innovation playground Idris Mootee

Disruption Is Less About Technology. It's About Customer Experience. Disruptive CX Strategy Needs To Get Emotional.

Why do some companies make so much profit and command price premiums while some continually  struggle to make minimum margin and gain market share despite spending good money on advertising, buying channel presence with some even having a better designed product?

The secret is very simple. Though these different high performance companies operate in very different industries and face different challenges, the major reason for their success comes down to one thing. They understand it is all about the customer experience. And they don’t even have to do it for everyone. At least not initially.

They are putting their customers at the center of their universe; they also understand that not every company can do that (including their competitors who are many times bigger and with big marketing budget) because it will be difficult or too expensive for them to make that work for everyone.

The secret is that you should start with ‘not everyone’ and identify those ‘someone who cares’. Those someones who appreciate the extra things that you do and will ultimate tell everyone about it and essentially those become the most tangible evidence of your brand promise. The declining effectiveness of advertising is well evidenced and many marketers are still doing that despite their value propositions which are unclear, and customer experience is underwhelming. And instead of spending time and resources on the latter, they take the easy path and buy more display advertising, it is not going to work.

Smart companies understand that success depends most fundamentally on a few core customers and if you can tailor your customer value propositions to them and then design the experiences just for them, you’re on the right track and can achieve a new level of performance and differentiation. These customer experiences are not about a $50 rebate, or a free something or many thank you emails. These are things that consumers take for granted and believe you’re doing it to get their business as the cost of doing business.

Customer experience needs to get emotional. This is how our brains are wired and this is when design thinking comes into play. You need to map the customer journeys and engineer happy accidents. Not a business process exercise at all and don’t mix them up. Walk their shoes in their everyday life and constantly invent new ways to apply the best value propositions on minimal scale. Remember customer experience is not about being well said, it is about being well done and it is not a published rule book. It is embedded in your culture and how your brand dictates your behavior.

Eight Most Common Marketing Mistakes That You Should Avoid Making.

Every one is an expert in marketing these days. And with social media, everyone is an ad critic. Not entirely a bad thing, but as marketers you need know how to filter the noise. People need to understand the difference between STRATEGIC MARKETING, MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS and CHANNEL MARKETING. These are three very different things. The first one is strategic and is tightly linked to business strategy and decisions are made based on what and how to invest, the second one is about advertising (there is no social only advertising or no advertising only social..either way that's where we're going) and the third is about activations and promotions in the field.

I am writing this blog post while shopping at a Prada store. It is a good place to write about marketing because luxury goods companies such as Prada understand building brand equity, communicating brand desire and staging customer experience. I bought my new Prada briefcase and shoes for three reasons in the following order: 1/ Brand 2/ Product 3/ Experience. I see many great design but their brand is never part of my consideration. Product is great and I need to like it. The experience makes me feel like buying more stuff.

There are many myths in marketing despite it is a relative mature practice and companies are still making the same common mistakes. Every senior marketers and CMOs can benefit from reading this:

Marketing Mistake #1: Marketing is all about driving sales. 

Many people still confuse marketing with sales. Selling is only a part of the marketing function, but marketing is much broader than selling. It is not one is more important than the other. Marketing begins before a company design or conceptualize an idea or design or engineer any products or services. Marketing continues throughout the whole product’s lifecycle. Its mandate is the continued discovery of new ways to create, communicate and capture value. Marketing is not and should not be considered a cost; in fact it is an investment. Imagine if a business stops investing? If marketing cost is linked as a ratio-to-sales, them company will eventually enter a stage of stagnation and eventually decline (I am not saying there shouldn't be discipline in marketing resource management). But like any investments, it must provide a clear idea of how and when it will deliver a return on that investment. So marketing is a number of strategic investments and not just a cost item. The truth is any marketing dollars that are linked directly to sales improvement most likely are sales promotions that leads to discount and sometime brand erosion. The best marketing build brand equity and create demand. Field promotions, discount programs, sales incentives etc. are not marketing, these are sales operation expenses.

Marketing Mistake #2: Marketing is a department.

This is another common mistake that marketers make and that is to view it as a department within the organizational structure. And therefore marketing is the sole job of the marketing department. It is true that marketing is a function that’s organized within a marketing department. But if marketing thinking only happens within this department, I believe the company would not do well. Marketing is far too limited if it is left only to the marketing professionals. Progressive companies need to get all their departments to be customer oriented and focused. Marketing must be an integrated part of the entire organization, rather than a specific function. Successful marketing is the true integration of marketing, engineering, design, customer service, community management and operations beyond simply putting a multi-disciplinary team together. The team must be supported and managed effectively in an environment where each discipline respects and appreciates the perspective of others. Look at some of the most successful companies today and see who in the organization sets the marketing direction for those companies. More and more, it’s the CEO who’s also becoming the CMO while not officially although they do not usually carry that title.

Marketing Mistake #3: Marketing is all about the big idea and the marketing mix.

Marketing is often being marginalized to just coming up with the big idea and then managing the marketing mix and communications. Gone are the days of the Big Idea (Leo Burnett’s in the 80s). Many executives today still believe that marketing is about getting the “big idea” from their agencies and spending money effectively on the advertising and promotional mix. In another words optimizing your advertising dollars, will lead to a successful marketing campaign. It doesn’t matter what products they are marketing, many executives believe that the key to a successful campaign is to work with their advertising agencies to come up with big ideas to differentiate their product in the marketplace and win a few advertising awards along the way. The traditional marketing model is obsolete and many clients and agencies are still operating this way. Marketing is not about mix, it is about telling your story in the most authentic ways and the best way to do that is from their leaderships. The big idea is not about the advertising, the company itself should be the big idea! They missed it completely. And the marketing mix is not about the media, it is about orchestrating both mass and individual social conversation at scale.

Marketing Mistake #4: Try as hard as you can to sell.

