Orange Envelopes | Small Business Optimized Marketing > By Design

Examining Sony’s abject failure to make any impact in the personal MP3 player market, noted author and blogger David Akers concluded that Sony’s failure was largely due to unfortunate bad timing, not Sony’s strategic decisions or lack of innovative thinking.

Having examined Sony’s repeated failures to exploit their overwhelming market positions and brand magic to gain traction and market share in personal MP3 players, notebook computers, e-books, digital cameras and flat screen tvs, I believe that Sony’s failures can be attributed almost exclusively to their inability to incorporate design thinking into their product conception, development and execution and a singular reliance upon hardware appearance and technical distinction to define themselves with consumers.

That previous sentence was personally painful to write. I’ve been a Sony devotee since the early 1980′s. I’ve owned virtually every type of media device that they’ve ever created, starting with the cassette playing Walkman, the CD playing Walkman, the mini-Disc playing and recording Walkman, digital cameras, digital video cameras, ebooks and VAIO notebooks. I was a Sony fanboy before the term was even coined.

And I was perpetually disappointed.

Not by the quality of their products, which was uniformly excellent, but by their perpetual embrace of proprietary standards and refusal to open their technology ecosystem to their industrial compatriots. They did not play well with others.

Sony cameras worked only with the Sony MemoryStick, a media format adopted by exactly zero electronics manufacturers. So, while other PC users could slip their SD memory cards directly into a slot in the side of their PC, Sony users had to perform an intermediary step and find a USB dongle with a Memory Stick slot. But, since the quality of the pictures was great, I put up with the inconvenience.

Engaging with the Sony video cam was significantly worse. The camera would only connect to a PC with a FireWire port, not the universally available USB port. But, since I had a FireWire enabled VAIO, I was OK. Until I imported the video and discovered that Sony would only import the video in a proprietary Sony file format that could not be edited in any third party movie editing software program.

Their VAIO notebook introduced similar user frustrations. Although my VAIO was a gorgeously designed unit encased in a distinctive metallic purple, Sony simply refused to play well with third party accessories and ultimately had to be retired in favor of an HP tablet computer that promised to behave better.

And Sony’s recent foray into the ebook market did nothing to reclaim their previously held mantle as developers of the best designed electronics in the world. Although their ebook was visually distinctive, solidly manufactured and a pleasure to read, it enraged its users with its needlessly complex steps necessary to load content onto the ebook. Relying, as always, on a proprietary PC -based software platform to display and deliver ebook content, Sony infuriated Mac users who had no ability to load content on the Sony ebook. And even when I did load the proprietary Sony software on a Windows partition on my Mac, the software was so poorly designed, buggy and difficult to use that the entire experience of using their ebook was irreparably diminished.

It’s my decades of experience with Sony’s failure to deliver a single consumer focused, delightfully engaging and thoughtfully designed user experience that convinces me that Mr. Akers’ conclusion is dead wrong and will only provide another excuse for Sony to hide behind.

Sony’s problems with the MP3 players wasn’t that they mistimed the market. It’s that they never conceived the market that Apple imagined and created. It never occurred to them to create an absolutely delightful device AND a surrounding user environment that included finding music, listening to music, buying music, sharing music and syncing music. Apple didn’t win the MP3 player war because they timed the market better. They invented an entirely new immersive mobile music experience that just happened to rely on the iPod as the handheld component necessary to provide mobile music.

For Apple, it wasn’t about the hardware. For Sony, it’s always about nothing but the hardware.

For proof, simply look at the litany of missed opportunities that should have been directly in Sony’s sweet spot: game players as mobile phones (Sony missed it entirely, while the Apple iPhone is now the world’s largest selling portable gaming platform, eclipsing the multi-year headstart of Sony’s PSP), notebook computers (Sony’s insistence on incorporating proprietary components relegated them to single digit market share), MP3 players ( a market that Sony owned and surrendered entirely), digital cameras (again, an insistence on proprietary components limited their appeal, and they’re now an also ran), ebooks (they had the early lead with a gorgeous product that made the Kindle look like a cheap plastic toy, but again Sony’s insistence on proprietary software and file formats allowed Amazon’s Kindle to grab a dominant position they will not relinquish) digital music sales (Sony has an enormous catalog, but their feeble attempts to sell digitally were hampered by proprietary software and file formats, fanatical concern for piracy and a miserable user experience in finding, buying and syncing music.)

