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    Technology Marketing

    Leo’s Brilliant, Mistimed, Cloudy Future.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Today there will be lots of stories written about Leo Apotheker’s plight at Hewlett-Packard. And of the HP board, and potential replacements for Mr. Apotheker. One lens I like to look through when doing strategic planning is the “history” lens.  When viewed over time – a long time – will the company, product or leader have made a historic contribution?  Typically, that means looking at strategy rather than tactics.

    In Mr. Apotheker’s case, it is clear to me that his PR handlers were at fault.  His moves to purchase Autonomy, shed the PC and tablet business, and stop investing in WebOS were historic moves — looking well beyond the dashboard.  One might say, and say accurately, that when you put a software person in charge of a mixed media multinational, the road to the future is paved with software.  Mr. Apotheker saw deteriorating PC sales, reduced profitability in services (the cloud is getting not only bigger, but smarter), and device manufacturing (especially sans Steve Jobs) under enormous cost pressures. Think device kudzu.  Rather than stay and fight for integration of solutions hard and soft around his OS — which code-wise may not have been ready for primetime and perhaps at risk from new OS pushes by Microsoft and Apple — he decided to retrench with eye toward the future. Very ballsy.

    The cloud is the future. Device complexity will reduce over time and when it does, the cloud, run by software, will become the electricity of business. And that is where Mr. Apotheker was going. Sadly, he had a lapse in judgment and bad guidance and announced it at the wrong time and inelegantly.  Como se billions in lost shareholder value?  Some strategies (read historic) are better left unannounced. Is that not so, Mr. Jobs? Peace.    

    The Winner of Google Trivestiture.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    A couple, two, tree years ago I predicted the trivestiture of Google. It will still happen but perhaps not for the reason I initially thought. One of the businesses that will spin off will be an analytics business. The more the cloud powers the world, the more data actions are recorded. And I’m not just talking about purchases, I’m thinking mobile apps, geo-location, word capture in texts, searches, likes, LOLs, picture tags, etc.

    Big data allows a lot of this now, we just don’t have the tools to use that data. HubSpot is a dashboard company that offers rudimentary analytics, but they don’t do much more than offer reports.  One of my first big clients AT&T once told me, “It’s not enough to capture data, you need to do something smart with it.” Google has the scientists, computing power and cash to use consumer and business data to predict purchase behavior. A data action seen in the cloud such as the search for new Netspresso machines for the office can indicate small business growth. Predictors of commerce is a business.

    When an entire industry has grown up with a .250 batting average – that industry being advertising – the time has come for a marketing tool with a bit more clarity and exactitude.  That marketing tool is data-based. And it’s in Google’s sweet spot.  Unless Amazon beats them to the punch. You think Google makes money on advertising now, you just wait. Peace.

    Phones, Tabs and Pads.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Whoever coined the term “on-size-fits-all” got a lot of mileage out of that phrase.  Must have been an ad guy.  In this age of specialization, one size does not fit all, has actually gotten a lot more traction.  And as I read about Apple’s decision to come out with a smaller version of the iPad – a 7 inch version – it makes me wonder when the form factor of the tablet is going to settle down.  What will be the most useful and used size?  The Samsung Galaxy family is certainly larger than most mobile phones, but not a business-ready typing device.  Even the iPad, who just about every tech-forward person owns, is not the right size for vigorous typing.  Many iPad users tote along spiral notebooks to meetings.

    The Microsoft Surface when released will goes bigger (but not too big), yet its felt-like typing surface seems to be an interesting breakthrough and may be a market changer. Especially for those who want to retire the pen and pencil.  

    The ergonomics of the tablets, pads and large format phones have not yet found their level. Must they fit in a woman’s bag? A man’s back or front product?  It’s not the wild west, it’s just the wide open west. And most companies in the space are trying to find the right place to settle.  Apple, it seems, is continuing to experiment. Should be interesting to watch. Peace.

    Dumbed Down Utility.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Today The New York Times had a cover story on geolocation dating services. If you’re looking for a date and have a smart phone these new apps tell you who is nearby and available. Text, text, plan, plan and you can grab a drink with little social awkwardness. The services are Grindr, Bendr, OKCupid Locals, and How About We.

