Few links - 16 Sept. 2006

1. The onliness of Strong Brands is a BusinessWeek article about ZAG, a new book from Marty Neumeier. The book talks about the "onliness" of brands, meaning their uniqueness. It emphasize the need to create unique experiences as opposed to best experiences, arguing that best experiences leads to following common practices and fail to differentiate the brand. The article also emphasizes the need to link brands with long-term trends to create a bridge with customers, as well as be critical towards results from market research that sometimes fail to identify a killer product.


2. (Links in French) WAT.TV is an online platform launch by French TF1 (The channel number 1 in France). In LeMonde, leading French newspaper, the article entitled "TF1 fait de la television avec du Web" (TF1 does TV using the Internet) discusses the new strategy employed by the channel to bridge traditional TV programming with the Web. The online platform allows the community to share pictures, videos, text and so on. On a weekly basis, the channel will choose a selection of short videos that they will broadcast late at night on their main channel. The authors of the videos receive Euro 100 for that. I find the approach pretty nice, but I wonder if a significant community can really emerge around a TV channel... it seems too restrictive to me.


3. The last link is to the SonyEricsson ad that is showing right now on Hong Kong TV. The ad is very neat and nicely done... but at the end the phone rings and a guy says: "Hello...". Am I the only one who wants to complete the sentence with "Moto"? Every time I see the ad I think about Motorola more than SonyEricsson...

When Will They Get It?

Around 2 months ago, my Internet connection stopped working. It took me plenty of courage to get myself to go through the PCCW hotline and solve my problem (I usually prefer going to a store rather than trying Call Centers). As I was on the phone, the support person told me my Now Broadband TV subscription was almost over and that he could propose me some good deals to renew it. He said he would call back two days later.

Time passed...

... and passed...

And two days ago I decided, seeing one of these PCCW Now booths in the street to go and check for myself. I discovered that my contract was already over and that they just had continued to charge the service as usual. Well, I consider myself lucky that they did not start charging more without telling me, so that's fine.

Then the guy started to enumerate the different options I had to renew. Of course all of them were forcing me sign a new contract for 12 to 18 months, even though I have been a customer for more than 18 months. After some negotiation, he told me that there was a way for me to get a nice subscription and 3 months for free. He just had to treat me as a new customer, come to pick up my current set-top box and replace it by a brand new one.

Reluctant to sign for a long contract, I asked him what would happen if I was switching subscription through the DIY (do-it-yourself) TV system they have. He told me: "Well, you would pay full price and get no discount."

To summarize, if as a customer I change my subscription I use the way that costs the least to the company, then I will pay the most (that's DIY). And if I ask the support person to stop my current contract and come to my place to exchange the hardware, then I will pay the least for the service. How could a company do something more mind-bending than that?

Well... This kind of things happen of course everyday, but I just had to write about it!

Is More Choice A Good Thing?

Here is another great video taken from TED (Technology Entertainment Design) Talks. This one was made by Barry Schwartz in July 2005 following the release of his book "The Paradox Of Choice" (duration: 20 minutes).

Please go check the Malcolm Gladwell video I posted earlier if you did not watch it.

In this talk, Barry Schwartz builds a very strong argument against providing too much choice to people. He highlights that in regards to choice, although too little is bad, too much can as well have a very negative effect on people on four different aspects:

1. Regret and anticipated regret
2. Opportunity cost
3. Escalation of expectations
4. Self-blame

This presentation relates directly to customer experience and to the strategies companies employ to provide positive, or higher than expectations, experiences. With expectations getting higher with the increase in choice, companies should consider the paradox highlighted here seriously.

If we look at clothing shops in Hong Kong for example, instead of having a simple Giordano, now you have Giordano, Giordano Ladies, Giordano Junior, Giordano Concepts. With every new type of store created, customers' expectations of how well a specific store can address their needs will increase, thus making it much more difficult to exceed these customers' expectations. Few choices answering specific needs and clear distinctions between each choice, rather than choice overload, is a winning formula.

RSS for Everyone?

RSS feeds changed my life. They are the best way to retrieve information on a daily basis from multiple sources of information. Everybody knows that I guess... or do they?

Even though RSS feeds have been around for a long time, their potential has not been fully utilized today. One of the reason for this is that whatever easy we believe, as heavy Internet users, it is to use RSS or to understand the logic behind, well it is not. I was transferring all my feeds this afternoon from MyYahoo to NetVibes, as I think NetVibes offers more flexibility for me to build my own "stay-in-touch-with-the-World" page. It took me hell of a lot of time... adding all the feeds and very often having to copy/paste RSS feeds URLs. And I am not even talking about finding new feeds here.

