Making the consumer connection that Steve Jobs might have approved of

by Peter Harris ON 12 April 2013

I’m often bemused at – and getting increasingly tired of – the inward-looking discussions in the research industry about why market research and market research professionals are not valued more by business.

After all, there is no better way to grow a business than to invest in frequently understanding your customer. Or is there?

In my role, the majority of my time is spent talking to marketing and market research professionals about their business, and trying to work out how we can help.

One of the more challenging responses I hear is that Steve Jobs didn’t use market research to grow his business. Well, perhaps not in the traditional sense. Jobs was famously quoted as saying, ‘Customers don’t know what they want until we show them,’ and I think this is true. What was so admirable about Jobs was how much he understood, very early on, that people who were interested in using computers were frustrated by their complexity. He would have discovered this by understanding their lives in detail, walking the proverbial mile in their shoes.

One of the problems business faces these days has been that really understanding your customers lives requires frequent contact, which has always been expensive and time consuming.

Luckily, technology has finally caught up with market research and the best use of technology in research is in the space of online insight communities. In my experience, the creation and management of online insight communities can move market research from being an expensive, slow and complicated back-room application to being front and centre, creating and then managing a direct line of communication between a business and its customers in real time. Knowledge is built collaboratively and iteratively which results in fresher insights generation, accelerated innovation and improved brand advocacy.

I said something similar to this in at a global research conference in 2009 in China, and, more than three years on, I have had the opportunity to work with over 40 leading brands throughout Asia Pacific and Europe in the establishment of their online insight communities.

Every brand has a different use and reason for building an insight community, however, the results I have witnessed have been staggering and include:

An FMCG company in Australia conducted more than 50 research studies through their insight community, with a conservative estimated value of $1m. This cost them less than $250,000,
a large Australian company uses its customer community to recruit face-to-face qualitative research and face-to-face meetings with its CEO (for closer customer connection),
brands can now use their community to conduct in-home product tests with customers at a tenth of the cost of traditional recruitment. They use the community to understand their customers’ lives and then when they have potential solutions, they use it again to test their hypothesis and improve their products,
online forums can replace sense-check focus groups in half the time and with five times the geographic coverage, and
companies can access their customer community to quickly answer the queries that always come out of quarterly tracking presentations – at no additional cost.

I think the most impressive change I have witnessed is how an insight community allows clients to connect with customers more often which means more issues and more new products can now receive some form of consumer lens prior to decisions being made.

I see this as the digitisation of customer connection.

The bottom line is there’s no excuse for anyone to assert that asking customers what they think is a waste of time. Anyone who thinks this simply has not discovered the power of a well-managed, branded, insight community. The ability to connect more frequently to understand your customers life is a form of market research that Steve Jobs might well have approved of – and enjoyed!

Did you know: in each issue of the print edition, Marketing includes the very best opinion articles curated from our huge industry blogging community, as well as exclusive columnists writing on the topics that matter? Becoming a subscriber is only AU$45 for a whole year, delivered straight to your door. Find out more »

The world’s cartridge – HP brand profile

by Marketing ON 28 December 2011

This feature first appeared in the September 2010 issue of Marketing magazine.

From ‘Halo Rooms’ to Seoul, Sean Greaney takes a look at the many faces of Hewlett-Packard.

“Everything that can go digital, will go digital,” the Israeli messiah repeats to his rapt ‘parishioners’. He has brought the prophecy that ushered in the era of digital print east to Seoul, and stands by it. The messiah is Benny Landa, an Ogilvy-level enigma in the printing world.

In 1977, Landa moved to Israel to found Indigo, a company that would focus on research and development. And for years it did: according to Landa it produced no whole product for 16 years and generated $200 million in that time (he coined the term ‘patent fence’ and owns over 500). In hushed and deferential tones at Seoul’s Grand Hilton I’m told that if I own a printer, Landa probably invented some part of it.

Among his many patented (don’t you forget that!) miracles, Landa is credited with inventing digital offset printing. By extension, that’s a modern marketer’s ability to create personalised direct mail. Seven years later, Hewlett-Packard (HP) would recognise the value of Indigo to the tune of $882 million (after Indigo achieved long-term revenue goals).

Upon acquisition, Landa remarked, “Our vision has always been to lead the printing industry into the digital era and to see Indigo technology pervade the commercial printing market. Now, as part of HP, that goal is in sight.”

