Michael Myers

I recently called T-Mobile customer service to have them switch me over to the Blackberry Curve and had a very interesting experience.

Like most people, calling customer service is one of my least favorite things since it usually means something is wrong. I don’t like it because the vanilla version of a human being I usually get is more painful at times than getting no help. “I understand your frustration” they drone and I have to tell them to skip the attempt to make me feel good. I actually prefer instant messaging  support to any actual human contact and yet find myself on the phone at times.

I called T-Mobile twice and obviously talked to two different people and I had a different experience each time. The first time was a young woman and commented on the text plan that I had implying that is was an awesome plan and then related it to the one she wanted. The next individual I talked to heard my four month old in the background and asked about him. He then shared some of his experiences raising his kids. (He kept calling me “my friend” which is exactly what one of my coworkers in Canada calls me.) We were talking on speaker phone and my wife walked in and looked puzzled, since she knew it was customer service.

I have been talking about companies allowing their employee’s personalities (online/customer service) to show through, enabling people to more easily relate to them. I’ve even discussed the trend towards democracy in business. I was relieved to see T-Mobile empower their employees and have to admit it was a bit awkward. I have been known to play with customer service to get them to relax and want to help me. This was the first time I’ve ever had someone reveal a personality first. All in all it was good.

This interaction is one of the most powerful brand experiences a business can create and I think they have done a good job. The experience can only be as good as the employees are at reading the customer on the phone. That is a hard to find skill and an even harder culture to cultivate in a cube farm. Transparency is a concept that many are growing tired of hearing about and yet I hope it is less of a trend and more of a new understanding of how customers want to be treated; like peers.

I was recently given a Blackberry for work. I got the Blackberry Curve to insure that I would be able to use the whrrl mobile application and other similar applications. I was excited to download Skyfire and the Firefox mobile browser . . . and was quickly disappointed. Those applications are not available for the Blackberry.

I’ve been blogging about the iPhone recently and have see many imitators such as the Samsung Instinct and the LG Vu. iPhone users are already having a better user experience and the limited screen real estate/lesser interface will make it hard for the Blackberry to compete in the non-business consumer market.

There are currently efforts focused on creating applications for the iPhone, Android and Blackberry. Android is Google’s open source effort to enable developers to create applications. The iFund is a KPCB backed effort to encourage the creation of applications for the iPhone and Blackberry announced several months ago that they had also started a (”me to”) fund to get the ball rolling.

The iPhone has definitely changed the landscape and the real question is; will Blackberry be able to remain relevant. We can see that Android has plans of imitating what the iPhone does best and owners of the Crackberry are sure to take notice. Blackberry’s differentiator has been its ability to tie into Microsoft Exchange making it the business person’s tool. But recently Apple has been showing an ad that highlights the iPhone being used for work and Apple’s software developer kit currently offers Microsoft Exchange support.

In my opinion (and many others) the iPhone is better because of its screen size and its intuitive interface. Usability is key to successful design and as mobile devices utilize the Internet more and more, it will continue to be a driving force behind design and in turn purchasing decisions. These differentiators are more personal/less business driven and therefore more sticky. In my opinion the only thing the iPhone lacks is a good tactile interface and this not stopping the masses from jumping on the iPhone bandwagon. Currently the iPhone has over 10 million users and this number will continue to grow.

Blackberry’s weaknesses are the iPhone strengths. (It does have a QWERTY keyboard!) A redesign is needed and I believe there is a opportunity for them to go with a design like the Samsung F700. I do know that Apple is pitching the iPhone as being the phone for your life and that Blackberry has been the phone for your work. Today, for many of us who “live work”, the likelihood that the iPhone will be seen as the answer increases daily.

I have been watching Anthony Bourdain’s, No Reservations since 2005 and love the show. I appreciate his intelligence, eloquence, humor and how I feel a little more worldly after every show. I have always said that you can’t really know someone until you see the place they grew up. Bourdain’s belief is that you can’t really know a culture until you eat what the locals are eating, where the locals eat it.

