Orange Envelopes | Small Business Optimized Marketing > By Design

I read a post from Chris Brogan this morning about Dunkin Donuts’ new iPhone app designed to assist the office coffee runner who needs to keep all the orders straight.

Brogan’s blog post and accompanying screen shot exemplified how simple, effective and targeted design could deliver a terrific user experience while solving a common problem: how to collect increasingly complex coffee and breakfast orders from an entire office staff.

I intended to write a post about the effectiveness of simple design so I downloaded the Dunkin Run app, launched it and immediately decided to change the theme of my post.

3 Quick Steps to Devastate Your Clever iPhone App:

1. Compel your user to enter login information that refers back to an unnamed site where the user ID must have already been created.
2. Provide no instruction, hints, links or ability to create a user ID from your application.
3. Ignite burning hatred of your application that cannot be accessed.

I’ve got to wonder… did anyone from Dunkin Donuts’ marketing department ever take a look at this app?

Did no one consider that brand new users – without existing Dunkin Donuts user ID’s – would try the app and hit a brick wall?

Where was the beta testing?

Dunkin Donuts: FAIL.

Cheezhead this week wrote about Monster.com’s recent announcement that they will (for a hefty fee) execute a social media strategy for their clients.

What’s noticeable about this announcement isn’t that large companies are becoming aware of the value of social media and are trying to cash in on the gold rush of consulting fees that uncertain and unfamiliar companies will fork over to play in the social media pool.

No, the shocking thing about this announcement is that Monster.com has absolutely no social media presence themselves. They don’t tweet. They have no Facebook page. And I can’t find a Monster blog. All of which suggests that perhaps they’re not the best source of social media advice.

What’s also disturbing is that they don’t promise any tangible ROI, just a number of impressions. That’s right, for a mere $12,000 they will set up a Facebook page and Twitter profile for your comapny and promise that a banner ad will appear on 2 million Facebook pages.  Are you whipping out your checkbook yet?

Developing a social media strategy isn’t something that you can outsource to a third party. It should be part of your strategic marketing plan with specific objectives and an anticipated ROI. Company participants need to engage online in genuine conversations. Bloggers need to write about their real world issues. Problems. Successes. Difficult issues. Complex questions. With an authentic, human voice.

It’s not easy, it’s not cheap, it’s not quick and it’s not someone else’s responsibility.

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 had a meeting this morning with Michael DeAloia, Cleveland’s former TechCzar, who has spent virtually his entire career involved in assorted aspects of business development. As the founder of several technology start-ups, an advisor to emerging technology companies, former director of technology development for the city of Cleveland, former company owner, CFO and director of business development for several Cleveland area technology firms, the TechCzar is intimately familiar with the essential financial elements that enable business growth and success.

He’s also a social media maven, with two blogs of his own, a daily fixture on assorted social media platforms and the founder of two social media startups. Basically, he’s got the credentials, the experience and the detailed understanding of the potential of social media to advance specific business objectives. So, when he talks about executing social media strategies, a lot of savvy people in town listen.

That’s why I wanted to hear his perspective on social media ROI – a topic that’s inflamed the Twittersphere since Olivier Blanchard published his series of blog posts that excoriated the pretentious social media gurus who promote unreliable and flawed ROI models.

So, does ROI it exist? Should it be tracked? And, if so, how should it be measured?

As Michael makes clear, an essential element of any social media strategy is how that strategy contributes to business development. And business development is clearly defined as activity that generates revenue. It really is that simple.

Salesforce.com recently introduced tools that integrate the online CRM system with Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, thereby enabling their users to track contact and activity originating in the social media sphere. Salesforce’s integration an acknowledgement that companies need to track all of their business development activities, not just those emanating from the historic direct marketing channels. As marketing investment shifts to the new social media platforms, executives will need firm data to determine the efficacy and effectiveness of their assorted social media channels.

Sorry if this sounds so Web 1.o, but this is the real world, where investment decisions are based on hard data, not on warm feelings. Bottom line, if your social media efforts do not translate into an increased number of transactions, larger transactions, increased margins or reduced costs, then your insistence on the value of your conversations, retweets and Fan Page subscriptions is a pure and limpid farce.

As Michael concludes: “Dollars in the bank, baby.” Truth.

The blogosphere and Twittersphere have been buzzing this past week over a series of blog posts by Oliver Blanchard on his blog, The BrandBuilder, discussing how to communicate social media ROI to skeptical executives.

