this later….

So Microsoft has been a little bit slow so far with a creative answer to the blog. Nevertheless in the age of user-generated content internet users already came up with their answer to the Apple advertisements. One forum entry on the Channel9 website of the Microsoft Developer Network had an interesting reply, check it out here.And even some people spend their time on creating a movie to reply to these advertisements. A funny can be found below, others can be found on this website.

Yet it gets even better. So some execs at Microsoft probably thought “Damn it, Windows user looks studid in these adds. The Mac guy is just a hip role model – maybe we can create a hip Microsoft guy and use it as a role-model for our advertisements”. And then…everything got worse…..Microsoft created “funny” advertisements promoting their new Windows Mobile 6.0 operating system using some “young, energetic, successful” guy as their role-model. You can find one of these ads below or more of them (you really wanna see more?) here.

Now what’s wrong with this? Sorry, it’s not cool to be tied up to a light pole and be able to check your eMail. It’s not cool to be in a beaver cage and work on some Excel spread sheet. And no, it’s not cool to be able to work on your documents when you are stuck in an elevator full of snakes. This guy simply doesn’t give me the feeling of beeing “young, energetic, successful” but just some weird guy who is addicted to his email and work. Is this a role model anyone wants to follow?

This also reminds me of the marketing message of the Windows powered Ultra Mobile PC-UMPC, something like “Surf on the internet sitting on the beach, while your friends surf in the water.” Come on, you are joking – right?

Enough ranting for today….

Twitter is a “A global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing? Answer on your phone, IM, or right here on the web!”. Sounds complicated – but it’s actually pretty straightforward.

Here is how it works:

You and your friends create accounts on Twitter and you also provide your mobile phone numbers. In the next step you subscribe to your friends twitter account and you will receive all micro posts your friend sends to Twitter. Of course it also works the other way round – any message you send to twitter will be sent to everyone who has subscribed to your Twitter account. So why you need the mobile phone number -cause you can do this from your mobile phone (but also using instant messaging or the web interface).

So basically Twitter is an enhanced version of SMS texting – SMS texting with a broadcast feature, sending one message instantly to many other people. But if the user is sending one SMS text which is then sent to more than one receiver, someone has to pay for these additional SMS texts. And this is where the mobile phone provider comes in.

The mobile phone company should set-up such a system and their customers can subscribe for a monthly fee to the “T-Mobile Twitter”, “Vodafone Twitter” or “Mobilkom Twitter”. This way the mobile phone company can monetize not just on the SMS texts sent (which they will still charge) but also on the SMS texts received (via the monthly fee).

And who should be using this? Teenagers – who are busy keeping their friends uptodate about “What they are doing”. Will they be using this? Just think back about yourself when you were a teenager? Would you want to feel left out about what your friends are doing?