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Mediapost Online Spin: The Stack

The Stack

I just returned from a vacation to Mauritius -- AKA Paradise -- and South Africa. In Mauritius, I don’t think I opened my laptop and barely accessed my mobile phone. The connection was too slow anyway and the nearest Starbucks was around 4,000 miles away -- too far to walk!

South Africa was a different story completely. For a family of five, we passed through security at the airport with seven phones: three iPhone 6s, one iPhone 5c (which I subsequently left on the flight from Cape Town to London, and, thanks to absolutely incompetent customer service from British Airways – you should be ashamed if you work for this airline – it’s somewhere in Phoenix right now), two iPhone 4s (our unlocked “local phones”) and finally another iPhone 4 (which functions as an iPod Touch for our little one).

In case there’s any doubt, we’re an Android family (NOT!).

Throughout our stay in Cape Town, we would often place all our phones on a pile in the middle of the table when we visited a restaurant. This of course was when free Wi-Fi wasn’t available and we weren’t able to Instagram all our #blessed #sunset shots and #foodporn snaps.

I dubbed this “The Stack.”

I wasn’t proud of this term and often joked that you could spot the Americans a mile away thanks to their abundance of technology.

One dinner we sat with family friends discussing a “social game” where everyone puts their phone in the middle of the table and the first to touch their phone has to pay for the entire meal. Sounds easy to avoid, but not when it becomes an obsession or even an addiction.

There’s an even an app called “Moment” that tracks phone usage via a dashboard to determine the winner (or loser) of this game. The irony of course is that this is an app, so how exactly would you monitor performance without having to use the phone in the first place?

Don’t get me wrong. I love technology. And I love my iPhone. But this trip made me take stock in what is REALLY important and how to better create balance in my and my family’s lives. There’s going to be at least one unhappy teenager around the house when phone time is limited to specific times and occasions.

Are you taking similar steps? At home? On vacation? With yourself versus your family? Are you miles ahead of me or in the same boat? What will your mobile usage resolutions be in 2015?

Incidentally, I appreciate the irony of how I am becoming my parents’ generation in terms of being crotchety, stodgy and old-fashioned. In my day, we used to…

I also appreciate the wisdom of said old-timers and how history keeps repeating itself in terms of the pursuit of balance between the best of the old and best of the new.

With this in mind, I wish you a balanced year ahead of technology usage. Should you be reading this on your mobile phone, you get a free pass from me!

For more wisdom from Joseph Jaffe visit www.jaffejuice.com and follow him @jaffejuice.

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MediaPost Online Spin: Why Every Single Brand Needs An App

Why Every Single Brand Needs An App

Well, hello, brand marketers out there. It’s time to shut the door in the face of the Grinch who stole your media budget. It’s time to celebrate that you made it to the end of the year (albeit with a few bumps and bruises). Be thankful you survived the umpteenth reorg and restructuring, budget cut, CMO and/or agency firing/hiring.

It’s time to focus those unused dollars (there always are) on all the fringe stuff you cut earlier in the year. You know: the “nice to have” gimmicks like retention, loyalty, utility, mobile -- and innovation in general.

So here’s a novel idea: Why not invest in a branded app? Yes, a branded app. Please get off the floor.  I apologize for not warning you in advance so you could brace yourselves for the shock and horror that would force you to fall off your chair.

I was reading a very succinct (and almost too simple) article in Tech Cocktail titled, “Why You Should Make An App For Your Brand.” Said article cited three key points: rise of mobile (consumer adoption), user loyalty and the importance of continual improvement and iteration (“don’t stop at the first version.”).

This got me thinking about all the people in the industry (yes, I’m talking to you agency stewards and brand guardians) who poo-poo the mission critical investment of a branded app with overused exaggerations, clichés and throw away 140-character tweets like, “how many apps do you have on your phone that you’ve never used?” These crowd pleasing quotes are tantamount to the malarkey you hear (or heard) about Twitter like, “I don’t care if you had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch,” which are a clear tell that you have never used Twitter before and/or you’re a moron.

Can you imagine if Starbucks didn’t have an App? Or Bank of America, or Starwood? “But we’re not Starbucks,” you protest, perhaps adding, “No one can pay for our toilet paper or razor blades by shaking their phones.” Who on earth thought that this would even have been possible in version 1.0 of the app (see the earlier point about continual improvement)? Commerce is a red herring in that it is ubiquitous for all brands. As long as a brand has a price for its products, it is fair game in the app world. Purchasing a product directly from the app is just a proxy.

What about managing an account balance? Being part of an Ambassador type program or loyalty in general? Are these endemic to banks, airlines and/or hotels? Of course not! And as in the Starbucks example, we’ve seen innovations like depositing checks via your camera phone or opening up your hotel door with your mobile phone coming out of this exploratory journey.

What is the equivalent for YOUR industry?

If someone doesn’t download your app  -- or they do, but don’t use it regularly enough -- it’s your fault for not giving them a compelling reason to do so. I don’t use my Starwood app every day or every week, but I do use it every time I travel and stay at a Starwood resort. The same with American Airlines. As long as you have customers, you have an opportunity to engage them through the power of a “direct to customer” asset (the O of owned assets in Z.E.R.O.) that is wholly owned, uniquely branded and always on (also known as a branded app).

Perhaps the excuse of no one wanting to download or use your branded app would have worked five years ago, but now it is the kind of statement that should deservedly get you fired. If your agency is spouting this kind of drivel, challenge them to find a use case or solution that refutes this notion. Worse still, if the seven-figure proposal in front of you does not give your customers a compelling reason to engage, then send it back to the proposal drawing board.

