Astonish Your Customer(s)

Cool Is Back (but it has, regrettably, left the room)

I am not a veteran of Silicon Valley and therefore do not know my way around.

It was 1999 and I was in Silicon Valley calling on a customer. It was near dusk and I was racing to the airport. I was speeding around a bend and I saw it: A gigantic banner proclaiming "Cool is Back" along with a picture of the iMac. It was huge, hanging over the front door of the building, bathed in light.

I remember thinking two things:

1) That must be Apple's HQ

2) It must be great to work in a place that brought "Cool Back" and proclaims it publicly. 

If what's cooler than being cool is, Ice Cold, then Steve Jobs was an Arctic Glacier.

O.D.O.o.O.D.B.

Steve Jobs - More like Lincoln than Edison, Einstein

Steve Jobs:

• Adopted
• College dropout
• Apple III and Lisa computers were flops
• Hired John Sculley
• Fired at age of 30, from Company he founded and led
• Created NeXT Inc., hobbled by exorbitant price tag and key design flaws
• Largely written off as a has-been during 11 year absence from Apple
• Cube-shaped Macintosh
• Pancreatic cancer
• Liver transplant
• Option backdating scandal

Abraham Lincoln:

• Lost job in 1832
• Defeated for state legislature in 1832
• Failed in business in 1833
• Sweetheart died in 1835
• Had nervous breakdown in 1836
• Defeated for Speaker in 1838
• Defeated for nomination for Congress in 1843
• Lost renomination in 1848
• Rejected for land officer in 1849
• Defeated for U.S. Senate in 1854
• Defeated for nomination for Vice President in 1856
• Again defeated for U.S. Senate in 1858

O.D.O.o.O.D.B.

Sell to an existing 'Tribe'

Which is easier?

a) Listening to and creating a product for an existing tribe

B) Creating a product and then finding a tribe for it

Apple stores get more visitors in a quarter than all the Disney properties in a 12 month period.

Listen to the Apple tribe, find out what it wants and give it to them.

O.D.O.o.O.D.B.

How Apple 'mis-behaves' & wins

• "Defining how computers are used, not how they are manufactured, will create real value – and thus market power, employment, and wealth – in the decades ahead,". "A computer company is the primary source of computing for its customers."
• The future, in other words, is a verb, not a noun.
• At the core of Apple's strategy is the insight that apps are the future – because apps are verbs turned into code.
• It has a narrow product line, so the focus is clear and management isn't overloaded."
• 'Think Different' is embedded in Apple's DNA. The company is built on the proposition that the status quo is the enemy. That big and boring and dull – whether as a description of a company's products and services or as a way of working – are simply bad. Bad for innovation, bad for people, bad for customers, bad for business.
• Jobs streamlined the organization, got rid of competing teams, returned Apple so people were fighting for the company instead of fighting against each other."
• "Whether it's product design or the overall customer experience, Apple always tries to do it differently, and do it better," he says. "Innovation allows you to get a premium from the marketplace. And no matter how good you are, you can always do it better. Apple shows the value of always striving for perfection.
• "I'm not sure Apple even thinks about the competition," Keith Yamashita says. "They're uniquely themselves without worrying about anyone else. When I worked for Steve there was little discussion about the competition. The aim was for us to be the most extreme version of ourselves. When you adopt that approach, it causes you to think about things in a different way.
• The goal, Yamashita says, is to be true to the uniqueness of the enterprise. Too many companies get caught up studying their competitors, benchmarking their rivals. The result is an incremental approach to innovation: "If they did this, we need to respond with that."
• Apple's greatest strength, Yamashita says, may be its "obsessiveness." Obsessiveness about everything.
• "Apple is obsessiveness to the power of 10," he says. "And you see it everywhere. It's in things that are immediately visible, like the retail stores. They spend more on tenant improvements than anyone: stone floors, not wood floors; glass tables, not plexiglass. But it's also in things you don't ordinarily see: Apple has the most symmetrically laid out motherboard in the industry. They're obsessive about the supply chain, obsessive about the design of the product, the packaging."
• "Apple has always been on an ongoing journey to be its best self," Yamashita says. "Its marketing mission is to help Apple customers get the most out of their Apple products, to equip and enable their customers to be their best self, too. That kind of thinking has led to online tutorials, lessons at the Apple Stores, 'gen­ius bars.' What other company would hire 12,000 experts and then not charge customers a penny to talk with them?"
• The ultimate lesson from Apple? "All the pieces have to fit together," Yamashita says.
• "For Apple to be its best self, it has to be about its customers also being their best selves. Apple is aspirational and iconic. But its message to its customers is, 'You are, too.' "

From: Christian Science Monitor "The Apple Effect: How Steve Jobs & Co. Won Over the World"

Good enough to lick

We made the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them.
~ Steve Jobs

That's one way of setting the bar for the product design folks. 

O.D.O.o.O.D.B.

 

At Apple - Process Skills Matter, Management Skills Don't

"Jobs has been dismissive of "management" skills, and the company has no general managers.

