About Uwe Hook

Apps

We saw it all before: the portal gold rush, the microsite gold rush, the Social Media gold rush. They all ended at one point and gave way to a more mature way of utilizing these new tools and tactics. In the early days, we saw a few lucky pioneers strike gold with novelty apps. There were a handful of independent developers and Fortune 500 brands that invested in user experience and captured the high end of the market.

As it goes with most gold rushes, the usual targets were depleted within a few months. New entrants to the apps world, find a very cluttered market, filled with competition and not many new mountains to conquer. While people have often hundreds of apps on their phone or tablet, the bulk of them are rarely used. And, let’s not forget that smartphones are not yet ubiquitous. You’re more likely to reach more people with an SMS message, even though it’s not as sexy as sparkly app.

At this point, does it still make sense to jump on the app bandwagon?

For the majorities of companies, the answer is no. A good app needs a lot of investment in design, user experience, content and marketing. Companies that don’t have a site compatible to mobile browsers, should not even think about an app. (And don’t get started with companies that create apps as a near-carbon copy of their website.)

Futurist John Smart, founder of the Acceleration Studies Foundation, looks beyond 2020 and sees apps as merely a passing phase in Internet evolution. “Apps are a great intermediate play, a way to scale up functionality of a primitive Web,” he said, “but over time they get outcompeted for all but the most complex platforms by simpler and standardized alternatives. What will get complex will be the ‘artificial immune systems’ on local machines. What will get increasingly transparent and standardized will be the limited number of open Web platforms and protocols that all the leading desktop and mobile hardware and their immune systems will agree to use. The rest of the apps and their code will reside in the long tail of vertical and niche uses.”

This doesn’t mean companies shouldn’t invest in apps, we just have to end the gold rush mentality. Not every advertising campaigns needs an app, not every brands needs one. There’s still some gold in the hills and mines but it’s going to be harder to find and much more expensive to extract. That’s a good thing. Enough of the bubbles and gold rushes.

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Since the beginning of marketing time, the ultimate objective was always a transaction. You give me a A, I’ll give you B. Transactions have become even more important throughout the emergence of digital marketing. You can track customers through the purchase funnel, explore why they didn’t transact and create less friction to improve transaction effectiveness.

Why transformations are more important than transactions.

While driving by a lively Apple Store, I heard the news that Best Buy will close 50 stores. Best Buy was a pure transactional company. The sales associates weren’t very helpful, just focusing on the sale and their extended warranty. The moment I declined the warranty, the interest level of the sales person dropped dramatically and I was herded into finalizing the transaction. Apple stores are transformational experiences. Flying with United Airlines is a transaction, flying with Virgin America a transformation.

A transformational experience: It’s not what you say. It’s not even what you do.

It’s how you leave them feeling when it’s all over.

When they walk out of the store, with your product in a bag – how do they feel?

When they see the email-receipt – how do they feel?

When you provide a transformational experience, you start a self-perpetuating loyalty loop. That good feeling about you will linger on, will be shared, stored in your synapses.

When you just provide a transaction, you need to continue spending a lot of money to get them back into your circles of influence.

Are you transacting or transforming?

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When the Web was young and digital marketing in its toddler shoes, a common practice was to require customers to fill out a form before they could access a site. Cheered on by “Get all the exciting news from Brand A” or “Don’t miss out on the latest events”, many customers signed on. Once spammers started to get rich and marketers over-communicated with their audience, these forms quickly disappeared. You didn’t have to fill out a form before you watched a commercial, grabbed a brochure or visited a store, why should that be different when it comes to digital?

Some tactics never die

Marketers are rehashing that old formula, forcing people to ‘like’ the brand before they can see any content. Brands and agencies continue to be obsessed with aggregating as many ‘Likes’ as possible. In the beginning it was done through other marketing channels, social games and apps installations. Increasingly, this has been replaced by using the ‘Like’ click as the price of entry to interact with content or get special offers.

