Apple

Hey, Your Humanity Is Showing

Garth Beyer

Noticing humanity comes natural, so natural to the point you may say you don’t even notice it.

You may think adding that extra characteristic of humanity, of vulnerability, of doodle, if you will, will take away from the formality, credibility and technicality of your business. It doesn’t.

I opened the Great Lakes philanthropy booklet today (what could be more human that this?) and the message from the president ends with his signature (ineligible). Following is his name and title in print (eligible).

You may see things like this and, as I have, wonder “what’s the point?” After all, you can’t read it, there’s almost no point to it.

On the contrary.

Would you believe just having a badge or ribbon-like image on a book cover makes it more likely for people to pick up and believe in? The text within the image doesn’t quite matter. It can say “runner-up finalist” or “enjoy the read.” The image adds a dimension of credibility to it just as the signature adds a dimension of humanity to the letter.

The same, I’m arguing goes for all small humanistic prints of ours: a signature, a typo, a hand written newsletter, a behind-the-scenes video or one-on-one unscripted interview of an employee. No one needs to ever mention the video to another or point out the signature; these marks don’t need to stand out, they simply need to be there. Every person notices them whether you or they realize it or not.

A final example: People love technology, but when you take all the humanity out of it, you’re removing what people connect to. When Apple talks design, they aren’t talking about how pure and inhuman the device is, they’re talking about all the human qualities they’ve put into it.

 

Stay Positive & People Connect Through Nonverbal Communicational Ques, Not Cords

One Great Thing Makes Everything Else Better

Garth Beyer

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If you know anything about Madison, Wis., you know hot & spicy cheese bread is a big deal. In fact, it’s Stella’s Bakery’s one great thing. As a result, all their other pastries are delicious. Stella’s one great thing makes everything else better.

Take the hot & spicy cheese bread away and everything else tastes a bit more bland.

Take Apple’s design away and everything else starts to feel cheaply made.

Take the Dre out of Dre’s Beats and, well, you get the point.

The piece of advice all these brands take to heart: don’t try to be everything. Be remarkable at one thing. The rest follows.

 

Stay Positive & Can You Guess My One Great Thing?

Go ahead. Guess. I’ll mail a loaf of hot & spicy cheese bread to the person who guesses it.

To Know What You Stand For

Garth Beyer

I shouldn’t have to search through your website to find your big idea, your brand essence, your mainstay. Creating a linchpin brand comes from saying no to enough little ideas so all anyone can see is the big idea. Zappos gave up a lot to stand up for service. Apple let a lot of things go so they could focus on design.

 

Stay Positive & What Do You Let Go Of?

What Are They Admitting To?

Garth Beyer

Flappy Bird

You’re searching for customers. Your marketing. Your advertising like crazy to get new folks to buy your product or service or enroll in your seminar or MOOC. To get anyone to try whatever you are offering requires them to admit to something. But what is it? Do you know? You need to.

It’s hell trying to top your competitors, it’s even more difficult to get your competitor’s followers to follow you. Why? Because to do so, those followers have to admit that they want more (most don’t) or that they made the wrong choice to begin with.

Take a second to realize how monumental of an internal confession that is.

I keep wondering why so few people who loved Flappy Bird aren’t trying anything similar like Ironpants, Super Ball Juggling or Red Bouncing Ball Spikes. To do so is to admit that they made a wrong choice of playing Flappy Bird to begin with. Either they don’t want to admit to that or they simply don’t want better, they want Flappy Bird.

I don’t suggest you find a niche because you can’t compete with someone like Apple or Zynga. You could certainly make something as good or better than them. Getting people to admit they like you more or that they were wrong to like the other competitor first, that’s the exhaustive (and endless!) battle.

Unless of course, Apple or Zynga die and there’s room in the market for you. Then again, like I said, not everyone is flapping over to different games after Dong Nguyen took Flappy Bird down.

Niches are important. Find them.

*UPDATE: since writing this post IronPants and another flappy bird spinoff has made the top app list. I would be fascinated to see how many users of these apps know of flappy bird.

Stay Positive & It’s Easier To Get People To Admit They Wanted Something Your Competitor Didn’t Offer

Photo credit

 

What To Do About The Name

Garth Beyer

Isn’t this the first thing to do when coming up with a business or a book or any venture? Gotta name it.