Talking about my dad again...
I am sorry that I will mention my dad again. Not that I have a fixation on him, but while he was visiting Hong Kong I gave him am Internet crash course! I decided to show him the power of the Internet and how it could change his way of working. Some stuff freaked him out, like being able to find pictures of the house he just bought in a tiny village in the South-East of France on Flickr. Others amazed him like the amount of information that can be found on Wikipedia. But above all, he felt most enthusiastic about RSS feeds and how it could help him save so much time... save time, that is once you have everything set up.

All this takes so much time
And that's where for me the major problem is. To be able to make an efficient use of RSS feeds, well on top of being very comfortable with all that Internet stuff, you have to have so much time. There is so much information out there that finding really interesting content is really a challenge, especially for the generation of people who did not grow up browsing the Web before they could speak. And this segment of the population is in dire need for information, as they hold position of major responsibility in multinationals for example.

Bloomberg for everybody
So, if we look at how things work in the Financial world, where Bloomberg and others feed real-time information to traders around the World. Wouldn't a concept like that nowadays work with general information where users could choose to be informed about special topics of interest? As many Web sites do it, it is great to leave it to the community to decide what is interesting, but for people with little Internet experience and little time, the task of choosing the type of content that is interesting to them could be left to one or several experts.

Following Pandora concept
A Web site that has nothing to do with information but that I find so great is Pandora, where the system builds a radio suited to your own taste, just based on the name of a band or a song that you provide. When a song comes up, you can just say that you like it or not and the system will tailor further the radio. It is that kind of simplicity that could make to my mind RSS feeds and information providers reach their full potential. Of course Pandora is a huge initiative that necessitates to review and categorize every piece of music that can be found. Could that be done with information? My feeling is that leaving an algorithm and the whole community do it may not be enough... and may leave out a part of the population who would be avid users is they were given the opportunity to try.

The Solution to Branding

Last week-end, as my dad was visiting, I went to Shenzhen to show him the difference between Hong Kong life and China life. Sure enough, you cannot summarize China by looking at Shenzhen, but you see a big difference with Hong Kong right when you cross the border. Colors are paler. It is dusty everywhere because of the continuous construction going on. People look tired. You can tell you are not in Hong Kong anymore. You can tell you are in a country that is developing and in a city that is still struggling to find its identity.

On one of our errands, we saw a celebration in the street. A Hong Kong jewelry brand was celebrating a very important event. That brand had joined the exclusive circle of "CHINA FAMOUS BRANDS" as the certificate that they were showing off explained (see picture on the right).

That got me thinking... How can a certificate, be it from the most important government body, give you the status of a famous brand. Aren't the people supposed to decide which company is famous and which one is not?

Now, I am reading "1 Billion Customers" by James Mc Gregor right now (a book that I recommend to anybody with interest in doing business in China). In the book he explains how the Chinese government when there is a lot of money at stake will find ways to benefit more from it.

To me that example could be one of these. Branding, advertising and marketing in general are great sources of revenue. So, what if the government could issue a document that decided whether you were famous or not, whether your brand was a valuable asset or not, wouldn't that be a great power in the hands of the government?

Targeting the niche

Going mainstream gets harder and harder by the day. Significant behavioral differences and increasing expectations among customers makes it near impossible to develop a message that will reach every consumer. As a result targeting niche segment can become a more and more valuable option. That is one option that the Telecom provider Smartone is following in Hong Kong by targeting explicitly the Filipino community.

Smartone brand is usually red and white, but this store closed to a Filipino hotspot in Hong Kong Causeway Bay has been totally rebranded to fit the community taste and even displays Bahasa language instead of English or Chinese. Shops assistants are of course Filipinos as well. With a huge Filipino community, dedicated Filipino shops are not uncommon in Hong Kong, but it is very uncommon for a "big" company to recognize the fact and spend the effort to research the needs of that community. With no other company following the example as thoroughly, Smartone surely has a huge lead in a community of several hundred thousands.