If however, the pushback is coming from you or your boss, then perhaps you should start updating your LinkedIn profile or resume ahead of the new year. Maybe you need a fresh start. And if you do, please do not put “mobile expertise” on your list of skills or accomplishments.

That would just be sad.

For more wisdom from Joseph Jaffe visit www.jaffejuice.com and follow him @jaffejuice.

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MEDIAPOST ONLINE SPIN: SPEED-DATING IS THE TINDER OF INNOVATION

We live in a time of instant gratification -- from tweets to WiFi at 30,000 feet, from Amazon Prime to Snapchat. It’s all about real time and immediacy, where faster is better and better is faster.

Nothing is sacred in this agile age, even love.

Enter Tinder, the Uber of matchmaking. Now anyone can literally swipe left or right while sitting on the toilet in order to find their soul mate. It’s a Hallmark moment, all right.

In order to read up on Tinder, I just Googled it. Instead of doing real research, I just watched a great video of Dave Franco and Conan O’Brien masquerading on Tinder as Jenghis Roundstone and Chip Whitley respectively.

So I think I’m pretty much up to speed now.

Just to be clear, I don’t really have an opinion on Tinder. It’s probably awesome. There’s an app for everything nowadays and I’m pretty sure this one has addressed the “inefficiency” of having to go out IRL to a bar or club and make real conversation with fake pick-up lines in order to get to the same outcome. As deep and profound as we’d like to consider ourselves to be, we all know that at the end of the day, it’s just about a primitive and superficial physical attraction.

Tinder works great for meeting potential “mates,” so why do we attempt to replicate it in the innovation space as brands look to meet startups?

For some reason, the industry has embraced an ephemeral speed-dating approach that is more akin to #DTF than eHarmony. Brands are putting out APBs for startups, corralling a cacophony of Dog the Bounty Hunters to scrape the bottom of the barrel in order to compete for a low-cost ransom.

Pitch nights become meat markets, and speed dating becomes one-night stands, when in reality, each and every startup on show is -- and should be looked at as -- a potential soul mate.

To rectify our errant ways, it’s probably a good idea to consider five changes to the current modus operandi: 

1.     Stop looking at startups as a commodity (abundant, interchangeable).

2.     Do away with free-for-all bounties for merciless and mercenary hunters

3.     Abolish speed-dating if there is no intent on the part of the brands to follow up with a second date, or even…

4.     a hard commitment (preferably in writing) to conduct a pilot program, invest time and/or money.

5.     Make sure that every startup that participates (even -- or especially -- the ones that don’t get selected) gets some kind of tangible benefit from the event. Perhaps it’s pitch coaching, presentation feedback or “office hours” advice, etc.

There might be a quick fix for everything today, but when it comes to carefully, respectfully and earnestly looking to make connections between big brands and small startups, the answer lies in curation, not automation; strategy, not tactics; follow-up and follow-through, not one-off checking the box of innovation.

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Check out this @MediaPost article by Evol8tion's Joseph Jaffe here.

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MediaPost Online Spin: I Have Seen The Enemy -- And The Enemy Is Within

I Have Seen The Enemy -- And the Enemy Is Within

Companies are their own worst enemies. The amount of wheel-spinning that takes place to get an initiative in place or even started, only for the rug to be ripped out underneath due to “a new CMO coming in” (or an existing one going out), “a budget cut” or “a reorg,” translates into significant hours expended, and therefore has a very real price tag.

I think it’s important we recognize the tangible cost of dragging our feet, being stuck in holding patterns and/or ultimately having cold feet as a substantial cost of doing business.

The waste of time -- and therefore money -- is mission critical, especially when dealing in a complex, dynamic and turbulent marketplace, with -- let’s face it -- extremely scarce resource (and by scarce resources, I’m talking about talent and time). While we all complain about budget cuts, in reality we are swimming in obscene excessive amounts of money that go into the temporal renting of multitasking eyeballs (yes, I’m talking about YOU, 30-second spot).

As a writer and speaker, I get to clench my fist and shake it disapprovingly at you a lot. You agree with me and yet you do nothing about it.

As a consultant and “agency” guy, I get to feel the short stick by being on the receiving end of your constant “reorgs” and additional approvals and reviews.

But honestly, don’t worry about me -- this is about you. I’m really worried about you.

Did you ever stop and think that all this time lost is actually hurting the current and future state of your business? In other words, hastening the next reorg and restructure? Your inability to get anything done that is different, original, unique and/or innovative is without question putting your own continuity and value INTO question.

Seriously, consider the ROI of not doing anything. It’s a Return on Inertia that is ironically very measurable both as an opportunity cost (past/hours) and opportunity lost (future/execution).

Instead, consider the analogy of waiting in a very long line. You’ve stood for an hour and you’re strongly considering calling it quits and walking away. Only, you’ve already spent an hour and who knows, the wait might only be another 30 minutes or so. And then before you know it, it’s 90 minutes or 2 hours. Now you DEFINITELY can’t walk away, because you’ve invested 2 hours, which is much more than the hour. And then it’s three hours -- and so on.

Why not apply the same logic to your projects? Stay the course!. Consider all the hours and legwork that got you this far and use that as the incentive to keep going.

And if all else fails, consider this: “If you’re not adding to your legacy, you’re adding to your eulogy.”

You can quote me on that if you like.

For more wisdom from Joseph Jaffe visit www.jaffejuice.com and follow him @jaffejuice.