Redslowwe Mac-fanatic

Is Apple the same after Jobs?

All the news coming out of Apple seems positive these days and any suggestion that Tim Cook would fall flat on his face as soon as Steve Jobs wasn’t around have proved very wide of the mark. Profits have soared way above analysts expectations; sales of iPad have continued on their stellar course with iPad 2, despite its relatively minor technical update, exceptionally well received and iPhone sales remains strong, winning back market share against ‘all Android’ in many markets, including the all important Asian market.

Rumours about the forthcoming upgrade of the MacBook range with lighter more ‘Air’ like models, without a hard drive and new in-screen technology, leading to a significantly shallower overall profile, have been well received and suggest that innovation across the range remains on track.

Yet there is a shift - and its in the reporting of Apple’s activities in the press and in the media in general. Somehow Steve Jobs’ halo - or should I call it force field - protected Apple, to a degree, from criticism, in the US at least. Without it there seems to be a change in the tone of commentary of issues such as corporate responsibility issues, the Chinese patent dispute, problems of the ghost 4G capabilities in Australia and in Apple’s tax avoidance regime back home in the US.

None of this should perhaps come as a surprise. As a nation’s favourite son, Mr Jobs was afforded a degree of leniency that a mere mortal such as Tim Cook (highly competent though he has already proved to be) can not aspire to owning. And its highly unlikely that anyone at Apple will ever reach this level of reverence in future.

Apple is doing exceptionally well and long may that remain the case but it will have to continue to outperform expectations if it is to remain a darling of the stock market and reached the projected $1000/share price some predict. And a less sympathetic press will be quick to jump on any blip in delivery, corporate responsibility or product innovation which will make the landscape trickier for Apple than it has been. Personally I have great faith in Tim Cook’s leadership but those are awfully big boots to fill!  

The World has lost a luminary and I feel like I have lost a friend

With millions of others this morning I read of the death of Steve Jobs.  My reaction and I am sure I am one of a huge number here, was one of intense shock and great sadness as well as enormous sympathy for his family, friends and work colleagues. The impact of the news also felt very, very personal. Someone who mattered to me and who has through his company greatly affected my life, has gone.

 

And yet of course I didn’t know Steve Jobs, never had the chance to meet him or even to hear him speak live. And he certainly didn’t know me; so why did his death feel so personal I have been wondering? For two reasons I think.

 

The first is the degree to which he, almost uniquely in the world of giant corporation managers, was identified with his company, with its trials and tribulations and ultimately with its triumphs. As Apple watchers we have all come to accept that it was his attitude, vision and absolute commitment to challenging the norm that drove Apple to greatness and enabled it to reach the dizzying heights it has now achieved. Apple is now the most valuable tech company in the world, it is a vast empire of people, facilities and programmes, no one man could possibly personally control such a leviathan – yet somehow his ethos permeated the whole organization and was written into its corporate DNA.

 

The second is the deep emotional connection I have with the Apple brand. Apple is a core brand for me it is one of the ways I define who and what I am.

 

When I was at Saatchi we talked about brands aspiring to become ‘Lovemarks’ – I am sure they still do. It’s a great concept that describes those few brands that somehow manage to so surpass lesser brands that they manage to establish a relevance and connection with their consumers that embeds them emotionally at a far deeper and enduring level. Can there be a better example of this than Apple? I doubt it.

 

I said earlier that Steve Jobs didn’t know me. Well in a way I feel that actually he did. Not personally of course but through his legendary desire to know and  understand the needs, desires and interactions of the consumer with his company’s products. I am one of millions of those users but Apple managed to make me feel it was marketing to me personally, that it understood me and wanted to serve me.  Great marketing should always aspire to that universal personal connection to its consumer. Many of us try – so few of us succeed to the level that Apple has achieved.

 

That success was driven from the very top of Apple, it was driven by Steve Jobs. It is immensely sad that he has gone but he has left behind a company so deeply engrained with his values, his thinking and his smarts that I for one trust he will never truly leave us.  

Hi-tech fear in the surgery

Discussion I held recently with a wide range of patients in Australia highlighted something I think is more universally applicable and strange. Patients reported finding the experience of a GP referring to a computer during a consultation - presumably to help in diagnosis and prescribing - more disturbing than a GP referring to a text book in the same situation.