The Indigo story mirrors HP’s somewhat, though HP’s is the progenitorial Silicon Valley start-up success fable. When starry-eyed entrepreneurial minds drool over the houses Apple and Microsoft built, they’re really gagging over the second generation.

In 1938, two men, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, electrical engineers out of StanfordUniversity, flipped a coin in a one-car garage to determine whose surname would take pride of place in their new company’s brand. Bill won. The garage is now Heritage-listed.

With $538 investment capital, they founded a company that in 2009 would generate US$114, 552 billion in revenue: the world’s largest technology company by revenue – excepting Samsung, the interests of which are even more diverse than HP’s, roaming as wide as real estate.

An acolyte of the big idea

In 2002, following its acquisition of Compaq, the brand launched ‘Everything Is Possible’, centred on the equation device ‘(customer) + HP = everything is possible’. It leveraged some of HP’s big clients: the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), Amazon.com, FedEx, DreamWorks, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Bang & Olufsen. It groped some celebrity brands, but the focus was corporate juggernauts.

At the time, VP of brand and marketing communications Garry Elliot explained the move, saying, “This is the most assertive, creative brand campaign HP has done. We decided the best way to become recognised as the world’s leading technology company was to simply tell it like it is. But rather than focus on what we make, this campaign focuses on what we make possible on behalf of our customers, our clients and our partners.”

Four years later, with a new CEO (more on that later), HP launched ‘The Computer is Personal Again’. This campaign has been a no holds barred, rub-against-as-much-cool-as-possible, celebrity endorsement love-in, albeit a well-executed one. Those lending themselves to the cause include: Jay Z, Jerry Seinfeld, Serena Williams, Vera Wang, Mark Cuban, Pharell, Vivienne Tam, Petra Němcová, Jessica Simpson, the Sex and the City girls, Gwen Stefani, Mark Burnett and Shaun White. And I think I missed some. These endorsements roam from Jay Z’s nonchalant TVC telling us he’s got his “whole life in this thing… new Frank Gehry plans for my team, in Brooklyn… gotta track all my investments ’cause I’m gonna retire, right? Ha. My passport says Shawn, but you may know me by another name,” as “Jay Z, CEO of Hip Hop” pulses toward the screen, to designers sexing up netbooks, to product placement.

Goodby, Silverstein and Partners (GSP) has shown a restraint that probably raised client-side eyebrows in decommodifying product through a more translatable, if perhaps lower-impact, communication than Apple’s lauded campaigns of the noughties: the TVCs deliberately obscure the endorsing celebrity’s face – and the ads are all the more artful and engaging for it. Imitation, flattery and that whole axiom are the true mark of a successful campaign though; it has spawned a few spoofs ostensibly ‘starring’ Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Keanu Reeves.

Both brand campaigns, they have seen HP climb Interbrand’s ‘Best Global Brands‘ from number 15, valued at US$16.7 million in 2002 to 10th place valued at nearly US$10 million more (although rivals of varying degrees Intel, GE, Microsoft and IBM all place more highly from a brand value perspective). Any CFOs, CSOs or sales directors who’ve wandered into the wrong magazine may balk at my next juxtaposition, but in 2002 HP sat at 28 on the Fortune500. In 2010 its Fortune500 rank matched its ‘Best Global Brands’ rank: 10th.

Both campaigns were developed by GSP; its evolution, and I’d say strategic convergence, is the recently launched ‘Let’s Do Amazing’. Hosted by Rhys Darby – better known as Murray the manager from Flight of the Conchords – the campaigns walk the now very familiar territory of endorsement, this time from Annie Leibovitz, Viacom, DreamWorks, an unnamed, sort of ‘everyman’ financial services company, the International Space Station (!), HP Labs and HP’s CeNSE sensors, United Parcel Service (UPS), Dr Dre, The Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas and Avatar. The difference being the convergence of corporate and celebrity interests alongside media brands, likely moving toward a more cost-effective campaign for both business and consumer audiences.