Every failure in every major segment can be attributed to the same institutional arrogance, intransigence and strategic ineptitude that has defined Sony for over 30 years. They believe they are wonderful technology designers because they produce visually distinctive products. But physical design simply isn’t sufficient to create an entirely new market and deliver an exceptional user experience.

Sony didn’t fail to extend their domination from portable cassette and CD players to MP3 players because of timing. They failed because they lacked vision. They perceived the market for mobile music as just another pretty device. Apple proved that the market actually wanted a thoughtful and delightful music experience. The difference between the two is software, not hardware. And Sony has never demonstrated nor developed the capacity to envision and create a software experience that delivered more than frustration, confusion and exasperation.

In the technology arena, there are several competitors who strike fear into the hearts of their competitors: Apple, Microsoft, and Google so dominate their technology sectors, that entrepreneurs and investors will intentionally avoid any attempt at direct competition with these behemoths.

But, as evidenced by last week’s Fortune list of the 20 dumbest business moments of 2010, being big doesn’t guarantee market success.

While Apple had a banner year and generated an entire new computing segment with its iPad tablet, Google had three major failures with their Buzz service, Nexus One mobile phone and GoogleTV, and Microsoft killed their Kin mobile phones just over a month after their widely hailed, billion dollar launch.

What each of these product disasters had in common wasn’t a necessarily a lack of innovation, but an absence of design appreciation and the essential need to delight and amaze their users with a products simplicity and utility.

Size Doesn’t Guarantee Success
In fact, I believe that many large companies believe that they can compel the success of their new ideas through the application of brute marketing force. After all, who is going to tell Microsoft that their social media friendly phones will fail if Microsoft is willing to commit $1 billion to their launch? Did I mention that they’re social media friendly? How could they fail in a Facebook world?

Easy.

Just like Google’s Buzz and GoogleTV, Microsoft’s Kin phones delivered miserable user experiences. They were too complex. Too difficult to use. They violated users’ assumptions about how things should work without offering a better alternative, just a different alternative.

Ideas Are Easy
What these failures demonstrate is that coming up with a creative idea for a product is actually the easy part. The hard part is selecting the right idea and implementing it exquisitely.

As a design company whose culture is rooted in delivering exceptional user experiences, Apple hit another home run not just with its conception of a touch-controlled tablet computer, but with its execution of a thoroughly delightful and intuitively simple device that resonated with virtually every user who picked it up.

Apple relied not only on its genius for creative concepts, but on its organization, its internal processes and its metrics in determining what products to pursue and when they’re ready for release.

It’s not their size (which recently surpassed a $300 billion market cap) that fuels their success, but their innovative business model.

Culture Trumps Strategy
Microsoft and Google may rival Apple in size, but what they lack is the design culture that infuses Apple. Microsoft may try to copy specific Apple successes (see their attempt to replicate Apple retail outlets) but without the corporate DNA that fuels innovation and insists on delivering memorable user experiences, their duplicative efforts are nearly guaranteed to disappoint.

Google has fallen into the same trap, believing that their dominant success in the search engine market will transfer just as easily into any technology venture they elect to pursue. But, despite being named one of the most innovative companies in the country by both Fast Company and Business Week, their inclusion seems reliant upon their intentions to enter new markets, not their ability to actually succeed in any new venture. At some point, the magic of their search engine prowess will fade and their perception as an innovative company will become dependent upon delivering memorable, exciting and successful new products and services.

Will this be the year?

What defines your Microsoft experience?

Frustration?… Confusion?… Anger?

My personal list of Microsoft-inspired adjectives is lengthy, and nowhere on that list appears the word delight.

Frustrated with their perennial regard as the ugly and undesirable stepsister to Apple’s beloved fair maiden Microsoft decided to take action to reclaim their throne and assert their benevolent rule in the technology kingdom.

So, what does Microsoft, in all their imperial wisdom do to stand apart and reassert the provenance of their brand? Why they copy Apple’s retail store, of course. Right down to the fixtures.