For brands to sell they have to stop selling. Unless you’re on DTV or doing a tactical DM campaign. For brands to win the hearts and minds they so crave and to engineer brand desire, they must first earn those hearts and minds and tell people who you are and why you’re here. What is your purpose? Where does your company’s passion lie? What are your greatest capabilities, and what do you have to offer? What need do you see in the world that you are operating in? And you must earn your relevance through a view of the world and a perceived role within it that is a clear break from the bygone advertising practices of the 80s. Sell hard by selling less. Any advertising that tries too hard to sell will not work.

Marketing Mistake #5: Listening to your customers.

Today’s technological advancements have given companies the ability to target and talk to customers in a more precise manner. Yet, the new technologies allow us to listen to whatever is going on out there. Failing to use these tools effectively will result in companies totally disconnected with their customers. Social listening is not an option; it is the core of marketing intelligence. Don’t waste money on useless focus groups.

Mistake #6: Not listening to your customer.

This is the key difference between “Market Drive” and “Market Driving. Customer input is valuable in helping companies develop incremental innovation. However, customers are usually unable to conceptualize the benefits of revolutionary products, concepts and technologies. No market research will tell you what’s the next big idea. And no customers or your trade partners can tell you how you should do your marketing. Your customers can tell you the things that are broken and they want you to fix it. Listen to them. Make sure they know you are listening and make them happy. But they won’t create the future roadmap for your product or service. That’s your job. No you listen to your customers but you should never ask them what they want. They will tell you they want a car that self-drive and can fly.

Mistake #7: Making everything a CMO problem.

The average tenure of a CMO is 12-16 months these days and is getting shorter. No one wants the CMO job. The shortness of the typical CMO’s tenure is a tangible manifestation of corporate management's frustration with the inability of marketing to create economic value let alone the inability to drive change and transformation. Good marketing not only transforms customers but it should first transform the organization itself. Many CMOs are traditional marketers who are usually great advertising tacticians. Trained for years in traditional advertising, their primarily focus was in marketing communications activities to build brands. Many lack the strategic thinking and CMO must also relentlessly focus on unifying the disparate functions of marketing, operations, sales, service, and technology. For most companies, such integration suggests an unholy alliance of warring fiefdoms and silos, and that's precisely why the C-suite needs an individual with the power and authority to deliver the results. Marketing is about the customer experience.

Marketing Mistake #8: Marketing is a pure science.

Marketing can become over obsessed with logic and lost sight of the magic. Marketing has always aspired to be an “accurate science” status and has been searching for the best formula. Sometimes people are using fake science although data is becoming more and more important for marketing these days thanks for big data. Even with those data, we should not lose sight of the most important of marketing: magic, mystery and mastery.

 

Action Cam King GoPro Is Turning Our Life Into A Movie. HTC and Others Also See The Opportunity.

When I was at a GoPro event earlier this year I saw how the crowd reacted to it and it is more than a product, it is now a movement. The little mountable camera is a brilliant example of how innovation can shape the industry structure of digital imaging and created a new path of growth under the radar screen of all big players from Canon, Nikon, Sony, Lumix and others for cameras and the Logitech, Microsoft, HP and others for video cam.

This little wearable camera company did an amazing job (now a US$10 Billion market cap company) invented a completely new category. The digital camera business is in decline while smartphone replacing low end cameras and more affordable DSLR and micro-four-thirds are driving margin out of the industry. GoPro managed to innovate based on a simple unmet needs. A perfect example of taking advantage of a corporate blindspot.

GoPro has been developing wearable technology devices "before they were cool." Nick Woodman developed the first GoPro camera in 2004; it was a film camera that could conveniently be strapped to a person's wrist, allowing users to easily snap a photo of memorable moments in action. So people don’ t need to put their cameras inside a waterproof bag. It’s the age of the selfie, GoPro are enabling video and action selfies. They are the best (and until recently the only) tools to be used to bring authentic and extreme actions to share with everyone. It is an answer to our needs to share moments and capture experiences. It is the defacto adventure broadcast system. The accessories system is impressive and that is part of the reason for their success.

GoPro's success stems from its ability to use consumer experience as advertisement. Customers are basically marketing their products. Otherwise it cost tens of millions to produce those. Now the National Football League is launching a digital streaming network, called NFL Now using GoPro. This NHL season, you'll be able to experience hockey from a whole new perspective -- the players'. The NHL is teaming up with GoPro to provide footage of certain plays from the perspective of goalies and stick handlers. Now you'll be able to experience hockey from a whole new perspective - the players'. Yes, they've just reinvented sports broadcast. Think about it, it is more than a hardware company selling a commoditized product (video camera) that can be easily produced at half the price, and GoPro is not just a sports cam anymore.

GoPro is as much a content and media company as it is a hardware company. GoPro's lightweight HD devices and content management/sharing platform - through GoPro Studio and the GoPro App - enables users to capture, edit, manage, and share. So it is offering a full solution. The barriers for entry to compete with them is very high, it is not just hardware anymore but also brand, content and full suite of editing software. It is in fact in the business of content capture and delivery. In addition to the Xbox, new platforms have enabled GoPro to stream its videos on airline Virgin America through a dedicated channel.

Companies including Garmin, Polaroid, Sony and HTC are all joining game. Their products would have to be overwhelmingly better than GoPro’s for GoPro users to abandon their brand loyalty, which is hard. HTC is playing a different game and the product is uniquely different targeted for the non-consumers. This is a way smarter strategy than Sony and Garmin who try to compete head on. Panasonic's 4K solution was a joke.

HTC’s strategy is like Nintendo’s strategy with Wii in the early days (huge success unfortuantely they couldn't sustain) competing for the non-consumers. They opened up new markets not targeting extreme gamers but for family and casual gamers. HTC RE is playing a similar game and stands a good stance to carve out their niche. Or perhaps that niche is 80% of the market that are non-consumers. How many people actually do extreme sports? 10% or 20%? HTC RE will need to compete on a different model.