“From an imaging and printing perspective our strategy is to focus our marketing efforts through the line. For example, in the consumer printing area HP’s focus is on promoting our innovative and leading ‘web printing’ offering and we have done this with some above the line activity in print and digital media, experiential activity focused on high traffic locations where consumers would be to showcase the product, such as airports, press relations activity targeting tech, daily and lifestyle media and in-store activation programs with aggressive promotional offers, sales training and incentive programs for the sales reps on the store floor, as well as point of sale materials that explain the range and highlight the differentiations of HP,” touts Jacqueline Ibrahim, marketing manager, printing and imaging group, South Pacific.

“One program that we have implemented is the HP live demonstration program, which allows consumer and small business users to go into a store and test HP product for themselves. This allows them to test the print quality as well as see a live demonstration of HP’s innovative ePrint and Print Apps available across the new consumer range… We will be expanding this program to include live wireless internet enabled units in-store, which allow us to showcase HP’s innovative web connected printing.”

Pretty standard stuff, eh? But wait, there’s more.

“We are also focused on leveraging social media to communicate our products and technology and will be launching a social activation program partnering with a reputable museum in Melbourne that allows consumers to send their prints via ePrint (simply by sending an email) and watch them being printed in this world famous museum. This is designed to demonstrate and communicate the simplicity of HP’s ePrint technology with the aim of this activity being viral and communicating this value proposition to the masses,” says Ibrahim.

I’ll break one of my rules and call the idea innovative. But HP hasn’t embraced, or at least resourced, social media across the board, or if so has elected to adopt the ostrich strategy regarding negative commentary. The comments to your right, at time of writing were found unanswered (and not unique in that state) on the first page of HP and HP Australia’s Facebook pages.

Tough

“The HP board just made the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs many years ago. That decision nearly destroyed Apple and would have if Steve hadn’t come back and saved them,” wrote Lawrence Ellison, CEO of Oracle and friend of former HP CEO Mark Hurd, to The New York Times (‘former’ following accusations of sexual harassment from HP employee Jodie Fisher, one time reality TV contestant and loosely defined as a ‘marketing contractor’). The allegations were eventually disproven by HP, but a probe did find falsified expense claims concealing a relationship between the two.

“In losing Mark Hurd, the HP board failed to act in the best interest of HP’s employees, shareholders, customers and partners. The HP board admits that it fully investigated the sexual harassment claims against Mark and found them to be utterly false,” continued Ellison.

Hurd’s five years at HP saw a number of successes and tough decisions: he cut 10 percent of the company’s workforce (15,200 people), reduced the number of software applications from 6000 to 1500, halved the IT department to 8000 and shrank the company’s 85 data centres to six. The savings went toward more salespeople.

Facing the recession, he imposed a five percent pay cut on all employees, took a personal cut of 20 percent and, following HP’s acquisition of the company, enforced EDS (Electronic Data Systems) employee salaries into line with HP structures – meaning cuts of up to 20 percent. He then predicted a five percent sales fall, but six percent profit rise. Of course, his 20 percent pay cut was refunded by the compensation committee.

When questioned on the impact the scandal has had on B2B relations, HP declines to comment, but is happy to confirm its partnership with Oracle continues – a significant interest at 140,000 shared customers.

Whatever the impact, Hurd’s ejection was a costly affair at US$34.6 million in severance, options and stock. He’s now residing on Oracle’s board, a tense position given the shared customers and Oracle’s recent acquisition of Sun Microsystems, putting it in direct corporate hardware competition with HP.

United we stand

It’s cold, wet and I’m finding out about the downside of last month’s Superbrand Profile, Vespa, as trucks buffet me about the Burwood Highway. Uncharacteristically running late, I’m ushered rapidly into the apparently heavily booked ‘Halo Room’ for a product-focused session with Ivy Liang, VP of marketing for HP, Asia Pacific and Ibrahim. Liang appears to be sitting about a metre and a half from me, but is actually in a Singaporean ‘Halo Room’: three crisp screens provide a wraparound view of her room, while a fourth above allows those meeting to share videos and presentations. Lag is non-existent.

Every conversation and presentation I am involved with while researching HP focuses on four trends clearly driving the day-to-day, and this meeting is (repeatedly!) no exception: content explosion, mobility, digitisation and moving to a service-based business model. An internally conducted digital content audit predicts that by 2012 available content will have increased tenfold. A function of this, says HP, will be a threefold increase in printed pages, a very important metric. Digitisation refers to the conversion of content and mobility the consumer trend in digital devices.

