macbook love and hate

Well I just got a new Macbook and boy is it awesome. Now I’m not the first person to think this, but having made the switch from PC to Mac (I’m no longer “a PC”…) all I can say is I now understand fully why people become fanatical about Apple.

What captured my attention was that the branding, the funky stuff you know and love from the ads, carries on even once you turn your macbook on for the first time. The Mac OS X introduction video – slick and welcoming makes the experience of turning on your new macbook fun and you can’t wait to see what happens next.

However this is where my gripe begins because what happens next is highly frustrating. Updates, updates, updates…

Quite simply, there is not much point in building a great brand through great advertising, creating a great first time experience but then rendering all that great brand work USELESS by forcing upon users a very “PC-esk” plethora of software and operating system updates. Over a gig of updates – just to make my macbook ’secure and stable’? Who in Apple slacked off at the final hurdle? Why release something that clearly isn’t ready…

But of course this is not just something that is limited to Apple users, it affects every computer user. Windows, as you may have experienced, is just as bad. But it seems to be more and more common, as if software or hardware companies believe we have accepted that patches and updates are part and parcel of any new product.

Well I can’t say I feel that way. To me, nothing destroys brand cred more than making it plain to your customers that you rushed a product out the door without giving thorough testing first.

Is there anything we can do as consumers? Perhaps a collective push back to the decision makers at these organisations.

If we don’t tell them…they’ll never pick up on it themselves.

How to make IT sexy

Lately I’ve been working with, and meeting, a number of tech start-ups who are launching some fantastic new products. One has even found a way to make the world wide web faster. 

Anyway, what I’m finding is that while the products are great, the way they are delivered to the world is lacking in sex appeal. In fact I think I’ve stumbled upon a little marketing gold mine…

Ok, so what I’m saying might sound a little obvious, but I think there’s a real need for good communications advice in the IT industry – especially to start-ups. It’s during the start-up phase that IT companies need to sell themselves the most. To potential investors and potential customers.

But so often the message communicated is focused towards an IT and tech audience. Now I don’t blame the business owners for this. When your engrossed in the day to day development of your business it’s easiest to stick with what you know. But in New Zealand especially, the tech audience is small and there isn’t a lot of money to be found. The key may just lie in making IT sexy -  changing the message appeal to a wider business audience.

This means not talking product in terms of what it does, how it works or who it’s for. In fact it shouldn’t even be about the product in the first instance.

It should be about a need. What need exists that this product is out to solve? Why should I care? What’s the so what that makes this product unique?

There are, of course, a few IT products that cannot, and do not need to be made sexy. But I challenge any tech/IT start-ups to think about how they communicate their business in a fresh light. It may be a case of getting a communications consultant in to give the business the “outside in” perspective required to create a message that appeals to those fat cat investors.

Social media is no different

Really enjoyed David Meerman Scott’s post on “Learning from the 3M Post-It Note debacle: Social media ethics defined”. At the end he offers five social media guidelines that I thought would be worth sharing here as well.

Read them, and you’ll probably find like I did, that they are rather common sense. And probably of more interest is the way the relate to the ethics of ‘real world’ marketing. In the real world:

• a company wouldn’t get away with pretending to be something they’re not
• a company wouldn’t get away (these days) with blatantly lying about their product or service
• an employee wouldn’t disclose confidential company information in an email to their friends

So why do companies and individuals think that the rules are different online? Although the internet may seem quite a inconspicuous place – the amount of tracking that now goes on means that it won’t be long before the truth comes out.

Companies should just stop trying to be ‘tricky’ about marketing online and just do as they usually do. People say the rules are different – I believe they are very much the same.

David Meerman Scott’s Social Media Guidelines:

1. Transparency
–Never pretend to be someone you are not

2. Privacy
–Unless given permission, don’t blog about something disclosed to you

3. Disclosure
–Disclose anything people might consider a conflict of interest

4. Truthfulness
–Don’t lie

5. Credit
–Give credit to bloggers (and other sources) whose material you have used in your blog

Six keys to maximising Gen Y marketing success

Fastline newsletter, which is an ad industry publication here in New Zealand, highlighted some research conducted by Adshel into the lives of New Zealand’s Gen Y’s today. The prime outtake of the research was that Gen Y’s like to live highly mobile lives, mainly revolving around social activities in ‘the third place’ (locations outside of the home and school/work environment).

I don’t think I can disagree with that…

What was interesting was Adshel’s “six keys to maximising marketing success”, namely:

1. Become part of their ‘third place’

2. Acknowledge their understanding of media

3. Talk with them not at them

4. Be true to the brand

5. Communication is a two-way street

6. Help them navigate the sea of information

Very interesting. In my mind I think they have a few good points here about how I would like to be marketed to.

What do you think? Is connecting with Gen Y more difficult than just following these six key points?

Making ratings really mean something

Facebook is on to something with its “thumbs up, thumbs down” rating function.

thanks robbweb2k for this image (oh and I guess Facebook)

I’d consider myself a pretty difficult person to engage with in terms of online ads. I’m not much for clicking through but lately I have been engaged, to some extent, by clicking on a thumbs rating for many of the ads on Facebook. 

I did a bit of a search on Facebook to try and find out where this data goes to but had not luck. I assume however that it’s given to the ad buyer to help them understand their audience better and the whether their messaging is engaging or not.

As far as I’ve seen Facebook is the only website to have this feature. Why? Imagine how much more valuable online advertising would be if you could collect direct feedback from the people you are trying to reach at the very point they engage with your ad.

It’s only a matter of time, surely.