The HTC RE is a clean and simple product which is the opposite of GoPro. HTC's design philosophy is that users are all trapped behind the screens of our smartphones when we capture important moments in our lives, whether that's a sports game or a fashion show. HTC RE is lightweight, simple, and out of the way so that allegedly, documenting your life doesn't stop you from missing the experience. It is still very early stage in the game and whether GoPro will continue to dominate the category or it will fade away like the first MP3 player Creative Technology Ltd., we will have to wait and see.

Porductwsie GoPro range has a fixed f/2.8 aperture, the same as the HTC RE Camera, which should good enough in most lowe light conditions. Both feature an ultra-wide angle lens to capture a broader view than point and click cameras or smartphones. Both are supported by a good range of accessories. Both pair up with apps that can be used as remote control and viewfinders. In terms of look... that depends on what you wear. If you wear Roxy, Nike or Columbia you most likely will buy a GoPro. If you wear Y3, G-Star, Converse, Anthropologie or AX, you will most likely buy a HTC RE. Or you can have both.

Many Made The Mistake Of Taking the Brand Out Of The Innovation Equation On The Fuzzy Front-End. Are You One Of Them?

Companies make many mistakes in their innovation journeys and often they go down the same path again and again and wonder why that is the case. The four main reasons among many are:

1/ They think it is all about creativity and coming up with more ideas.

Coming up with ideas is easy. Coming with good ideas is not difficult. Coming up with more ideas is not helpful. It is the quality of ideas and once ideas are being exhausted, it is time to perform the more difficult job of sensemaking and mapping. This is where most people fail and have no ideas of what and how to do next. They lack a framework of synthesizing these concepts into bigger themes and look at them in a differently way to see how each of ideas-system means to the customers, business and industry.

2/ They think innovation should be separated from the brand. Often people start thinking of new ideas without thinking without understanding the scope and scale requirements and that should be governed by the brand.

These ideas need to link to the current brand or masterbrand in whatever ways and has the potential to scale within a reasonable period of time. No established companies, unless for a very good reason, should start a new brand because of economic reasons and also the brand can be the powerful source to inspire innovation, in addition to the users or customers. Otherwise people can waste a lot of time and realize even they have a good idea, the marketing investment will cost too much making the project not worth pursuing. On the opposite, they also should not confused brand extension or other incremental innovation as strategic innovation.

3/ They think their current capabilities (including that of their agencies) are adequate and can do the job. The learning curve for them is too steep.

In many cases, companies have existing working relationships with their advertising agencies and marketing research firms and naturally would want to work with them on innovation projects. This is a bad decision as for the advertising agencies, they are too deeply embedded with the existing idea of what the brand is and should do rather than a fresh way of looking at it. And most marketing communications people and not equipped to manage the innovation process. Some innovation firm is basically ex-advertising agencies people repackaged themselves as innovation consultants (there are some occastions people successfully migrate). Most marketing research firms are not equipped with the right tools to do research that support innovation, and end up applying the usual quantitative and qualitative research methodologies which were designed for market testing and tracking.

To unlock the full power of applied creativity to drive innovation and economic value, let’s not approach innovation with overly simplified approach to getting the magic and bringing in the money. There is no magic in the innovation process, no one should hide behind this magic black box and the client expect them to show up one day with some magical ideas and then write them a check. Innovation is about applying design thinking and having all the right type of people and capabilities in place.

4/ They are confused between strategic visions, brand and innovation and what comes first?

Executives spend a lot of time on strategic vision – answering questions such as who we are, what we do and what do we want to be when we grow up etc. Then they trying to figure what the brand really stands for. At the same time they also spend time on creating new products and service ideas? What usually happens next is now they struggle bringing the two together to use?

When people hear about vision, they think of it as something that guides the company into the future, and to succeed in the future requires innovation. And innovation is about building a powerful brand and create new market space for the future. While the value of having some kind of strategic vision is obvious, it should never be mistaken as strategy. Strategy is not only about vision, it is about strategic innovation. And brand should guide innovation. It is so easy to get confused.

Moving forward companies need to do two things differently.

1/ Reorient their brand people with the idea that brand needs to get beyond communications. My new book 60-Minute Brand Strategist shows readers step-by-step guide to build a brand from the core and its meanings to customer experience design. Brand Managers should not be stuck in the old world with old-school approach and brand-building model developed in the 80s and take on the roles as Brand Innovators. Every brand manager’s jobs should have two roles: managing brand business performance and managing brand innovation.

2/ Rethink what kind of people and skills that is needed to implement innovation. Implementation innovation is 10X harder is coming up with the ideas and it requires more than a product development person. They need to understand the different roles that they have already – and will need – on the team and each role’s importance in the ideation and activation stages. Idea Couture research on innovation practices shows that many business leaders still believe that innovation is a rare gift that exists mainly in creative people who are in leadership roles or gifted creatively. For example, just think of how often you hear people saying, “That’s why I get paid the big bucks because I am the big idea guy.” Such thinking is not healthy as it usually means that organizations are overlooking other, much better sources of potential innovation. An idea, even a big idea, is not the same as an innovation. Only when an idea is turned in to a product, a service or a business that creates new value can it be considered an innovation. Whether the innovative idea is radical, substitutive, incremental, or complementary, it still needs to fit into the stages of a value chain within an industry.

On another note, my book 60-min Brand Strategist is offically launched this month. It is available in Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other book stores. These are some pages taken from the book. It only takes you 60 minutes to read through it. I know you're busy. Share with me your thoughts.

Some Celebrate Failure. Some Even Romaniticize Failure. The Best Strategy Is To Avoid It!

The new M/I/S/C Bounce Back issue is out in newstand.This issue is packed with great articles about how companies should deal with adversity. It is one of the best issues ever.

For the last few years, magazines have made failure romantic, and start-ups love their failure stories. It’s true, there are some great stories out there: at the top of the list is Steve Jobs who was fired from the very company he founded. J.K. Rowling took Harry Potter to 12 publishers; all of them turned her down. Walt Disney filed for bankruptcy in his early twenties.

