Measuring Up

I marvel at Apple

The other week, I was in an Apple store in a New Jersey mall. My 10 year old son’s iPod Touch wouldn’t charge because the charging component inside the device had been bent just enough to ensure that the little rectangular charging component would not fit squarely inside. My wife and I both knew that my son was the culprit here. He loves that iPod. And, I’m sure in his typical haste to give it optimum battery time each day, he clumsily pushed it to a breaking point. Still, we had purchased a three year warranty and I intended to bring out the salesman in me with an Apple representative to convince him to either cover the damage by fixing the iPod or replacing it.

I was just about to leave for the Apple retail store, when my wife explained to me that I can’t just walk in and receive service on the spot. No, instead (like thousands of others) I had to set an appointment, online via my Apple account. When she told me this, my first thought was, “What a royal pain in the butt.” I complained to my wife that I didn’t want to deal with any retailer that has gotten this big and bureaucratic; I started having visions of what it’s like to deal with cable and phone company service and that just didn’t make me happy.

My complaints really didn’t make a difference once my son gave me that sad look, which often leads to a few tears. So, I conceded, went online and made an appointment to see a service representative at 11am, on a Saturday morning, two days later.

Anyone who has been in an Apple store understands  the branding experience that customers receive there. (I won’t provide the obvious explanation about that.) What was interesting about my experience was just how service oriented the entire process was.  I checked in with a lead customer service representative. He asked me to sit anywhere I wanted  and within a few minutes,  a personalized technician (named Bill) would be at my service. And, that’s exactly what happened. After explaining the problem and walking the technician through my warranty, I asked him if this tiny little problem could be fixed. He smiled and told me no. The iPod was ruined because no charger or device to download tunes on it, could be attached. Then, he told me that my warranty only covers “problems that Apple is responsible for. Not those that a 10 year old boy created himself.’

I was just a second or two away from trying my used car salesman pitch (and then groveling if necessary) to get some relief on this product, when Bill surprised me. He explained that Apple wants to do right by its customers and he has no problem replacing it with a new iPod Touch. I would just need to pay the $20 warranty fee. I was completely psyched and appreciative. The next few words out of my mouth were “Thank you. Really appreciate it. You’re a great guy, Bill.”

Apple came through in a major way for me. Clearly, the company is devoted to ensuring that customers experience that brand promise (ease of use, innovation and being customer friendly) that is so heavily marketed every day.  The irony here (though) is that Apple creates these products knowing that most will break down and die within a 12-18 month period. Most iPods are not fixable. That’s a very smart go-to-market strategy for Apple. The company hopes (or in this case knows) that its customers will just keep coming back to purchase the next latest (and trendier) model. It works because most customers never really ever question why these products aren’t built to last longer.  And, to my earlier point, consumers (like me) are even willing to make appointments two days in advance to have their products serviced.

Very few brands have this type of powerful impact and control over consumers everywhere. Over the last decade, Apple has become the de facto standard in how to build a mainstream brand. It has worked so well that many consumers don’t even wait until their current model is broken. They just want the next greatest version as soon as it is released. The next big question for Apple is how long can the company stay on top. Most leaders typically fall from grace after any number of years because it’s so difficult to maintain that same level of innovation, quality and service (think of Dell, HP, Sony, etc.). But, I continue to marvel at Apple because it seems to keep getting better and better, each and every year.

What’s not to like about Steven Singer?

Ever hear of Steven Singer Jewelers? I’ve probably heard this company’s quirky radio commercials a thousand times and never thought anything about them. Until it finally hit me this morning just how bizarre Steve Singer’s marketing strategy is. You see, Steven Singer’s web site is www.ihatestevensinger.com. And, whether the company  is simply promoting discounted jewelry (as it always does) or special 14 carat gold dipped roses around Valentine’s day (yuck), this web URL is proudly highlighted over and over again in all of its advertising.

I found it quite odd that a company would promote such a negative statement about itself. So, I Googled Steven Singer to see if anything is being written about the URL name and then went to its Web site. I couldn’t find much being written, but the “About Us” section of Steven Singer’s Web site gave me what I was looking for. It seems that founder Steven Singer is quite a successful entrepreneur and businessman. He started the company at an early age and then expanded it in the Philadelphia area not long after. He’s won countless awards and has played a key civic role in the community as well. The positioning doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, but Steven seems to feel that with each successful move he’s made, it’s a great reason for people to hate him (i.e. when people say, “Don’t you just hate the guy?”). Pretty weak, eh?

Regardless, his contrarian strategy to create a lot of noise around this negative (completely comical) Web site URL seems to work pretty well because the company keeps expanding. I only call this point out because it shows how sometimes counter intuitive, yet very creative marketing strategies can actually work when implemented the right way. With Steven Singer, he actually has Howard Stern preaching the company’s accolades, all while he makes fun of the URL ihatestevensinger.com. That’s caught on with Howard’s fans big time.

Who knows. Maybe this will start a trend and we’ll see Apple create www.ihateipod.com , or Disney promote www.idespisemickeymouse.com. Well… I can’t see this really becoming a trend (and I wouldn’t recommend it to any clients.) But, if it works for Steven Singer, that’s great.

Where social media is not socially accepted yet

I've spent most of this week in London. This trip has been extremely interesting because
I've had the pleasure of having long discussions with many government experts.

Their specialties range from working directly in high level government communications/advisory positions, to corporate public affairs folks, to very senior agency practitioners.