“A lot of people were asking us: ‘Is printing on a declining trend, since a lot more content is already in a digital format?’ In one way it’s true, the proportion of content being printed out will be less, but, on the other hand, the [amount of] content is increasing 10 times. So the printable content, we’re actually projecting it to increase by three times. So the absolute number is increasing, even though the proportion is decreasing. That’s what we see as the trend,” says Liang.

So while the brand ostensibly believes the world of printed pages is about to swell like so many boab trees, it’s hedging its bets around its golden goose by moving away from a goods focus to services. Or rather, from what I’ve seen, service offerings attached to premium goods.

Partnerships also appear to be a big focus – perhaps a logical step for the voracious acquirer, but, again, more on that later. One such partnership is based around a product I, as a Gen Y male, had never heard of: photo books. An evolution of the photo album, they’re a phenomenon in Japan, Korea and much of Asia. A surprise to me, their popularity has increased, Ibrahim explains, from four percent of Australian households in 2009 to eight in 2010.

“According to PICA 2010, the median number of pictures taken by households with digital cameras was 345. In Australia, 55 percent of households made prints from digital camera images in 2010, and the median number of prints or copies made per household was 100. Australian households typically print 55 percent of the prints they make at home on the computer printer and the remaining 45 percent on a photo-printer designed specifically for a digital camera. Nearly 60 percent of households printing at home used photo paper for all of the prints they make. Photo cards and photo books are the most prominent and popular photo-publishing products in Australia,” says Ibrahim. “The biggest inhibitors for end users are the perception it is difficult, time consuming and expensive.”

This flurry of data has driven partnerships with Kmart, Ted’s Cameras and Camera House, providing kiosks that move the production of these products from the black-rim framed eyes of designers to the bleary eyes of young mothers.

“One of the key limitations for these creative products is people perceive them to be really difficult to create, and actually think it’s really expensive. So one of the things that we’re working on with our partners locally is how can we communicate that this is actually relatively simple, and it also can be done relatively quickly. And a key differentiator for HP’s retail publishing products is it only takes one hour to actually collect your book, and so we’re going out and communicating that a lot. If you go into a Kmart store, you’ll see a lot of messaging around one-hour service. A lot of the communications they’re doing in market is around that, and also the actual software that operates on these kiosks is really easy to use, because that’s another thing that’s really daunting about these photo books: people think they need to be some sort of tech guru to actually work it out. So they’re some of the differentiators of HP, and it is a challenge to communicate that, because you’re trying to get over that hurdle. So we’re doing a number of different things in communicating that through media relations activity as well as when they’re in-store,” explains Ibrahim.

Kmart was selected for its demographic, reach and previous experience with photo labs.

“We actually work together with them to set up the entire store, the entire in-store experience – how do we get the customers, what kinds of solution we want to show to them, who are the customers we want to talk to, and what are the products we want to sell to them, be it photo book, calendar or just a four by six photo,” adds Liang.

Outside of the retail channel, HP has also allied itself with that heroic group, media owners, in its quest to drive a greater volume of printed pages through what it’s calling ‘web connected printing’.

“We work with the content partners… to bring the content basically directly to our customers. So without logging on to the PC or the internet, they’re able to pull the content directly from those content partners and print it out directly,” explains Liang.

“The strategy is driven internally and is very much based on the consumer insight that I shared with you, the four key trends that we see happening. Customers want to have the content in their hand…

“It was launched in North America one year ago, and we discovered that 70 percent of customers who bought printers with this functionality actually print out content from various partners, which is very encouraging. Because, having to be very frank, this is a very new thing; we didn’t know whether people would really print it, or if they wouldn’t use it… On DreamWorks they print out colouring pages and give them to their kids to colour in, and it’s much faster. So we think this is the trend to go, and what will make it successful is to enable our teams in the regions to engage local content partners that have the content that is relevant to the customers locally. So those are the directions that we’re working towards,” she continues.

“In some countries we are working with the country coffee chains to put our printers there, enabling the people who go to the coffee chains [to use them]. That’s what you’re going to see in other markets, including Australia. You will see our printers appearing in places where our customers are travelling, are living, are enjoying or relaxing rather than just in one space,” adds Ibrahim.