Gizmodo acquired a leaked PowerPoint presentation detailing the design of the planned Microsoft retail stores, and after reviewing their plans one thought springs instantly to mind: plagiarism. Seriously, if a college architecture or design student submitted this presentation as a class project to create a new retail design, their professor would be entirely justified in red stamping “PLAGIARISM” across the cover page and charging the student with academic fraud.

When will companies learn that copying innovation and clever design does not bestow those qualities upon your organization?

I predict that within 24 months, Microsoft will realize the futility of copying Apple’s retail efforts and shutter their retail stores. The reasons why:

1. Apple delivers a unique Apple Experience that Microsoft cannot emulate, no matter how hard they try. Apple is a design company that expresses their design innovation through technology. Microsoft is a technology company that attempts to apply design elements to their technology after it’s created. Apple delivers an experience. Microsoft delivers a product. Delivering an exceptional user experience is in Apple’s corporate DNA. It is absent in Microsoft’s corporate DNA. And it’s not about to change.
2. Apple has total control over all of their hardware and software products, Microsoft simply licenses their technology to third parties. Apple maintains its near total control over its user experience by designing, developing and manufacturing every device themselves. This maniacal level of control ensures that there are no missteps in delivering a memorable and delightful user experience. But Microsoft adopted a dramatically different business model, licensing their technologies to thousands of companies to integrate into third party computers and devices. Microsoft’s licensing model expands Microsoft’s market but eliminates their ability to control how the software and hardware components interact with the user.
3. Apple focuses on simplicity while the Microsoft universe is inherently complex. Compared to the thousands of different products that integrate Microsoft technology, Apple offers only a handful of computers, tablets, phones and devices. Their limited product offerings allow Apple to retain control while the millions of iterations of Microsoft products expand the PC universe but add technical complexity and near infinite opportunities for user frustration.
4. It’s the culture, stupid. Steve Jobs instilled an innovation centered culture in Apple that has allowed them to create entirely new segments of technology. Microsoft is not known for their innovation and has not fostered a corporate culture that celebrates innovation and understands how to generate new ideas and new markets. And they apparently never will.
5. Microsoft can’t compete on price with their retail competitors. Apple maintains rigorous control over its distribution channel. They do not allow their products to be discounted, so the price you pay at the Apple store is the same that you pay at Best Buy. However, Microsoft will not be able to discount their offerings or offer the same number of configurations as their larger retail competitors. So why would anyone pay more to buy at Microsoft?
6. Renting your store out for birthday parties does not qualify as a brand differentiator. Nuff said.
7. Opening your stores next to existing Apple stores magnifies your lameness. We all know who was first. We all know who copied whom. Opening your store adjacent to an Apple store reinforces the perception that you have no original ideas.
8. Microsoft’s not cool. Apple is. Do you know anyone who camped out overnight to be the first to get the new Zune? Of course you don’t. No one does. Because Microsoft products are cool anti-matter.

The clock is ticking. When the last door shuts I’ll let you know.

Someone should create a mission statement for any company attempting to create a mission statement. Something like this:

We will critically examine our company to determine why we do what we do. What inspires us. What drives us. What excites us. Then we’ll write a brief statement that accurately, and singularly, describes our company. That can fit on a t-shirt. It will not contain the words: best, leading, biggest, profit, diversity, growth or exceed expectations.

Now, if you really, really feel that a mission statement is essential to understanding and guiding your business, you have the rules. My question is: Why do so many companies break these rules and create irredeemably awful, platitudinous and ultimately pointless mission statements?

My ire was inspired by an article I read on the Smart Business Online website this week detailing the efforts of Staffmark CEO Frederick Kohnke to rebrand his national staffing company around a unified vision, mission and values. The project took nine months and resulted in one of the most useless, generic mission statements I’ve ever read.

Really. That’s not just hyperbole. Although the resulting mission statement wasn’t included in the article (wtf?) I found it on the Staffmark website. Their mission:

To always strive to exceed the expectations of our employees, business customers, and external stakeholders.

How’s that for exciting? Really gets your juices flowing, doesn’t it? Strive to exceed expectations. What’s the matter, think outside the box was taken?