Wasn’t social about conversations, engagement and long-term benefits?

Social Media was this big party where we can interact in transparent and authentic ways, right? We didn’t like the screamer that just yelled at us. Or the “Look-at-me-guy”, right? Last time I checked, those are as annoying as the people I need to endorse on LinkedIn or praise them publicly before we can start to talk. Don’t I deserve a chance to explore what they’re all about before I endorse them to all my friends?

Don’t mistake a “like” for an endorsement

Studies show that 58% of US Facebook users expect to gain access to exclusive content, events or sales after “liking” a company, while 58% also expect to receive discounts or promotions. More insightful is what Facebook customers don’t want: Bombardment with messages (54%), access to profile information (45%), pushing things into friends’ newsfeeds (31%) and companies contacting them through Facebook (29%).

We all have busy lives. We can’t “like” every brand, we don’t have enough time and bandwidth. Does it make sense to “like” everything that’s in my closet, office, living room, garage and shopping mall?

Exactly.

The forced “like” tactic might be a good choice for brand advocates. But, they are already on your side.

Wouldn’t you rather start a conversation with people that have no defined feelings toward your brand, winning them over? You’re forced “like” tactic might just result in the opposite.

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I love to run.

When I started running marathons, I used to focus on one person I wanted to beat. I just ran them into the ground. Until I passed them and I had to find another competitor to beat.

That worked well for a few miles but around Mile 15, I lost my stride and focus. Putting all my effort into beating the competition, made me forget to focus on the little things: My posture, the stride, breathing, my mental state, my exhaustion level. All have to be fine-tuned while running or Mile 22 will became the torture mile.

That’s a very common mistake.

Very common for brands, organizations and people. We focus so much on the competition that we lose sight of our mission, vision and performance.

It happened to Toyota when they were focused on beating GM.

We need to use competition to improve ourselves. The competition is there to help us be better, learn from them. What are they doing right in marketing and product development? How are they dealing with customer services challenges? What decisions are turning customers into ex-customers? Collect all of them and delight them with your product/service. Don’t be ruthless against your competition. But ruthless when it comes to your brand. Ruthlessly improving.

When I run now, I focus on myself and try to learn from other fellow runners at the same time. Once I learned enough, I’ll pass them.

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Whenever I go to Facebook, I tend to see the same people on top of my newsfeed (I love you all.) and a lot of (almost) strangers. I met some of them a few years back, made the connection, never to see them again. I know what they are doing each day, what hotel they are staying, what song they are listening to.

But I often don’t see my own wife. Or my best friend.

There’s mounting evidence that Facebook is making assumptions about me – without asking.

Those (false assumptions) are shaping who else I see, meet and talk with and I find that deeply problematic.

Last weekend, while watching football, I went through all my Facebook friends and clicked on the forgotten ones. The ones that I normally don’t see. The ones that I miss. My friends. I was hoping that clicking on their profile would change the algorithm and let Facebook know that I care about these people. Nothing changed. I still see the usual suspects. And the strangers.

Personalization can be very convenient and useful. But it can also be wrong and damaging. Personalization may find you lots of what you like, but look at the ads that you see. They are based on similar assumptions. On my page, it’s the request to like Michelle Obama, some crappy brain enhancing formula and the request to like Kia. I don’t care about Michelle Obama that much, my brain functions very well, thank you very much, and don’t get me started on Kia.

Assumptions behind personalization are wrong all too often.

Those assumptions will push you in a direction that you may not want to head into. I don’t mind reading about strangers but the reason for investing time in Facebook was to stay close to family and friends, wasn’t it? Facebook should offer the option of opting in and give me more freedom. They can ask each of us to confirm assumptions they are making.

Of course they won’t. It’s inconvenient to them in their haste to assume they know what is convenient to us and what is not.

It will get worse.

Rumor says, Facebook will try to get public next year. This will increase the pressure on the platform to improve monetization. The algorithm will be changed to improve opportunities for brands to connect with us. We’ll see more brands/advertising/marketing and less friends. Makes sense for Facebook. Not so much for us.