The Compliance Assistance Centre in Hong Kong

As one employee stated it when explaining what it was, if the Environment Protection Department is the stick (armed with laws and regulations), the Compliance Assistance Centre set up in September in Hong Kong is the carrot. The center main mission is to educate people in specific industries on how to comply better with environment standards and how it can benefit their image to do so (the carrot). The center focuses on four areas: the construction industry, vehicle repair shops, restaurants and property management.

The attitude of the center is quite passive, waiting for interested parties to contact them. From the material distributed at the booth, the focus is also on big companies. Indeed all documents are thick reports that only a company with a legion of administrative staff would read. Even if the initiative is good I am not sure the carrot (a better image) will be big enough to attract the bulk of companies in the targeted industries where image may not be a top priority.

The other limitations of the center is that it only provides information and will send companies to other third-parties for actual services to help them, significantly affecting convenience. My first feeling on the Compliance Assistance Centre is that it should focus on a bottom-up approach with targeted trial programs with few picked companies rather than a top-down one. The carrot would appear much bigger with successful case studies done with other small businesses.

Blurring the line between real and virtual

A pretty interesting article today in BusinessWeek Online Innovation section entitled: "Second Life Lessons". It explains the threats and opportunities of advertising campaigns or even setting up shops in virtual worlds like Second Life. As a gamer I really do not believe in in-game advertising. They are intrusive and if not their effectiveness still has to be proved.

The example of Toyota, which plans to build its own shop in Second Life selling customizable virtual cars is another kind of interactions between companies and customers, which to me offers much more appeal. If Toyota is creating great virtual cars that blend totally in the virtual world, it may very well have crucial impacts on its brand in the real world. But it is also a risky path... as the article points out, virtual communities are not easy to crack and blend into (The example of avatars bombing virtual stores is pretty scary). Second life also offers limited opportunities in terms of exposure due to the volume of its traffic... at the time I write this post, only 6,250 people are online.

Oh! That's Great!... oh... no, finally no...

That ad is displayed inside the MTR (Metro) in Hong Kong. It is an ad for the fast train that links the airport and a new exhibition hall. It says in big that you can enjoy a same day return trip to the AsiaWorld Exposition Hall for only HK$42, instead of a usual HK$100 if I am not mistaking. That sounds like great! Then you look at the right of the ad with all these street signs displaying places in Hong Kong Island and a big 42 next to each of them...

... unfortunately, when you look at the bottom of the ad, you can see that if you take a full ride from Hong Kong station (on the main island of Hong Kong like the places displayed on the signs at the top right of the ad) to the exibition hall, that will cost you HK$72. Still a nice discount but not as nice as HK$42.

I will never understand how an advertiser can manage customers' expectations so badly. You have a great discount, but by showing IN BIG a wrong figure you actually make people feel bad about the offer and about the company that is seen as trying to trick people. It would have been so easy to display the right price first or at least to change the copy and say: "Same day return trip ticket to AsiaWorld Expo FROM HK$42 up".

Enthusiasm is not enough

The Hong Kong Government Environmental Protection Department had a large booth at the EcoAsia Expo dedicated to promoting its efforts. I spent extensive time there talking to the staff, exchanging ideas and learning about the latest initiatives implemented by the department. Among the initiatives are the Compliance Assistance Centre (CAC), EcoPark and the Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) Charging Scheme to which I will dedicate separate posts.

The first thing that struck me at the booth is the people. When I think government staff, it usually does not trigger very positive emotions (It is true that I mostly interact with immigration staff which is not the most pleasant of all experiences). But at the booth every single person I talked to was knowledgeable (in their particular area) and presented well. The most important was that they believed in what they were doing. They were eager to explain the newest initiatives happening, their impacts and exchange ideas about how things are done in other countries. Having enthusiastic employees is a first step in making a change.

It was clear as well that the department was spending endless efforts and money on trying to make their message stick and change people’s habits. The booth was full of reports, booklets, leaflets, freebies and other posters aimed at explaining how to be a more environment-friendly citizen. As a researcher, I am not convinced at all though that all these documents are “sticky”, to use Malcolm Gladwell terms.

I don’t think any study has been performed to assess how efficient all these promotions are, but there should be some. Mostly after people pick up leaflets, if they don’t throw them away, they will store them in a drawer not to look at them again. To really achieve its goal of changing people’s behavior, the government should look at more innovative ways and channels to research people and communicate its message. Being enthusiastic is good; being an expert about the environment is even better, but in the end how the message is communicated is most crucial in changing people’s habits. And there, the expertise necessary is marketing and psychology, on which I doubt that the government focuses enough.