Bourdain has shown me things that I might have never seen. From watching him eat a bloody & raw seal on the kitchen floor of an Inuit Indian family to seeing his skeletal system rearranged in an Uzbekistan banya. (My wife laughed so hard I thought she was going to pass out.)

I’m not a foodie and yet I find myself compelled to watch the show every Monday. I’ve appreciated watching him evolve from a self-described snarky bastard to a man of the world. From the Malaysia show where he was reflecting on the impact of travel in his life to the Brazil episode where he was so happy, I almost did not recognize him; smiling and calm. If I sound like I think I know him; I do. At the very least I feel like I know him. That is what businesses need their customers to feel like.

What can we learn from Bourdain that will help us create deeper relationships with our customers?

Educate & enlighten - Taking a page out of the book of Jason Fried (he actually used the analogy of a chef when he spoke in Denver), building deep customer relationships is made easier when you become the trusted source. If you educate them directly or indirectly your business will be sought after.

Be the SME (pronounced ’smee’) - This goes hand in hand with the last item. You can’t be the trusted source unless you continually invest in keeping up-to-date in your industry. Most industries don’t have one single SME for information. It is important to make your perspective known and back it up with relevant information. Also, being a SME does not mean anything unless you communicate what you know. I would argue that it is impossible to be a SME unless you educate and the more you communicate the more of a SME I would consider you.

Make me laugh - This is just a good way to reveal who you are as a company. Bourdain has the right balance of humor and insight. His form of humor also shows that he does not take himself seriously. I think this is very important for businesses. Unless you are in the business of cancer research; we are not curing cancer and yet we are feeding peoples families.

Be Transparent / honest - The Romania show “sucked” and he admitted it on his Travel Channel blog. Being honest is one of the keys to being transparent. It’s very easy when things are going well and much harder when things don’t go according to plan. Or the plan was completely off. Because of the Internet, customers are hyper-aware of what a company does. It’s best to embrace this and move on. (Again; from the book of Fried.)

Be flexible - Bourdain is willing to try new things (except dance and sing) and businesses should be willing to do the same. This does not mean abondon your core strengths. Also, since brand creation is now a collaborative effort, companies really don’t have a choice. Remember, everyone on the Internet has the potential to be a niche celebrity and businesses being flexible is going to become more and more important.

Have a personality - For a business, their brand is their personality and they need to empower their employees (some who blog) the way that T-Mobile has enabled their customer service. (I will be blogging about a recent customer service call I had.) This can go hand in hand with making my laugh but they are not necessarily aligned. Bourdain has a better personality because he is as reflective as he is funny.

Be willing to change - Bourdain has done this over the last several years and watching him evolve in some ways is like watching a good company grow. Apple is a perfect example. They are quiet different (yet the same) from when they started.

These are a few of the things that Bourdain does that I think companies can embrace. I also, think that these can be done in a way that builds deep relationships with customers.

As for me, I’ll be watching every Monday night . . . so . . . please don’t call.

Today is the one year anniversary of my blog. I started this blog as a collaborative tool and am still working towards this goal. I have been fortunate enough to meet some incredible people because of this tool and it has also served to solidify my thoughts with respect to the future of marketing. I’m someone that needs to have conversations on a subject to truly understand that subject. This blog has really helped me understand what changes are taking place and more importantly; where we are headed. If you frequent this blog; thank you. If you have stumbled upon it; please take some time to read some of the things I have written.

Either way, please stay tuned to see what the blog will become and email me with any feedback. With any luck comments will be turned on soon.

Thank you: Michael

This title of this post comes from a line in Ayn Rand’s 1943 book,The Fountainhead and is from a conversation between a woman and the main character, Howard Roark. Her point was that any attempt to create beauty is futile when compared to the beauty of nature and that we should abandon any desires to create beautiful things. She wanted to rise above nature and create something ugly.

