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What made your business a success?

June 28, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Steve Jobs and the Original Apple MacI recently had the pleasure to listening to Guy Kawasaki speak about innovation at the IABC World Conference in Toronto. His Top Ten items for Innovation really resounded with me. But it was his example for number 6, Let 100 Flowers Blossom, that really stuck with me. Guy was a member of the original Apple Macintosh design team. As Guy explains it, when they launched the original Mac, the team thought they had created a great computer to compete with all the other computers of the time that let users manipulate data in early spreadsheets. But a little known desktop publishing program called Aldus Pagemaker was also just starting to bring desktop publishing to the masses. Well people soon realized that the icon-based Graphic User Interface (GUI) of the Macintosh, worked hand-in-hand with this new program and the popularity of both grew. Pagemaker eventually evolved into Adobe InDesign, still a desktop publishing powerhouse. And we all know what happened with Apple. According to Guy, “Aldus Pagemaker saved Apple, if we had been restrictive of what the Mac could do and stuck with spreadsheets, Apple wouldn’t exist today.”

Guy had other examples of products being used for pursuits outside it’s original purpose, such as AVON Skin-So-Soft being used as a bug repellent. His advice, “take the money, let the 100 flowers blossom.” My question for you is what unforeseen purpose, product or service helped make your business a success? For me, I was asked to help a business communication organization I belong to revamp its Philadelphia chapter’s website. The result was having to learn WordPress on the fly and design the site at the same time. WordPress development and customization has become a majority of my business, but who knows if it would have happened if I didn’t volunteer for the website redesign assignment. What unforeseen event or product use helped make your business a success?

Let me know, until next time, Tim

Filed Under: Inspiration, marketing, Web Design Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

So Long MacWorld … The beginning of the end of Trade Shows?

December 17, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Say it ain’t so, Apple announced today that next month’s MacWorld in San Francisco will be Apple’s last. I always wanted to make it to the one in SF, but never had the chance. I love everything Apple, but like most people, find what I need online or at the local retail store.

It makes you think, Apple is always on the forefront of trends and this could mean that trade shows are in trouble. According to Apple, “Apple is reaching more people in more ways than ever before, so like many companies, trade shows have become a very minor part of how Apple reaches its customers. The increasing popularity of Apple’s Retail Stores, which more than 3.5 million people visit every week, and the Apple.com website enable Apple to directly reach more than a hundred million customers around the world in innovative new ways.”

I attended a trade show for trade show managers over the summer here in Philly. It was interesting how the keynote speaker, David Meerman Scott, spoke to the audience about how social media and the Internet is changing the game for marketers. You know it’s bad when the keynote at your trade show trade group is advocating other resources other than a booth at a trade show to market your wares. Has the Web and social media marketing changed the game?

What do you think, are trade shows a thing of the past and fading into obsurity?

Until next time, Tim

Filed Under: Customer Service, Social Media Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Social Media Trends – Part 3 of 4

June 30, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Also last week, I had the priviledge to hear from Steve Rubel, SVP and Director of Insights from Edelman Digital. Ya know, the trust study folks. I figured with a title like that this guy must know what he’s talking about in the digital world, and he didn’t disappoint.

Steve listed some great stats – such as – of all the Internet’s users, only 13 percent are creating content. I assume this means on social media or networking sites, as every person or company that puts up a website is creating content at one point. But I assume this is ongoing and regularly, which means most of us are just taking it all in and absorbing it. I would hope that number would grow as more and more of the younger generation take jobs and presumably create online content as a part of their daily lives. (i.e. facebook, myspace, or even ebay)

He also cited Edelman’s Trust Study where “people like you” increased in trust from 36 percent in 2003 to 58 percent in 2008. Which means we are growing to trust others on the net that are like us and not Nigerian business men looking to deposit $ in our accounts. Social Media is having an effect and giving voice to people all over the world that share common interests.

We also discussed the trends:

The increasing portability of the Internet,
The ever-shortening attention span of audiences,
The popularity of aggegation sites on the web (i.e. popurls),
Being able to compress the web into digestable bits (i.e. google),
Growth in collaboration sites (i.e. My Starbucks Idea, or Dell)

On the horizon…
The living room being hooked into the Web. Ala – Apple TV and Game Marketers
Digital Nomads (like me) who have left the corporate world to go it alone out on the digital frontier. (i.e. virtual workers, and with $4 gas – it’s a good bet others will follow)

Also checked out Anders Gronstedt, Ph.D. from the Gronstedt Group – he has some big name clients (EMC, ADT, Microsoft, Jamba Juice) and can be described in one word – passioniate – about Second Life as the future of collaboration. Worth checking out.

Until next time, Tim

Digg!

Filed Under: Blogging, corporate blogging, Social Media, TV/Media Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,