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1.    Groupon’s IPO: We’ve wasted too much time, writing about Groupon’s problems, challenges, opportunities and internal machinations. I’m as guilty as anyone. The IPO filing moved the conversation from pundits to the market. As it should be.

2.    Google+: Since we don’t have to focus on Groupon anymore, Google+ gave marketers more fodder to discuss the problems, challenges and opportunities of Google’s innovative social layer. The combination of SEO and a huge user base makes it likely Google+ will be a success. It’s not the new Facebook, but it’s a new Google.

3.    Zombies cling to life: Just a few deaths of 2011: The Web, micro site, print, display ads, television (a golden oldie) and radio. I’m glad to see all these zombies looking pretty much alive. Some of them need some drastic procedures to move them back to a real healthy existence, others need a good rehab to reset their mission and vision. Still, they are alive, nobody died and no need to write more obituaries.

4.    Josh Williams, Gowalla: It’s good to see a CEO pivot in the right way. He knew he lost the “check-in war” and changed the vision of his company from “I was here” to “I wish you were here.” Check-ins were always kind of stupid: marketing opportunities are limited (Since most people use location-based apps as personal branding tools, the opportunity for businesses to conquest seems minimal), and the user base was even more limited. Foursquare cornered that small opportunity and we’ll see if they can get traction outside of the geek crowd. Gowalla’s mission change to craft the narrative of your life is fascinating. I wish them well.

5.    Content Marketing: Let’s be honest here: We didn’t feel needed anymore. People just blocked us out. Banner blindness, DVR, apathy, ignoring our messages. Content marketing gave us an opportunity to go back to our roots of communicating with our customers and prospects without selling. Instead of being the parrot-on-the-shoulder-crazy-colored-blazer-wearing pitchman, we can deliver now messages that make our buyers more intelligent. Beautiful.

6.    Steve Jobs: Simplicity and purpose. A powerful vision for all of us.

7.    The GOP primary: Some of the candidates remind us of marketing lessons we should never forget:

• Rick Perry: Never overpromise and under-deliver. Always under-promise and over-deliver.
• Herman Cain: Always be prepared for everything. You lose all credibility when you don’t know the basics of your profession.
• Mitt Romney: It’s not good enough to look and act the part. You need substance.
• Rick Santorum: Brand Awareness is important.
• Jon Huntsman: If there’s no demand for your product, you need to create demand.
• Newt Gingrich: Lies only get you so far. And they will always come back to haunt you.

8.    John Wanamaker: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” We all thought this would change with the digital revolution. Not so fast, friends. Clearly, we still haven’t figured it out and John Wanamaker ‘s quote will be around for many decades to come. Maybe not, since some claim 90% of advertising is wasted.

9.    Mark Zuckerberg: The inventor of the Zuckerberg dance: Introducing new features, protest dances by a minority of users combined with flaming threats of an even smaller minority to leave for good, Mark and his team dance the apology tango, retreating slightly with a waltz and the users go back to do the Facebook Polka. Thanks, Mark, for keeping us all in motion.

10.  All the people that dedicate their lives to help people in real need.  You have my deepest thanks. You do work that really matter.

Last but not least, thank you to everybody who reads my posts. I feel humbled and quite lucky to have the privilege. Thanks for being here, for making a difference and changing the world.

Thank you.

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Message Boards

Facebook is a terrible tool to build communities outside of your immediate friends and family. It’s a good platform to maintain existing relationships. It performs badly when it comes to creating new communities based on shared interests. I’m still active in many forums and stats show they tend to build powerful, long-lasting communities.

The emergence of niche networks.

Big social networks have received all the attention in recent years but the real action happens in community forums. There are millions of these sites that have a combined audience comparable to Facebook. The one big advantage Facebook offers for marketers: Scale. It’s so much easier to communicate a message on a unified platform compared to millions of communities, often behind password walls.

