When I was young I wanted to be a doctor, I ended up in technology. It was a pretty big shift. I realised I just wanted to do something I loved and enjoyed, and I ended up doing that.
In high school I thought I would end up in New York in my 20s, I ended up in London. Not such a big shift. I realised I just loved a buzzing metropolis that was a true centre of creativity in the world. I wanted to be in a city that everyone knew and where lots of people visited, and I ended up in one. Just not the one I originally intended.
I was happy living the single life, and I ended up meeting my wife. Having fun was the goal and meeting the Bee, moving in together, getting married, and the last 6+ years have been, if nothing else, fun.
We were then thinking of Africa or India, and we ended up in Switzerland. I think we just needed a break from London. We needed to figure out if London was indeed a city we truly loved or a place where we had become comfortable.
So when I saw the John Lennon quote “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”, followed by the proverb “Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday” in a fortune cookie on Flickr, I couldn’t help but be a bit reflective.
I’ve always set out with big ambitious goals, and then let whichever road takes me there take me there. I think it’s a decent way to live life. Have some targets but be flexible in how you get there.
Flexibility in living life seems to be a pattern, whether it’s personal or professional, salary or position, debt or savings, whatever, have a target and then let the universe show you how you get there.
I know the world is thinking, “I wonder what Farhan is thinking?” I kid, I kid.
I think they’re all right. Free can and will work for a lot of publishers and content providers. But charging will work for other content providers. I think it’s about value and distribution.
The WSJ provides more value then a lot of Newspapers. So too does the FT and even the Economist. They provide commentary on the latest issues and provide great content. People will be willing to pay for this content. The prices may come down, as the costs come down, but the business model can and will remain charging for content for these publishers.
I think the daily news – from a purely information perspective – will become free. In London the Sun is 20p and the Evening Standard starts selling for 10p later in the evening. The value of the content from these providers is minimal so this should and will, I believe, approach and eventually become free. Using some form of advertising as a business model.
Jason Jones on “The Daily Show” nailed this on the head, when he went to meet some of the people at the NYT, where he made the salient point that nothing in the paper happened today (video below). It’s yesterday’s news. people will want today’s news and the best channel for this is online.
The really valuable content, the content that won’t become free, will be the analysis, the interpretation, the realisation of what the news actually means. This is the stuff that people will always pay for in print and online.
I think the publishers realise this. This is why the WSJ has always charged for a majority of their content and why websites like the Guardian, the Independent, telegraph etc have always kept their content free.
The daily newspapers should focus their editorial and writing chops on providing more of this high value content and charging subscription fees for this – moving from reporting the news to more analysis.
As I’ve written before going from free to charging for content is difficult if not impossible. But content owners know what stuff people will pay for and what content consumers won’t. Free is the future, but not for everyone.
While having breakfast with some friends, the question “What’s your favourite product from a design point of view of all time”. It was an interesting question and some of the answers were totally linked to people’s backgrounds and personality. My mate N said the book, a product that’s still used hundreds of years after it’s original design, quite similar to the original model still, it was an interesting answer, being a book historian though, it wasn’t that surprising that N said a book.
I ummmed and ahhhhed quite a bit. I wasn’t sure. Finally, I came up with chopsticks. At first people were sceptical. They can be difficult to use, isn’t a fork better?
Here was my rational. Their simple, and yet extensible, when you become good at using them you can find them easy, it’s almost a badge of honour to be able to use them well. Their design hasn’t changed much in decades. They can tell you a lot about personality and traits (Cathy mentioned that in China there’s a belief that you must hold them at a certain position, too high means you’re too ambitious, too low means you’re not ambitions enough). For me they’re cool in their simplicity and watching someone eat with them can almost be artistic – or a train wreck.
Chopsticks also are a good analogy for decisions in design. Simple beats complex. Less complex lowers costs (in most cases), can make messaging and use much easier. From Twitter, to Google to the Mac, to the kindle, books, amazon.com, Spotify, to iTunes. From Uniqlo to the Gap, Hulu to the iPlayer, simple products with a focus on quality and execution can lead to success.
I’ve written quite a bit about business-y type stuff on this blog and avoided writing personal stuff. Don’t know why, just didn’t feel like sharing. But I’ve decided that on weekends I’m going to try and write some personal thoughts, starting today.
I love the word blessed. I think it’s a beautiful word with a beautiful meaning.