And there was Bernie Marcus who was the son of a poor Russian cabinetmaker from New Jersey who got fired from his job working at hardware store. With US $2 million in capital, Marcus and a partner went into business and opened a different format store with hangar-size, no-frills outlets, friendly service and a huge selection of products, they called it Home Depot. For Marcus failing was about character building and part of the journey to excellence.

These stories are both motivational and inspirational. Magazines from Fast Company to Harvard Business Review jumped on the bandwagon, selling the message it’s ok, even cool, to fail. Some people take this as a ticket to push bad ideas forward. Sometimes people carry failure as a badge of honor. There was a guy who wanted to join our company; his resume read ‘six times failure, a proud veteran.’ When I asked him whether he had any confidence that he will succeed the next time, he said no. It sounds like Vegas to me. The organizations we design and operate are not agile enough to support smaller experiments and the bigger the company is, the harder it is to bring innovation to the market.

Companies are using the stage-gate approach, taken from product development, to the innovation process, which is a big mistake. They’re also applying the wrong metrics to measure innovation projects. But the fact is failure is a bad thing – if you can avoid it, avoid it. Instead of putting too much focus on those who ‘made it’, and their struggles and resilience, we should be really be focusing on teaching people how to avoid failure in the first place.

The problem is we should not encourage people to fail, but should not penalize them either. We should be encouraging them to take calculated risks. The danger I am seeing is when young people embrace failure in the wrong way. It almost seems like they’re trying to race through more failures to earn a badge, rather than trying the best they can to give the idea the best chance. This ‘failure movement’ is mostly supported by mediocre people who have few ideas and cannot execute. They continue to romanticize failure, to the extent that they start to expect it. We need to prepare for failure, but never expect it. The failure movement is growing an irresponsible attitude toward risk-taking and Design Thinking.

Just because you fail many times, doesn’t mean that you have a better chance of emerging from challenges unscathed. It gives people an excuse to think harder and learn to apply Design Thinking principles to model scenarios to avoid or minimize failure. Most innovation can’t avoid failure. In fact failure is often by design, it is part of the process of iterative development and market learning. I don’t consider that failure.

Prototyping and learning from mistakes can ultimately lead to a higher chance of success, but it also de-risks project mistakes that usually come from the weaknesses of our human mind, such as hindsight bias. We should be teaching people how to deal with those biases.

The failure movement often falls prey to both of these biases. How many people can you name that went broke while attempting various business ventures, and are still broke? Can you write a list of these people more easily than a list of successful entrepreneurs who overcame immense obstacles to succeed? I think we are giving ‘failure’ too much credit.

I can see why those stories sell, they’re comforting to read and somehow people feels closer to success. This is not the case. If you’ve failed 50 times it doesn’t mean you’re closer to making it. Let’s stop over-glorifying failure and avoid the pain. We know what it means when you have your fingers burnt once. The smartest way is to teach people to learn from Other People’s Failure (OPF). There is so much we can and should learn from it.

When I teach my strategy courses in master level programs, 80% of my teachings are around how companies fail and how to avoid it in the first place. For me, it’s called ‘strategy.’ There are so many free lessons our there, you don’t need to pay the price to feel the pain. Someone did it already. There is no need to romanticize failures, instead, we should learn how to best avoid failure and, in the worst-case scenarios, be prepared to bounce back from it. That’s what Design Thinking can do.

For the full story, pls see the June issue of M/I/S/C which is available in 26 countries and digital subscription is available through Zinio.

I Am Not A Gadget! Or Am I Becoming One? How Close Are We From A Full Blown Computional Culture?

Sometimes I feel like I am a gadget. We all performing various specialist and general tasks everyday and somehow you feel each of these tasks are not related. And the worst part of our job is to perform something that is so tedius and doesn’t really require any creativity, analytic and imagination. And you wonder why this work cannot be done by a gadget. Or if I am doing the job, does it mean I am a gadget?

There are over 600,000+ personal pocket gadgets out there for whatever purposes and over 700,000 apps for iPhone 7000,000; Android and 99,500 Blackberrys to turn your smartphone into a gadget. There's an app for almost anything and someday my resume will look like my iPhone and people will look at how many apps I have to decide whether I qualify for that job.

Human is supposed to be good at problem solving. Or at least we think we are, I am not getting into that debate. There are differences between the different types of problem solving from pure creativity to system level thinking or analytical processing.  Creativity requires periodic, temporary “encapsulation” as opposed to constant calculation or recalculation. You need time for working privately as well as times for group ideation. Encapsulation is what allows for the possibility of self-testing that enables a quest for excellence.

The big question is will the proliferation of gadgets push us towards a more creative culture where our time is better spend on the creative side while our gadgets take care of the rest or in another scenario where these micro-computing machines (gadgets) will take over and we will be pushed towards a computational culture?

All these micro devices, bit data-warehouses and pervasive communication facilities are now omnipresent in our daily activities. The way we live, work, play, communicate and interact with each other is in permanent flux due to the influence of these cool gadgets. Historically speaking, technologies are developed as a result of the need for faster means of calculation to achieve the unachievable before the world emerging into a full-blown computational culture. Emerging in its modern form in the seventeenth century after the introduction of typography, that culture, it is here argued, remains dominant today.

Can future gadgets evolve to a point that they understand our feelings and not just commands and preferences? As part of our extended mind and heart and algorithm that can add feeling to an otherwise mathematical, non-physical, and consequently non-aesthetic, thought? This is the theme of the next issue of MISC for March. Look out for the big Gadget Issue.

The Economics of Co-Creation. Can What Happened To Microbrewery Happens To The Auto Industry?

A lot of talk and interest around the concept of co-creation. It is no question that this is going to have asting implications of how products and experiences are designed, developed and marketed. In 3-5 years, customer co-creation will be the part the norm of everyday business. Much like early days of ecommerce when people struggled with the legal, technical, operational issues. Slowly these issues will work their way out and we would look back and say “that’s simple…. makes perfect sese.”

What’s a great example of co-creation? Let’s first try to define it here as sometimes people refers it to anything from idea crowd-sourcing to technical expert groups to simple product/service/marketing customization. One good example of real co-creation is a company called Loco Motor.