Fast forward to August 1st, 1981 and we saw the Buggles proclaim Video Killed the Radio Star back. The nature of music celebrity had changed. For the first time, the look of the band was immediately known (without them selling millions of records) and for the first time a band’s image was at least or as equally important as the music. It quickly became apparent that image was going to surpass talent with the birth of New Wave. Bands with minimal talent but a new look were thrust into the limelight with a video in heavy rotation. This makes sense since something that is seen and heard is more compelling than something that is just seen. (Less imagination needed but can be more compelling.)

Today music videos are rarely shown on MTV and when they are, the artists are for the most part categorically attractive. (If the artist is not attractive the video is peppered with good looking people. Most rap videos that I’ve seen use this method.) This is especially true of women with almost none overweight. I seriously doubt Janis Joplin (voted the ugliest male at her college) would have made it today. Bands like Steely Dan & Jethro Tull would also most likely have not made it. I’m in no way saying that image did not matter in earlier years. I am saying that for the first time, talent was overshadowed by image. Remember what happened to C&C Music Factory? (Yes. I’m that old.)

Well . . . like all things, we are now deep into a reversal of fortune for those that have a face for radio or at the very least are more talented than good looking. The Internet has allowed everyone to be a niche celebrity if they so chose. (The Internet also facilitates people with no talent.) We are back to looking at people that could be (and very well may be) our neighbors. Beauty will always be valued and yet with an increasing number of overweight people in television ads (for those of you without a DVR) we have come full circle in some sense. This, of course, relates back to transparency and in my opinion it that it can be a good thing. If customers see people that look like themselves representing business they will be more likely to relate and incouraged to do business.

Let’s be Gods. Let’s be ugly.

When I blogged from the MMA Consumer Best Practices Industry Forum back in January, I felt like I had stepped into a circus that was in the middle of a performance but needed to move to a new location at the same time. The iPhone had just been released and it was not really discussed by the attendees as much as I thought it would have been. Of course this was not the focus of the conference so it was not much of a surprise. I felt as though much of the conversation was about “on-deck” functionality and that the existing model was still the focus. It is and was.

I watched the round table discussion put on by TechCrunch yesterday and was encouraged to see the turmoil I felt, verbalized during this meeting. The video is worth watching and I will boil down what I believe the underlying focus of the meeting was.

The iPhone is obviously a game-changer. In my opinion, one that Silicon Valley is focusing on primarily due to the genre of users that are buying the device (and their love for Apple). The market is not yet large enough warrant much attention from the larger players. (They are the fastest growing in some regards and yet still small.) Developers feel that Apples platform is easy to develop on and are excited about creating apps for their tremendous user interface. Nokia and others were there and you could see/feel that they don’t know what they are going to do to handle the challenge the iPhone represents. They know it is a threat and yet with Nokia owning 70% of the overall market it is hard to get too upset about Apple’s move into the space. The interface/web interface is what most feel the iPhone’s claim to fame is; and it is. No one is focused on Android right now as it will not launch until November at the earliest. Michael Arrington went as far to say that Symbian and other operating systems are now pointless. I will be curious to see what Nokia and others do to address the iPhone challenge.

There is a lot of concern that Apple will be the new walled garden, instead of the carriers. The understanding that the WAP experience is abysmal and that the mobile web is only now beginning seems to be lost on those that have been in the business for a long time. WAP is not web and to confuse the two is ridiculous. What has existed under the WAP protocol is a dumbed down version of what the web could be. There simply was no interface that was easy enough to use. WAP is for those that are techincally minded with respect to navigation and it would never pass the Grandmother Test. It was also mentioned that the browser for mobile is the killer app, and I agree with this. Firefox and Skyfire are the latest additions to the race. One person (on a very impressive panel) was offended when someone said that the mobile Internet has just started. He cited the fact that $700,000,000 dollars in revenue had been generated from ringtones, music, etc. Again; not the internet.