The enemy of my enemy

HP’s partnership/endorsement focus is actually indicative of a wider business strategy of acquisition. The brand has been a voracious acquirer, over the years buying up over 100 companies, including big names Compaq (for US$25 billion), Palm (US$1.2 billion), 3Com (US$2.7 billion), Snapfish, Mercury Interactive (US$4.5 billion) the aforementioned Indigo and, in 1958, importantly, FL Moseley Company, which allowed HP to enter the plotter business, plotters being the predecessors to certain printers. According to Fortune magazine, the brand now holds the best profit margins in the printing industry.

Ibrahim points to research from Gartner demonstrating businesses spend as much as three percent of their revenue on printing, once hardware, software, consumables, maintenance and support costs are accounted for. She goes on to reveal the brand has a 34 percent share of the Australian market – that’s a lot of three percents. At Dscoop, obviously speaking of specialist printers, it is revealed HP’s Indigo outsells all of its competitors, combined.

At the professional level, this is driven by the partnership philosophy. The brand consults its customers to reduce costs and optimise its offering. In Asia Pacific, the lifeblood of these customers is marketing collateral, making up 58 percent of the business, followed by labels and packaging (19 percent), photo products (13 percent) and publishing (seven percent), with DM trailing at a surprising four percent. And the region is increasingly becoming the lifeblood of HP Indigo – Chinese sales equalled US in 2010.

Dscoop is another means of partnering through a branded, essentially gated community and encouraging users to create the value of belonging.

On a consumer level, the aforementioned web connected printing and retail channel partners are the driving focus.

“It doesn’t mean that we are not focusing on our core business, which is selling the printer itself, but we want to make sure there is no longer a box that sits in the study room or in the back room. It’s something that can enable the customers to connect to the content they want,” says Liang.

Leaning against the wind, HP believes digitised content hasn’t strangled consumer desire for printed content. Rather it’s a case of removing barriers and personalising that content. A study HP commissioned across Asia Pacific found that 75 percent of customers in possession of a smartphone, or related mobile device, want to print from it. The solution? Give printers their own email address.

“So if I want to print something to Jacqueline from the printers that she owns, as long as I know the email address of her printers, I can print directly from my smartphone, all kinds of smartphones, to Jacqueline’s ePrint enabled printers,” say Liang.

“Our fundamental strategy is to convert analogue pages to digital and to enable new types of digital pages. We’re especially focused on high-value pages such as colour and variable data,” adds Ibrahim.
“Because of all these changes, the way we do marketing is also very different. So gone are the days that we only do product launches and that we just tell them all the product features and the benefits. We truly want to move into the customer’s experience, dialogue and discussions. It’s a lot more interaction with the customers that we want to generate. So you will see a lot more marketing activity, not just at the advertising level, but more… at places, physical places where our customers live their life and consume that content,” proselytises Liang.The brand believes it can move the printer out of the office and into the centre of the household as a content generator of sorts.

Allies

Technology brands don’t do a lot above the line in this country. When it comes to personal computers, we tend to sit in camps by operating systems divided: you either back a fruit or that rich guy. And that’s really determined by personal situation, influenced a little by word of mouth and viral content.

HP’s decommodification in markets the scale of which justifies it, is elegant. But the brand’s pre-emptive defence of its bread and butter, printed pages, is an unexpected mirror and ally to traditional media’s own challenges. Those partnerships may be an inroad to influencing consumer decisions in smaller scale markets beyond allegiances to Seven or OS X, black or aluminium, John Hodgman or Justin Long. Those partnerships will likely prove more important than the omnipresent ‘four trends’. And I’m sure HP knows it.

That bearded prophet Benny Landa put it best for him pulpit in Seoul: “The best deal isn’t the one that looks best at face value, but the one that makes the other person believe they got the best deal.”

Apple compromises on ad platform in effort to catch Google

by Marketing ON 14 December 2011

Consumer tech giant Apple is reportedly compromising on the terms of its 18-month-old mobile advertising platform iAd as it has struggled to win over customers as expected and is losing ground to rival Google.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that after introducing its iAd service in July 2010 with a minimum spend from marketers of at least US$1 million, it is now discussing deals with a commitment of as little as US$400,000.

