Tech Archives - Otis Regrets... or not

Smart homes and smart marketing at CES 2015

Oomi Smart Home system — What’s Oomi? Tell me why I should care.

“Smart homes” is a useful topic for a marketing review because, while it’s exciting (or maybe ominous) to think about gadgets turning out the lights, managing security or monitoring our baby’s heartbeat, it’s up to the marketers to tell us exactly what their specific products do. Witness a few examples, good and bad, from the recent Winter 2015 Consumer Electronics Show.

Smart Home famil — Generic smart home marketing

Oomi makes the mistake of thinking others are as interested in their product as they are. “What’s Oomi?” was the headline of their booth at the Showstoppers press event. Without a benefit or point of reference, it’s not likely many will stick around to find out. The subtext “the first smart home that’s actually smart” provides context but is too clever for its own good: I don’t know that there’s a perception of lots of smart home products that are stupid. It’s a solution for a problem that may not exist. And meanwhile, we haven’t learned anything about the product. (Like many others, it’s a set of modules that work together to handle various home automation functions.)

Not much better are a number of OEM booths I passed in the nether regions of the second floor in South Hall. By focusing entirely on technology, these importers make their systems generic. There’s a “home” graphic but otherwise they lean heavily on the “what” rather than the “why”. This is a common problem with marketing at the CES where thousands of new products and unfamiliar concepts jostle for attention simultaneously. In a few seconds as I stumble down the aisle you need to tell me not only what you are selling, but why I should care.

For smart homes, it’s obviously about emotion, and the shoestring display for “Teddy the Guardian” does this very well. In fact, the signage doesn’t even say what the product is but the baby tcotchkes make a strong emotional appeal and you hang around long enough to find out it’s a teddy bear with all kinds of baby monitoring built in. There was a lot of interest in this one.

Finally, WeMo is a family of devices that monitor and automate activity in the home. Belkin created a mock home and then stuck devices all over the places with captions describing hypothetical problems and “can I WeMo that?” Compare this to Oomi, which seems to do the exact same thing, and you can see why Belkin’s marketing is so good. It’s a complete conversation that combines technology and the human factor and is fun to interact with as well. The booth was packed.

The Idiot of Things visits CES 2015 Las Vegas

Internet of Everything Now Open — *Qualcomm’s takeoff on the Internet of Things*

I saw IoT all over Las Vegas on buses and billboards, and asked a booth staffer for an explanation. She said it stands for the Internet of Things and then proceeded to explain what that meant. I already knew the concept, just not the acronym but too late; I felt like a clueless Luddite. Anyway, it is indeed the Year of the Thing at the Consumer Electronics Show with heavy emphasis on apps for connecting mobile devices to all aspects of your daily life.

Pet monitoring gadgets — *Lots of pet monitoring devices at CES 2015*

Over two days I saw many gadgets for monitoring every aspect of your fitness, or your child’s, or even your pet’s. You can buy an electric toothbrush that has Bluetooth that connects to an app to show you how effectively you’re brushing. You can control your home remotely or turn your car into a nerve center for managing what will happen when you arrive while hopefully not getting into an accident due to distracted multitasking. (As a car company executive pointed out in a keynote, one thing that has to be sorted out is liability when a self driving car gets into an accident.)

3D family — *3D printing and printed 3D products are huge at CES. Here, your family miniaturized for posterity.*

What’s hot this year, in addition to things? Drones, lots of drones. 3D printers, and products and services connected to 3D printing. Smart cars that can be controlled with hand gestures (Volkswagen), will park themselves (Hyundai) or run on fuel cells (several). Fitbits and other performance monitoring electronics on steroids, so you don’t have to be because your conditioning is so efficient and awesome. And endless lineups of 4k televisions and monitors, each more vivid and breathtaking than the last.

What’s not? 3D television. (I saw just one at the show, billed as the world’s largest glassless meaning you don’t have to wear goggles.) Google Glass is ice cold… again, just one showing. And very few laptops, tablets or conventional PCs…. This was a gadget show, and it’s fully returned to its roots as a “consumer” show with very little business spillover. (Microsoft, which had an enormous presence in years past, was behind closed doors with a single hospitality suite.)

I’ve got a few reports coming up over the next couple of weeks:

Some interesting “mobility experiments” described in the keynote by Ford President Mark Fields
Best and worst of CES: some niche concepts that fill a narrow but credible role and others that left me shaking my head
Marketing makeover: I look at how, and how not, to present the “smart home” concept based on examples from many exhibitors
A historical retrospective on CES—an institution that would seem to have no history, since it’s always looking for the next big thing

Stay tuned.

Persado is not going to put copywriters out of business. (Whew.)

Persado Try It Page — *Persado “Try It” page; click the image to try it for yourself*

A recent article on artificial intelligence in the Wall Street Journal had me trembling with fear. It described a technology called Persado which writes emails and landing pages for multivariate testing, stating each component of the message in an infinite number of ways which can be mixed-and-matched through AI to surface the result that gets the best response.

