Social media pros are great for brands, because they get people talking by turning tweets and Facebook posts into sharp conversations. Let’s face it, when you’re good, it’s because, well, you’re social!
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Everyone has been talking about the massively public and massively awful Netflix move that is Quickster…or wait..er…Qwikster. It seriously is like watching a train wreck that you just cannot look away from. My hope is that this is a small piece of a much much larger strategy, where one day we are all haters, but the next day we find ourselves as loyal customers under a new regime that is Qwikster, but somehow I doubt it. What is so interesting to me about this piece of news is that it highlights two very very important reasons brands should become more collaborative: Communities hate change – unless they are the co-creators of it. Netflix probably needs to make some large changes to save its business, but launching something out of the blue is a great way to pull the carpet out from under your customer community. Had they involved their customers in creating solutions, the company would have been able to enact large scale change, while preserving the loyalty of their best customers (and actually increasing it). They also would have formed consumer-centric solutions that solve their obvious business problems, but also less obvious consumer needs around renting, viewing, and interacting …
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Roshan and I had a conversation the other day about how physical mail totally and completely boggles our minds. The same way many people are intimidated by anything having to do with the @ symbol, I get tired just thinking about the idea of mailing something. As far as I am concerned – mail is still handled by a network of horses and cowboys. Recently there has been a ton of talk about the United States Postal Service and their struggle to remain relevant as physical mail declines. It’s really amazing to me that USPS has not done more to innovate in a world where physical mail becomes more and more of a ridiculous proposition. Why would you ever send a letter? (but in case you ever have to – here is a refresher). But then I got to thinking how much of a role mail actually plays in my life. I also started to think about the weird emotional elements of mail. When you want to thank someone you send them snail mail, right? It seems to me like the USPS is sitting on a mountain of innovations not only in the digital world but making mail more integrated with the …
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It’s taken me some time to grow the balls to write this post. Steve Jobs is a personal hero of mine and Apple is now the most valuable company in the world, so it is tough to argue with what they believe. That being said, whenever I talk about Napkin Labs and how we help companies collaborate with their customers to innovate better, I get the “Well Apple is the most innovative company in the world and they don’t do market research and keep everything on lock down, so is involving customers really a good thing?” It’s true, Apple will probably never be a Napkin Labs’ customer, and we are totally cool with that, but Steve Jobs’ declaration that customers have no place in the innovation process is misleading at best. As an icon of design and leader in bringing design to the forefront of corporate competencies, I would hope that he wouldn’t make a complex issue so black and white. So what follows is a few reasons I believe Apple’s anti-customer approach is misleading and why it is not as black and white as they declare. Apple has an outdated view of market research. I agree completely that surveys …
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