The posts sparked dozens of comments and hundreds of Tweets from social media aficionados that split between those who castigated Olivier for daring to introduce crass mercantile interests into the pristine world of social media and those who recognize the business realities involved with securing investment and executive support and need practical guidance to pitch their social media plans.

Olivier was precisely correct when he wrote that executives need to hear how any social media plan will generate a tangible and measurable return on their investment. These executives are responsible for dispensing a finite amount of corporate resources among departments. It is practical, desirable and reasonable that they dispense investment dollars to those projects that will advance the company’s financial position the farthest. That’s reality. Now how do you deal with it?

Once you understand their agenda – maximizing the return on their finite investment dollars – you can frame your social media plans effectively, in language that is compelling and convincing.

Rule #1: do not talk about Twitter followers, the number of retweets last month or the number of times a Fan Page was shared on Facebook. They don’t understand and they don’t care. Zip it until next month’s local SMC meeting.

Rule #2: Speak in language that they understand: Process, Plan, Cost and Return. CEO’s will want to understand the SM process and know that you have a precise plan to execute. By the way, it must be written, or it’s not really a plan.

Rule #3: Do not tell the CEO that the cost of your social media plan is zero or you’ll lose all credibility. Although Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and WordPress do not charge their users, their cost is not zero. Their actual cost must include the human costs of participation, engagement, content development and management. How many employees will be involved? At what level? How many hours per day? Per week? Although the company doesn’t write a separate check for social media costs, they are paying for participation, and the total cost may be significant.

Rule #4: Focus on Quantitative, not Qualitative returns. Qualitative returns include the impact of your participation on your company’s reputation and the value of extended online conversations in relationship building. The CEO doesn’t care. I know you do, and I know your CEO should, but that’s not how he measures success. He wants Quantitative metrics. How many new customers did your efforts generate? How many new sales? How much did the average sale increase? What impact did your efforts have on gross margin?

Rule #5: Understand how the F.R.Y. metrics explain and support your social media goals. As Olivier described in his blog post, a compelling social media strategy should improve:

Frequency Increasing sales revenue by shortening the interval between transactions.

Reach (breadth) Increasing sales revenue by increasing net new customer count.

Reach (Depth) Increasing sales revenue by helping customers buy deeper into the product line.

Yield Increasing sales revenue by driving customers to want to increase their average per transaction spending.

Rule #6: Be prepared to detail how you intend to track sales that emerge from the social media channels. You must be able to track results to prove that your SM participation justified the company’s investment.

There. That wasn’t so hard. Now head up to the CEO’s office and tell him how you’re going to improve the company’s bottom line. And you can blog about it later.

The publishing industry has been devastated by the Internet model that demands free content immediately delivered in a variety of user-chosen formats.

Newspapers are floundering, trying desperately to remain relevant when the news they deliver to your doorstep has already been read and digested for up to 24 hours.

And the news magazines are facing an even more perilous future, since the news they have historically reported is now delivered over a week after its occurrence. When Twitter can provide reports on, and photos of, an airplane landing in the Hudson as it happens, the prospect of a news magazine reporting the same event seven days later doesn’t seem particularly compelling.

Facing this historic business crisis, Newsweek decided to do something about it. They aren’t going to be just a weekly news magazine (despite their extraordinarily precise brand name), instead they are going to be….. a thought leader. And, to cement their long-term viability, they’re increasing the price of the now non-news week magazine so that their subscriber base can be simultaneously confused and impoverished.

Imagine if ESPN tomorrow were to declare that because of declining sports viewership, they were switching formats and would now broadcast nothing but classic comedies. And, oh by the way, they were raising their price for all of their previous sports viewers to continue watching. How long would you predict they would last on your cable system?

Apparently the arrogance of publishing executives cannot be tempered by anything as prosaic as business realities. These haughty decision makers have determined that the perception of the publishing brand that they’ve created, developed and reinforced for decades can be summarily dismissed and instantly rebranded with an entirely different focus and objective simply because they declare their intent.

I won’t delve into the recent reporting biases of Newsweek, which suggest that they’ve abandoned all pretense of being an objective news source, and focus on the seemingly genetic arrogance of the executives who intend to pursue a new purpose and create a new publication without any apparent need or clamor from their readers. Markets are supposed to react to demand. Has there been any demand from their readers insisting on lengthy essays on a variety of topics? Have any readers begged for some leadership so they could frame their thoughts correctly? Or is this reformation simply an extension of the publisher’s and editor’s desire to retain some semblance of relevance?