“A creative person is good but random,” according to Lawrence Whittle, head of sales at Persado. (Note that the reporter relies on the sales department, rather than talking to a technologist.) “We’ve taken the randomness out by building an ontology of language.” The article goes on to explain how Persado deconstructs each ad into five components including “emotion words”, product descriptors, the CTA, text position and images and then offers up every conceivable option. (Actually I guess it does not offer them up but simply inserts them into an automated test.)

I experimented with the “play with the technology” page today (after taking over a month to get up the courage to visit the site) and am greatly relieved. The static page is shown here; you can click through to the site and try it for yourself. The “free storage” subhead, button and the text in between will dance around as you mouse over them showing all the options Persado has come up with.

However, there’s one thing that’s obviously wrong with this example landing page that Persado doesn’t address, at least in the demo. Any cub copywriter can tell you the biggest problem with the ad, which is that the company’s logo is used as the headline and the true head, a benefit statement about free storage, becomes the subhead. The logo head is actually completely unnecessary since the logo is repeated in the screen shot of the smartphone. (To be fair, Persado lists “image” as one of the things it tests, but it’s not happening here. It would be embarrassing if they put up a demo which does not properly represent the product.)

What Persado is going to kill is not copywriters, but boredom. I’ll certainly experiment with headlines and different button text, and if there’s more than one way to express a key selling point I’ll give my client options. But I don’t have the patience, and you’re not going to pay me, for micro-experimenting with every word in the copy. Persado, be my guest.

NetSuite vs. SAP: using competitive advertising to reposition your company

NewtSuite SAP Fired — *NetSuite “Fire SAP” ad in Wall Street Journal; click the picture to see it larger*

We’ve talked in the past (and you can read in my book) about strategies for competitive advertising—promotions in which you talk about a competitor as much or more as yourself. It’s a good strategy for smaller companies because, by positioning themselves against the bigger competitor, they can gain instant credibility. It’s probably not so smart for the bigger guy, who would be better off pretending the little guy doesn’t even exist.

There’s a third reason to do competitive advertising: to position yourself in a new way, for a new audience, even if you are a big and established company. That’s what is happening with the NetSuite campaign currently running. Both NetSuite and SAP handle the back office “plumbing” of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and other large-scale data management. The difference is that SAP is an established and somewhat stodgy company, while NetSuite is Software-as-a-Service. They operate in the cloud.

Notice, however, that cloud is never mentioned in this ad. NetSuite is a company that does the same thing as SAP but is more agile. Maybe the idea is to position them with IT executives who are suspicious of abstracting their key functions and think that important data should never leave the premises. This ad gives NetSuite an opening to talk to them before that objection comes up. They use the reader’s built-in perceptions of SAP, bad and good, as a springboard they can use to say “we do that too” and then differentiate themselves.

I do wonder about the creative execution that seems a little casual and slangy when a stodgy, white-paper approach would have been the obvious way to go. I doubt this target does a lot of text messaging. On the other hand, this is the kind of sophomoric humor that appeals to engineers.

I’ll be keeping my eye on this campaign to see how successful it is (which you can generally judge by how long it keeps running) and what this first foray leads to next. Stay tuned.

Obamacare with a New York accent

As a small business owner, I turn out to be one of those people who doesn’t get to keep the health insurance I like. We got the letter from our provider yesterday, advising us to go right to the New York State site thus avoiding the healthcare.gov train wreck. Unfortunately, mystateofhealth.ny.gov isn’t much better. I tried to register about 30 times each time getting the message that my session had expired as soon as I hit the “submit” button. It didn’t help that I had to get over a check of my preferred username to be sure no one else had it, and answer a particularly hard to read Captcha. Why in the world would they think bots would be trying to set up health accounts?

My wife had better luck today and got a good way through the application before the website went down. There were two drop-down menus at different points, one to identify our current health carrier and the other to identify our auto insurance provider (not sure why they need this info). And here’s the thing: the menu listings were in random order, vs. alphabetical. There were easily 100 health carriers and even more auto insurers so you just have to scroll back and forth till you find the one you’re looking for, and I bet there are lots of mistaken choices. My wife was able to find our health insurer. But when it got to auto insurance she scrolled and scrolled, back and forth, and finally realized our carrier (USAA) wasn’t on the list. So she put down “none” because that was the best choice available. Doesn’t exactly help the state exchange with the actuarial part.

Where do they get the people who code these sites? Isn’t there any kind of darwinism in government that rewards people who strive harder to do a good job? I know a lot of you will say “what a stupid question” but I really do try to have faith that people entrusted to help other people will take that responsibility seriously. So this is discouraging, and I hope we don’t get sick before we get insurance.

