A Rock Star Marketer's Journal

I was getting itchy to upgrade my phone. I knew I was close to the end of my contract. Maybe I should go with the Iphone?

But Verizon has been my mobile carrier for several years now. As much as I wanted an Iphone, I refused to move services over to AT & T. I had AT & T once for a contract. I said I’d never go back. I lost more calls than I kept, I couldn’t even pick up service in several locations and the customer service was below par.

So I brought my Blackberry Curve into the Verizon store to see if I was eligible. Walah (pronounced wa-la). I was. Next decision was which phone. I liked my Blackberry but craved for a touch screen. The Blackberry Storm was getting terrible reviews. The salesperson convinced me to go with the Droid.

So far, after a month of use, these are my observations:

1. It’s not well made: Ok, I dropped it once while walking. But still. The slide keyboard is loose.

2. It’s heavy: It’s much fatter than the Iphone, and heavier. This is in compromise for the large screen and full keyboard.
But if you are on long conference calls, which I am often, it’s best used with Bluetooth, speaker phone or headset. It’s just cumbersome to hold for any length of time.

3. Not intuitive: The setup and menu screens are difficult to navigate. And Verizon/Motorola has done a horrible job in using YouTube and other video social mediums to get the directions circulated.

4. Touchy: This is a positive or a negative. For me it’s a negative. I find it impossible to use the touch keyboard while holding the Android vertical. The horizontal touch keyboard is a little easier. However it than uses too much of the screen. The slide keyboard is the best but I find that challenging as the keys are not raised at all. I may have to get rid of my finger nails. I think the phone is designed for men.

5. Notification System is Annoying: This is a problem only because I haven’t found a solution. I’m SURE that Droid/Google/Motorola COULD not have possibly made this without customization. But I have yet to figure it out. I have notifications going off for calendar reminders, email notifications, Twitter, Facebook and phone. Which has caused me to turn it off the phone completely. Doesn’t this defeat the purpose of having a phone?

Now, onto the positives.

1. The screen is beautiful: So crisp. And larger than the Iphone. I do warn that it is impossible to see in the sun, but I don’t know a smart phone that is.

2. Camera is awesome: Enough said. Much better than the Blackberry.

3. Microphone works: The Droid has a voice activation search feature. It’s so helpful and functional. It helps me work around the keyboard issues I have from above.

4. Google Maps is Fantastic: I work in Boston. Google maps help me navigate through the streets while walking or visiting another city. This feature helps me feel safe wherever I am, particularly while I’m in another city.

And saving the best for last……..(drum roll)

5. Gadget Master: This phone, added with apps and apps, becomes the best gadget in the world. I can link to all my social network accounts, Twitter, can keep track of shopping lists, emails, music (my favorite is Shazam. It’s come in handy during those times that song is playing somewhere and I need to have it), my calorie intake, coupons, news, dictionary…..blah, blah, blah. Finally in one place, I can store everything.

All in all it’s been a good experience.  For the most part, other than the input challenges, most of it’s been “user error”.  Trial and error.

However………Verizon and Apple just announced the Iphone for Verizon service.  Doesn’t it just figure?  Grrrrrr.  Technology is becoming a lot like purchasing cars.  As soon as you take it off the lot, it decreases in value because something newer and better becomes available.

As I’ve been on my quest to understand new social marketing technologies, I’ve spent a tremendous amount of time surfing the web.  Wow.  There’s a lot of “stuff” out there.  Some valuable.  Some invaluable.   A lot of junk.  There’s an overload in this ever-changing business landscape.   How will companies stick out?   Will company identity become more important or less important?  My guess is more important.

But what type of corporate identity is going to succeed?   Well that depends on a lot of things, but here’s one lesson I’ve learned.

I just recently email exchanged with a with successful entrepreneur Paul Graham (founder of Viaweb, sold to Yahoo!) and  partner at Y Combinator.  Paul is one of my business idols.  I worked for him at Viaweb.  He’s one of the most brilliant people I ever worked for.  I didn’t know how brilliant he was at the time (and he will chuckle when he reads this).  I do however remember how speechless I was at his incredible insight to all aspects of a business.  He js seen as a “technology guru” (which he is) but he’s one of those entrepreneurs that just “gets it all”.

Paul and I discussed the similarities between Y Combinator’s logo and Viaweb’s.  One of the lessons I learned while working  for Paul at Viaweb was the power of simplicity.  Paul was a stickler on the topic of clean design.  You saw it in the product (now Yahoo! Store)  as well as in the design of the company identity.

Simple.  Clean.  Concise.

And it’s not just use these adjectives in your logo design.  Use these adjectives in your positioning and brand identity.  What does your company do?  Simple.  Clean.  Concise.

We live in a world of overload.   Too much to take in.  Keep it simple!

I have come up with at least 10 titles/subjects of things I want to blog about. I can’t seem to get any farther than that. Writer’s cramp. Clogged brain. Whatever you’d like to call it.

As I’ve dug more into Twitter over the past week, I’ve become more convinced that micro-blogging is a powerful tool for businesses. It’s a way to keep right on top of your brand, your customers and the influencers’. Real-time.

Commoncraft Videos are great. You can find them at YouTube.  The videos are top-level views on a topic;  just so you know where to start.

Enjoy!

