Job’s legacy while seeming to be about innovation really is about his ability to see a good idea and make it better, much better.  And for that he was supremely talented and supremely right.   Gladwell’s depiction of this is crystal clear as is his depiction of Jobs’ tweaking methods, which is where our 21st century mini-messiah went extremely wrong.  He tweaked by shoving, demanding, demonizing and humiliating people.  Getting it right, as he defined right, was worth any cost.  And perhaps the most alarming part is that our culture has come to celebrate and revere the consequences of that abuse while overlooking the abuse itself.

Imagine any other CEO, military leader or even college coach who belittled and brutalized all who worked for them?  How long would people stand for it?  Apparently as long as the perceived value of the right exceeds the actual value of the wrong.

Related articles

• In Praise of “Tweakers” (coordinationproblem.org)
• Steve Jobs More ‘Tweaker’ Than Inventor, Gladwell Says (inquisitr.com)
• Malcolm Gladwell On Steve Jobs’ Perfectionism: The Genius Is In The ‘Tweak’ (mediaite.com)
• Malcolm Gladwell Gets Steve Jobs Wrong (forbes.com)
• Getting Steve Jobs Wrong (daringfireball.net)

We see this re-focusing on product excellence at the core of more great brands these days, including the brand that most often emerges in the “Brand Envy” questionnaire we use to kick off our One Simple Thing™ workshops: Apple.

Here’s a recent video they produced for the latest MacBook Air. As you watch it, try to imagine something like this coming out of Dell, or any of the PC brands:

In our methodology, “Relevance of Offering” sets the stage for “Clarity of Message,” our One Simple Thing™ (or OST) process. Here’s the language we use to explain the need for OST to clients:

We live in a complex world.  Each of us is confronted daily with a fire hose of facts, claims, opinions and noise, by choice or not, at work and at home. The onslaught is relentless. Some of it is relevant, much of it is not, and a vast majority is beyond our ability to grasp or remember.

In our attempt to manage this complexity we subconsciously look for ways to distill each of the things (brands, products, people) we interact with down to a single, defining attribute. Not as the whole story but as a sort of “meta-tag” for our own mental search engine — a way to easily manage and categorize our association with that thing, whatever it is, over time.

Holland-Mark calls the result of that distillation a brand’s One Simple Thing™ or “OST.” It is the attribute of any entity that is most relevant and motivating to the target market, distinct from the competition, and true to the capability of the entity.

Here’s what The Maestro, Steve Jobs himself, had to say about the secret to Apple’s marketing success:

“For me, marketing is about values. This is a very complicated world, it’s a very noisy world. And, we’re not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us, no company is. And so we have to be really clear on what we want them to know about us.”

If you’re a brand that envies what Apple is doing these days, shoot me a note.  We might be able to help you do more of what they seem to be doing exactly right.

Related articles

• Apple Crowned Marketer of the Decade: Here’s Why (nytimes.com)
• Apple MacBook Air to Sell 700,000 Units in Fourth Quarter 2010, Analyst Predicts (slashgear.com)
• MacBook Air 11.6-Inch Model Officially Unveiled (slashgear.com)

Quoted in Scott Kirsner’s excellent Apple piece this weekend, from The Boston Globe…

Why Apple is still generating buzz – The Boston Globe

For me Apple’s magic unfolds in the yin and yang of inspiration and listening.

Steve Jobs has said that if you give people what they ask for, by the time you deliver it, they want something else. That means great products are born from a place of innovation, often from the inspired vision of an individual person. The iPod, for example, was obviously revolutionary in 2001.

But if you look at the way Apple evolves their products, once they launch, you see a very different story. Apple eats its own lunch, aggressively evolving products in the direction their users demand. That comes from listening, intently, to what users have to say. Here again you can look at the iPod. In 8 years it went from “1,000 Songs in Your Pocket” to “Shoot Video With Your Nano.” It took Sony the same 8 years – from 1979 to 1987 – to go from the Walkman to the Walkman II, which was basically a stereo Walkman with a radio. Whoop-de-do.

The talent for true innovation and the discipline for user-driven product refinement rarely coexist in the same product culture, but for me, that’s what makes Apple great.