If you spend nine months creating a mission statement, odds are that it will be created not by the company founder or CEO, but by a committee tasked with the job of creating an inclusive mission statement. One that will take into account all their stakeholders, will be legally benign, generally inoffensive and ultimately uninspiring. One that will be guaranteed to include no distinctive or compelling voice, no descriptive or detailed verbs and certainly nothing that will differentiate it from any other staffing company. Staffmark succeeded spectacularly on all these counts.

What’s so terribly disappointing is that genuine, heartfelt mission statements can be inspiring and unique. Consider Ben & Jerry’s mission statement:

To make, distribute & sell the finest quality all natural ice cream & euphoric concoctions with a continued commitment to incorporating wholesome, natural ingredients and promoting business practices that respect the Earth and the Environment.

There’s not another ice cream manufacturer that could claim that mission statement. Euphoric concoctions. How wonderful is that phrase?  The precise wording matters because it captures the essence of Ben & Jerry’s. It could not be transferred to Briar’s website, or Edy’s or Haagen Dazs.

Or consider Coca-Cola’s mission to refresh the world. It captures their company spirit in a way that PepsiCo’s mission to be the world’s premier consumer products company focused on convenient foods and beverages doesn’t.

Being the premier, leading, biggest, most profitable company isn’t a mission, it’s an objective. It’s not inspiring to anyone outside of the company boardroom. Not one of your employees will get out of bed tomorrow and say to themselves “How am I going to make Company X bigger today?”  But I’ll bet there are Disney employees who get up and ask themselves “How can I make someone happy today?” And I’m certain that there are Apple employees who can’t wait to get to work to do something insanely great.

But apparently Staffmark is content with their employees exceeding expectations. Whose expectations? We don’t know. How are the expectations measured? We’re not sure. How will anyone know when they’ve exceeded expectations? They won’t. But, gosh darn it, it’s better to exceed expectations than fail to meet them, right? Then that’s the goal.

And I’ll bet that if I were to call 20 of Staffmark’s employees today, not more than one or two would be able to recount their company’s mundane mission statement. Anyone want to take me up on that?

The Palm Pre was one of the most highly anticipated smartphone launches this year. They primed the media for months with photos and detailed specs of the unit, ensuring reams of coverage for their iPhone-killer.

On June 6th, Palm released the phone to collections of eager fans who could have all assembled in the lobby of their local Sprint store without disturbing the regular patrons just there to complain about their monthly bill.

Without an established collection of Pre fanboys committed to camp out for hours in front of every Sprint store, the groundswell of Pre passion seemed rather demure and underwhelming.

No matter. Palm announced that they realized record sales nearing 500,000 units during their first weekend, dampened only by Apple’s release of their own new 3GS iPhone, which sold over one million units in its first weekend.

Now that the smartphone dust has settled, it appears that Palm’s Pre will never become the iPhone killer they had hoped. Total sales for this year will finally settle between 1 and 1.5 million units, compared to Apple’s total iPhone installed base of over 40 million. Not much of a comparison really.

So, what went wrong? Why didn’t the technical tour de force that is the Pre stumble so badly? In a word: marketing. Or, to be more precise, lousy marketing.

Palm ran a series of ads introducing the Pre that have been universally panned, frequently eliciting adjectives including creepy, eerie and confusing. Great adjectives if you’re Rob Zombie, introducing Halloween 2. Not so great descriptions for a cutting edge smartphone trying to gain traction in a market dominated by Apple and RIM’s Blackberry.

Take a look for yourself at YouTube. Creepy, right? And nowhere in any of the ads does Palm provide a single reason why you need a Pre. What does it do? How is it better? How will it improve my personal/professional/sex life?

Come on, people, these are the fundamentals.

When Apple released the iPhone, their simple visuals set against a plain white backdrop focused all the viewer’s attention on the phone and its remarkable touchscreen. They showed precisely what you could do with the touch of a finger. They conveyed a Wow! factor that generated interest and desire bordering on lust. In contrast, the Pre ad suggests that if I have their phone, I may encounter nothing but green lights on my way to work. Really? That’s your pitch?

The truly disappointing factor is that the Pre is a remarkably innovative phone. It’s the only touchscreen device capable of genuine multi-taking. But Palm never tells me why I need to multitask. What can I do with a Pre that I can’t do with my iPhone or Blackberry? Besides making concentric circles of orange-clad Asian men dance in unison?

