iPhone changes several games at once

iPhone and Steve JobsYesterday Steve Jobs showed off Apple’s long-rumored mobile phone. The iPhone combines cell calling with a widescreen video iPod and WiFi-driven Internet communicator. It will change many games.

It will certainly improve the growth of mobile marketing. Apple truly understands how to provide pleasing user experiences, so I suspect that the iPhone’s broad, 3.5 inch color screen will make viewing video and web-based email not only easier, but fun. And the ability to browse your voice mails the same way you do emails will certainly add to the calling experience. Other cell phones would have to struggle to catch up if this interface resonates with users.

But another game-changer will be in movies on demand. David Denby wrote in this week’s New Yorker about how the tiny screen is changing the big screen. Hollywood is scrambling to adjust to a new type of movie viewer, one who is “platform agnostic,” and really doesn’t care if a film is projected in a theater, played from a DVD or downloaded in some form. This person is still in the minority, however. Denby explained that the tiny hand-held video players are fine for movies about talking heads, but the blockbuster, action/adventure films look sad and flimsy. They also strain the arm of the user, as you work to support a tiny player in your hand. Or you have to loom close to it as it rests on something, placing your body into some rather uncomfortable contortions.

The iPhone won’t change this film-viewing limitation, or reduce the crick in your neck. But it will add a new reward to the early adopter — a cool, hand-held analogy to the ever-growing home theater flat screen TVs. It will be perceived as the biggest little screen in town, and will make hand-held screen size an important bragging point.

Denby ends his analysis by speculating that dreary, uncomfortable multi-plexes will have to respond to this tiny threat in a way that can benefit every type of movie-goer. They may have to reinvent themselves, offering amenities and settings that once again make watching a movie in a theater a pleasure . If this comes to pass, no small part of the reason for these innovations will be from the iPhone and its nascent imitators. Many theaters, according to Denby, will even have ushers, to personally remind audiences to turn off their game-changers before the lights dim and the feature begins.

The 5 Things You Don’t Know About Me Meme, plus the importance of memes

I’ve been tagged “it” by Kevin Hillstrom, author of the MineThatData! blog. As part of the 17th generation of recipients of this playful meme*, I’ve been challenged to tell you a few, fun personal details and then pass on the challenge to five others. Although this has become a much larger year-end Internet phenomenon, you can thank (or blame) Jeff Pulver for this particular game of tag.

I’ve learned a lot about my fellow bloggers, and gotten a good chuckle in the process. Probably the best list I’ve read so far (and mind you, my RSS reader is tuned exclusively to business- and technology-related blogs — no puffery to speak of) is from a blogger who will remain nameless, who confessed, “Every winter in college, I ran naked through the library giving out donuts.”

Here is my list, refreshingly free of nudity and donuts:

  1. At the age of 11, like a lot of pre-teen boys, I developed a passion for performing magic tricks. This could have made me a social pariah, but I was quickly “discovered” by Dick Oslund, a talented professional magician who was born in my same home town. Along with studying how to do tricks, my first mentor had me reading books on showmanship and selling. In high school, while my classmates were earning a few dollars with paper routes and odd jobs, I was building a surprising bank account by performing at children’s birthday parties. Dick taught me to offer the curious mothers a choice of three different shows, with varying prices: good, better and best. I never had to decide exactly what to do for two of those, because the mothers would always book the mid-priced show. In this and other ways, I learned lessons I’m still applying. But don’t ask me to do a trick. I’m way too rusty!
  2. I lived for a time, shortly after college, in Venice, CA, trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my marketing education. Two blocks from the Pacific Ocean, I was helping a friend convert a factory building into apartments, living in the construction site. One day, working in the Beverly Glen area as a plumber’s assistant for some extra cash, I was nearly electrocuted in the crawlspace under the house of Tom Bosley, of Happy Days fame. The culprit was a poorly grounded sump pump. Perhaps it was the jolt of electricity, but shortly after that I was on a less hazardous career track.
  3. It’s hard for me to think of a professional accomplishment that wasn’t actually the work of a team of inspired and talented people. Therefore, I won’t single out any one of them here. Instead, I’ll tell you that I did some solo work as a volunteer, years ago, for the Wisconsin chapter of the American Cancer Society. On the basis of my analysis and by merely changing what donors were contacted, they increased renewal donations by 23% over the prior year. All without spending additional fundraising dollars. This added over a million dollars to their bottom line. (I also donate blood regularly, but not to the organization.)
  4. Between high school and college I traveled with a circus. Yes, a real circus. I kid you not.
  5. My wife keeps hoping I’ll outgrow my love of loud, fast punk rock music — some by musicians young enough to be my kids. In my opinion, by far the best album from last year is by The Arctic Monkeys.

