Mobile Has Changed Expectations Forever

10/23/13

Those were the words of Ford Global Product Manager for SYNC AppLink Julius Marchwicki (pictured) during his keynote address to open the Radio Ink DASH Conference in Detroit on Wednesday. Marchwicki  dazzled the crowd with mobile statistics to back up his words, leaving no doubt about the role smartphones play in the lives of today's consumers and the impact that's having on his industry.

Marchwicki said the fundamental shift toward mobile devices started in 2008 with the iPhone and the growth of smarrtphones, and  that today there is tremendous global scale. He said there are 6 billion mobile subscribers in the world today, 1.8 billion mobile devices were sold in 2012, and there were 63 billion app downloads in 2012. Marchwicki's job is to mesh those two industries.

"We need to introduce technology that allows people to use their devices in a safe manner." Marchwicki said. Seventy-five percent of smartphone users believe it's important to connect their phones to their vehicle, and 46 percent of young adults would prefer phone access over buying a car. "Kids expect constant on-demand access to their entertainment now," said Marchwicki. "We've pioneered in this space, but we have not done enough."

Marchwicki  left the crowd with a pair of questions: "How do we educate consumers on how to find the content they want? How are they interacting with devices so you can deliver them what they want?"

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(SALES) Managing Expectations

8-28-2013

Your local-direct advertisers know they can?t pay their mortgage with Facebook "likes" and they can?t send their kids to college with page views. They can only achieve their goals with sales.

Yet they are delighted with responses or likes on the Internet while they demand that their cash registers ring when they invest in radio campaigns.

Why? In part, because over-zealous radio sellers create unrealistic expectations and in part because of simple math. The simple math is: low investment = low expectation; high investment = high expectation.

Along with low investment comes a willingness to take more risks with the message; risks that can result in more effective messages than so-called call-to-action commercials.

Last week, I met a local hardware store owner who was ?amazed? with her responses on social media. She said her Facebook likes jumped from 6,000 to 18,000 with one simple post. The social media "gurus" would promote this response as "going viral" and claim a 300 percent increase.

During the early August heat wave, the store owner heard all of the publicity about people leaving their dogs in their cars. She simply posted a "dogs welcome" sign on the front door of her store, took a picture of it, and posted it on her Facebook page, inviting shoppers to take man?s best friend out of the heat.

Think about this "amazing" response. The appeal was emotional. It cost the advertiser nothing. It had no call-to-action and didn?t try to sell anything. And it won the hearts of dog lovers.

More importantly, it cost the Facebook friends nothing to share it and respond. It?s easy to get a response when you?re not asking consumers to open their wallets today.

There is no denying the Internet has changed the way consumers buy and the way sellers sell. In the pre-Internet world, many marketers practiced the ABC of selling: Always Be Closing??come in today, these savings won?t last.? And broadcasters got sucked into the old ABC trap with their commercials.

Marketers have learned that the ABC of selling today is Always Be Connecting, and the "dogs welcome" message certainly connected emotionally with pet owners.

I doubt the message would have gone viral had that store owner posted a one-day special on paint on her Facebook page.

As we continued our conversation, I asked the hardware store owner, ?Can you imagine the impact had you told that same story to 100,000 or more radio listeners in addition to 6,000 Facebook friends? And how your commercial would have stood out amidst all of the other "buy today" messages on the air?? She said ?Wow, I never thought of not asking for the sale in my paid ads.?

Broadcasters are just as guilty of embracing so-called "earned media" versus paid media as my hardware store friend. We hail it as a success when we capture a few followers on free social media, but question our investment when no one has ever said, ?Boy I love that billboard you paid for.?

In our eagerness to make the sale, many local broadcast salespeople have created unrealistic expectations, promising immediate results to clients rather than positioning the power of branding to Always Be Connecting.

And it?s those unrealistic expectations which cause advertiser dissatisfaction and high account attrition rates.

Advertisers who are happy winning hearts online can be even happier with their paid campaigns if we persuade them that we can win hearts and win wallets by combining powerful branding messages with a call to action.

It?s time to train your account executives about the power of branding at the local level.

Local marketers have a distinct branding advantage over larger national companies, and local broadcasters can exploit that advantage.

Local businesses can move quickly in response to local situations, like a local heat wave. Large national marketers cannot move that quickly, nor would the "dogs welcome" message resonate in some of their markets which might not be experiencing the heat wave.

There is no better way to Always Be Connecting than with heartfelt stories delivered by a human voice. Add to that the inspiring emotional impact of music and the other tools available to broadcasters, and radio can quickly become the fuel that drives an advertiser?s total media mix.

Wayne Ens, wayne@wensmedia.com,  is president of ENS Media Inc. ENS Media?s "Winning in the New Media Economy" seminars persuade local advertisers to reduce their print advertising in favour of a new media mix with a strong radio component.

(8/28/2013 1:10:08 AM)
As Wayne sez: "It’s time to train your account executives about the power of branding at the local level."

Why stop there. The ones who also really need the training are the GM's, the PD's, the Creative Department and the on-air staff. They are still operating as if some dopey sale price was important and a "call to action" wasn't, in reality, a slap to the listener's face.

And no, I'm not kidding. Wayne swung and he connected. I doubt he realizes he has hit one out of the park and into the next county. :)

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TECHCRUNCH: Diminishing Returns, Or Exceeding Expectations?

Rip Empson is a writer and rabble-rouser at TechCrunch. He covers startups, music, social, mobile, health, and education. You can reach him at rip[at]techcrunch[dot]com ? Learn More

Are you having fun yet? We’re in the process of winding down from another Apple Event Day, which means recovering from a day full of iFanpeoples eagerly clicking on every iPad-related article on the Web, a day in which blogs lap up the ad revenue, and trolls eagerly proclaim their indifference to whatever this iHubbub is all about, sneering at the army of iClones marching in lock-step to the nearest Apple Store. Let this wash over you, as it’s clearly a unique display that only the tech industry — and, really Apple — is capable of inspiring.