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As much as I’d argue to do the hard work first, I know we won’t. We sell ourselves on the idea that we can’t take any steps until we have the name down. That’s okay as long as we don’t take forever to come up with a name. (That’s where I come in.)

The first two tips came from yesterdays post: choose a name that incorporates something common and something uncommon. Here are five other tips to picking a name:

1) Forget words that start with A and words that are only three or four letters long. It’s unnecessary. If the business is remarkable enough, we’ll remember all the letters. There are very few people who will forget www.projectexponential.com (HT Michelle Welsch)

2) Understand that people need to pronounce it. Here’s some hard to pronounce brands. Want to discover even harder business names? Google companies that store and sell private information like Acxiom, Epsilon, BlueKai, V12 Group. All businesses that don’t want to be found.

3) Make a list of all the words associated with what you do and how you want your customers to feel. Breaking out the thesaurus will help here. Mix and match the words to follow tip number four.

4) Combine two words. Squid-do, Garth-box, Copy-blogger, Skyy-Gamut, and so on. Think of it like a phone number with “www” being the area code.

5) Don’t listen to what anyone thinks. Don’t ask for your family’s opinion. Don’t run it by a friend. YOU decide the name. I attempted to explain yesterday that you make the name, the name doesn’t make your book, your business, your venture. People never attributed Apple with design until Apple gave them a reason to. People never attributed millions of photos with Flickr until Flickr showed them they could.

That’s the scariest part of it all, isn’t it?

If you’re relying on the name to give you the leverage, the exposure, the attention you think you deserve – well, you’re in for one hell of a lesson.

 

Stay Positive & Still In Doubt?

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Brands Businesses And Their Faces

Garth Beyer

I played an odd game last night with family. The game Faces. Basically you try to associate a particular attribute “the flirt” with one of the seven faces. If you guess the same as the dealer, you both win.

I also watched Shark Tank (worth watching otherwise I wouldn’t mention it).

Combining the two made me think a few things.

1. If given the chance, people can read your face. They are constantly analyzing every feature to see if it fits the world view you’re trying to sell. No, the grumpy looking women is not going to be the flirt. No, the stock faced men trying to pitch a tie business based on the Netflix platform are not passionate about their product.

2. Most will get close to understanding the face of your brand, but the more you stand out, the more they will all agree on what the face represents. That’s when you can call your branding a success. Everyone looks at Apple and sees the same face. It took years and plenty of differentiation and risk to get there.

3. Sometimes it doesn’t matter if you’re pretty.

 

Stay Positive & But Some Makeup Never Hurt

Garth E. Beyer

A New Problem With Customer Service

Garth Beyer

Phone broke. It was a smooth transition purchasing a new one. Lost my unlimited data plan though. But, of course, had to connect with customer service.

Three days into having my new phone I got a text message from Verizon saying that I have exceeded my two gigabyte data plan. Keeping it short, I visit the store and they tell me to call customer service. So I do.

I called the customer service number and got an automated voice system that asked what I wanted. There’s a button for everything else you could want, payments, minutes, checking data, etc,. but there was no button to get in touch with a sales rep. It took four calls until I figured out that I had to say that I wanted a customer service rep after I pressed “4” and was asked to state why I was calling. If you’re going to provide a number for customer service, have it connect to customer service. Strike one.

After figuring out how to get ahold of a customer service rep, the automated voice system said they were receiving an extremely high volume of calls and it would take a while to get on the line with a customer service rep. I was on the phone with one in 5 seconds.

If you ever have an automated voice message system to take service calls, remember that there’s a difference between preparing for the worst and being honest. I would rather be told the truth of how many calls are coming in even if the volume is low. Anyone calling customer service expects to be on hold for a while, even if told otherwise. Lying was strike two.

I had my situation resolved in less than 10 minutes. He (I don’t even remember his name, explained in a moment) reset my data usage from the time I got my phone. Done and done.

Yet, there was still a problem. The third strike. I got to speak to a human, but he wasn’t very human. He avoided the question of how his day was and turned it around to if I had protection on my phone. Instead of sparking a conversation when silence ensued, he merely thanked me for my patience. Everything he said felt scripted. I couldn’t help thinking that I could have had a better conversation with the automated voice service.

Want to know a reason why Apple is the go-to goodie about customer service and not Verizon? They are human. They have a conversation. And you get a hold of an actual person when you call customer service.

 

Stay Positive & Lessons Learned For Future Business, I Suppose

Garth E. Beyer