Now if you give this a moment’s thought this is counter intuitive. Clearly its at least possible, if not almost certain, that any text book on the doctors shelf is going to be less up-to-date than the best information he could find on the ever up-dating, www. So providing we believe that the GP has done his homework and knows where to look, surely the www is likely to provide him with the most contemporary information available on any topic he cares to research. The use of the web should therefore be reassuring rather than disturbing.

Yet there is something fundamentally trustworthy in the published certainty of a text book - and by inference untrustworthy about something disseminated by the web. Books are how most of us, over a certain age, sourced all of our information during our education, its where we expect knowledge to be captured, and the very format endorses the content - another example of that oft-repeated media mantra - the medium is the message. 

Doubly strange then, that whilst the patient might frown upon the GP make use of the web during the consult, web searches by the general public for all matters medical, often according to GPs just before or immediately after a consult, has been growing astronomical. Web searches for health related material now outstrip all others topics, running at twice the rate of what most people think the web is most used for - porn! This pre/post consult use is confirmed by GPs. They regularly complain, when asked about patients use of digital media, of having first to disabuse their patient of an erroneous self-diagnosis, before they can issue the right one and of having both their diagnosis and prescription challenged by the patient on the basis of what ‘Dr Google’ has already told them. Doctors tend to characterise this as ‘the danger of a a little knowledge’.

With 2 in 5 doctors in the US already claiming (I nearly wrote confessing) to go online during a consultation (source - The Doctors Tech Toolbox’) - ‘Google in the surgery’ is here to stay and to burgeon. Perhaps therefore there is a case to be made for some direct communication between the the medical profession and the general public to put the use of digital information sources in the surgery into perspective and to position it more positively.

The once unchallengeable wisdom of the medical profession is dying with the last of the post-war generation. Trust and respect for the medical profession has fallen markedly - in Australia the general public have more faith in the pharmacist than the GP. We could certainly do without any further erosion caused by a misunderstanding of just how useful and reliable the web is in ensuring an accurate, totally up-to-date consult, diagnosis and prescription. 

Has digital media changed the role of the planner?

Account Planning, or maybe you call it Strategic Planning, has been around for decades now. Ever since, in fact, the progenitor ‘super-suits’ decided that in order to deliver better thinking for their clients, they needed to hive off their account management responsibilities to others and to specialise.

And for as long as there have been planners there has been a debate about the role of planning in the advertising process.

For me its simple, the planner represents the consumer in the agency.

And by delivering clarity about the motivations, drivers, needs and behaviours of that consumer the planner provides both inspiration and a sounding board against which strategies, ideas and channel plans can be tested. Its the planner’s job to make the connections that attach the brand to the real world and which are essential to developing creative work that changes behaviour and channel plans that enable that work to be delivered cost effectively and with impact.

Some planners, often those best with numbers, talk glibly about the market, or discuss the target audience as if such a thing actually existed, they can give you the statistics, the trends and draw charts that show this that or the other - all of course useful but not enough to create great advertising.

The best planners know, and help the agency to remember, that the market for a product, or the audience we want to talk to, is made up of tens, hundreds, thousands or millions (depending on the market) of discrete individuals, each acting independently and behaving differently. And by understanding some essential truths about the way these individuals behave the planner is able to create a sense of the way a group/niche/segment will interact with the brand and respond to messages. And by focussing on the essential ‘humanness’ of the response they keep the communication relevant and personal.

So now we live in a digital age and we are told that this changes everything. Why? The new (well not so new now) opportunities that digital offers are important. Of that there is not doubt. They offer a degree of interaction and engagement that was simply not available before. More than that, they encourage individuals, groups and audiences to proactively promulgate messages about our brands - good or bad of course. This is a whole new dynamic and challenges us think about how best to seed, encourage and hopefully harness these conversations - but at the end of the day what digital offers is a raft of alternative communications channels.

If we are going to use these new channels, with all their nuances and challenges, to their maximum we need to know more, not less, about how individuals in the market behave and why they behave that way. And thats what a good planner can bring to the table.

Digital opportunities need to be considered every time we think about a communications challenge. Getting inside the head of the consumer, knowing how, why and when they use which media and how they integrate this use into everyday life is critical to creating effective digital offers and integrating them into the overall communications strategy. 

Rumours of planning’s demise have been exaggerated - but planners like everyone else have to move with the times and this means understanding our consumers use of all the media channels available - including digital.

