January 2012 - Otis Regrets... or not

Wrapping up CES 2012

The highlight of my final day at CES 2012 was a visit to Eureka Park, the area at the Venetian dedicated to new products and startup companies. Here are a few items of particular interest.

Cubelets. Designed for kids to learn programming, Cubelets are magnetic blocks that can be snapped together to produce complex reactions. For example, the brightness block determines the available amount of light and turns on the flashlight block, then the distance block tells the driving block to move the whole structure down the table. You can watch a really silly video since my photo didn’t work out well, and you can also preorder an (expensive) prototype kit to ship in March.

Postcard on the Run. An iPhone or Android app that lets you choose a photo, write a message (including your written signature) then mail it as a physical postcard to an address in your address book. I tried it out and the app was going to charge me $1.99 (including a scratch n sniff layer at 50 cents extra) which is not a bad price compared to buying and mailing a postcard from the post office.

Twykin.com. These guys are doing a mashup of bulletin boards, FAQs, Wikipedia type user written articles and using it to develop as a test case the world’s first crowdsourced customer service application. You’ll have to trust me (and I will have to trust them) on this one since their developer was in an accident just before CES but they promised to get back to me and I’ll do a full piece at some point in the near future.

Blippar. Instead of shooting a QR code with your smartphone that takes you to a website, the Blippar app allows you to interact directly with an augmented reality application. The examples shown by this UK company include a ketchup label that allowed you to turn the label into pages you can flip through, and a retail page in which you can order directly from the app.

SurfEasy. This is a USB dongle that fits into a credit card-size carrier. On it are your browser preferences and passcodes with bank-level encryption so you can just plug into a public device and go right to work. There’s no storage on the device, but it comes with 2 GB of cloud storage. It’s a bit pricey at $60, but solves a problem for folks who use public computers in what looks like a complete and well thought-out execution.

That’s it for CES 2012. See you next year.

Bests of CES, 2012

Best marketing: Samsung Note. This is the new device that’s small enough to use as a phone yet big enough to use as a tablet, soon to be announced for AT&T. (I want one!) To show off its capabilities, they had two artists doing portraits of showgoers using the special pen that comes with the device, and all their advertising features examples of these portraits.

Kodak at CES 2012 — Kodak "Sharing Solutions" at CES 2012

Best “dead man walking” imitation: Kodak. Even though they’re openly attempting to sell off their units to avoid bankruptcy, they were in their exhibit space maybe because they’d already paid for it. There was only a single wall of cameras, which they now call “sharing solutions”; more irony, they’ve now started packaging their inkjet cartridges in boxes that look like Tri-X film boxes.

LG 3D TV at CES 2012 — Intro to the LG display area at CES 2012

Best commitment to 3D TV: LG. They ask you to put on the glasses before you enter their space, and leave them on because there’s just one 3D TV after another. I still predict a short lifetime for this fad and think it will wither once everybody who wants a 3D TV has one. The summer Olympics are being broadcast in 3D, I learned at the show, so that will be a tipping point one way or the other.

Best waste of time: Justin Bieber. He was standing doing something in the middle of the Vody robotics booth, and a huge press of people were seeing nothing except the back of each other’s heads. The C/Net camera, a few rows back, did capture a wisp of his famous locks. Meanwhile, other showgoers were actually learning something about technology.

New York Deli at LVCC — New York Deli has great sandwiches

Best food without leaving the show: Uncle Joel & Darryl’s New York Deli, toward the back of the central hall. Real deli sandwiches with a pickle and excellent cole slaw and potato salad, for just a couple bucks more than you’d pay on the street.

Casio Bluetooth Watch demo — Casio watch tells you when your phone is ringing.

Best example of missing the boat: Casio. As the world switched to smartphones, they made a strategic decision to stick with watches. New this year, a Bluetooth watch that will alert you when a call is coming in. Hey, I have a phone for that.

Panasonic kicks eco-butt at CES 2012

If you are at CES, be sure to check out the “eco ideas” section of the Panasonic exhibit. Once again, they score with irresistible concepts and catchphrases for ideas that may or may not ever become practical but should be. A racecar that rockets across the Australian outback under its own solar power, and beats its nearest competitor by an hour. A planned community in Singapore built within a solar/wind farm on the site of an old Panasonic factory, so energy is immediately available for use without being stored or transmitted. An electric car that is recharged wirelessly, and warms its passengers with its onboard heat pump.

Panasonic 3D screen at CES — Panaonic's 3D screen, in which the image is projected on building blocks

Panasonic demo queen Joey Lao — The indefatigable Joey Lao

Be sure you get your demo from the indefatigable Joey Lao, who was featured a couple of years in my still-popular post on the heat pump washer/dryer. And don’t miss the showcase video, a tour de force in which the screen itself, not the camera, is in 3D.

Marketing Makeover at CES 2012

One of my favorite events at CES is Steven J. Leon’s Showstoppers. Tech companies large and small rent a 6-foot booth space for 4 hours so they can convince reporters and bloggers (this is a press event) how cool they are in hopes of getting coverage.

A real niche product — Some of these companies, like Twonky, have a real niche product.