Apple is also reportedly introducing a more flexible pricing structure following complaints from advertisers that the original system was too confusing. Running on a combined ‘cost per tap’ and cost per thousand impressions (CPM) model, advertisers pay US$10 CPM and US$2 for every tap. In comparison, Google’s mobile ad products vary from US$4 to US$12 CPM.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple is now collecting 15% of mobile display ad revenue in the US, trailing leader Google’s 24%, a share that is apparently well below what late CEO Steve Jobs envisioned, and represents a fall from last year. Apple and Google held 19% each at the end of 2010, according to research firm IDC, but since then Apple has lost ground and is now trailing not only arch-nemesis Google but also Millenial Media’s 17% share of the US$630 million market.

The reported compromise comes as Apple establishes a training program with its media agency OMD to educated customers about the mobile marketing, inviting senior marketing executives to tour its Cupertino headquarters and consult with Apple product managers and designers.

iAds are typically richer in their use of media, and clicking one opens up a full screen ad within the app, rather than taking the user to the Safari app, but they are only served through apps in Apple’s own App Store, meaning advertisers must always utilise competing services to reach wider audiences.

Planking and the census the viral hits of Facebook in 2011

by Marketing ON 9 December 2011

The social barometer that is Facebook has released its most talked about topics for 2011.

‘Facebook Memology’ “takes the pulse of the global community by unearthing the most popular topics and cultural trends – or memes – emerging on Facebook.”

The data shows the top ten Facebook status trends for 2011 by key countries and globally, as well as fastest growing Pages (from musician and actor categories) and most popular media on a global level. Most talked about brands and most successful brand Pages were not made available by Facebook. The most shared items of the year globally were published on Mashable, but unavailable at a local level.

Planking, where people lie face down in unusual locations, was the runaway viral success (for society? – Ed) in Australia for the year, topping the Facebook meme list and ranking third amongst ‘what is…’ searches on Google’s most searched queries for 2011.

Status updates mentioning planking exploded in May. According to Facebook, that happened after Max Key, the son of New Zealand Prime Minister John Key, posted a Facebook photo of himself planking in the family lounge with his father in the background. The stickiness of the phenomenon appears to have originated from a well connected source.

The campaign for the 2011 Australian census also registered as a success, elevating the event into third place on the meme list. Central to the engagement campaign around the survey was ‘Spotlight’, an interactive tool that published a personalised infographic to the user’s Facebook wall.

Top global topics on Facebook

Events in the UK and US had the greatest influence on the global memology. The most talked about event of the year was the death of Osama bin Laden, the biggest sports event was the Super Bowl and the biggest product launch for 2011 (and all time) was for video game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

Charlie Sheen captured people’s attention in March, when his trademark ‘winning’, ‘tiger blood’ and ‘goddesses’ memes took off.

The marriage of Kate Middleton and Prince William dominated the conversation in April, with mentions of the phrase ‘Royal Wedding’ shooting up nearly 600-fold in the days running up to their wedding day.

And the year was also marked by outpourings of sadness and memories after the deaths of Amy Winehouse in July and Steve Jobs in October.

Homepage image courtesy of Budgetplaces, via Flickr

Apple launches social networking platform

by Marketing ON 2 September 2010

Apple has announced the launch of Ping, its music-oriented social network platform, available through iTunes.

Ping, coinciding with the release of the latest version of iTunes (version 10), allows users to follow favourite musicians, as well as follow friends to see what music they’re listening to and which musicians they’re downloading. As is common on other social network sites, users can share their thoughts and opinions, but this time largely around their favourite albums, songs, concerts and downloads.

Ping is able to draw from a huge database, as iTunes already has over 160 million users in 23 countries.

“iTunes is the number one music community in the world […] and now we’re adding social networking with Ping,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “With Ping you can follow your favourite artists and friends and join a worldwide conversation with music’s most passionate fans.”

Apple has had a busy week, with the announcement of a few improvements to their range of music listening devices. The new iPod touch has features such as an advanced screen and high definition video recording, while the iPod Nano has also been improved upon with a touch screen and a ‘shake to shuffle’ track choice option and the iPod shuffle has been re-introduced with voiceover options.

iPad builds Rome in a day

by Marketing ON 6 April 2010

Apple has sold over 300,000 iPads in the US in the product’s first day.

The figure includes pre-order deliveries, channel partner deliveries and retail store sales.
iPad users downloaded over one million apps and 250,000 ebooks from the new iBookstore in the first day.