*So what’s a meme?

The term was coined 30 years ago by the Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene. It refers to a unit of cultural information, such as this “five things” list, an urban legend or even a catch-phrase, transferred “virally” from one mind to another. Like a virus, it needs a conveyance method and a hospitable host. In the case of this meme, the conveyance method from blogger to blogger is something called a “ping.” The bloggers I mention below will be automatically informed of my challenge to them. As for the hospitable environment? Hey, who doesn’t want to divulge a few facts about themselves?

Anyone who wants their brand to spread online — and offline — would do well to understand memes and how they can be leveraged.


Here is my challenge to the next five bloggers. Do tell!

Can negative reviews of your product actually help you?

Earlier I had talked about Hosted Conversations, a hybrid online ad and portal to content. All content is about your product … generated by (gasp!) the unwashed masses. Okay, that’s harsh, but sometimes clients look at user generated content that way.

Fellow blogger Chris Brown, and others, were sceptical that the ad unit would represent good cross-sections of opinion. In other words, criticisms would be mild and rare, thus destroying any credibility.

So here are three questions:

  1. If you truly opened conversations up, would you get seriously flamed, and have way more negative than positive opinions voiced?
  2. If the answer to the above is no, would the relatively rare damning reviews hurt your brand and a decision to purchase from you?
  3. Is the risk worth it? In other words, do people trust online reviews in the first place?

I found one person’s opinion on all three. That person is Sam Decker, VP of Marketing and Products at Bazaar Voice. In a report he presented back in September, he provided some clarity to Question #3, when he showed how there is a strong correlation between online and offline reviews. In other words, experience should demonstrate to most consumers that there is reliability in online reviews.

I can also speak for myself and say that my online research has been at least as helpful in purchase behavior and satisfaction than have the opinions of friends and associates. He also quotes a familiar source for a theory on how and why trust can be developed online:

The Edelman group found that ‘trust in someone like me’ has tripled over the last two years. The key phrase here is ‘someone like me.’ Shoppers identify with the reviewer based on the content of the review, user attributes, and product attribute ratings.

For answers to Questions #1 and 2, I refer you to Sam’s contribution to a recent Forrester Research podcast, called Word-of-Mouth (third one down in this list):

We’re finding across our clients that with online reviews, [they] are 8-to-1 positive to negative.

Products with mixed reviews actually drive conversion, because that’s what we as consumers are looking for. We’re looking for that negative review that can give us the right information we need in order to get out of decision paralysis and make a decision. It also drives authenticity, which is what this is about in the first place.

The Take-aways:

If you have a good product, it will get mostly good reviews. And even the bad ones may cause people to buy your product if (a) They don’t relate to the reviewer, or (b) They don’t look at the complaint as a big negative.

As you can tell, I feel that with proper precautions, the risk is ultimately worth it. Be honest, be open, and — oh, yes — be prepared to step into the conversation to add your brand’s perspective to the negative comments.

In a product review I talked about in my previous post, the first (and as of this writing, the only) person responding to a slam on the Hosted Conversations concept was none other than Rick Murray, of … Edelman!

Even Betty Crocker is strapping on the feedbag

Betty Crocker for Boys and GirlsLet’s face it. You know RSS feeds are becoming mainstream when even an ageless, fabricated chef has one. I’m referring to Betty Crocker, and her Recipe of the Day, appearing in an RSS reader near you.

Follow the link to the BettyCrocker.com site and discover a great explanation of RSS (really simple syndication), and an even better argument for using it to serve up your own freshly-baked web content. Every modern kitchen has one.

Thanks to Christopher Kenton of Marketonomy for the heads-up.