I’m blessed with an amazing wife, a lovely family, lovely friends first and foremost.
I’m blessed with parents who worked hard and moved from country to country to escape persecution, for opportunity that they might have an education and provide for their child to have an education (thanks mom). I pray that I can be as strong for my family.
I’m blessed with an education. I’m blessed with the ability to work as a result of that education.
I’m blessed with a good job and good people I work with – and have worked with in the past.
I’m blessed with a couple of days in my favourite city in the world.
I’m blessed with a strong community which made it possible for me to meet my wife, some of my best friends and countless amazing people.
And I’m blessed with becoming a father in the next few months and looking forward to sharing these blessings with a new child.
I don’t often (enough) count my blessings, but the last couple of days in London have just been so nice. And today waking up in this city with good friends, taking a cab across a sleepy London just waking up, a great breakfast with really good friends and a fab chat with the Bee I’m really counting my blessings today. There’s a word in Arabic I believe, Shukar, I used to say it all the time growing up. It literally means thanks. My mom and dad insisted that it should be my response to everything good in life. I think I lost this for a little while, but after a couple of days in London, with seeing some great friends and enjoying my time, it’s back, and I’m glad. Shukar.
I hate telemarketers, and I’m not sure why they exist. With Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and other social web services getting more and more popular, the sale of goods and services is massively changing.
It’s easier to know who’s dissatisfied with the products or services they’re currently using and leads can be a lot stronger today, with simple searches and leveraging of contacts, then ever before. Following and engaging with decision makers helps make linking business to business services simpler. If I’m selling web analytics I can follow web masters and know who’s having trouble with their analytics packages. This can work for almost any corporate sales service or good. Just know who your potential costumers are, what jobs they’re likely to hold, and start engaging with them. Not in a cold stalkerish way, but in a maybe I can help you make more out of your business way.
This isn’t just for B2B sales, but for consumer goods and services sales as well. Let’s take an example of mobile phone operators, let’s say I’m a competitor mobile operator, it’s a lot easier to do a couple of searches and find out who’s likely to switch. Doing some searches on Twitter would show you who’s having mobile service issues. Looking up facebook groups about mobile operators gives you a list of potential new acquisition costumers.
This isn’t a unique example, you could use this for utilities, consumer electronics and any other good and service where you have some serious competition available. I think a lot of companies are using social media to do customer service it will be interesting to see which companies use social media appropriately to do acquisition marketing in the future.
So @Ev pointed out that Microsoft Australia was doing a marketing campaign where the buried 10K (Aussie dollars I think, but the site doesn’t specify) somewhere and have launched a social media blitz to get people to use… wait for it… wait… Internet Explorer 8!
I have three major gripes with this campaign:
1- Burying 10K has nothing to do with the browser, it might have something to do with search, so why not use this campaign to promote Bing, Microsoft’s newish Search engine? Why not get users to search using Bing to find the 10K?
2 – IE8 is not one of the best browsers on the market (let me count them off in no particular order Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera are all better in my opinion) so as Gary Gale replied to me yesterday “Theyd’ have to pay me a whole lot more than that to use IE8.”. This goes back to my post on T-Mobile, at least have a comparable product, play in the same ball park, before you spend marketing dollars promoting a lesser product.
3 – The execution of the campaign is terrible, the twitter account isn’t following anyone (at least follow some of the Microsoft execs or some celebrities or something). Apparently the destination is a web page, so users can probably find the page without actually using the product, so you mean I can follow the clues on twitter, add myself as a fan on facebook, add it to digg and delicious and find the page on, oh I don’t know, Chrome or Firefox or Opera and still walk away with the 10K? This goes back to my first point at least do the campaign in a way that ensures people are using the product.
Bonus gripe – By using Twitter and delicious they’re obviously going after the younger, more social software aware, tech savvy crowd, as my mom doesn’t know her twitter from her delicious from her facebook from her digg etc, this crowd will want a good product. If they’re not going after this segment this makes even less sense as the less tech savvy, less social web using segment is most likely already using IE8, just using it to go to Google first to do their searches.
Don’t get me wrong, I like socially driven marketing campaigns, I think using social media to promote a product is a good idea and more companies should do this. But invest in the product so you’re at least a solid alternative first and make sure the campaign is being used in a way that’s relevant to the product.