Is Apple vulnerable now to Google/Motorola

There is a theory doing the rounds on notice boards and blogs that suggests that following its purchase of Motorola and the leadership switch at Apple, Google has a ‘once in a lifetime’ opportunity to challenge Apple’s dominance in tablets and smart phones.

The theory is based on the notion that Google managed to take a big step closer to Apple with Android, through the purchase of Motorola, just at the moment when the company might be at its most vulnerable - during a leadership transition. But is there any substance to this neat, and perhaps for Apple unfortunate convergence of events?

All the evidence suggests not. Firstly Apple is not actually in a management transition, that actually occurred many months ago. Tim Cook has been effectively running Apple as CEO all this year. What we have seen is not Steve Jobs deciding to resign but Apple deciding to tell us about it. Apple has always been masterly in its control of what surfaces in the media and expert at timing news to its best advantage - as I have suggested before, this would seem to suggest that Apple has iPhone5 ready to announce soon and perhaps more beside.

So the questions now are, how close to iOS is Google’s Android OS, and how much will the purchase of Motorola help Google to push Android forward faster than it could have done otherwise?

Motorola has always been a key partner for Google’s Android OS and its tablet offer is arguably one of the better attempts at de-throning the iPad, but its smart phone offer has not really captured the market’s attention or the market share Motorola might have hoped for nor it really troubled Apple. 

Rumour has it that Google have been pouring money into Motorola development for years and the outcome has been at best mediocre. Perhaps the purchase then was less an inspired aggressive swoop, and more a defensive shoring-up of a struggling partner.

Its possible of course that the closer ties between Motorola and Google will be a game-changer but it doesn’t seem likely. Its possible that Google has seen development work or potential that justifies the eye-wateringly high purchase price, if it has then it has been well hidden from the market to-date.

And then there is the small matter of other Android devotees. if Google’s purchase and subsequent management of its phone business gives Motorola too much of an advantage as an Apple competitor, where does this leave HTC et al?

Apple needs strong competition to continue to drive it forward - its healthy and good for us the users of the tech - Google/Motorola might just prove to be just that, I for one genuinely hope so, but is it going to knock Apple off its perch? Not likely

Will Jobs’ departure really affect Apple?

I joked on twitter yesterday about us all having to learn to live without Jobs (something 10% of the UK working populations seems quite happy to live with - ha ha) but seriously should we be expecting the worst in the post Jobs era at Apple? Personally I can’t see it, but a decline in Apple’s share price of almost 3% and associated falls over night in the price of supplier shares on the Asian market, coupled with increases in the price of competitor shares such as HTC, would suggest that brokers think so.

The reality it seems to me is rather different. Apple is no longer the small iconoclastic player it once was. As the world’s most valuable tech company, albeit a bit less valuable today that it was yesterday, it is now a vast organisation - and one that no one man could effectively influence personally on a day-today basis. 

Jobs has, of necessity, had a much reduced role at Apple for some considerable time as he has battled his health issues. The team that has overseen all of the key developments and introductions over the last 12 months has been effectively led without him and there seems no reason to think that it will suddenly fail to deliver because Jobs has changed his title to reflect the reality of his current role.

Jobs influence at Apple is not held in his person but in the legacy he leaves behind - a legacy that is about an approach, a way of thinking and a willingness to challenge conventional wisdom. Apple is there only company I know that takes ‘consumer insight’, something all of us in marketing claim to have in abundance, and enables people to respond to it so effectively. This way of thinking is so clearly evidenced in Apple’s approach to the ‘cloud’ that I am confident it is now embedded in the corporate DNA.

That being the case Jobs move to Chairman (non-executive I presume, but I haven’t seen that confirmed) is entirely appropriate and will have no negative impact so I for one am buying not selling Apple shares at the moment.

iPad and iPhone break free

Following close on the heels of the eradication of the laptop installation disc comes a more welcome eradication. It seems that the much disliked, even by Steve Jobs, need to connect a new iPhone or iPad to a computer to get it started, is also soon to end.

The combination of a new version of Time Capsule, capable of wirelessly updating the software on all your mobile devices with updates it has previously downloaded, plus wireless activation of new devices via iCloud, is finally going to set your hand-helds free!

Code detected in iOS5 points to a clear intention to break the link with the desktop sooner rather than later. The iCloud activation looks likely to be released as soon as iCloud goes live and an updated Time Capsule is expected in your local Apple Store very soon. Out-of-stock reports for Time Capsules have been appearing in many stores indicating a new model is imminent.