I met Jay Rogers (founder and CEO) at the PDMA Co-creation Conference when I was moderating a panel. He was hosting the event and I was extremely impressed with what he is trying to do and has achieved to date. It is the first co-creative automobile design and purchase experience in the world. Just as the auto industry is dying for new ideas and change and Detroit needs a new strategy and it is more than making a better car. There are many structural issues to deal with and it is complicated. Jay is attempting to disrupt the auto industry by using co-creation as the strategic core.

The people in the car industry that have tried to innovate in the last 100 years and mostly fail, what makes him think he has a chance? Perhaps Detroit should concentrate on redesigning the business model and the whole experience before redesigning cars.

The first product Rally Fighter sells for just under $60,000. It’s an incredible car that looks like a life size HotWheel and gives me fond memory of my childhood. Remember the Hot Wheels yellow track?

The Rally Fighter is designed by the online community and ismanufacture at the microfactory in Phoenix, Arizona with a sustainable and highly efficient process. Jay wanted to build cars all his life, after raising $10 million seed capital, he launched the company with a simple idea that is extremely difficult to pull off. Loco Motors hosts a passionate online group of car-lovers or fanatics who compete to design vehicles for some regional communities in contests that run about once a month. The winning designs is then produced and sold to the communities.

There is more than to the flexible and customizable micro-factory, the concept here is when you give people tools, a strong community network with shared passion, some inspiration, small incentive you are in game. In fact, he is reinventing the customer co-creation experience for automotive. There are more than needs to be done in order to reinvent the economics of the industry. I think every business should look at Loco Motots and see what is relevant for their industries.

Will Loco Motors remains to be a niche business or eventually springing into a platform that supports a auto-cottage industries I don’t know. But we also need to think how we reduce traffic including rethinking local supplies network for certain products and cutting down unnecessary traffic.

An example is to look at how we replace pizza or UPS delivery with perhaps flying delivery drones – pizza right through to your windows. I am not sure if someone has thought about flying delivery drones man by 14 year old part-time students that doesn’t even have a driving license. The military drones can be converted to do the job. It is more realistic than flying personal transport, because in the event of an accident the worst is you don’t get your pizza. May be this is another idea of Jay, his Marine Corps background can be very useful. A central drone delivery operations theater that supports the nation’s takeout industry.

Experience Design Innovation Can Use Nostalgic Clues To Create Emotive Connections. Don't Under Estimate The Power Of Nostalgia.

As technology pushes forward and sometimes it is easy for us to forget about the past. I think marketers and product designers could benefit more from looking to the past. I am not ready to claim that many of the classic design whether it is product or interfaces will stand the test of being both functional and timeless, but I can comfortably say that many brands/ products /interfaces carry a lot of sentimental value for many people. And many of these deign will not only survive this lifetime and well into the next generation. 

For me, I am at a stage where the best objects or brands or products are the ones that connect me with my childhood and memories of my time with my Dad when I was a little boy. I have been collecting these objects since a while back and they seem to contain a bit of my past. I guess as we age we will become more receptive to marketers and designers who make use of what market researchers call "a longing for positive memories from the past."

The science of nostalgia isn't yet fully understood, but studies have shown nostalgic cues that can be exploited and the ways in which images from the past can yield favorable attitudes about products in the present. Ask our team of resident anthropologists and they can explain why.

The best examples would be my McIntosh amplifiers, JBL studio monitors and Leica cameras. I couldn’t really accord these (not the top end models) when I was 14 and my dad ended up buying me the entry models. I remember the joy when we bought a pair of giant speakers and we struggled to carry that home. It seems the objects I love most around the house are those that reminds me of him.  He once said to me “You're the most wonderful boy in the world, and doesn’t matter what you choose to do you will do it well. And you can do anything you want to.” 

I’ve heard the saying “A man travels the world over in search of what he needs, and returns home to find it” and I am not sure who said that. That’s kind of what I feel when I look at stuff around me. I have a thing for McIntosh (picture above my living room) and have quite a few of them lying around everywhere, I think I have at least 3,000 watts of pure clean power to feed to my JBLs. These pretty "Big Blue Meter" McIntoshes are more than sound machine, the classic design and the physical knobs are part of a very simple user experience. I am sick of remote control and I can’t even use them other than power on and off. It brings me the question why machine + usability + style can come in such a nice package then and we hardly see many today (Apple is the exception).

A nice surprise for me is now I can download a McIntosh app for my iPad (picute above). It is very smart idea, not that the app will upgrade the sound from my iTunes, but the skins with the big blue VU meter brings moments of joy even when I am not in front of my McIntosh. Now I can listen to and playback music from my iPad within the classic McIntosh experience. I can now access to my digital music library in a simple elegant interface inspired by the line of McIntosh audio equipment. Genius idea!! And it is free too!!

A great brand/product and even interface if stylistically design and adding some nostalgia touches can power up a wave of innovation that has strong emotive connections.  With more and more people entering the boomers lifestage, expect to see collectable toys inspired nostalgia factor. The essence of these brands is very appealing and emotive; something that people grew up with. It is more than Lanvin porcelain dolls and Prada toy keyrings, it is time to visit eBay.

 

 

We Have Proved Once Again That Brand Marketing Can Drive Social Change, Further Customer Engagment And Build Brands. And Won A Gold Award For Best Financial Service Marketing.

Aviva Canada just announced winners to Aviva Community Fund with half a million dollars payout to programs across the country. This is the second year of a very successful campaign created to use brand to drive social change. The Aviva Community Fund, a unique competition designed to lead, empower and support positive change in communities across the country, was first launched in 09 when we presented the idea to the client.

The idea is an open source idea platform for people to submit and decide how to use the money to drive real social change and provide positive impact to their communities. We are grateful to our client's team who worked with us side by side and our design and development team working day and night to accommodate the evolving needs of the program. This is year two and we won a gold award for this campaign. Great work team!