The new model appears to have avoided any attempt at serious design thinking – trying to create a new model to replace the failing model that they’ve always adhered to. Where is the surprise? Where is the integration of web-based elements with the new magazine? How are they remaining relevant to the millions of mobile users? How will they generate sustained revenue outside of their historic advertising model? Where are the innovative social media elements? Where, in fact, is anything distinctive or memorable? Why would I read this?

Cue the dirges, because this experiment is destined to fail. Quickly. Inevitably. And certainly. They are breaking their brand promise, they are trying to force a model on their subscribers without preceding demand and they are vainly clinging to a publishing model that has been demonstrated to fail. Without even a nod to the transformative nature of the web, Newsweek has simply changed itself from a Triceratops to a Stegosaurus. But ensconced in their insular, self-affirming and self-congratulatory echo chambers, they fail to acknowledge that both ultimately became extinct.

Sat at the bar at Champps this week where a shark fin shaped coaster caught my eye. It was the coaster for a beer named Landshark, and I thought it was a creative use of design to grab attention and notice.

The coaster sparked a conversation with the bartender about the beer. It was obviously intended to appear to be a microbrew targeted at the Corona drinker, and I was curious how a microbrew could land in a major restaurant chain and have their coasters placed under every drink at the bar. That’s an expensive proposition, and one that’s not entered into lightly from the chain’s perspective.

Something didn’t make sense, so I pulled out my handy iPhone and fired up the Google.

A quick search revealed that the Landshark beer wasn’t a microbrew after all, but was brewed by Anheuser Busch for Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville Brewing Company and launched as a direct competitor to Corona.

The Landshark bottle design is virtually identical to Corona’s, it is served with a wedge of lime to be squeezed into the bottle, just like Corona, and it is described on its label as Island Style Lager (though the specific island, or islands, is never specifically identified, though we can be reasonably certain that the island isn’t Manhattan).

The connection to Corona is even more apparent when you take a look at the Landshark lager web page on the Margaritaville corporate website, where the images of Landshark postcards appear to be a direct rip-off of Corona’s marketing efforts.

Seriously, Landshark’s materials are a direct lift of Corona’s look and feel images incorporating sandy beach, dazzling blue ocean and palm tree fronds dangling from the upper corners. Gentlemen, start your depositions.

Faithful to my inquisitive marketing nature, I ordered a Landshark to gauge it’s similarity in taste to its intended rival. The beer was similar in flavor to Corona, delicious with a wedge of lime, and immeasurably better than the major brewers’ other Corona rivals Miller Chill or Bud Light Lime. Which left me conflicted.

The product itself is fine, but I have qualms about how the beer’s marketing strategy is being designed and executed. Both the bartender and another Landshark beer drinker that I spoke with thought that the beer was a microbrew. In fact, that was one of Landshark’s primary appeals: it wasn’t a big corporate brew. Except it was.

Want to know how big and corporate Landshark is? They just acquired naming rights to the Miami Dolphins Stadium for one year. That’s seriously corporate.

At its core, my unease with the brand lies in its lack of any genuine authenticity. It pretends to be something it’s not. It has no island style, no island roots, in fact no legend or backstory at all.

Ultimately, that’s where Landshark, and their ad agency, fail. They obviously want to position themselves as the beer of choice for Corona lovers. But what’s the reason to order the imitation instead of the real thing?  With all the social media and web-based marketing tools available, it’s never been easier to create a legend and product persona. But Landshark has no social media presence at all, has intentionally avoided creating their own legend and appears intent on leveraging a glossy image and their substantial marketing dollars to gain mindshare and bar space.

Given a choice between the two, I’ll take the original Corona. With a wedge of lime, please.

Some of the worst advertising in the world is printed in industry trade journals. Those glossy magazines devoted to mobile home production or coal mining that are paid for with industry specific advertising from the titans of their industry sector.

Reading the ads in these magazines illustrates everything that’s wrong with most marketing efforts. They try to incorporate too many messages, they make outrageous claims of industry leadership or market domination, they are insufferably self-aggrandizing and they focus almost exclusively on the product, not the buyer.