Full article is here.

Posted using ShareThis

Related articles by Zemanta

• My iPad is here (scripting.com)
• 11 Ways The iPad Could Change Business (PHOTOS) (huffingtonpost.com)
• Marketing genius (jonoscript.wordpress.com)
• Why The iPad Is A Hit (And Why I Won’t Buy One Yet) (pbs.org)
• Apple iPad Unboxing Video – Now I Want One (mrgadget.com.au)
• Apple die-hards rush to stores for iPad (thestar.com)

In the course of discussing the transition today I realized, as a small business, how difficult managing and syncing email and calendar has been. Years ago we suffered along with Now Up To Date. Even within the walls of the organization it never really worked. I could manage my own schedule but couldn’t effectively connect with co-workers to schedule group meetings — and there was zero connectivity to my handheld or with the outside world. Then we migrated to iCal. I love Apple and the system worked for a while. But slowly we overwhelmed our server. And we never had success importing invite files from clients. It worked OK inside the biz but not with those outside.

Over the past few months we’ve been half-assing it with Google. Every employee used a personal Gmail account to create a shared business calendar. Then we linked our existing Holland-Mark email account to the personal Gmail account with the hope that we could continue using our Apple Mail browser and our current email hosting service alongside Google calendar. It worked kinda sometimes. For those of us that began to use the Google interface to grab our email (instead of Apple Mail), it worked better than kinda sometimes but not awesome always. Friday we transition to Google Apps as we seek awesome always.

Here’s awesome always defined, and why we are making the move to Google:
• Seamless email and calendar integration
• Real time, built-in, communications (chat, video)
• Access and mobility: anywhere, any device
• Secure & stable platform, no hardware or support headaches
• New features regularly — no need to wait for new releases or software upgrades

We are excited. We believe we’ll save money, save time and be far more productive. We’ll keep you posted as to what we learn along the way.

In the meantime, if your organization has made the move to Google Apps, please let us know what worked and what didn’t. Any and all advice is appreciated.

Posted via email from holland-mark posterous

I had pretty much given up on retail. I hadn’t had a remarkable retail experience in I don’t know how long. In fact, I found myself so convinced that retailers couldn’t meet my needs as a consumer that I found myself making excuses for them . . . they are under-paid, under-staffed, under-something. Even worse, I convinced myself that I was the problem – I am too demanding, my standards are too high, I am unreasonable. And as we descended deeper into this recession-that’s-not-a-depression I was continually surprised that even those that were still employed weren’t able to provide a level of service that made me take notice.

Until this weekend. Two retail experiences, two home runs. One for Nordstrom’s and one for Apple.

Very briefly . . .

Nordstrom’s: I bought a pair of shoes. I wore them around the store. They felt pretty good. I wore them around the house. They still felt pretty good. I wore them to a party on saturday night (snow/rain/mud) and they killed my feet. I had to return them. I couldn’t wear them again. Nordstrom’s took them back. No question. No problem. Thank you Nordstrom’s for empowering your employees to make it easy for me. By the way, I bought another pair. More expensive.

Apple: I bought a new computer on Thursday. Today I woke up and realized I needed a printer. Went back to Apple and saw that they had printers with a $100 rebate when you buy it at the same time as a computer. I mentioned that I had bought one on Thursday, could they accommodate me? 2 minutes later they had printed out a duplicate copy of my receipt (I didn’t have the original with me), sold me the printer with the rebate and made me aware of two other promotions that are currently offered at a discount with a new computer. Thank you Apple for empowering your employees to make it easy for me.

So the weekend is over and I’m once again hopeful for you, Retail. Not to mention that you’ve reminded me of a few things about customer service that will serve me well as I begin my work week tomorrow. Thanks.

Posted via email from holland-mark posterous

Related articles by Zemanta

• Consumer Reports readers love the Apple Store (macworld.com)
• Microsoft Stores Now Hiring. An Apple Store “Genius” Is A Microsoft Store “Retail Technical Advisor” (techcrunch.com)
• A rising market is putting new luster on luxury retailers (dailyfinance.com)