The sustainable impact of the idea or campaign is another proof to show that the world has changed so much since the early days of advertising. The events of the last decade and the Internet has made us aware of the challenges around us.

Advertising has always been the primary mechanism to create awareness and build brand equity, but it is not a question of which 50% of the money is wasted, it is a question of why 80% of the money spent is not building brand equity and merely creating awarness?

Our research shows that 79% of consumers are willing to change the brands they buy or if they believe their actions contribute to making our world a better place, and over 67% would help a brand “promote” (by using Facebook or other social media) if a good cause were behind it and is credible. Also, 73% of consumers (under the age of 35) said it is their mission to contribute to a better society and environment.

Among all respondents, “helping others and contributing to their communities” was cited as the second-most important source of personal contentment, after “spending quality time with loved ones.” Over 54% respondents are not fully convinced that corporate social responsibility advertising is credible when they cannot associate that with real action. The power of PR is diminishing when the program is not designed to engage consumers. This study was part of our ongoing research to look at how social causes can help brands which are low involvement in nature to drive engagement.

One interesting take away point, 67% of consumers are comfortable with the idea that brands can support good causes and improve our societies and make money at the same time. When is Wall Street ready to factor in a second or third bottom line into their valuation of companies? It is time.

Powerful And Affordable Real Time Data Mining, Visualization And Interactions Are Powering Up A New Culture Act - And Enabling "Infovation".

Just landed in Rhode Island and spendin the next 2 days in Providence, long working sessions ahead, expect to some productive knowledge exchange. The topic will be around where arts meets science, design meets technology.

We talk about how information changes our life and how it affect the way we make decisions both as individual and as a team or society, I think we are still unaware of the true power of change information visualization can have and the impact when applied in an interactive and social mobile settings.

Imagine a scenario everytime a politician suggests an idea and you can see realtime information in simple graphics visual data to confirm his/her coment or when a company makes a statment you can see how other respond with an instant trust index? That's a very likely future, an idea which I am working on. Can't say more.

And I don’t mean just data visualization such as bar chart and 3D chart etc, primarily it is the study and application of the visual representation of quantitative data, meaning "information which has been abstracted in some schematic form, including attributes or variables for the units of information."

Infodesign of infographics is actually different (it is like when I was trying to explain the differencne between customer experience and user experience/usabiity 10 years ago) from data visulaization. Information graphics (or so called infographics) instead of visualizing data, it is the strategic use of data by incorporating interactions, icons, charts, diagrams, graphs, tables and maps to present information that could bring new knowledge and sense making. Not only it helps to explain oterhwise difficult to understand data, but also illuminate and explain system complexities or system relationships in an easy to digest manner.

This is not new, in our human history our ancestors created cave murals and giant paintings to show us what was happening including what their understand of the the world, an event or even the universe. The power of infodesign lies in its effectiveness in simplifying complex data into understandable visual representations that can be universally interpreted.

The power of real time interactions with live data brings the potential to a whole new level. The human minds are real time computing machines that works to constantly changing and creating value and meaning of objects; the interactions between human brain and semiotics is conducted every time we see a visual representation of a scenario and makes possible of expanding our human cognition to absorb large amounts of data at just one single glance or click.

Here comes the most interesting part, infodesign is powering up an “infoculture” where massive real-time socailly digitally distributed (useful and useless) information is enabling a new form of cultural act. It is where science meets arts, and will continue to power up new possibilities as we learn how to use them. I will be the first one here to call it “Infovation.” Remember you hear it here first. Will write more about it next few days.

One more thing, how many schools out there actually teaches information design? Not many. We are still training people yesterday's skills for yesterday's job. No wonder it is hard for designers to find work. I think design schools should be paying for the continuous education of their graduates, becasue they never trained them enough or properly in the first place.

The Future Battle Of Seach Will Be In Social Mobile. Does Social Search Make Any Sense?

A friend of mine visited me from Japan and our conversation was around mobile search, since Apple’s acquisition of Siri, a company that makes voice-operated personal assistant app for the iPhone, people wonder what’s Apple intent was. This move has big implications for the future of mobile search and is just a first step into the game.

This space is where Google is not winning as generalized search is not working and so people have to resort to specialized apps. It can be super-local for hyper-specialized and need-based. It is more than just getting information but getting some jobs done. It is two steps within minutes versus most online search is the first step. Whether it is about finding a nearby pub, getting a movie ticket or getting a dinner reservation through OpenTable, context is crucial. So business model is pretty much based around affiliate commissions from partners.

There are still a lot of usability issues to solve and there is little tolerance to sifting through irrelevant search results and they include: How to create clear quick access action buttons? How do you combine motion and gestures into the usability language? How to use limited real estate particular there are a lot of information to display? How to meet the user’s needs quickly? He or she has less than 3 minutes to get what they want. How to deal with user mistakes? It is not just a backward button?

Is social search the answer? I don’t know and I am not sure. There are apps that go out there and search for rankings and aggregate them and translate them into usable data. I think there are some apps that simply go through social networks and find out what people are recommending. Adding social layers onto search results is one option but I don’t think it is an effective solution. I am not sure I know what is the best filtering technique? I think location matters. What people are tweeting is often irrelevant. Searching for ‘likes’ in Facebook can’t be too useful. We are still a few years away from AI search.

Researchers at IBM have been working on a machine called Watson that can sift through a terabyte of data and crank out answers to complicated questions in a few seconds. A version of the software that runs Watson could reside on a doctor's tablet computer in 3-5 years, analyzing test results to proffer a diagnosis, according to Dave Ferrucci, a senior manager at IBM.

Smartphones are getting more prevalent and powerful enough to handle complex tasks. More than 70% of Americans will own a smartphone by the end of 2013 and mobile tablets sport more powerful processors that let users run complex artificial intelligence apps on them. Ai will be available at the palm of your hands.. .in no more that 2 -3 years I hope.

In the meantime, Google will be buying up anything that helps the to colonized the mobile space. Anytime you need to use any of these services on your Android devices, you need to log into your Google account. That means all your location history, browsing history, and preferences are available for Google to use so that they can show you send advertisements your way.