As a followup to yesterday’s post detailing the 5 Essential Rules of Business Design, I now offer these 5 Essential Rules of Message Design:

1. Your message should consist of one thing. That’s it. One. Ideally, it should be one thing that appeals to your customers. The ad that you ran that declared your engineering prowess, commitment to service, ease of use, instant availability and unparalleled quality was so crowded and disjointed that it actually conveyed none of these messages. If you don’t know what sets your company apart, how will your prospects or customers know? Distill your capabilities down to the one essential thing your customers can’t live without. Then stick with it.
2. Your product/machine/service is not your message. Industrial companies are frequently run by the person who originally founded the company – who is often the person who designed and engineered their original products. You can tell from their advertising that they love their machines. Their full page ads are dominated by a picture of their latest beauty, which is nearly indistinguishable from their earlier machines, or from any of their competitor’s machines. But the difference, you see, is that the new Model 3550DX can run at 1700″/minute, not 1600″/minute. Get it? Actually, I understand if you don’t. What these company owners fail to grasp is that the buyer isn’t buying the machine, they’re buying the functionality of the machine. They actually don’t care a whit about the machine. Only you do. If you want to create an indelible message, focus on the benefits you deliver: ease of use, reliability, uptime, throughput – and leave the machine out of it.
3. Tell the truth. Your customers know who you really are. Your prospects who convert to customers soon will. If you fabricate an identity that has no connection to reality, you’ll alienate your customers, lose their trust and may never regain it. I worked with an industrial company that was # 7 in their industry sector, with annual sales of about $25 million. They competed with companies with sales exceeding $2 billion, yet made the claim that they led the industry in R&D, service and quality. It was an unbelievable boast. In reality, their strength was regional distribution, but they didn’t think that regional distribution was significant enough, so they puffed themselves up to appear larger and more important than they are. Their sales are down over 25%. Good luck regaining that trust, guys.
4. Commercial buyers are no different than any other consumer. Industrial producers frequently claim that their buyers are different from other buyers. And they’re wrong. The emotional appeals to industrial buyers are virtually identical to every other buyer. Compare the buying process of  a consumer preparing to buy a new car and an industrial buyer preparing to buy a new labeling machine. Both will investigate several buying options. When evaluating these options, both will likely consider the manufacturer’s reputation, reliability, ease of use, total cost of ownership, service requirements, warranties and performance characteristics. Although the total purchase amount may be many factors higher, the buying process isn’t far removed from any standard consumer purchase. This makes the design of your marketing message that much more critical.
5. Repetition works. Just because you tire of your message doesn’t mean that your buyer is tired of it. You see your message every day, in every e-mail that you send and in every view of your company’s web page. But your customers don’t see your message nearly as often. You may send them e-mails every week, but it’s likely that they delete over 70% of your messages before they’re even read. Stay on message. Over and over and over. Across all media, including social media. If your message is important, it’s worth repeating.

The only thing worse than being exposed to bad design is being forced to work with bad designers.

During each of the past two years, I guest lectured at the Kent State design school, discussing with students how to integrate their design aesthetics with business exigencies. I told them that design had to support a specific business purpose, reinforce the corporate brand and communicate specific qualities. If their design failed to support these business imperatives, then it was bad design, no matter how pretty it was.

Over the course of a semester-long design project, the students learned how to apply their design skills to create a memorable impression, generate interest, communicate product information effectively and generate revenue. Just what they’ll need in the real world.

If college students can understand the purpose of design, why can’t professional designers?

I stopped working today with a designer who simply doesn’t understand how to design effectively for business. Despite detailed feedback, this designer could not grasp the five essential rules of business design:

1. Reinforce my corporate brand. My company has a brand. Specific colors, images, fonts, styles and visual elements that are repeated across multiple media to convey specific qualities and attributes of my company. Your job is to incorporate those design elements to reinforce my brand, not to create a new look that ignores established visual cues and design rules that define my brand.
2. Understand my strategic goals. What is my market? Who are my clients? What are my sales goals? How does this project fit into my corporate mission? If you don’t understand where I’m going, and why, how can you design components to support my efforts?
3. Look at your work from the end-user’s perspective. What does the user want from the product or service? Does your design communicate the core purpose effectively? Is it compelling, distinctive and memorable? The end-user is the one who determines the effectiveness of your design, not your design committee or the marketing director.
4. Design with a purpose. Know what you want to accomplish and what specific message you want to convey. Then design with that purpose in mind. Focus, focus, focus.
5. Pretty ≠ Effective. I’ve yet to meet a designer incapable of creating pretty output. Virtually all are able to generate gorgeous brochures, beautiful ads and splendid identity programs. But just because your work is pretty, doesn’t mean that it’s effective. Great design communicates function, pleasure and meaning to the customer, and supports the specific business purpose of your client.

Remember, you’re a businessperson, too. Pretty isn’t enough. Design with purpose.

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.