Because I’m here to study how companies market themselves, I like to look at how good they are in their signage. With 100+ companies in a large ballroom, I’m not going to listen to everybody’s elevator pitch. It’s amazing how many just put up a sign with their name, giving no clue what they do. Others have slogans or graphics that are edgy or plays on words but, again, give no clue what the product or service is.

I’d like to do a marketing makeover of some of these guys, similar to the lightening rounds I used to do with Carol Worthington Levy at DMA events. Someone would bring up their catalog or mail pack or ad and we’ll have to fire off quick ideas to make it better. Some of our ideas were better than others, but it’s amazing how many obvious improvements are hiding in plain sight.

One company that could use a makeover is YurBuds, with its “earbuds that won’t fall out.” Please, don’t make them look like implants. Don’t make them red like blood. Don’t make the cords look like blood dripping from your ears. Change those things and your product will be less creepy and sell better.

Another candidate is EmPower (note unhelpful jargony name), a company that makes eyeglasses with built in electronics in the earpiece that changes them from reading glasses to distance glasses at the touch of a finger. Invisible bifocal glasses that do this cost hundreds; these are $12 and available already at 1200 opticians. Nice story… but they miss the boat with a marketing display that features the fact they are glasses. Yes, we know that. It is the hidden electronics that makes them different. To demonstrate that, show them as anything BUT glasses.

Nicole Messier demos Kogeto panoramic camera.

The only truly new product I saw was from Kogeto: a camera that attaches to your iPhone and will take a panoramic photo which you can then upload to Facebook or a similar app; the viewer uses a slider to move the image around. It was so cool that, true story, I did not even notice it was my pal Nicole Messier doing the demo. Their signage could use some work however.

Welcome to the year of crappy customer service

2011 was a year I’m happy to be done with. So, I expect, are Netflix, Bank of America and Verizon, who saw their ill-advised attempts to insert a direct tap into their customers’ wallets flame out in 2 months, 5 weeks and 2 days respectively.

Doesn’t anybody do customer research any more? Wouldn’t it be a better idea to find out how your customers are going to react before you implement a toxic new policy? B of A and Verizon wanted to charge customers for using a debit card and paying a bill online; since those policies subsequently were reversed they’re fiscally in the same place as before but with bad press and a lot of pissed-off customers. Netflix soldiered on with its plan to separate its DVD delivery and streaming content, but paid a terrible price in subscribers and market value. How is any of this a benefit to the shareholders?

I guess it’s good news that the cycle of mea culpa is getting shorter, as noted above. But meanwhile I’ve noticed a couple of new assaults on my wallet from smaller companies and wonder if it’s part of a larger trend to put short term revenues ahead of longer term customer loyalty and common sense.

I previously wrote about Boingo and their “good news” that I could now download an updated version of their wireless roaming app that allowed me to use just two devices in my account rather than have unlimited access. I cancelled, but then I recently found myself in the BWI airport needing wireless access and was tempted by an offer to get a $25 American Express gift card after 2 months of service. So I re-upped, after discovering out something interesting: of the three different devices I was carrying, each received a different offer when I went to boingo.com. My laptop (where I’d received the email) told me I could join for $9.95 a month and made no mention of the gift card. My tablet offered the gift card and $9.95 a month. My Android had the gift card for the rate of $7.95 a month so that’s how I joined. But I don’t need a wireless service on my cell phone since it has an unlimited data plan so I went through the process of registering my laptop and tablet and was told oops, I’ve reached my 2 device limit.

Turns out the very act of signing up had registered the cell as one of my two devices and now my only option is to cancel it, effective at the end of the billing period one month hence. So I’m down to one device during this period and then can register my second device. Just way too much clunkiness for customer satisfaction and what makes it all more irritating is that Boingo has this breezy website where a message “oops… something has gone wrong” that pops up way too often and only serves to increase my irritation with that man behind the curtain.

A more disturbing revenue tactic was applied by Bill Me Later after I tried to take advantage of an offer for $15 off when I paid for an eBay transaction through their service. I was told online that, for unspecified reasons, they were unable to process my payment so fine, I paid through Paypal. I then started to get daily voicemails from somebody who left a message saying “This is the fraud department at ramamafoqw calling about a recent transaction…” They didn’t exactly say ramamafoqw but they did mumble the company name. After several calls I realized they were saying “Bill Me Later.” I called the number and got a message “we’re sorry, no one is available.” Finally their representative reached me live and it turned out the purpose of this “fraud alert” was to set up an account, but not offer me the $15 credit since that one had expired.

So that’s downright deceptive… using the fraud alert concept, which has struck terror into the heart of every consumer at one time or another, to make the customer pay attention so you can sell them a service. (And how did they get my number? Well, turns out Bill Me Later is owned by Paypal…) What this has in common with Boingo, and also the three giant companies mentioned above, is that nobody applied the sniff test. As in, “this will hopefully make us some money but is it going to make our customers more loyal and satisfied, or less?” If that question is no longer relevant, then it’s going to be a long year.

P.S. Reading over this post, my experiences do sound a bit down in the weeds and yes I do have better things to do than chasing after $25 gift cards. But these are the hooks marketers use to get customers and prospects involved, and if they don’t provide a satisfactory customer experience or are perceived as deceptive then sales will suffer and more than likely we in the marketing department will get the blame.