Freeing iPhones and iPads from the desktop is important to Apple because many existing, and even more potential, iPhone and iPad owners, either don’t need or want a desktop computer as well - and if iPad is to maximise its potential it needs to tap into this market.

Look forward to an untethered future very soon! 

Apple Builds ‘Cost of Entry’ App barrier

Apple is currently spending around $1.3b per annum on running the App Store and iTunes, with the majority of this expenditure going on serving content and collecting money http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-spends-13-billion-a-year-to-run-itunes-and-app-store-2011-6 and while spending money is no absolute guarantee of success, if Apple is spending it wisely, what it is building is a massive barrier to entry for competitors hoping to take market share from Apple’s mobile devices family.

If previous technology wars are anything to go by (and why shouldn’t they be?) content trumps hardware every time. Think back to the video wars - in the end it was the content disparity that killed off Betacam. With game consoles it has consistently been the same, the console with the best games beats the best console - and before you comment on this blog, I do accept that the technology does, to a degree, drive content provider and developer choices.

But to return to the key point; Apple has developed a formidable system for the servicing of its iTunes and its Apps catalogue. It has the momentum to encourage on-going content development and most importantly it is generating the revenue that allows continued investment - just look at what its spending on, for instance, on its new service hub and its iCloud offering. And if it keeps up this pace of innovation its going to be incredibly hard for anyone else to challenge Apple’s dominant mobile platform position.

Nokia for instance effectively missed the boat when it went down the Symbion route and will definitely struggle to regain a foothold in the smartphone market with its Windows handsets. Even if the software comes up to scratch, and its hard to see that happening - the content will not be there - without content revenue will be slow to grow and without revenue investment in creating the infra-structure to deliver content smarter than Apple does, simply wont be there.

Nokia and others might find themselves servicing the low end, low value handset market - and thats going to be a very, very tough gig against low cost manufacturers in China in the years ahead. 

Entertainment courtesy of……..

Augmented Reality is the latest buzz around the advertising table. And there is no question it has the potential to be a powerful tool capable of breaking through the clutter of messages and images we are all exposed to.

The idea that you can change a person’s experience of the physical world they inhabit is clearly appealing - and when you see campaign executions as powerful and integrated as that of the Linx Fallen Angel - its clear this potential can be, and is already being realised.

And if virtual Angels interacting with travellers at a train station isn’t enough to get your juices flowing just have a look at this link to get a sense of what might be possible -http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=sM-uyhv6Dec#at=90

The danger inherent in these new forms of interaction with audiences is that the cleverness of the idea becomes more important than its relevance. Sound strategic thinking, the identification of genuinely motivating differentiators, the careful targeting of the audience and the ability to communicate in a way that actually changing the audience’s mind don’t go away just because there is a new creative possibility.

Arguably these disciplines become more, not less important - they are the touchstone against which even the cleverest, most impactful idea should be judged. And the more ‘left-field’ the idea, the closer we have to check it communicates the right thoughts and feelings to the right people - the risk otherwise is ‘Brand Irrelevance’  or perhaps worse Entertainment Courtesy Of your brand.

Thats all well and good if you have money to burn - but how often is that the case these days?

Convergence Apple’s latest theme

I have spoken before about the path that Microsoft is clearly taking with Windows8, or whatever it eventually gets called, and it now appears from straws in the wind that Apple is serious about combining its two operating system in future.

Mac Air has already been seen in the wild running a version of iOS4 and we know that when Lion is officially previewed at WWDC 2011 tomorrow it will, amongst a host of other enhancements, feature an interface much influenced by iOS. Apple seems to be favouring a convergence path that heads in the direction of iOS; iOs5 is likely to foreshadow this directional shift when it is revealed also at WWDC 2011.

It’s a direction that makes a great deal of sense and should, within a fairly short space of time, deal with the anomalies and frustrations that come from running two platforms on a family of devices so clearly meant to operate as one.

Why, you might ask was there ever a need to develop two separate operating systems in the first place? The answer seems to be that at the time there really was no alternative. That convergence can not only be considered, but represent a realistic possibility so soon after, is an indication not of a gross error of judgement on Apple’s part, but of just how fast the world is changing and just how much of the pressure for change is coming from handheld devices.