In addition, you need to be passionate about specific topics: Unless you’re into Dubstep in Brazil, why would you ever know about forums discussing that topic? Or baseball forums in Germany. Sumo forums in Los Angeles. Bobblehead forums. These forums are surprisingly popular and extremely resilient because of their community bond. For every interest there is an online community to accomodate: fishing, hiking, TV shows, Rugby, Bakersfield fans – you name it. They live and grow every day even if you know nothing about them.

Real relationships

I joined a EDM (Electronic Dance Music) forum in 2000 and still participate every day. The conversation has transformed from sharing club experiences to political discussions, parenting issues, travel advice, general entertainment. I’ve never met 99% of the community but we’re a lively bunch and engage on a daily basis. It’s fascinating to experience this use of the Web and the untouchable strength of community.

Don’t miss out on the opportunity to engage in niche networks

Facebook has become the Microsoft of Social Networks. It’s there, you can’t escape it but you don’t love it. We use it every day but we are really not passionate about it. I’m sure Facebook will be around for years to come, just like Microsoft won’t disappear. The real love and passion happens in niche networks. By integrating more social features into their forums, niche communities will soon begin to have their heyday. Soon means about now.

All this talk about Facebook and Twitter have distracted from one the most important strengths of the digital medium: bringing people together to form a community. The current Forums 1.0 will soon be transformed into more advanced and socialized forums.

Scale is important.

The bond and passion of a community is more important. And a much better playground for your brand.

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The Rock Garden

While hosting a brand session in Kyoto, I was able to visit the Ryoanji Temple. Just like millions others, I didn’t come for the temple, I came for The Rock Garden. Built in the 15th century, the garden consists of raked gravel and fifteen moss-covered boulders, which are placed so that, when looking at the garden from any angle (other than from above) only fourteen of the boulders are visible at one time.  It is traditionally said that only through attaining enlightenment would one be able to view the fifteenth boulder.

No trees are to be seen; only fifteen rocks and white gravel are used in the garden. It is up to each visitor to find out for himself what this unique garden signifies. The longer you gaze at it, the more varied your imagination becomes. Some consider the garden as the quintessence of Zen art.

What do you see in the garden?

Some people see hills with their peaks poking above the clouds.

Some people see tigers crossing a river.

Some people see islands rising from the sea.

Some see a lake. Some see heaven itself.

Some people only see rocks.

What do you see in the garden?

What do you see in a brand?

Some people see a product.

Some people see a dream.

Some people see a bigger thought.

Some people see a passion.

What do you see in a brand?

Focus and simplicity.

Modern life is full of distractions. Our minds weren’t built to all the information coming at us constantly. Even when these temples and gardens were built, the outside city life was busy and full of entertaining distractions. Visiting a garden with a few rocks in it gives our mind just enough information to feel comfortable. It calms the mind, like calming water, allows the dirt to settle, and the water to clear.

Modern marketing and branding is full of distractions. We tend to to stray from the brand core, brand vision and mission – focus on diversions, things that have nothing to do with brand. The ever-changing marketing and technology landscape forces us to keep up, open new channels, engage and connect. Nothing wrong with that. But, once in a while, we have to go to back to the brand garden and calm the brand, like calming water, allow the diversions to settle, and the water to clear.

Perception is not reality.

Why is our thought deluded? Why can’t we perceive reality correctly? One reason is that we are usually limited to a single, subjective view. Our deluded perception constantly deceives us into making bad decisions. As mentioned above, at The Rock Garden 15 stones are arranged so that from any point, only 14 are visible. So how many stones are there? Like the stones, we can’t see everything all the time.

Why is our perception of brands deluded? Why can’t we perceive reality correctly? This is especially true when you are working every day on a brand. Because we’re so close, we’re becoming deluded. We’re projecting our own goals and objectives to our point of view. You might think you know your brand. Most likely, you’re just overlooking the blind spots.

