6 questions for advertisers with Apps.

Traditional paper publishing is going down the slot, we all know that, but it still has a place, particularly the magazines, and most particularly the lower  volume, niche end, high fashion and  exotic cars for example. 

So what happens to websites included in a print ad when a magazine releases an App for a tablet? There are a bunch of new dimensions here:

    1. Does the advertiser pay more for the website to be activated on the tablet?, or
    2. Does the cost of the ad to the advertiser include the cost of activating the website?,
    3. Is an activation fee a one -off, or per site activation fee?
    4. Should an advertiser pay an additional fee as a tablet subscriber clicks on an activated link?
    5. Should the subscriber to the print edition have free access to the web edition?, or do they need to pay again for what they have bought already?
    6. What is the cost relativity between the tablet version and the print? Does the tablet subscriber get a discount on the paper edition to put on her table?

This is making my head hurt, but I am pretty sure that there will be a huge amount of experimentation going on, and in 10 years we will be wondering what all the fuss was about, as the answer will be obvious.

 

Human costs of innovation.

In the December 2011 quarter, Apple made  $13 billion in profits, an extraordinary figure, 3 billion more than the revenue of Google in the quarter. Apple is an innovation machine, making it so is the legacy of Steve Jobs.

However, there is usually a flip side to the stories of huge success, Jobs was not the nicest person around, brilliant, magnetic, but a real genuine article prick, according to his biographer, and the woes of Apple contract manufacturers in China are well known.

But, who has heard of the mineral Tantalum? Apple uses it, as does every other producer of our electronic gadgets.

Talison, a company headquartered in Perth used to mine tantalum in Australia, a mineral extracted from an ore called Coltan, short for Columbite-tantalite, but no longer due to competitive price pressure coming from African supplies. Pity we lost another market.

Coltan is now one of the minerals being mined in West Africa, using primitive tools, and kids paid slave wages, sold so we can have the latest gadget, and the nasties in charge can buy more guns and anti-personnel mines, and fill their Swiss bank accounts.

This blog is usually about marketing, management, and the stuff that hopefully scratches my readers brains to facilitate improvement. However, from time to time, we need to think about the ethical base of what we do. 

This almost unknown story of Coltan ore, and its derivatives should be on our agenda.

5 key Leadership attributes

 Libraries have been written on this topic, so perhaps a summary for 2012 is warranted, particularly as we go into tougher, and more ambiguous times.

  1. Plot a course that others can relate to, buy into, and understand.
  2. Inspire and energise others to do better than they expect they can
  3. Create a culture of action and integrity
  4. Inspire and nurture innovation
  5. Deliver results for all stakeholders.

Australia’s meaningless celebration.

It’s Australia day, a celebration of nationhood, opportunity for pollies to grandstand, excuse for a piss-up, whatever floats your boat.

Perhaps it should be a day for articulating our national challenges, in a manner that encourages rational debate based on data, whilst offering a real philosophical underpinning for decision making, rather than the current flatuant rhetoric and partisan maneuvering for short term political “advantage” .

That’s what I tell my clients to do, then often assist them through the exercise with mentoring and a set of readily available tools.

If it can be done for a business, is a basic discipline for survival, why can’t it be done for a country? Why shouldn’t we, as Australians, the shareholders in this Australia P/L  demand it of our Board of Directors?.

So, my call for today, is to dismiss all the puffery, glad-handing, and mutual admiration, throw it in the bin, and replace it with an agenda for the evolution of an Australia we would like to live in.

I would be talking about education, real education that sets up our engineering, operational and manufacturing competitiveness for decades, the means by which we demonstrate our humanity, to our elderly, those who want to come and share this great country with us, and to our disadvantaged, how we strike a balance between the short term expediency, and long term sustainability in all sorts of areas, and how we relate to those with whom we share the world, and finally, how our society pays for itself.

Not a word about gay marriage, the machinations of political parties, who has the best looking dog,  the latest shark attack, or nominations for an Academy award. All are irrelevant distractions, the detritus of life, ignore it, and consider something a bit more meaningful, and what you will do to push it, to put some meaning back into the day, and perhaps bit by bit, make the joint a better place.

 

 

 

 

Social Media & the Iceberg metaphor.

The term “Social Media”  is catch-all for a multitude of web based services that bear little similarity to each other beyond their location on your nearest device.

Each tries to deliver a compelling and differentiated benefit, often to a very narrow but geographically spread user base.

It seems to me that there are a number of categories in the social media eco-system, just as there are product categories in a supermarket, and consumers benefit by understanding the role of each category, just as in a supermarket, to enable the best use decision to be made.

Here are my product categories:

    1. Sound bites. Designed to attract attention for further investigation. Twitter is the king of sound-bites, 140 characters with links and search capabilities.
    2. Taste-tester. Sites that offer you a taste of something more, a reason to have an increasing engagement. Facebook created this category, replacing the original brand, My-space with a superior offering, but is now being attacked by Google+ who have introduced a couple of new pack sizes and colors and are trumpeting them as genuine innovations. Of a different product line, but still in the category is  YouTube, simply a bigger bite from a different product to taste.
    3. Taste-tester Premium. Similar role to the original, just more targeted to a user need. LinkedIn is the original, now stretching into providing other services like closed systems that require you to be a member of something outside LinkedIn to gain membership. The Australian Institute of Company Directors,  AICD, now has a closed group on LinkedIn that is proving to be very attractive to AICD members. A bit like a platinum Amex.
    4. Mine, not yours. Closed  systems controlled to within a defined arena, a social media substitute for an intranet. Salesforce.com’s “chatter” is one such service housed within their cloud CRM offering, but they can be offered on a company’s server  just as easily with a whole range of search, co-ordination and networking capabilities.
    5. Here ’tis. Sites that offer you the opportunity to find stuff. Google is the giant of this cateogry, but there are many additional services, Meetup, EBay, 4 square, and many others that make up this very fragmented category. You can find anything from an address, where your SM friends are hanging out, an obscure product for sale or swap, a service to be provided, or a car to hire.
    6. The co-ordinator. This is your website, the place to which all your other stuff is connected, and provides a serious foundation for activity, information, and directing to the most appropriate location.

The whole ecosystem is a bit like an large iceberg with many peaks and crevasses showing above the water, but much more hidden beneath the waterline that floats it. This can be dangerous, as it can do a “Titanic” and sneak up and rip the heart out before you have the time to react.