Yet Instagram (see my previous post) is way ahead of the pack in popularity and buzz. This fantastic article goes into why. My favourite aspect is about how it deliberately limits its functionality. you can only load one image at a time. Imagine how natural it would seem to add many at once. But that would detract from the product’s simplicity and delight.

Design is finished not when there’s nothing left to add, but when there’s nothing left to take away.

I bet Grolsch wish they’d thought of it.

via Dangerous Minds

And that’s a key reason for Facebook’s incredible success.

The internet can be a horrible place. People shoot off unfair blog posts, thumb down your comments on YouTube and have you ever read the article comments on the Daily Mail website. Or even worse, the Guardian!?!

Facebook offers a Disnified version of the internet for people. Everything is OK and you won’t get bruised. It’s like going back to the playground, but this time there are no bullies. Everyone has to wear a name tag and play nice.

We’re all vulnerable and we all have egos. Zuckerberg is either a genius or he’s stumbled on a genius idea.

Please Like this post.

I’m reminded of that wonderful aphorism about design being complete not when there’s nothing left to add, but when there’s nothing left to take away.

Vitsœ’s designer, Dieter Rams. Photograph by Abisag Tüllmann

It won’t be.

As the paltry sales of GQ’s iPad app indicate, simply having an app isn’t enough. The dirty truth is that no-one ever wanted a magazine. Just as Coke sells happiness rather than fizzy drinks, what people actually get from mags are:

1. Signalling. What magazine you hold up on the train carriage, or have on your coffee table sends a message about how you see yourself – be it Viz, the Economist or Wallpaper
2. Passing the time. Mags work great to wile away train journeys and lazy bath-times
3. Special interest Whether you love cars, photography, cycling or houseboats, there’s a mag for you.
4. Sense of belonging People like feeling part of a community and sharing tips.

Magazines have delivered on these benefits very well for decades. The challenge is that digital does all of these better, or changes them:

1. No-one knows what you’re reading. It’s the device itself that says something about you. iPad v Kindle, and iPhone v Android is the new Mods v Rockers.
2. You’re never alone with a mobile. Yes you can read magazine-like articles and look at professional photos, but you’re more likely to listen to music, watch episodes of Glee, email your friends or check-in at a foursquare location.
3. Niche interests are hyper-served by digital. I’m not just interested in digital photography, I want to read in-depth articles on not only Canon lenses, but that particular lens, and those particular types of shots
4. Sense of community has of course been owned by the massive, real-time, rich media interactions of social media. I want to know now what people think of that Cameroon goal.

That all said, magazines will not die. Print has winning attributes of portability, ever-lasting battery life and brings a simple, tactile pleasure. However, it will of course change. There will be fewer titles and producing them will become a leaner, tougher, much less pleasant game. Print dollars really will be replaced by digital cents. Get over it.

My counsel is:

• Think brand and not product. Top Gear is the shining example of a media brand that has transcended its format and is thus less vulnerable to channel shift.
• Embrace failure. There are no certainties in this era of disruption. Things will not settle down, and it is delusional to ‘wait and see’. No-one has a right to survive. The only viable strategy is to keep testing and keep learning.

Google must be thinking very hard tonight.

Just because you’re big doesn’t mean you can win at anything

Google is about making digital information accessible, facebook is my social network

Which is why it’s nice to see The Body Holiday. Their proposition is crystal clear and seems to tap into a genuine consumer insight.

As a stick to wield at Google, it’s pretty much the only one Rupert has. And as they trail by miles in search share, Microsoft won’t miss an opportunity to team up and gain an edge either.

It must be tempting for Google in turn to consider exclusive deals with Murdoch’s competitors.

But what do consumers want? Imagine a world where you have to know “I can find this kind of content on Google but that on Bing, or that on Google but not on Bing”. It’d be awful. Like having to dial 118 118 for these phone numbers, but 118 247 for those phone numbers.

We want everything in one place.

I wonder whether Google would open up a PR front championing “search neutrality“? i.e. position themselves as wanting to bring you the whole web and de-position others as wanting to fence it off.

Are you thinking hard enough about what you really provide to them – rationally and emotionally?

Is it really only news you sell, or is it reassurance? Or a signal for other people of your status? Is your magazine selling entertainment – or is it a way to pass the time? Or feel connected? Or feel good about yourself?

How can you take these underlying values and translate them into other product forms (guide books, insurance services etc)

I’ve previously written about my view that people will pay for content if you make it easy. But if they won’t pay for your brand, you really are in trouble

A year or two ago, I had a chunky piece of product news to announce, but no budget. No problem I thought, I’ve got all these modern comms assets to play with.

So announce it I did – big bang style – sending the news simultaneously to the website, news wires, the forum, facebook, the press office blog, Twitter etc.

I thought I’d been terribly modern and efficient, but the story got nowhere. It was summed up when the blogger relations guy called me, pretty out of sorts.

