Throw away that slide rule! Use Facebook, iPhones, iPads and Groupon

by | Mar 4, 2011 | Current Affairs, In the Rapids, Innovation, Leadership, Openness, Television, Web/Tech


My high school physics teacher spent a week teaching students how to use a slide rule.  I asked him, "why can't we just use calculators?" At the time a slide rule was about $2, and a calculator was $300.  The minimum wage was $1.14/hour.  He responded that slide rules had been around a long time, and you never knew if you'd have access to a calculator. To the day he retired he insisted on using, and teaching, slide rule use.  Needless to say, by then plenty of folks were ready to see him go.  Too bad for his students he stayed as long as he did, because that was a week they could have spent learning physics, and other important materials. Ignoring the new tool, and its advantages, was a wasteful decision that hurt him and his customers.

Yet, I am amazed at how few people are using today's new tools for business, and marketing.  At a small business Board meeting this week the head of marketing presented his roll-out of the boldest campaign ever in the business's history.  His promotion plan was centered around traditional PR, supplemented with radio and billboard ads.  I asked for his social media campaign, and after he confirmed I was serious he said he had a manager working on that.  I asked if he had a facebook page ready, the videos on YouTube, a linked-in program ready to run against targets and his twitter communications established, including hash tags? He said if those things were important somebody had to be working on them.  Two weeks from roll-out and he wasn't giving them any personal consideration.

I then asked the roughly 20 attendees, all but one of which were over 40, some questions:

  • How many of you use skype at least once/month? Answer – 5%
  • How many of you have a facebook page and check it daily? A – 15%
  • How many of you check twitter daily? A – 5%  Tweet at least 5 times/week? A – none
  • How many own and use a tablet? A – 10%
  • How many of you have a smartphone on which you've downloaded at least 10 apps? A – 10%
  • How many of you carry a laptop? A – 100%
  • Who knows the #1 company for new hires in Chicago in 2010? Answer – 5% (GroupOn)
  • Who has used a Groupon coupon? Answer – 30%

Slide rule users.

New tools are here, and adopters will be the winners. If you still think we're a nation of laptop users, you need to think again.  Laptop usage declined 20% in the last 2 years, to 2006 levels, as people have adopted easier to use technology

Declining PC Usage 2010

Chart Source: Silicon Alley Insider of BusinessInsider.com

If you are trying to pump out ads the new medium is mobile – not television, radio, outdoor or even web sites.  Have you tested the look and feel of your web site on popular mobile devices? Do you know if new users to your business are even able to access your information from a mobile device?

And, it's more likely a customer will hear about you, and obtain a review of your product or service, via Facebook than vai the web!  A CNet.com article asks the leading question "Will Facebook Replace Company Web Sites?" Want to understand the importance of Facebook, check out these same month comparisons:

  • Starbucks: Facebook likes – 21.1M, site visits – 1.8M
  • Coca-Cola: Facebook likes – 20.5M, site visits – .3M
  • Oreo: Facebook likes – 10.1M, site visits – .3M

Yes, these are consumer products.  But if you don't think the first place a potential customer looks for information on your business is Facebook, whether it's financial services, business insurance, catering or blow-molded plastic housings you need to think again.  The use of facebook is simply exploding. 

According to Business Insider, by the end of December, 2010 Facebook apps were downloaded to iPhones at a rate exceeding 500,000/day as the total shot to nearly 60million! Meanwhile the Facebook app downloads to Android devices grew to over 20million!  Blackberry Facebook users has reached 27million, bringing the total by end of 2010 to well over 100M – just on smartphones!  In September, 2010 Facebook became the #1 most time spent on the internet, passing combined time on all Google and all Yahoo sites!  With over 500million users, Facebook isn't just kids checking on their friends any longer. When somebody wants a first peak at your business, odds are great it will be done over a smartphone and likely via a Facebook referral!

Facebook minutes 9.2010

Chart Source: Silicon Alley Insider at Business Insider

As fast as smartphone usage has grown, tablet usage is on the precipice of explosion.  Tablet sales will be 6 times (or more) notebook sales in just a few years!  The second most popular product will be, of course, continued sales of advanced smartphones as the two new platforms overtake the traditional laptop.  So what's your budgeted spend on mobile devices, mobile apps and mobile marketing?

Tablet Sales Forecast 2.11

Chart Source: Silicon Alley Insider of Business Insider

And in the effort to attract new customers, if you think the route will be newspapers, radio, TV, billboards, or direct mail – think again.  Digital local deal delivery is projected to grow at least 45%/year through 2015 creating a market of over $10billion! If you want somebody to know about your product or service, Groupon and its competitors is already taking the lead over older, traditional techniques.  By the way, when was the last time you bothered to open that latest Vallasis direct mail package – or did you just throw it immediately in the recycling bin without even a look?