Don’t make the same mistake Palm made. Understand what makes your product/service essential and then clearly communicate your distinct value. Sure it’s fundamental, but even the big guys forget to focus on the blocking and tackling sometimes. Like Palm.

Sony has transformed itself into one of the most disappointing brands of the 21st century. The company that dominated consumer electronics for most of my life hasn’t had a bona fide consumer electronics hit outside of their gaming systems in years, and their product releases, with business partner Ericsson, of multimedia playing phones and smartphones have been huge disappointments.

Sony Ericsson’s response to their negligible impact on the smartphone market? The introduction of an $800 smartphone to compete against the iPhone and Blackberry lineups. It’s almost as if they’re trying to fail.

Sony Ericsson is not renowned as a mobile phone provider, as evidenced by their 5% market share. Their forays into Walkman phones – phones capable of downloading and playing music – produced little consumer interest

Sony has always had a sharp eye for design, and they’ve certainly brought their design sensibility to their joint venture. Sony has designed and manufactured some of the most stylish and technically advanced electronics in the world. But their grasp of design apparently doesn’t extend to the full concept of design thinking, which also takes into account the entire user experience surrounding one’s product.

Play to Your Strengths
Anyone who has used a Sony product in the past 10 years knows how miserable the Sony user experience can be. I’ve owned Sony cameras, videocameras, ebooks and laptops and can attest that their devices don’t play well together, much less play well with others. Sony continually provides beautifully designed hardware with thoughtlessly designed software – a combination that guarantees a lousy experience. And yet they continue.

There is still a huge opening for Sony Ericsson in the smartphone market that can exploit one of Sony’s only remaining strengths: gaming.

Sony has sold over 50 million of their portable PSP gaming systems worldwide. They have experience in that sector that no other manufacturer has. They’ve watched the iPhone develop into a serious gaming platform, validating the market for combination phone/gaming systems.

So what does Sony Ericsson do? They release an $800 smartphone with a great camera and no gaming. Wow.

Maybe I’m the one who’s out of touch. It’s certainly possible. But I have serious doubt that a 12 megapixel camera will drive sales of an $800 smartphone when virtually every other smartphone offers at least a passable 3 MP picture. I just don’t believe that photos drive phone sales nearly as much as entertainment options drive phone sales.

Oh, by the way, Sony Ericsson isn’t even releasing their new phone for another 6 months. That just gives them more time to fall behind the new iPhone, Palm Pre and new Blackberry introductions before they launch an inexplicably expensive phone in a midst of a global recession.. Good luck guys. You’re going to need it.

I simply can’t be the first to notice Microsoft’s repeated, laughable and impotent attempts to produce consumer electronics that appeal to anyone outside of the Bill Gates compound.

Quick, do you know anyone who has a Zune? Have you ever even seen one outside of a Best Buy? When was the last time you overheard someone bragging that they waited in line four hours to nab the latest Windows Mobile phone? Hell, even Melinda Gates admitted that she privately coveted the iPhone.

The list of Microsoft failures is long and illustrious. Walk with me down the memory lane of Microsoft product tragedies, which include the Microsoft Origami (their lame and ultimately aborted attempt at an UltraMobilePC), a five year headstart in developing a mobile phone platform that has generated viral buzz and consumer anticipation for…. well, none that I can recall, and, of course, the aforementioned Zune, whose sales are rumored to  approach triple digits. Total. Worldwide. Way to go, iPod killer.

Given this unrivaled history of corporate ineptitude, what’s to explain the huge headline in today’s WSJ, spanning nearly the entire page – Microsoft and Verizon Plot an iPhone Rival?

Are the loud guffaws and giggles from Cupertino disturbing your reading?

It’s not difficult to guess what will emerge from these high-powered strategic confabs between Microsoft and Verizon. Both have watched as each company’s nemesis rode the cresting wave of popularity and iconic status of the iPhone to unimagined commercial success.

Verizon is still wallowing in the regret of turning down Apple’s initial offer of exclusivity. And Microsoft remains stubbornly, and almost endearingly, steadfast in their commitment to Windows Mobile as the preeminent mobile platform. Which makes them the perfect partners to develop an imaginary mobile device that will do everything the iPhone does… and more!