During the new, new iPad/iPad 3/iPad 2S announcement today, Apple CEO Tim Cook told those gathered that Apple is “redefining the category that [it] created with the original iPad.” Personally, I’ve become a bit wary of Apple’s near-constant claims that it is re-defining itself, or language that implies anything along the lines of “we’ve done it, again,” or “look at this miracle of gadget wizardry and fear our command of your wallets.”

In a tweet earlier today, Box Founder and CEO Aaron Levie tweeted an initial reaction to Apple’s iPad announcement that likely resonated with many: “It would appear that iPad innovation is experiencing the law of diminishing returns.” This strikes at the heart of the matter: Innovation.

Because, when it comes to returns from sales, Apple devices (the iPad, specifically) are far from seeing anything that resembles diminishing returns. Apple sold 315 million iOS devices in 2011, 62 million in Q4 2011, and the CEO revealed that the company “sold more iPads in the fourth quarter of last year, than any PC maker sold of their PCs.” Yep, 15.4 million iPads were sold in Q4 2011, and iOS devices accounted for 76 percent of Apple’s revenue in the fourth quarter.

However, with some saying that the iPad 3 is just a large version of the iPhone 4S, it’s worth asking whether or not the public will view this new device as an example of incremental innovation, or whether this is indeed a huge update befitting of media slobbering and hype.

Apple has had every superlative known to man attached to it in the last three months, and when you pass Exxon-Mobil in market cap, there’s at least some justification for that. But, as the New York Times’ James Stewart points out, the company could be soon subjected to the law of large numbers, which basically means that it will be unlikely to sustain this kind of growth forever. Of course, that could mean that Apple continues its meteoric growth until 2015, when things start to level out.

With the current adoption of the iPad, and many analysts expecting the company to sell 60 million iPads in 2012, it’s unlikely that growth slows in the near future. The market in Asia, and really the international market as a whole, is relatively new territory for Apple. Smartphone adoption in Asia especially is blowing the roof off, and if Apple can capitalize (like it’s already started to), the company’s already ridiculous numbers are only going to become more jaw-dropping.

But the fact of the matter is, with each of these successive “Oh my God we’ve done it again” announcements, the public becomes increasingly inured to the actual magnitude of their hardware and software updates. So, we see the line between actual innovation vs. incremental updates become increasingly muddied. Yes, Apple is trying to play a part in reinventing education (via text books), though I personally would say they’re not really that close on that one, it’s doing its best to disrupt TV, and no doubt we will be seeing more.

Yes, the company essentially created a new form factor with the iPad, but, again, it seems we’re getting to a point where Apple is going to have to introduce the flying car, a Watson in human form that can do my taxes, or an edible tablet before we’ll feel emotionally moved enough to pay attention. Of course, there’s a gulf between the tech media and the rest of America, and things aren’t quite as jaded on Main Street.

As long as Apple continues to design its products (make updates) in such a way that really matters to its customers, then there won’t be a problem. Apple executives seem convinced that the new, new iPad — at least in terms of hardware — is a serious next-gen update compared with the iPad 2. And they do have a point when you consider the A5X chip, hi-res (retina) screen, and fancy new 5MP shooter capable of recording video in 1080p. Now, considering the fact that photo-snapping with an iPad has been a fairly fuzzy experience, this is a great update — for the iPad. Yet, it still just sounds an awful lot like the camera on your iPhone 4S.

But, with its new chip, which is supposed to be four times more powerful than Nvidia’s Tegra 3 chip, plus LTE or 4G speeds, voice dictation, a iPhone 4S camera, and a supposed 10 hours of battery life (hopefully unlike the iPhone 4S’ conception of “longer battery life”) — there’s plenty going for this iPad.

After all, the iPad’s 2,048 x 1,536-pixel, retina screen is now of a higher-resolution than you’re likely to find on any phone, tablet, or TV, so, when we talk about innovation, it’s hard not to get a little excited about the effect this new gadget can have not only on video, but more so on gaming. As we wrote Monday, iOS is already killing Android in terms of its ability to handle HTML5 game performance, with the iPad 2 reigning supreme.

And now, re-imagining games in extra HD is going to be amazing for games that, unlike Angry Birds, push the envelope in terms of animation and design. Of course, designing for that higher resolution can be expensive, and it remains to be seen whether the iPad’s new processor will be able to handle the higher resolution in graphics.

There could be a huge boost as game developers figure out how to best incorporate cool new visual elements. What’s more, the iPad 3's density and display likely will give it the best picture in your house, so you’re going to want to play your games on it like you would a regular console. Startups like Joypad, Flypad, and Brass Monkey are turning your smartphones into game controllers. I have a feeling the public is going to want more of these when/if they turn to using their iPad 2Ses as their main source of movie-watching and game-playing.

All in all, it seems like there are a lot of subtle (and not-so-subtle) updates and upgrades going on with the new iPad (also pretty cool that the company has optimized all its stock apps for the new screen like it did for the iPhone 4S), but I leave it up to you: Are we seeing diminishing returns in terms of iPad innovation, or did this blow your socks off?

iOS is Apple’s operating system for their mobile devices. It debuted in 2007 with the release of the first iPhone, but has since been extended for use with the iPod touch, iPad, and Apple TV. iOS’ user interface relies on users’ direct manipulation of the product screen with multi-touch gestures, including swipes, pinches, taps, and reverse pinches.

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The iPad 2 launched in March 2011. It is one third thinner than the original ipad, has a front and rear camera and is 2 x faster than the original with its 1GHZ Dual Core A5 Chip.

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