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

In this “Era of Transparency”, where everyone knows everyone else’s business, it’s smarter to approach things head on instead of sweeping them under the carpet and pretending didn’t happen. What Tiger did is not any of our business, but it became so quickly through social media – all media.

This ad is one of the best moves that any of Tiger’s sponsor’s made. Others walked away. Nike hit it head on. And Nike will get more talk about this then they would have if they dropped Tiger. Nike has a younger audience; “openness” is expected.

And as the ‘ole slogan goes, “It’s better to be talked about than not talked about at all?” Tiger and Nike sure will get talked about.

What are your thoughts? Please post. I’m sure it’s full of controversy.

P.S. This is not to say that I, as the author advocate for Tiger’s behavior. I’m looking at this purely from a marketing point of view.

I’m using a Star Wars Strategy combined with David Letterman format for a way to recap my week on the internet. (If you don’t get the Star Wars Strategy comment – well, ping me at ammobland@yahoo.com and I’ll explain):

10. Ipad was a successful marketing case study.

9. Ipad was only successful because the product lived up to expectations.   Had it been a bad product, we would have sold the stock and thought “oh no, they are becoming Microsoft.”

8. Twitter is an untapped business goldmine.

7. Economy is picking up.

6. Small to medium-sized companies are the area of growth.

5. Woman are “literally” becoming the pocketbook (respectfully not wallet) of the world.

4.  Social media is feeling a lot like the dot.com “rush to figure it out”.

3.  There’s a lot of junk on the web.  It’s a matter of figuring out what’s good and what’s bad (and what’s substantiated).

2.  Facebook has the potential to take over the web.

1.  There’s never enough time to keep up.

I have worked in the video game business most of my career.  Recently, I’ve moved my attention to the social gaming space for obvious reasons.

One of my “gigs” was at Hasbro Interactive, the digital arm of Hasbro the toy company.  As business unit director I was responsible for taking Hasbro owned IP and bring them digital.  Monopoly, Scrabble, Risk, etc.  I had to pick the right platform, right developer and the right product concept.

Part of my training prior to running the business unit was to participate in “Hasbro University”.  It was here that I learned about Hasbro’s brands but most importantly the play patterns associated with particular products.

It was fascinating to watch through a two way mirror the way people played with the traditional products and drill down to the actual play pattern being used.  For instance, a simple example, is children playing with blocks.  Build play pattern.  Children playing with Perfection, time based play pattern.  Or adults playing Trivial Pursuit – knowledge play pattern.  Whatever the play pattern was, it was fundamental to the success of the product, the marketing of the product and the audience.  Girls/Woman, in general love dress up, nurturing, decorating, etc.  Boys/Men are more attracted to destruction, competitiveness and shoot them up.   These are gross exaggerations to get a point across.

As I’ve looked at the social games available on FB, the first thing I look at are the play patterns associated with the products and who must be playing those games based on that information.  Lo and behold, it works.  Take Zynga’s Farmville for example – a game largely played by girls/woman.

I put this type of game into the genre of “sandbox” games.  If you think of an open sandbox, put a variety of children in it, and see how they play.  They all play a little differently.  Girls may bring their dolls in, decorate the area for them and use the sand to cook and make a setting for their precious babies.  Boys on the other hand may bring in their trucks, dig, destruct….you get the picture.

Whether Zynga did this on purpose or not is probably something only Mark Pincus knows.   But by building a “sandbox” game, they opened up their product to the largest possible audience.  Farmville can be played by different audiences in different ways, appealing to both males and females and satisfying the basic play patterns of both audiences.

Of course the other factor that is driving the success of these products is the collaboration – and sorry folks, woman are much more apt to collaborate and help each other than men.

So thank you Hasbro, for the wonderful education in play patterns and understanding the fundamentals to making a product for a particular audience.

Enough Said.

A couple of months ago I had a very interesting meeting with a VC backed social gaming company.  Honest to goodness, I was told from this highly educated CEO of a social gaming company,  (don’t even ask, I’m not revealing the name),  ”We don’t need marketing.  Read Jeff Jarvis’ book, “What Would Google Do?”

SO, off I went, bought the book and read.  I do recommend the book.  It’s a lot about the “network effect”, social networking and marketing, although none of those words are used in the description of the book.  And it does in fact paint a simple picture, supported with examples (obviously the largest being Google), that marketing is not needed these days.  And, as this VC guy had done, had bought into the ideation of “If you build it, they will come.”

Well, as a marketer, I beg to differ.  And it’s not just about defending my talent or even my career.  Really.

But it can be very dangerous to think that anyone can have success in not doing “some” sort of marketing.  Unless of course you are first or the best. (more on that later).

Take social gaming for instance.  When games first appeared on Facebook, very few were actually marketed in the traditional sense.  However, the expansion of those games (take Who’s Got the Biggest Brain (from Playfish, who was purchased for $600M to traditional video game company Electronic Arts) for example took advantage of the network effect, viral loops, social media and lots and lots of publicity.  The marketing was built “in the product” from the beginning from its inception.  And now that there are more competitors in the social gaming space we do see games advertised on FB.  Social City certainly just made an effort to get out of the clutter with their new ads clearly targeted to other social gaming customers.

My point is this, at the beginning of any new business growing sector there are success stories of those that launched companies or products without marketing.   But as competitor’s step in, it’s time to add in your marketing engine.