Groupon Market forecast 1.11

Chart Source: Silicon Alley Insider of Business Insider

So, what is your business doing to leverage these tools?  Are your marketing, and technology, plans for 2011 and 2012 still mired in old approaches and technologies?  If so, expect to be eclipsed by competitors who more quickly implement these new solutions.

Too often we become comfortable in our old way of doing things.  We keep implementing the same way, like the teacher giving slide rule instructions.  And that simply wastes resources, and leaves you uncompetitive.  The time to use these new solutions was yesterday – and today – and tomorrow – and every day.  If you don't have plans to adopt these new solutions, and use them to grow your business, what's your excuse?  Is it that much fun using the old slide rule?

 

Rearranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic – Microsoft, Apple, Sony, Nintendo

by | May 25, 2010 | Current Affairs, Defend & Extend, In the Swamp, Innovation, Leadership, Lock-in, Web/Tech

The leadership of Microsoft's entertainment division are leaving, as reported at TechFlash.com "Bach, Allard leaving Microsoft in Big Shift for Consumer Businesses."  Whether by their own choice or by request, the issue is simply that Microsoft has not driven the XBox to a dominant position versus the Sony Playstation or the Ninendo Wii.  It is competitive, but not a big winner.  The entertainment division has only recently moved beyond break-even, after years of losing billions of dollars.  In the high-growth gaming business, Microsoft has simply not performed, despite its vast resources.  And mobile devices developed in this division have lost over half their market share in under 2 years to Apple and Google.

Some of the weakness may have been that the leaders were long-term Microsoft veterans, comfortable to Mr. Ballmer and other leaders, rather than executives committed to their markets.  Messrs. Bach and Allard were not they type of leaders to challenge the Microsoft Success Formula, instead willing to accept mediocre results rather than violate Microsoft Lock-ins that would have jeopardized their careers.  Microsoft was willing to lose money, and not be a big winner, as long as the division leadership didn't challenge Lock-ins or the company focus on desktop computing products.

I'm not optimistic now that the division is reporting directly to CEO Steve Ballmer.  He had an enormous role in the company decision to commit vast resources to Defending the old Success Formula by massing hundreds of billions of dollars behind development and rollout of Office 2007, now office 2010, Vista and now System 7.  Yet, these projects have done nothing to grow Microsoft; instead only helping the company hold onto old customers.  Worse, Mr. Ballmer himself recently informed the world in his CEO Summit (as reported in Computerworld "Microsoft's Ballmer admits 'Window's Vista was just not executed well") that he's not a good leader of product development – costing the company thousands of man-years in wasted development when admittedly mismanaging Vista!

Apple v msft mkt cap 05.24.10
Chart source Business Insider

Now, largely due to the ongoing Defend & Extend management practices of Mr. Ballmer, Microsoft and Apple's valuations are in a dead heat.  Growth at Microsoft is poor, while Apple with its multiple new products is growing much faster – causing Apple's value to catch up to what has historically been the world's largest software company. 

As I commented on the recent interview for bnet.com (available as a podcast) Microsoft's Defend & Extend management practices are deeply rooted in the industrial economy.  But they are insufficient for success in today's rapidly shifting marketplace.  I discussed this in more depth for my keynote address at the Western Michigan Innovation & Energy Summit last week, and a second article was published in the local newspaper on Saturday "Customer is Always Right? Columnist says not for Innovative Businesses."  Specifically, Microsoft's total commitment to maintaining old operating system and Office customers has created an inability to re-focus resources on high growth markets like gaming and mobile devices. 

Although Microsoft has solutions – including tablet technology – it's management is Locked-in to Defending what it always did and not committing to new growth markets.  Anyone who thinks Microsoft will be the major player in cloud computing, just because it has demonstrated some new products, must look closely at how poorly the company has developed these other growth markets.  Technology and products are not enough when management is Locked in to protecting past markets.  Microsoft is far behind Google, and has practically no catch of being a major player with so much resource dedicated to Office 2010 and System 7.

Thus investors as well as customers and employees are not doing so well at Microsoft.  In the rapidly shifting technology and gaming markets, this inability to commit to new markets is deadly.  For Microsoft, replacing the heads of the entertainment division is most likely analogous to rearranging the deck chairs on ocean liner Titanic.  The pending outcome is rapidly becoming inevitable.  Time to look for lifeboats!