I learned quite a bit more about the inner workings of Her Majesty's government. And, although the viewpoints on a variety of topical challenges and opportunities varied some, one constant remained through all these meetings: social media is rarely being leveraged to communicate/persuade or educate key stakeholders in the public affairs world.

Don't get me wrong— it's clear that a few of the more progressive political candidates leverage the Internet to frame their message/brand and woo consumers. But, when I asked about whether campaigns (focused on motivating consumers to act) now target the most obvious virtual places they communicate and socialize in (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, target blogs, etc.), the answer was generally— no.

I'm naturally inquisitive. So, I asked why? And, the responses weren't too surprising. In most cases I heard, "Most within our industry have yet to really understand how to harness and, more importantly, not be afraid of this new medium."

Those in the world of public affairs (whether in US or UK) tend to be much more about strategy and leveraging political connections than creativity (at least that's been my general experience.) But, on this side of the ocean there are countless examples of any number of dynamic association and/or corporate campaigns that have rallied consumer sentiment online to achieve lofty goals. I know of cases where a groundswell of online support came from consumers to push their Congressmen to vote down taxes, vote a certain way on a bill and even impact the new and progressive ways that legislators now communicate back to their constituents.

It's clear that this industry based in "the States" is much more savvy about leveraging the Internet and is probably a good two years ahead of their British counterparts. Success tends to breed more openness, familiarity and desire to take risk in previously unknown channels. What those who are still clearly afraid need to know is that it's impossible to control just about anything anymore. Once a good or bad story gets out, the buzz simply lets loose on the Internet. But, like anything else, if a client's story is positive, or the truth, and is communicated in the right, transparent (and maybe creative) way, this new medium called social media should become one of the most powerful and often used tools in a PA agency's tool belt.

On the reverse end, those who don't learn to adopt, accept and become ‘social’ will go the way of the British monarchs (who actually had power) very soon.

Twitter’s been unmercifully exposed… but is it all bad?

For those of you who haven’t been following this story, it’s a wild one. Seems that digital phenomenon Twitter  was recently hacked into in the worst of ways. Some thief who goes by the name ‘Hacker Croll’ found the easiest way to break into the email accounts of Twitter employees, including co-founder Evan Williams. It seems that Croll didn’t even have to work too hard to do this. No, all he did was guess or figure out new passwords as they were reset and… viola… he was in.

The damage that incurred is simply scary. Many of the company’s most sensitive business strategy/finance/competitive approaches documents were stolen and the popular tech blog/quasi media outlet TechCrunch decided to actually focus on two of them in this article.

Reading through this article is a bone chilling experience. Twitter’s business strategy and some of its deepest secretive deliberations and possible next moves are simply laid out for anyone to see. These include: How it plans to compete and/or partner with Google moving forward, real details on its goals and strategies (i.e. should it get into the licensing content game,) how it plans to deal with any possible identity crisis (not sure I get that one, but planning for this is certainly smart,) it’s acquisition strategy (according to rough notes, it has no intention of being acquired,) what it’s financial goals are (reaching $4 million by end of year,) how RSS is the enemy and what it intends to do about it, etc., etc. etc. I think you get the point.

There are many different story angles that I could pursue through this post. For starters, how ethical was it for TechCrunch to exploit Twitter’s misery by publishing all of these very confidential approaches to attack the market? Some would say that this is fair game. Even though Twitter was victimized by a theft, once the media/bloggers obtain something, it’s in their purview to report on it. Others would question the tactic since this had nothing to do with documents being leaked by an employee or someone just being careless at the company. No, they were stolen. My feeling is that (because of the special circumstances surrounding the release of this information) TechCrunch should have backed off. Of course, some other ambitious Woodward/Bernstein wannabe media outlet or blogger would have just picked up on what TechCrunch passed on. So, this issue really doesn’t matter.

We could discuss the technology ramifications behind what happened. I certainly am not knowledgeable enough to offer any views on what security platforms should have been used by these executives to ensure greater safety within their accounts. But, it does seem like the company didn’t take a whole lot of much needed precautions by allowing a hacker to break in so easily by just obtaining new passwords.

Then there’s the topic that I’d like to focus on… which I find most interesting. As I read through the excruciating details of Twitter’s thinking on so many key business and reputational issues, I cringed thinking about how the company will clearly lose a step in its competitive race to maintain dominance on the Internet because so much of what it plans to do next will be reacted to and mitigated. But, I also got to see how this global tech phenomenon thinks. And, it’s pretty damn impressive.

Many companies in Twitter’s enviable position would be more than happy to simply focus on how to maintain their current status. (I would refer to that as being complacent.) Not Twitter. Its executives are clearly thinking about hundreds of ways to move this organization (and what it offers) into the next stratosphere. From finding ways to capture even more market share, to fending off enemies, to developing various types of strategies to deal with the other Web giants (i.e. Google and Facebook,) Twitter has clearly created a fast moving, incredibly strategic, ‘what’s next’ culture that is made to compete and won’t accept anything less than success. (Just review the notes from so many of the strategy meetings laid out in TechCrunch and you can see that.)

So, while the company might feel like it is standing in front of the world, naked right now, there are also thousands of followers who are that much more impressed with its business savoir faire and who now recognize what a special organization it is.

And then, there’s one last (but important) positive here. Not all bad publicity is actually bad publicity. Yes, Twitter feels foolish. But, through this major incident it also continues to remain top of mind for millions because of the all publicity and viral chatter that surrounds it. Everyone was talking about Twitter before. And, the masses certainly won’t stop now.