    I was a doofus at bars as a young ‘un and couldn’t walk up to interesting girls with a good rap. For someone in the selling business it was a skill I needed to work on. Had I an app for that, would I have learned the skill faster? 

    Here’s my take, socially inept kids hide in their cell phones. Heads down, active in the ether, they appear to be busy. Some kids feign being on the phone to look popular so they can troll for interaction, they hope will come their way. Not good. Unless these are kids who might never make it out of the house to begin with. I suspect that these geolocation apps will soon come with “sorry” buttons so users don’t have to deal with ending these pseudo dates.  Rather than look someone in the eye and say “Thanks for meeting with me but…” the daters will simply hit sorry and the app will ping the date is over. (I can just hear these unique ping tones, ringing across the bars of NYC in 2012.)  The human behaviorists and sociologists are going to have a field day with this stuff.

    We need to move beyond a dumbed down utility with apps and think about skill enablement and development. Peace is not an app. (Or is it?)

    Smarter Planet?

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    IBM keeps selling solutions for a smarter planet.  Watson, the computer that won Jeopardy, they say, is the way to a smarter planet. I’m not so sure. Is a kid who breaks his front teeth stumbling over a fire hydrant texting “K” a denizen of a smarter planet? Is a gardener who uses the Web to find out Dawn and vinegar gets rid of mites smarter than someone who figures it out on his/her own?

    Is the massive computing power in our pockets and backpacks and on our laps and desktops making us smarter?  “Mom, how long do you boil an egg?” Are social networks forming our “likes” for us?  Is this fingertip world making our bones weak and our sinew stingy? Let’s ask Quora.

    Dude, I’m not going all Ted on you. Ted K, that is.  I’m just pointing out a trend we will all be seeing a lot more of as we leap forward in Moore’s Law chunks of time. It’s called roots. Etsy.com is a good example of the roots phenomenon; people making stuff with their hands.  Gardening. Cooking. Traditional music and art. DIY home improvements. These are all examples of the roots phenomenon.  Any neurologist or physical anthropologist will tell you that the way to exercise the brain is to use it. The way to a smarter planet is not to rely on computers for everything.  That’s a way to sell more computers. Peace.

    Google+ is no Facebook or Twitter killer.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    There’s has been a lot of talk in the ether the last couple of weeks about Google+ and whether or not it will be a Facebook or Twitter killer. (Google Steve Rubel for some smart analysis.) I have an invite to Google+ and added a couple of friends — figuring out the difference between friends, acquaintances, family and even created a circle called Business Peeps.  The fact is, though, thanks to Facebook, I’m not always sure who’s an acquaintance and who’s a friend.  I love the promise of multipoint video chat and think it will be a big deal for Google+.  Also circles is cool, but streaming to circles I haven’t given much thought to. I like Twitter too much.

    Here’s my initial take.  If you can’t tell which website app Google+ is going to “kill” then perhaps it won’t kill either.  Google+ is probably over-built – because it wants to take on both Facebook (the stream page looks exactly like Facebook) and Twitter – and when you try to do too much you often fall short.  That’s not to say Google+ will fail; I suspect there is enough cool stuff there for something really great to stick.  I just don’t think it’s going to bang Facebook or Twitter off their perches.

    There’s no doubt that Google knows, thanks to research and the algorithm, people want all the features and functions it has devised for Plus. But putting them in one candy bar, is going to be a little hard to chew.  There is no killer here. Just a lot of cool stuff bouncing off itself. Peace.

     

    The Marketing Morass that is Google+.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    “It will change the way people work, share and communicate” is a sentence we’ve heard hundreds of times. And a sentence we’ve read in ads, thousands of times.  This sentence was used in an article today to describe how businesses will use Goggle+ Circles.  According to the same article Google+ is a social network, like Facebook. It kind of looks like a clean version of Facebook but acts more like Twitter, organized to feed information of those one follows.  Then again, it displays pictures and videos in the feed as does Facebook. The buttons and apps in the side margins of Google+ are cool, offering the ability to gerrymander friends and acquaintances into groups and also to do video chats through an exciting feature called hangouts (which I have yet to try), so that feels new — but kind of hidden.