“It feels great to have the iPad launched into the world—it’s going to be a game changer,” said Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple. “iPad users, on average, downloaded more than three apps and close to one book within hours of unpacking their new iPad.”

iPad TVC released by Apple

by Marketing ON 10 March 2010

Apple has unveiled its first iPad TVC during the Oscar Awards telecast.

The ad ‘Meet the iPad’ is set to the song ‘There goes my love’ by The Blue Van, and was played following the announcement of the award for Best Animated Film.

Focussing on the iPad’s user experience, the TVC depicts different people going through various features of the devices, such as music, videos, photos, ebooks, email and Pages.

The TVC indicates that the US on sale date for the iPad will be April 3, however Apple has not confirmed whether the ad will be run in Australia.

Apple takes on HTC over stolen patents

by Marketing ON 3 March 2010

Apple has announced its intention to launch legal action against Taiwanese company HTC, accusing its mobile market rival of lifting its patented touchscreen technology.

Following the release of HTC’s Nexus One, G1 and myTouch touchscreen models – which all run off Google’s Android platform – Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs released a statement indicating that he’s had enough of what he sees as patent theft.

“We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it,” Jobs said in a statement.

The action was filed with the US International Trade Commission and the District Court in Wilmington, Deleware, which can award damages and order HTC to stop sales.

Apple’s decision comes after it counter-sued phone giant Nokia, claiming that its lawsuit regarding manufacturing cost reduction and battery life is baseless.

“We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours,” concluded Jobs.

iPad foregone conclusions proved correct

by Marketing ON 28 January 2010

Apple has announced its much debated but long-awaited tablet device: iPad.

The iPad set the blogosphere alight in late 2009 after rumours were shored up by a report from The Wall Street Journal. Apple is lauding the devices physical statistics – weighing 0.68kg and only 13.4mm thick – as lighter and thinner than any netbook.

Conjecture surrounding the products release has focused on its ability to remake the publishing industry and, to a lesser extent, extend the growing app industry. Apple CEO Steve Jobs confirmed rumours of an ebook focus when he revealed Apple’s new iBookstore and a number of confirmed deals with major publishers: Penguin, Macmillan, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Hachette Book Group.

The iBookstore could breath new life into newspapers, magazines and book publishing as well as presenting new opportunities for advertisers in these mediums. Several publishers began developing their offerings for eReaders and smartphones to significant success, as well as demonstrating the capabilities of the new medium including embedded video, music and links to etailers.

“iPad is our most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “iPad creates and defines an entirely new category of devices that will connect users with their apps and content in a much more intimate, intuitive and fun way than ever before.”

For a live run down of the launch event, click here.

One million iPhone 3GS sold

by Marketing ON 23 June 2009

Apple has announced over one million iPhone 3GS models sold since its initial launch three days ago.

In addition, six million customers have downloaded the iPhone 3.0 OS since its full release, five days ago. Apple said its application store has already hit one billion downloads.

“Customers are voting and the iPhone is winning. With over 50,000 applications available from Apple’s revolutionary App store, iPhone momentum is stronger than ever,” said Apple founder Steve Jobs.

Apple says the new 3GS model is up to twice as fast as the previous model. Improvements included longer battery life, a better camera with video recording capacity and voice control.

Apple elaborated on the iPhone 3.0 OS improvements, including cut, copy, paste, MMS, spotlight,and a landscape keyboard.

The iPhone 3GS won’t be available to Australians until 26 June.

Jobs off the job

by Marketing ON 15 January 2009

Rumours have circulated in the media for the past year over Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ health concerns.

He’s been described as appearing gaunt and sickly at a number of public engagements but has continually denied that his health was in jeopardy.

Now an email has surfaced from the inner sanctums of the computer corporation outlining that Jobs is to take an extended leave of absence due to ‘health-related issues’.

“During the past week I have learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought,” states the email.

“In order to take myself out of the limelight and focus on my health, and to allow everyone at Apple to focus on delivering extraordinary products, I have decided to take a medical leave of absence until the end of June.”

Jobs also explains that the media attention toward his health has been “not only a distraction for me and my family, but everyone else at Apple as well”, however, he is adamant in the strength of Apple itself.

Tim Cook, the company’s COO and Jobs’ second in command, will be put in charge of Apple’s day to day operations and the corporation’s board of directors fully supports his plan.