I’ve had an iPod touch for about a month and a half now and I’m about to buy a Mac. Having had a Blackberry for over a year and a Windows mobile before that, and a Nokia for most of my adult mobile using life, I’ve tried all the different major handsets and I have to say the iPod is a killer computer. I use it to surf the web, tweet on twitter, play games, and write the occasional email – don’t get me wrong the bb wins hands down when you’re writing loads – and man do I enjoy using the Apple product.
Now I want a mac, especially since the WWDC and saw the new Macbook pros. I’ve never been a mac fan boy. But using the iPod really does open your eyes to how good Apple’s products are.
At first I wasn’t sure about Macs, they’re pretty expensive compared to entry level PCs, but there are a couple of things that really got me. The speed, iPods start up and launch apps like a bullet, and from what I hear the Macs work in the same fashion. I started a three year old PC this weekend that acts as our music centre in the house and it took me nearly an hour to play a tune from Spotify. Whereas everyone I know with a mac swears it takes minutes to get started with applications, even years after purchase.
The other is usability, no one should ever have to know anything about logs and other madness that comes with knowing how to trouble shoot a PC. But at the same time finding Mac support can be difficult, but talking to my IT guy at work he’s much happier trouble shooting Macs then PCs, as he put it “The troubleshooting is less often and easier to fix”.
So while Apple’s continuing to make in roads using it’s iPod and iPhone mobile handsets, I think they’re really converting a lot of people to becoming Mac users. So they can afford to launch lower price point models and iterate on the handset development while moving people from the PC to the Mac.
The key learning point here is entry into lower margin and other products should be done in a way where you can migrate and convert users to using more of your products at higher price points.
While going through the pictures of the Obama White House on Flickr I came across a number of pictures of the President at play.
With the new first puppy;
There’s a ton of others, Obama with a basketball tossing a football in the oval office etc. Lots of great pictures. I love this for two reasons:
One – the access that we have to this White House is unreal, unmatched and really unbelievable.
Two – it reminds me of a great TED video on play by Stuart Brown (below) discussing the impact of play on cognitive development.
I love the thought that play contributes to development and progress. People need to be imaginative and playful to be able to think laterally and develop new ways of doing things. Which is why I’m really looking forward to being a dad, think it will give me an excuse to play more. Not that I need one, but at least when I play with my child the Bee won’t look at me strangely for being stupidly playful.
I’ve worked in marketing. I understand marketing. I like marketing. But marketing isn’t shit if you don’t have a good (if not great, awesome) product, have your distribution channels tied up and have great service.
Here’s an example, T-mobile has great freaking commercials, the bee loves the marketing campaign. It’s great, people dancing in Liverpool st station. It’s not only fun, but it’s extensible, they’ve had TV sponsorship spots, people like the brand in the UK. The full ad is great, it’s been viewed over 11M times on YouTube and appears on the first page of Google’s search results when you search for T-mobile. Here it is:
And as a result of the poor distribution, poor product etc, T-mobile lags behind its competitors, according to the FT, big time.
What would I do if I was T-mobile, well find out when Apple’s deal with O2 is closing, find out when the newest blackberry is coming out, redefine it’s trade proposition and products. Or focus on a couple of key segments, cheap pay as you go? Great data plans? Dunno. But focus on a couple and kill on the execution. Even better, lock the smartest strongest people and come up with some kind of innovation that simply (and the key work is simply) out shines the competition. Spend the time researching if there’s an underserved itch and find out how to scratch the hell out of it.
I wouldn’t spend as much as they are on marketing and advertising though, I would focus on getting the product/service better then the competition, then worry about marketing.
Marketing the hell out of a bad product or a product that isn’t at least as good as your competition will get you further behind rather then ahead.
People move. People leave companies. It happens. New CEOs, directors, leaders, like to bring in their own people, it happens. Here’s the thing, in technology people don’t make markets.
People work together with products and markets. You can’t just swap the market by swapping over the people. It doesn’t work like that. People leave organisations for reasons. Van Natta left facebook because (IMHO) facebook brought in someone better. People get stale and it’s hard to re-innovate or reinvent to create the next wave of success. Just cause someone had success at a competitor doesn’t mean they’ll have success with you. All it means is that they understand what the competition did well.
I believe to truly take market share, bring in someone who doesn’t have the same “we did things this way at the competition” crutch. You need someone who can look and see what the competition does well, but also where the competition is weak. You need someone who can think laterally and spark innovation rather then just jockey for position.