For Now Tablet Is Dominated By iPad, And Then There Are Hundreds Of Others Who Want A Piece Of The Action.

Microsoft just posted a really good quarter and has been openly criticized for its lack of strategy in the tablet market and other consumer market. This software giant has failed to innovate in many fronts despite massive resources and strong talent based. The company has also failed to create any buzz on their product launches; you wonder what is not working with this company. It is not lack of money for sure, and not about lack of talent either.

The iPod has only been on the market for half a year, the buzz has quiet down but adoption is high and broad unlike previous products. This is an instant success and looks like no one us close to being a threat. Though Samsung, LG, HTC, Dell, HP and Lenovo, and others are unveiling their own tablets, no on has the advantage of full software and hardware integration. Apple's complete integration of hardware, software, operating system, and applications is a major competitive advantage.

Many think Galaxy is only potential threat to Apple. The Galaxy's screen has about three times the surface area of typical smart phones, including the phone. When it comes to tablet features and performance, here's how the Galaxy measures up to the iPad. The Galaxy is about the size of large paperbacks and don’t expect battery to last more than 8 hrs.

Samsung has identified two problems to solve as a competitive weapon to compete against iPad. First is flash. And then the other is face-to-face communication. The Galaxy has two cameras, one facing you and the other facing away, and you can use the Qik app to videoconference with other online members. This is an attractive feature and for sure will be matched quickly.

There are a handful of Qik enabled phones out there, but it still hard to find someone to talk than using Skype. iPad2 might incorporate a camera and FaceTime. Android have more apps, above100, 000 apps but the proportion of high-quality apps that you have to pay for has not gone up significantly. Apple leans way the other way on this, limiting some of its 300,000 apps solely to iPad distribution. And most are willing to apps for the iPad. Mobile usage has become pervasive. Mobile devices (smart phones, tablets and whatever in between) will be experienced dramatic evolution in the next 5 years. It is the new competitive ground and becoming a real category on its own rather than something as complimentary to the PCs.

These tablets or large smart phones are fast becoming mini-computers with nearly 13 million iPads shipped this year and expect to grow 3x next year. These tablets’ bigger screens promise more immersive experiences for marketers. The web will become more app like and the user experiences will converge. I can see tons of innovation opportunities to drive new behavior. It is so easy to view content on iPad and people considered that as less private, and more willing to share. 2-3 users sitting in a coffee shop can easily view the screen. And as a shared device, the iPad invites social interaction and imagine design apps for real life social interactions rather than virtual. A game that can be passed around and played or something that people can use in a retail environment, sort of self-help navigation in mall and view merchandise and promotions etc. I can come up with another ten scenarios.

I am looking forward to see the Blackberry Tablet rumored to cost just under $500. The PlayBook will have a smaller screen than the iPad (7-inch PlayBook versus 9.7-inch iPad), and there won't be a 3G option (it shouldn’t as it should use the BlackBerry connection). The screen resolution will be similar the iPad, but will translate to more pixels per inch. The PlayBook will also have bigger ram than the iPad (1GB PlayBook versus 256MB iPad), and RIM also included in two cameras (5MP back, 3MP front). I think this is useful for BalackBerry users like me and will guaranteed a minimum adoption. Great, now I’ve got one more thing to add to my briefcase.

Brand Talk on Love, Sex And Emotion. Marketers Love Drinking Their Kool-Aid.

Can a company/brand create such powerful emotive connections to make customers love them? Your advertising agency will be quick to say yes. I am not sure. I can imagine a few scenarios that it happens but is is very uncommon. Marketers like to convince themselves that you can buy ‘love’ and that’s the ultimate goal for great marketing. What's that book name "Lovemark"?  That's an example of advertisers drinking their own Kool-Aid. Yes, many customers can have a level of enthusiasm because we provide them with a great customer experience, is that love? That’s what I want to write about.

Neurologists suggest that the early stages of love are governed by parts of the brain that are used for goal-seeking and reward, and resembles obsessive-compulsive disorder. Such as the first time you look at an Apple iPhone, a Harley Street Bob, a Hermes Kelley, a Mercedes SL AMG and a Patek Philippe Calatrava.

Here's how our brain works, at the early stage of a romantic relationship sparks activity in dopamine-rich brain regions normally associated with motivation and reward. The intensity is proportion to the activity. Advertising doesn’t make them love your brand; they attract their attention and interest.

The part of our brain associated with emotion, the insular cortex and parts of the anterior cingulate cortex, are not activated until the more mature phases of a relationship. In the context of brand marketing, the emotive connections require consistence good customer experiences including the love and hate. Love happens as a result when the sum total of the interactions that a customer has with a company's products, people, and interfaces reach certain threshold. Starting from the moment when customers purchase a product to the moment when they unwrap the box and sharing their joy with their friends on Facebook.

Here's a myth. Love is not emotion, it is a strategic capability to gain happiness. And love by itself has no object. It is some invisible and unexplainable energy of consciousness sometimes we are not even aware of it. It is beyond form, yet inclusive of form. Love is a capability that can be developed, nurtured and learned. We develop this capability when we were very young. Over the years, we develop the ability to love and care for the other person(s) and sometimes even objects.
Emotion is a different animal. It is feelings (or reactions from our brain activity) that aroused as a result of stimuli. When you see something, you want to touch it, feel it and probably own it. Many people marry for the sake of convenience or benefits. The same way we are loyal to certain brands for the same reasons. Either because there is a lack of choice of simply the product category is of low involvement.

Sex, love and emotion are three different things. In an ideal world, they intersect at certain junction. Sex is not the single manifestation of love (although it can be one of them), regular purchase and consumption of a brand is not a manifestation of love for the same reason. Some people are always under the misconception that the manifestation of love is sex; the manifestation of loyalty is purchase frequency. Yes, it may be. But mostly not.

Take away for you for the weekend, emotion often gets us into trouble but we must recognize them as part of being human and accept them into our consciousness, where they need to be cared for and managed. And that cab be learned.