I just called up one of our key targets saying ‘I’ve got something for you’ and he told me ‘yeah, I know, I just saw it in my facebook  inbox’. It’s old news isn’t it?’

Big lesson. Just because you have multiple comms routes to market doesn’t mean you should use them all at once.

Sequence matters. Think of PR as a fireworks display. You don’t set them all off at once. The impact is much greater if you build up to a crescendo.

Start with this release order and adapt from there:

1. Inform internal stakeholders
   Key staff and shareholders should know first – especially customer service people
2. Leak to bloggers
   Bloggers won’t write positive stuff if they don’t get to break it, so leak news to them and give them exclusive details/pictures.
3. Tell passionate customers first
   Anyone following your brand on Twitter, contributing to your forum, being a fan on facebook or subscribing to your email should be the first to officially know. These people care about your brand. Critically, you should give them material they can share – eg, embeddable videos, pictures they can link to or exclusive offers.
4. Mass anounce to journalists, visitors and previous customers
   This is when it’s actually public. Such is the pace of the web that this phase can follow just hours later.
5. Post-launch management
   Reputation/news management in the days following the announcement is an intrinsic part of the launch task. Use social tools to monitor the conversation and respond to as many positive/negative comments as you can. In the first 24 hours, the prevailing opinion on your announcement will coalesce and you want it to settle down in your favour.

Great ones are simple, positive and rally everyone behind an idea. Twitter appears to have one of those. Techcrunch reports, as part of the controversial leaked documents haul, that internally they are shooting:

to be the pulse of the planet

I think that’s great – memorable, audacious and benevolent.

Sitting here in 2009, spam volumes have never been higher, but my gmail account gets maybe one false positive a month. Email remains quite usable.

This is what I call the horse-shit fallacy.

This is not simply a pejorative term, but is based on (possibly apocryphal) tales of London in the late 19th century. Apparently, the volume of, um, little horse presents on the streets was a growing concern and doom-mongerers voiced that “at the current rate” in 20 years time we’ll be three feet deep in the stuff.

Of course this didn’t happen, and it never would. The reason being simply (and what I argued at that spam panel) that we’d never let it. Life is not linear, and successful marketing is predicated on solving problems. Although I had no idea how spam would be dealt with, I trusted that someone would fix it. In this case, it was Google.

Extrapolating the past to create a projection of the future is endemic in our culture and only serves to immobilise innovation and limit thinking.

Don’t believe the hype. Listen out for that phrase “at this rate…” and give it a dollop of what it deserves.

Photo by Pleple2000

Which is why I admire Spanning Sync. They’re a funky software outfit who’ve been quietly sync’ing up Apple and Google Calendars for a small fee for some time. Suddenly, things have got a bit noisier with Google announcing a service that brushes ominously past their territory.

Spanning Sync could have been forgiven a few reflective days to chew over their response, but instead had their blog post up in a flash. They were “very excited about” the news and happily linked through to Google’s page.

This is a really smart move. How many traditional companies would ever even mention the name of competing products outside of closed boardrooms? To actively tell your closest customers about them is certainly contrary – and absolutely the right thing to do.

1. Control the agenda
Geek news travels reallllly fast. By competing to bring this information to their customers before they heard it elsewhere, Spanning Sync gained the chance to influence the positioning.

2. Champion the category
By welcoming Google’s product, Spanning Sync looked magnamimous, confident and like fellow fans of the sector.

3. Point out your edge
Spanning Sync were sure to convincingly point out the differences and benefits of their offering – without coming across as churlish.

4. Be prepared
The speed of Spanning Sync’s blog posting indicates that they were ready for this day. Having thought-through tactics for market eventualities is smart. At Guinness in the 90s we developed shadow brand plans to game what competitors might do.

Given this prognosis, it’s only natural for marketers to bury their heads in Doctor Who specials and hope it all goes away, the consequences of declining sales, job insecurity and disappearing clients being all too close for festive comfort.

We can’t control what curve balls might come our way next year, but we can give ourselves a better chance of dealing with them by taking the initiative and getting onto the front foot.

For individuals, this means taking the time to build that LinkedIn profile, writing articles for the trade press and keeping your skills up to date – before you have to. Would you still get your job if you applied for it today?

Brand managers need to move first in assuring FDs and MDs that they’re all over contract terms, have uncovered low-cost routes to market and found smart headcount savings before the budget review email arrives. Get a reputation for being someone who is both a real customer champion and commercially sanguine.

Agencies must show clients they’re thinking about value before being asked. Volunteer new terms, recommend a move to payment-by-results and find new savings. It’s coming anyway, so present yourself as the good guys who ‘get it’ rather than being an overhead that’s long overdue for cutting.

Whatever your role, you can actively decide to give yourself the best chance in 2009. Good luck.