    The product managers at Google say Circle and/or Hangouts will change the way people work, share and communicate, and they could be right – but not based on the current mish-mash of free hand messaging in the market today.  Google+ released to techies in Beta because techies thrive on confusion.  They eat it for breakfast. But for the rest of the web Google+ still doesn’t have an Is-Does and so is compared to Twitter and Facebook.  The killer application (video circles) is underutilized and under understood.  I do believe video hangouts or cirlces (or whatever they are) will be a game changer – especially in training and education and problem solving.  But right now the whole Google+ thing is a morass of huh.  Were I Google, Google Labs or BBH, I’d be working on a Super Bowl ad (I know, it’s against their better judgment) that distills the Google+ value and showcases the ease of multiparty video chat to the world.  Google+ was a horrible name. A lazy name for what may be a huge product in 3 years. If properly brand managed. It is still a product in need of an Is-Does.  Peace!

    Yahoo’s Going to Get its Exclamation Back!

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    I would not be surprised to see Yahoo sold to Jerry Yang and the Texas Pacific Group (TPG) fairly quickly. Yahoo, with lots of schmutz on its shoes, is still one of the top 5 tech brands in the world. And what is a brand but a vessel into which we poor meaning. Organized meaning. Yahoo’s fix requires an Is-Does. What a brand Is and what a brand Does.

    Is it a portal?
    Is it search engine?
    Is it an advertising company?
    Is it a web content publisher?
    Is it a technology company?

    Does it provide news?
    Does it provide entertainment?
    Does it provide organization?
    Does it provide results?

    Yahoo needs to retrench and make tough decisions — and that will only happen if the property is sold. A public company with lots of shareholders, Yahoo will get its Yahoo! back with new leadership, some old leadership, tough love, and a brand plan. And when I say brand plan I don’t mean a new logo, new color palette and an replacement agency for Goodby, Silverstein and Partners.  I mean an organizing principle for marketing.  A plan that inform every decision made by the company — from hiring to firing to what new mobile services to launch.

    When dimensionalized through obs and strats, a brand plan creates marketing clarity. TPG doesn’t speak like this, but they know how to make it happen. It’s about time. Peace. 

    Solutions for a Smarter Planet. Not.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

     

    Solutions for a smarter planet is IBM’s ad campaign and has been for couple of years. If you watch the TV the message is clear: Look at data more closely, do something smart with it and we will see a better planet. The TV ads suggest (methinks) more efficient energy consumption in cities, better food prices thanks to global climate monitoring, etc.

    The print, on the other hand, gets much more granular with lots of tech copy with promises of improvements in healthcare, manufacturing, blah, blah.  Half pretty to look at, with buried datapoints to prove the stories, the campaign’s real goal is to seed the “solutions for a smarter planet” idea.

    Earnings Reports

    So (the digerati all start their sentences with “so”), I’m reading the business section today and notice that Oracle and Accenture sales and profits are up. Oracle shares are near a 10-year high. Businesses are spending again the article proclaims. Then I read another story suggesting General Mills profits are down. The culprit?  Higher commodity prices and aggressive discounting. Are those not things a smarter planet is supposed to address? 

    So what’s what? Machines are selling again. Database software is selling again. We are ensconced in datapalooza yet not really affecting the supply chain the way we might. In other words, we’re not doing “something smart” with the data yet. Similarly, Radian6 has built a great business allowing companies to monitor conversations in the ether. But unless listeners do something smart with that info, they won’t have smarter companies. That’s the way to a smarter planet. Even hunter gatherers know to eat what they gather (something smart).  Dial up the machines, dial up the software but let’s invest in some people smarts ya’ll!  Peace!

    Apple and the Untouchables.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    The cloud is the cloud.  Apps are the software we all use. Many apps are free, others are pay-for. What the cloud and apps have in common is the internet.  Apple was always a wonderful design company. First and foremost the designs were physical – about the device.  Also the designs were logical – about the software and usability. But physical design is the tangible evidence of what makes Apple graet..

    As Apple moves its center, its core, away from the wonderful designs it has created over the last 8 years towards more cloud-based designs (read iCloud) will the luster come off?  Clouds are pretty to watch, but don’t offer the luster of slim, shiny touchables.  I would almost prefer to see Apple go into the car or refrigerator business than the cloud business. But that’s moi. Peace!

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