Have a great weekend and please share your thoughts.

Interaction Design Has An Important Role To Play In Our Future, It Has The Power To Transform Cultures.

There is two articles on IC today, one on Inc. magazine and the other in Globe and Mail. We're getting some good press coverage and we need to continue to make our story heard. In the meantime, we continue onto my journey of building global capabilities. Interaction design (IxD) will be a core focus, and I don't mean just web or mobile interactions. IxD will be one of the most important strategic capability for companies to build meaningful engagement and sustainable differentiation as part of their enterprise level experience strategy.

How would interaction design change in the next 10 years? It is a relatively new area of practice, beyond traditional GUI design or web interface design. Interaction design go beyond just the clicks and links and is becoming an indispensable aspect business design, product design and service design. Interaction design is traditionally define as the study of devices with which a user can interact, in particular computer users or screen related. The practice typically centers on "embedding information technology into the ambient social complexities of the physical world. I think the word 'device' will eventually become irrelevant. I think IxD is about to take on a larger mission -- empowering communities and transforming cultures.

Here's my point of view, traditional industrial design focuses on a product’s form and function, but interaction design requires very different perspectives and approaches for increasingly complex business and design problems. Think media industry, it is transforming itself from a traditional broadcast medium to an interactive one and this change will accelerate faster and faster extending their ubiquity and interactivity to devices, objects and spaces. Rapid technological development is introducing new types of functionality, for example to sense, feel, control, monitor, connect, search, respond and transact for different types of applications.

I am talking about the circle of influence with interaction design. How does interaction design transforms culture; it begins when a small networks of people simply start sharing ideas, feelings, hopes and frustrations etc. and that is when culture emerges. Their behavioral patterns, mindsets, emotional responses as well as aesthetics, rules, norms, and values that are being shared influence culture and as a result produce certain artifacts.

These 'virtual artifacts', through people’s interacting with them, influence cultures and facilitate emergence of new culture. Interactions then become transformative social mechanisms whereby these ‘virtual artifacts’ are made accessible or shareable through networks of communities further facilitating more connecting and sensing, their creations are further linked to specific interactional, locational, cultural and economic context.

The ‘virtuality of our everyday life’ as a result of the interactions powers up new creation and distribution of culture never before in the modern history of mankind. This is where the real disruption is for marketers and media producers. It is hard to distinguish one’s role at the complex juncture of creation/production and consumption in our everyday activities. Interactions of our everyday life take on new meanings. Interaction designer have bigger jobs to do.

My favorite French philosopher Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) gave us the tools to understand the media society and counteract the total assimilation into capitalist overproduction. Truls Lie finds a previously unpublished interview he made when Baudrillard visited Oslo in 2000. "Disappearing", says Baudrillard, "should be an art form, a seductive way of leaving the world. I believe that part of disappearing is to disappear before you run dry...." An idea for all interaction designers, make sure you include a 'disappear' function in all your designs.

What Do You Know About The New 3G? Girls, Gaming and Gender. Look Out For The Sony PSG (Playstation For Girls)

Gaming is mainstreaming these days with average gamers over the age of 34 years old that has been playing games for 12 years. The average age of the most frequent game purchaser is 40 years old. Surprised? And many are women.

Social gaming is become a global phenomenon, last year was a breakout year for virtual goods in the US which had been only an Asian thing. The virtual goods industry in Asia generates about $7B a year in revenue, seven times the US, this means major valuation differences between Asia and US with China's nine largest public online game companies valued in the $50B range compared to the top four US companies that are valued in the $22B range. Expect to see continuous growth and new competitors, Apple will eventually join the party, may be 2013.

Many still think gaming is a boy’s things and I think this is worth challenging. Historically speaking, probably yes. Women and video gaming doesn't sound like a fit. In Simone de Beauvoir’s pioneering work (1949) on women, The Second Sex, created impressions of girls at play with their dolls. After the French Revolution then came the eloquent denunciation of housework. Then in the 60s, women in the US pushed liberal feminism that the pre-1914 period never done before. If you looked at the advertising between 1950s and 11960s you will know what I mean. Femininity has come a long way.

There are still a lot of mystique on femininity, these mystique transformed doing housework, bearing children and shopping into almost a religion, a lifestyle many women accept or reject. Consumer ideology continued to reinforce this mystique. Do women like this whole package or it is the ideal lifestyle projected onto them by advertisers and marketers? Did marketers and male media executive try too hard to fool women into paying for a femininity they did not need at all. Or was it a good thing after all? I don't want to get into this debate. But I do have a POV.

No question men like video games. Or there are simply not enough titles that are designed for women? I think women equally like video games. Columbia College Chicago hosted high school girls in a summit focused on gaming and gender equity. What they did was bringing together female game designers and academics to look at the female voice in the digital gaming industry. It is called the 3G Summit, like the name? The Future of Girls, Gaming, and Gender.

It was a four-day event that engaged young women from Chicago-area high schools in a series of discussions about young women’s place in the gaming culture. Video game is rapidly evolving and now delivered over smart phones, iPad and social network sites as part of social connectivity, consumer engagement, and cultural expression.

I think the women’s gaming market is largely untapped. Many games are beginning to look like interactive movies. Where is the equivalent of “Titanic” for video games? I can’t think of any video games that are built around romance. May be the 2008's Prince of Persia, but there's no player involvement, you simply follow the story along and the attempt at non-linearity makes the development of the relationship muddled and mostly nonexistent. I can’t think of a RFG that has a strong romance and sex theme. Here is a screenshot from a sex scene in the God of War.

Sex (not romance) is now part of many popular games, gone are the days when Mario and Luigi were jumping around looking for magic mushrooms. Some video games allow the player character to have sex or romantic relationships with NPCs, wonder how the logics were built behind those romantic relationships. I guess it comes down to enough talking and pick up some good weapons; they will start to like you. I am looking forward to see the first person romantic video game designed by women for women… the PS3 free online feature will proof to be very useful, the age of video gaming romance is here.