I’ve said it before and I will say it again. When I worked at Microsoft, I found the technical team to be very solid and the marketing team to be pretty awful.
Here’s yet another piece of evidence of what I mean by awful. In the US site of some business productivity software it sells, Microsoft chose to use stock photography. Not a problem.
However, in the Polish version of the same site, Microsoft replaced the head of the black guy with the head of a white guy.
I found this on TechCrunch and had to post about it. It’s simply unreal. If you are in charge of a web site like this, how can you possibly think this is a good idea?
A lot of people are very much against Starbucks. But you have to give it to them. Unlike many small coffee shops, they don’t care if you spend all day in their stores in front of your laptop. Here’s what the founder has to say about this:
“We strive to create a welcoming environment for all of our customers. We do not have any time limits for being in our stores, and continue to focus on making the Third Place experience for every Starbucks customer.”
By the way, I think Starbucks is ok, as long as they don’t shut down all the smaller, independently-owned coffee shops around the country. I think that’s possible. Cities like San Francisco, Seattle and Boston have plenty of great small coffee shops that seem to be doing fine.
I also understand their need for a healthy customer base turn over throughout the day. The smaller places have to sell food in order to survive. If people come in, order an expresso and occupy a table for a whole afternoon, it’s hard to stay alive.
A little bit more info about this story can be found here.
I recently learnt about an expensive, failed experiment by a mobile service in the UK and thought that this would be a good time to articulate in words some of my thoughts about an approach to advertising that I think will become prevalent not too long from now.
In a nutshell, being a technology guy, marketing never occupied a lot of space in my head. I never enjoyed advertising, except for the truly good campaigns, and always felt brands were out there to get me. That changed significantly when I started my own company. Ok, now that I have a product, how do I get people to buy and use it? Oh yes, marketing and advertising. And then I started thinking more critically about marketing strategies and how to make it really work. Today I understand why it’s important but I still disagree with the way it’s done, for the most part.
But let’s go back to failed experiment. Blyk is a mobile service in the UK that since 2007 has been offering free calls and texts to 16- to 24-year-olds in return for mandatory advertising. They expected to reach 4.5 million people but only acquired 200,000 people so far. Their ambitious dreams are flowing down the drain fast.
You can read more about the Blyk story here, but what’s really interesting about the reason why the company failed is that even with something as compelling as free calls, users (mostly teenagers without much disposable income) were unwilling to take the advertising hit. The article points out that the response rates for the ads was high, probably indicating that the people who bought into the service are the same people who click on online banner ads and like to talk to telemarketers. Wow, that must truly be a small number of people.
To me, effective advertising gives you something back, and that something sticks around. It might be timely information, a product that enriches your life or pure entertainment, like a well-designed tv ad or message that brings a smile to your face and stays in your memory. Unfortunately, 95% of what we experience today is a bombardment of flashing lights, colors and sounds.
Forget banner ads. One of the approaches to advertising that I think points towards the future is what’s known as branded software. It’s still gaining momentum, but I think it’s a powerful trend. Here’s an example of how it works. I was recently perusing the iPhone App Store and came across an iPhone app by Weber called ‘On the Grill‘. It is beautifully designed and advertises the Weber brand by bringing you grilling recipes and tips. As the useful tool it is, it finds its way into people’s phones and stays there. Now is Weber in the mobile application development business? Of course not. This is software-as-marketing at work.
It’s going to take time for advertisers and marketers to realize the more technology-oriented opportunities that exist in the online world. Technologists with a marketing sixth sense are already eating their lunch, just look at Google Adwords. Relevant information in context. It has its flaws but it’s a step in the right direction.
AT&T keeps sending me brochures to convince me to sign up for their high-speed convergence product, U-verse. I am already a subscriber! With so much going on these days in the realm of entertainment and communications (the social media wave, branded software, mobile opportunities), when are the marketing execs investing in direct mailings going to retire? It’s about time.
Some people believe that the only way to stop the downward spiral newspapers find themselves in involves taking immediate and drastic action now. These people suggest that The New York Times abandon its print publications and become an online publication only. Sometimes I think many other industries should go through a similar reinvention and advertising is one of them.