There’s no “average”.

All things have an ultimate nature. A real existence that ordinary people’s minds are unprepared to see. When people see something, they immediately classify and label it. They are unable to make sense of reality without this process. This conceptualization process is based on our subjective experiences and always causes gross distortions.

Let’s say a new creature just arrived on earth. The creature doesn’t understand male and female, so you explain to the creature that women are on average shorter than men. The creature doesn’t understand subtleties like “on average” and will assume from now on that any shorter person is a woman. We’re all as stupid as the creature, constantly making incorrect assumptions about the world because of our limited system of thought.

All your focus groups, brand research and data analytics give you a “general” idea or an “on average” perception of your brand. You make assumptions about a brand based on subjective experiences working on it, and it will always cause gross distortions. When working on a brand, always assume you are as stupid as everyone, constantly making incorrect assumptions about the world because of your limited system of thought.

When facing a single tree, if you look at a single one of its red leaves, you will not see all the others. When the eye is not set on one leaf, and you face the tree with nothing at all in mind, any number of leaves are visible to the eye without limit. But if a single leaf holds the eye, it will be as if the remaining leaves were not there. – Takuan Soto

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Zappos Social Media

I know, this question was asked a gazillion times before. And answered by much more profound minds than I could ever aspire to be.

Let’s look at the question from a different angle.

Let’s not focus on how we are going to consume media (tools, platforms). Let’s forget about the location where we will consume media (home, public place, office, etc.) And let’s not bother discussing what we will do with media (lease it, share it, own, co-own it, etc.)

Let’s answer a different question:

How are businesses are going to manage this new media world?

Sure, we have amazing examples of companies utilizing new media to their advantage: Zappos, Virgin America, Starbucks.

But, let’s be honest here: the majority of businesses are completely lost in this new world. They are acting like a 13-year old trying to score a date. They understand the world of media is moving faster and faster while they stand still and fall behind. They desperately hold on to tactics and processes that used to work 20 years ago. Just like the 60-year old who tries to squeeze himself into the wedding suit from 30 years ago. They are more care-takers of media than real managers or leaders of their destiny. This applies to paid, earned and owned media.

But, let’s focus on earned media.

Most brands claim to be engaged in social media. Frankly, they are lying to themselves. A daily tweet or Facebook post doesn’t mean engagement.

It’s checkbox engagement.

Most businesses are barely engaged in the real world. They shield themselves from customers by deploying phone trees, arduous forms and bureaucratic processes. Why would a narcissistic brand believe they can suddenly communicate with their customer base just because there is a new tool or platform?

Time Warner Cable is a great example.

I drop around $200 monthly for cable and Internet service. And I’ve done it for 15 years. That’s around $40,000 in 15 years. Did they ever thank me, offered free on-demand movies for a month, gave me something that says: “Thank you, Mr. Hook, for being such a great customer!” Of course not.

My brand experience is extremely low, if Dish or DirecTV offer me a special deal: I’m gone. I’m just too lazy to research this further and plan on returning their remotes and cable-boxes. And, I’m not alone. Just check out their Facebook page: It’s a great example of brand misery. They post content once a day, never to listen to anyone. People are bitching, complaining, expressing their deep hate towards the brand. Time Warner Cable’s answer: Push another message. It’s all about them, narcissistic, deeply dysfunctional.

They do on Facebook what they do on TV: push a message, push another message, push more messages. This push mentality translates how to engage with customers and treat them. Time Warner Cable has no clue how to navigate and manage new media in positive ways.

They are just one example. As I said before, the majority of brands act that way. They need to take a hard, long look at the mirror and ask: “How are we going to manage the future of media to be successful?” Zappos, Virgin America and Starbucks can answer the question honestly and don’t need to worry about their media future.

The other brands will continue to lie to themselves or finally wake up.

If you don’t engage and communicate with your customers in the new media world, you’ll be talking to yourself very soon.

And you well deserve it.

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