They will combine forces to produce a brilliant, almost legendary, product spec that includes an unheard of, amazing feature set for a touchscreen phone, including everything that the current iPhone lacks. Video? Check. Cut and paste? Check. 5 MP camera? Check. Stereo Bluetooth? Check.

Excited yet? It’s the phone that does it all. That has every feature that any user could ever want. On the nation’s most reliable network. What could possibly go wrong?

It will suck. It will perform 486 functions in ways that drive the user crazy and simply reinforce Apple’s dominion in the mobile world.

How do I know this? Because neither Microsoft nor Verizon has ever delivered a consumer electronic product that incorporates thoughtful and creative design in ways that delight and amaze their customers. It’s not how they think or how they work. While they focus on the current iPhone as their target, Apple is focusing on remaking the iPhone entirely, on designing user experiences and handheld capabilities that emerge from their fecund imaginations, not from a strategic planning session that will likely produce Verizon’s own mobile Vista. Now that’s something to look forward to.

My desktop scanner stopped working yesterday. I don’t know why. It worked the day before, and the day before that. But the capricious gods who oversee all that is right and just with OS X software drivers somehow decreed that my HP scanner would no longer be recognized.

Little did I know that by downloading a new 200MB driver from the HP website, that I would be pitting two supreme forces against each other: the despotic and high-handed HP vs the virtuous and obliging Apple OS.

You’ll Take It and Like It
There’s something about the PC world that invites heavy handed behavior. Anyone who has bought a PC from Dell or HP knows what I’m talking about. From the moment you first boot the system, you have to deal with uninvited pleas to activate unnecessary and unwanted bloatware. Your desktop is filled with software icons whose makers have bribed the computer manufacturer to impose their clutter on your system.

You’re never asked if you want these applications. They’re simply forced upon you. Without any convenient way to remove them permanently from your desktop, your disk and your life.

It’s no wonder, then that the computer manufacturers’ imperious attitude carries over into their software drivers as well.

What’s Yours Is Mine
To get the driver I needed, HP made me to download a 200MB file (that’s right, 200 megabytes for a scanner driver) so they could force me to install 11 unwanted HP PhotoSmart software programs, in addition to the driver. Moreover, the installation process resulted in the installation of two additional HP icons in my precious Dock. They never asked permission for this intrusion. They never asked if I even wanted these applications. They just installed themselves, decided to sit in the front row of my desktop and dared me to remove them.

This behavior was designed intentionally into their installation processes. In the spirit of corporate transparency, their software should come outfitted with brownshirts and jackboots. They reflect a corporate hubris and reflexive arrogance that defines their relationships and influences their user experiences.

Showing True Character
There’s only one reason why HP did not design a permission process into their driver installation routine: they were afraid that I’d say “No.” They didn’t want to make any special effort to persuade me of the virtues of their software. They didn’t want to cajole or entice me to evaluate their software. They didn’t anticipate that I would already have more sophisticated applications already installed that would perform the same duties as their software. They considered their peculiar, self-serving motivations and crammed their software onto my system and shoehorned their icons front and center on my dock.

And in doing so, HP revealed their true character. Their authentic personality no longer resides behind layers of packaged messages and slick advertising, but is revealed in the imposition of their rapacious corporate desire to have their software installed on as many systems as possible.

Lessons Learned
It’s the last HP product I’ll ever buy. And their behavior offers clear lessons for other companies:

• It’s not all about you. Sure, you want your product in as many hands as possible. But forcing your prospects and clients to accept your product is no way to forge a relationship. Consider their needs, convince them of your virtues and…
• Gain permission. You want to do business with me? Ask. Demonstrate your value. Make it easy for me to demo your product or service, and…
• Start a conversation. Let me ask questions. Provide easy answers. Introduce me to others who use your product successfully. Let me talk with them without moderation. Stay in touch and…
• Build a relationship. Spend time learning what I really need and demonstrating how you can solve my problems. Can you save me time? Money? Frustration? Tell me. Then show me. If your value is genuine, I’ll come around. And I’ll trust you. Something HP will never have from me again.