Jun 7, 2010 | Innovation, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
Will the iPad and Kindle do to books what has happened to music? You have to believe they will. At the moment, it is the early adopters who are looking for books electronically, but it should not take too long to become mainstream.
It would be silly for publishers to become resisters rather than figuring ways to embrace the change that will happen, drive it, and thereby build a sustainable new business model. The core to that success will be the “ownership of the relationship” with the readers. Currently that is via the publisher who has control of the channel, apart from the few “big name” authors who have their own following, built after a publisher has invested in them.
The new e-readers offer a disintermediation opportunity for authors, one they will grab, so the role of the publisher is about to change, but how many of them see that?
Thinking about the potential for e-marketing of books also puts a gun to the head of the dumb restrictive publishing rules that exist in this country. I cannot buy a book published in the US in Australia unless a local publisher, or off-shoot of a British one, has chosen to publish here, adding another margin that has absolutely no value to me. Until recently, I did not have an option, then Amazon popped up, then the Kindle arrived, and now the iPad. Now there is a new set of rules emerging from the marketplace, and the existing regulations no longer have the control, so have become irrelevant.
Can somebody please tell the publishers and their cronies in the government, and I wouild not be too keen to buy shares in a book retailer wedded to the expensive shop front in Westfield.
Jun 6, 2010 | Communication, Leadership, Social Media
As we grapple in this country with the notion of Canberra putting filters on the net, as has happened in China, and the various businesses and groups having their say, perhaps the most useful being Google, who have had the guts to take a stand that compromises their short to medium term position in China based on their corporate values, what we lack is a philosophical framework that describes the “why” and acknowledges the downsides.
All we are getting is the “we must protect our children” arguments, few would disagree, but it leaves us with a shallow virtually non existent populist “debate” without any real foundation.
A short time ago the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton put forward such a framework, agree, or disagree, at least there is a sensible framework to debate. One of the best commentators on the net, and what is happening, and why is Clay Shirky, and I have linked to his edited version of Clintons speech to make life easier rather than reading the full transcript, but the full text is available on the US department of State website.
Jun 3, 2010 | Communication, Management
So many meetings fail to deliver an outcome simply because they do not ask for one.
Here’s an tactic I saw at work a while ago in a meeting chaired by someone I know well with an extensive record of getting things done.
At the end of the agenda, he went around the table, and asked people what they would do as a result of the discussions in the meeting.
By observation, it achieved three outcomes:
- It offered an opportunity to ensure the resulting workload is both fairly spread, and in the right place,
- It committed people to an outcome, as once they publicly said what they would do, it become a very strong psychological commitment to follow through,
- It would have exposed any who were in the meeting simply as a means of filling in time, in this case, there were none, as this was standard practice, and the bludgers had already been burnt, and moved elsewhere.
Try it, I guarantee it will energise and shorten any meeting.
May 26, 2010 | Management, Marketing, Social Media
The brother of digital democracy is Analytical Insights. As more and more happens on the web, the opportunity to develop analytical techniques and resulting algorithms that are able to assist the prediction of behavior grows.
As every user of Amazon, and many others have noticed, the more you use it, the better it is at predicting, then offering you further purchases that focus on your interests. This is not a matter of “fries with that” or luck, it is a reflection of the deep analytical capacity to look at an individuals past behavior, and predict what they may like to do now.
Perhaps it is digital democracy’s big brother.
May 25, 2010 | Customers, Marketing, Social Media
A newish term to describe the capacity of consumers to respond, and to initiate change, and it is having a huge impact on the demands on the people running the marketing efforts of all organisations, and the breadth of their responsibility within those organisations.
Suddenly, because of the reach of the net, marketers are being asked to create startlingly different products in order to remain differentiated from the competition, whilst being socially and ecologically responsible, but still meeting the financial metrics that dominate organisations.
In most cases, this is a very big ask, marketers are usually as bound by the successes of the past as anyone else, consumers need to push them to new solutions by rejecting the old ones.
May 18, 2010 | Innovation, Marketing, Strategy
Digital interactivity has moved to the centre of marketing strategy. The launch of the iPad by Apple has moved it noticeably.
I have not seen one, just read the reviews, and when you sift through the hyperbole, it seems that the iPad has a pretty good chance of changing the way a large section of the market behaves. For communication centric uses, the iPad will possibly be a revelation, but to applications that require number crunching, it will not replace a computer. Now the market will segment by what sorts of applications you require, not just the size, and performance characteristics, and PC Vs Mac segmentation that has prevailed.
The other segmenting drive is the coming battle in “e-book” publishing, which will be facinating to watch. Amazons Kindle got the ball rolling, but the momentum will be built by the iPad when they get the iBook store running properly, which should not be long. It took Apple several years to get the iTunes store running, and it created a tsunami in the music world, it may be a bit harder in books because they are simply harder to digitise, but the lessons from launching iTunes will not be lost, and the current book publishing business model is clearly about to be broken apart.