In the end Apple and Android are the disruptors the US mobile market needs. The carriers behavior back in January were protectionist at the least and they aren’t going down without a fight. As for the video; its worth watching just to see an Arrington in the wild.

I have spoken about how the Internet is well on its way to being the platform for entertainment, information and communication. This of course extends to the mobile Internet as well.

I also spend a lot of time talking to people about the importance of “how” something is done. The premise is that what your doing is not as important as how your doing it. I then quickly site Star Wars as a prime example of this. The story itself is easily several thousand years old but it was how it was told in 1977 that made me and my mother wait for hours in line to see the movie.

If we focus on how Internet advertising at its most basic level is executed with these in mind we can develop a quick model as to how ads should be structured.

If we start with text based information gathering activities the ads should be text based ads. Some will say that this is a perfect place for a video; something that gets attention. I believe that when people are in the mode of reading, they want to read and don’t want to passively watch a video. I also believe that TV has taught us all to ignore something that jumps out at us; unless we are in that frame of mind. (This has already proven itself out with Google’s contextual text based ads.)

Placing advertising in communications is a bit more tricky. Not sure if this exists but I think it would be interesting to have an ad tool plugged into Skype IM or Digsby IM that looks for text signals as to what a conversation is about and then produces relevant ads off to the side. (Of course you would be able to turn this off.) When I think of the “Do you know anyone that . . . ” conversations that I have had, I wish I had a ad tool like this. For example if I was IMing a friend and I wanted to know where I should stay for an upcoming trip. The system would present a list of hotels for that area. This type of functionality could be extended to audio conversation with businesses/technology like Spinvox.

When people talk about entertainment in regards to the Internet, they think of video. Again, aiming at the frame of mind someone is in, I believe it should be a video or audio (yes audio) ad. I’m sure that people believe their video could get lost and pre-rolls, the last I heard were officially the most hated form of online advertising. I’m thinking of video advertising as movie previews are presented or destination advertising. This is not easy and yet I think it is attainable. (I have spent hours looking movie trailers on Apple’s site.)

The goal is then to promote interaction across all three of these mediums (and embrace contextual methodologies). I am not saying that these “rules” can’t be bent and in fact most online interactions are a combination of these mediums. Based on that, a hybrid ad could/should be created. The point is we need to work with the content and functionality that exists on the pages that are also housing our advertising. This is counter intuitive in regards to how most advertising is done and yet I believe we need to consider what frame of mind people are in when they are online and then mimic/compliment to some degree the medium they are in.

Last night I got to attend a New Denver Ad Club event at the Oriental Theater with guest speaker Jason Fried (freed) of 37signals. I knew very little about Jason and have heard about 37signals from a friend of mine. 37signals is a group that started out as an agency and created products to support internal processes and then decided productize/sell them. Logical progression given the difficulty of managing clients. The focus of the discussion last night was advice for people starting/managing a web-based businesses. We covered the following items during the presentation; many of which I agree with on some level.

• Planning is overrated. Just build it and then tweak as you go. Phillip Johnson said;” You don’t know whether a building is good until you’re in it. I have to say that I agree with this on some level. I also have to say, that this sounds like someone who does not understand the benefit of research. I think some minimal amount of research needs to be done before moving forward. It’s good to have a target.
• Follow the lead of famous chefs. We know who they are (Emeril & Julia Childs) because they teach us. Start teaching now. Out teach. Out educate. Out contribute your competition. Get people to show up first and then sell them something. I agree with this as well and I can’t remember what the point was exactly, but he made is point about not focusing on selling and then quickly followed it up with a “but” which as we all know means that anything said within that sentence before the but is negated.
• Interruption is something to be avoided. Creativity takes long spans of time and working virtually allows for “passive collaboration”. (37signals uses what sounded like a posting wall with messages that people go to when they have time.) This sounds obvious enough and yet the implication is that the open floor plan that you’re so happy with is costing you productivity. Great for collaboration and terrible for productivity which is what the client is actually paying for; to have something delivered.
• Avoid “scarring on the first cut”. Mistakes are a part of the process. When you implement policies based on a mistake that has has happened for the first time, you can cripple the learning process. Agreed. People need to feel as though they can take risks and that a mistake can morph into a discovery.
  