According to Fortune, Apple has only 70 or so VPs (for 25,000 employees).

Instead the firm develops process specialists — for graphic arts, supply chain, coding, retailing, and of course, industrial design. For example, Apple's retail chief, Ron Johnson, who developed the highly successful Apple Stores, didn't handle inventory. Store inventory and all other supply chain issues were handled by COO Tim Cook, an expert in supply chain management (and Jobs' apparent successor as CEO).

To Jobs, this approach creates an organization with best-in-class skills. General managers tend to create fiefdoms."

By: Bill Lee 

O.D.O.o.O.D.B.

 

Advertising and the Future of Apple

By Bob Hoffman at www.AdContrarian.blogspot.com

After Steve Jobs stepped down as CEO of Apple last week, speculation about the company's future began immediately.

The consensus seemed to be that Jobs built a strong culture, hired smart people, and taught a way of thinking that will serve Apple well in the future. The story line went like this-- while Jobs will be missed, he is no longer essential to the future of the company and it will go on brilliantly without him.

 

I don't buy this for a second. Genius is non-transferable.

Jobs hasn't just created better computers, he has created a world that nobody else could envision. He brought an artist's sensibility to a field previously populated by capable but tone-deaf engineers. He didn't just make beautiful looking hardware, he took what was a dead screen full of little green letters on a blue background and turned it into an astounding, enchanting world of graphics, music, and video that has become a central feature of contemporary life.

He has made work more fun, knowledge more available, and entertainment more rewarding.

Anyone who has had the pleasure of buying an Apple product knows the great aesthetic delight of turning it on for the first time and seeing the beauty that ensues. Even going to an Apple store is a completely unique and strangely arresting experience.

On Friday, Apple became the world's largest company, surpassing ExxonMobil in market value. It will not simply evaporate. The most likely scenario is that Apple will continue to shine for a few years while the initiatives that Jobs started are still in the pipeline, and then slowly the company's radiance will start to dim. They will be successful and will continue to produce excellent products for a long time -- but the startling brilliance will slowly fade.

Many successful creative enterprises turn out to be the extended shadow of one individual. My best guess is that Apple is such an enterprise.

Interestingly, one of the first indications of whether Apple is capable of continuing its explosion of creative energy without Jobs at the helm may be found in its advertising. The product pipeline will take years to screw up. But the ad pipeline can be screwed up in no time.

About a year from now, with Jobs in the background, the knuckleheads at Apple (there are knuckleheads everywhere) will have a chance to get their sweaty hands on the advertising.

Jobs is a brilliant technology visionary. But let's not forget that he is also the best ad man of his generation. He is what you might call a "classicist." Apple advertising is simple. It is almost always product-focused (the product usually sits smack dab in the middle of a white page.) The TV spots for the iPad and iPhone are usually nothing more than simple but compelling product demonstrations.

Here are some clues to look for in Apple's advertising that will indicate that dull hands are grabbing at the wheel:

1. Creeping Brandism: The Apple brand was built bottom-up. That is, the products defined the brand. Virtually every Apple ad was about a product, not  the brand (okay, there was "Think Different" but that didn't last.) Keep an eye out for the erosion of this discipline.

2. Agency change: Vapid marketing people relegated to the background all these years by Jobs' dominance may suddenly start flexing. They wouldn't dare contradict Jobs' legacy, but they could accomplish the same thing by undermining the agency.

3. The Tortured Logic of Account Planning: Look for ads about you the consumer instead of Apple products. Look for moronic online "engagement" gimmicks. Or look for social media pandering.

4. Complications: Part of the brilliance of Apple advertising has been its simplicity.  Keep an eye out for complicated ideas or ads with more than one product.

5. Media: Apple has used online media sparingly. The preponderance of its advertising has been conducted in traditional media -- TV, print, and outdoor. Watch to see if Apple suddenly starts going all trendy and new age in its media choices.

If you start seeing any of these signs coming out of Cupertino, sell your shares.

Advertising will be an early indicator of whether people without vision and taste are moving in at Apple. It will be interesting to watch.

O.D.O.o.O.D.B.

Usability vs. Capability

Steve Jobs believes that usuabilty (computer, music player, phone, tablet) is more important that capabilty. 

O.D.O.o.O.D.B.

Think like a Consumer Standing in the Future

A reporter who asked Steve Jobs about the market research that went into the iPad was famously told, "None. It's not the consumers' job to know what they want." Which isn't to say that he doesn't think like a consumer--he just thinks like one standing in the near future, not in the recent past.

"You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new."

By; Cliff Kuang

O.D.O.o.O.D.B. 

 

Be the 1st Fan

"Steve Jobs always talks about how wonderous it will be to use something, to actually live with it and hold it in your hands. If you listen to Steve Jobs's presentations over the years, he comes across not as the creator of a product so much as its very first fan--the first person to digest its possibilities."

By: Cliff Kuang

O.D.O.o.O.D.B.