Category archive: Marketing

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Thoughts on Guardian Changing Media Summit

I was speaking at the Media Guardian Changing Media Summit yesterday.

One of the topics discussed was “finding new ways to connect with consumers in a collaborative world.” It’s interesting to me that the focus was purely on “consumers and consumption,” as I believe that the changes we are witnessing at a societal level require us to think about these issues in a wider context.

"Thoughts on Guardian Changing Media Summit" continued...

Monday, March 27, 2006

Tom Peters on customer service

Tom Peters:

[I]f you really want to “put the customer first,” put the people who serve the customer “more first."

Sunday, March 26, 2006

Meliá White House Hotel, London

My fiancé, Antoine, and I really needed a weekend with no domestic distractions or other forms of work, so on Thursday I booked us into the Meliá White House Hotel near Regents Park. (Yes, we stayed at a hotel a couple of miles from where we live. Believe me, we will do it again.) It’s a four-star, so pretty comfortable, but what really set it apart was the customer service.

"Meliá White House Hotel, London" continued...

Saturday, March 25, 2006

Woot? Woot! We say W00t!

A new entry in the category of online niche marketing--even, shall we say, novelty marketing--meet Woot!, which sells one cool electronic gadget a day, with a new item posting at midnight Central US time. If you don’t buy it by the following midnight, it’s gone for good. And if it sells out before the following midnight, you turn into a pumpkin.

What Woot! lacks in inventory it makes up for in personality, with Weird Al-style podcasts for each item and design contests--recently readers were invited to re-design the logo of a joystick manufacturer, the results being rather ribald--and shockingly professional. If you can inspire a customer to spend several hours in PhotoShop just to send you a visual pun based on your product, I’d say you’re having quite a conversation.

Woot! has also turned their lack of customer service into a selling point, by having a sense of humor and making you, the customer, feel like you’re too sophisticated and witty to need a bunch of hand-holding anyway. From the Woot! FAQ (where the short answer to almost every question is “No."):

Will I receive customer support like I’m used to?
No. Well, not really. If you buy something you don’t end up liking or you have what marketing people call “buyer’s remorse,” sell it on eBay. It’s likely you’ll make money doing this and save everyone a hassle. If the item doesn’t work, find out what you’re doing wrong. Yes, we know you think the item is bad, but it’s probably your fault....

The lesson here is that in an online marketplace, constraints and limitations may actually give you your differentiating edge, if you’re clever and brave enough to exploit them.

Friday, March 24, 2006

EA advisory board member in the press

Tomi Ahonen is featured in two periodicals this week on the topic of mobile-TV convergence. In the American business weekly Barrons, he is quoted at length saying pretty much the same stuff he’s on about here at our blogsite, for example:

Tomi Ahonen predicts people will use their mobiles mainly for “snacking” on favourite TV content at idle moments of the day. The mobile phone will never become an alternative viewing platform, he argues, adding that the real challenge is for operators to create bold new TV services around the unique features of a mobile handset. These features, he says, include the ability to interact with, personalize and pay immediately for TV-related content.

Barrons, 20 March 2006

Unfortunately that issue is not free online, so you have to buy the issue to read more.

But if you want to read more about how to do 3G-TV, with several real examples of mobile-TV services and how the fourth screen differs from Cinema, TV and the PC screen, Tomi’s column in European Communications of Spring 2006, is worth a read. Tomi explains how to use his mobile service creation theory, the Six Ms, to build billable value into mobile TV services. Their Eurocomms website is open to access for all, so we warmly recommend visitors to to hop on over and read Tomi’s full column entitled “3G TV Convergence, the Personal Touch”.

But this is something I picked out that caught my eye

The fourth M is Multi-user, or extending into the community. A good example of a Multi-user mobile TV service is viewer participation in the form of SMS-to-TV chat. Launched in Finland in 2001, over the years it has evolved to SMS-to-TV dating as in Italy, SMS-to-TV games as in Malaysia and SMS-to-TV Rap the latest hit in Finland. But the most advanced concept of premium user-generated content on the mobile phone, broadcast live on TV, comes from Korea, on the Tu Media network. Last Autumn Tu Media introduced videoclip-to-TV chat. Any viewer could send their videoclips as premium-cost MMS messages to the broadcaster, and moments later these would be broadcast live. Your kid having a birthday? Shoot the video and turn on the TV.

To read the full column, please visit European Communications.