• Err on the side of simple. Create a foundation to build on. Wait to hear from customers and only act on things you have heard repeatedly. You don’t need every customer. YES.
• Focus on things that don’t change. When developing things, think about what things won’t change over the next ten years. Behavior and attributes don’t change. When he was talking about things that don’t change, he was talking about things like “people like to share memories”.
  
• Eliminate abstractions. Work with the real thing and iterate through to the resolution. You can’t know what you are building until you are building it. No documents. No wireframes. Nothing. Start building and get them something that they can “touch” within a week. There is no such thing as an agreement since everyone is speaking a different language. I love the sound of this and am not sure if it is possible for every web project. His point was that no one understands what they are signing off on so documents are almost entirely useless. I am more of the mind that documents themselves are lacking. They are not audience specific. For example;
  

1. The board wants EBITDA estimates
2. The C&V level want EBITDA & ROI estimates
3. Middle management wants cost/time estimates
4. Dev & QA want to know what they are building/testing

I have always said that prototyping is the best way to do things and then use that as a base. The issue that I have with coding from the start is that in my experience, it is very painful to touch/modify existing code; even if you created it. It’s just not something that is easily done. I suspect that the level of coding he was referring to was “coding lite” (aka prototyping that can be built upon).

• Laziness is good. Focus on the small problems that are easy to fix and have an immediate impact. Let your competition solve the big problems and then implement or build on that solution. I i like this and had never thought about it. I gravitate towards the hard problems and may need to rethink this.
• Ignore the details in the beginning. Don’t spend time on details until later in the project as you will surely be changing things many times during the process. Agreed.
• Work less. They have recently gone to a 4 day work week (Fridays off) and people are more refreshed. 37signals also pays for people to pursue their hobbies outside of the office. (They do this instead of just giving them a raise to insure that employees get to do what they want to.) People know they only have 4 days to get things done and tend to focus on getting things done. The level of creativity has also increased because of the external stimulus. If you check email on Sunday night at 8pm, why don’t you go see a movie Monday afternoon? I agree with this as well. I’m better when I’m relaxed.
• When hiring, look for curious people. Passionate people create amazing things and curiosity is a big part of that. Agreed.
• Say “No” before “Yes” to customers. A “No thank you” is probably better. Address the silent minority going forward and ignore the vocal minority. Wait until you have heard the same request from many different sources before making changes. Keeping it simple and on-demand.
• Meetings are toxic. They are costly interruptions and for the most part cover things that could be covered in email, IM or text messages. Agreed if the focus is purely productivity. If the focus is team building then a meeting may be the best way. Actually, a day out with the peers would be the best way.
  
• Avoid using the words; need, can’t and easy. These words have a negative impact in the following ways. When someone says need, the implication is that the entire project will fail if this need is not met. When it is discovered that the need is in fact a nice to have; it dilutes the power and importance of true needs. When someone says can’t the discussion is over. That discussion may be a very important part of the success of the project. When someone says easy it demeans other people’s work. Usually this is said by someone who has no idea of what it takes to perform that task. I agree with all of this and would go on to say that semantics is one of the most important yet underrated things in business. It can either bring about clarity or facilitate complete chaos.
• Transparency is important. Tell the truth and when you make mistake, admit it quickly and move on. I have posted about this before.
• Atomic problems & tiny decisions. Divide up a problem into its constituent parts and then tackle those. This is great for morale and makes issues more manageable. Agreed.
• Less is a competitive edge. It makes you focus on what you can do instead of trying to do everything. Less tech. Less skills. Solve a real problem and then extract what you can from it. Agreed.

It was a great event and there was much food for thought. 37signals also has a book out. You can get it here in a number of formats.

To sum up the Jason’s message from yesterday; Keep it simple and build it now.