How to be a good tech writer

The other day a marketing colleague asked me to write him an email which he’d pass along to his CEO, about why I should be hired to write technical copy. Feel free to use these selling points in your own self-marketing, assuming of course they apply.

The first thing I believe about tech writing is that you need to understand the product—-not necessarily on a programmatic level, but the problem it solves, and why it does this better than other options. I’m not a scientist but I love to learn how things work.

Secondly, I believe that technology buyers are people with the same personal motivations as those buying consumer products. They want to be secure, avoid conflict and achieve recognition and in an indirect way technical products help them do this. They get promoted because they’ve contributed to the bottom line. They get to go home on time instead of staying to placate angry users.

Finally, I always ask to interview the sales team so I can understand the objections that are typically raised and the hot buttons that get prospects excited about the product. I go to CES most every year (and attended Comdex before that) and spend most of my time hanging back near kiosks to watch sales engineers do technical presentations.

I believe these steps are missing in a lot of the copy I read for technical companies which reads like a laundry list of specs. I spent most of my career working in the Bay Area, and my work was typically lead generating direct response that was tested against other messages and I usually won.

To my fellow copywriters, I’ll add that I won consistently not so much because I was a dramatically better writer, but because I was diligent in my preparation. As Yogi Berra may have said, half of success is showing up.

Tech gifts for the techie dad

Father’s Day is a great time to give dad techie gadgets he wouldn’t necessarily buy for himself. Here are some ideas.

1. Last minute gift: an Apple App Store or Android gift card. Who doesn’t need more apps for their mobile device? You can buy prepaid Apple gift cards at most any Target and many supermarkets; if they don’t have the App Store card an iTunes card would work just as well. For Android, Amazon Gift Card – E-mail – Amazon Appstore will work just as well and you can order it for immediate delivery via email. (Unfortunately, Amazon does not seem to have a gift card with a picture of the Android robot on it.)

2. Home Depot gift: a cordless lithium drill/driver set. Every dad has an old cordless drill in a drawer, but the new-generation lithium battery technology is a dramatic step forward. They’re lighter, more powerful and the battery lasts far longer. I have one by Bosch but whatever is on sale will do; take a look and see if you can find a combo set with flashlight, radio and other add-ons that run off the same batteries. This is definitely something dad would never buy for himself but, take it from me, would like to have.

3. Grilling dad gift: temperature monitor for the Weber. The point where dad gets serious about barbecue is when he starts to think about temperature control. Fortunately, there are sturdy aftermarket thermometers like this one which he add in to his existing kettle cooker in a few minutes by drilling a hole, then securing the thermometer with a nut and a washer. If you want to go high tech, my friend Steve would send you to the Thermoworks site where they have all manner of remote doneness sensors, instant read laser thermometers and such.

I am fortunate enough to have all the above (well, except for the Thermowerks tchotchkes) and am hoping for Why Knot?: How to Tie More Than Sixty Ingenious, Useful, Beautiful, Lifesaving, and Secure Knots! by Philippe Petit, a high wire artist to whom well tied knots are obviously important. And when you think about it, back in the day, knots were the original high technology.

CES 2013: start the party without me

Alas, a schedule conflict will keep me from attending CES this week in Las Vegas. My annual prediction* is that this will be the year of the app-liance: a hardware mashup, possibly centered around a tablet but maybe something completely different, that puts together several apps in order to perform a hopefully useful service such as protecting your home, monitoring your diet or organizing your virtual library.

If I were there I’d arrive in time for ShowStoppers and give these good and awful marketers a probably unappreciated critique. I’d head for the Panasonic booth first thing next morning to see how they’re pushing the edge of the eco-envelope this year. I’d save time for Eureka Avenue and see what the startups are up to. (Hopefully they’ll fare better than Twykin last year.) And of course, I’d take in a buffet or two.

Have fun, be careful, and never draw to an inside straight. Hopefully I’ll see you in 2014.

* See last year’s eerily prophetic prediction here, in the paragraph about LG.

Nerds are people, too!

Here’s a preview of the KISS panel we’re presenting at the Direct Marketing Association’s annual conference in Las Vegas. Come see us next Wednesday, October 17 at 9 am to get the full story!

When you’re selling complex products and services, that often have a high price tag, it’s easy to overcomplicate your marketing message. A copywriter might think, it’s hard to know which of the technical specs is most important so I better include all of them. Or, this buyer will need a lot of information in order to justify the cost. The problem is that ultimately you’re still selling to people. And we can only absorb so much information, especially when we may not have asked for that information in the first place.

The solution is to keep it simple—tell your complicated story in basic human terms that boil down to easily understood story lines and personal benefits. Because even if we’re the chief technology office of a large company, we’re also a human being and we will evaluate rationally but ultimately make an emotional decision.

For example, here are the “Six Universal Buying Motives” as described by Roy Chitwood at Max Sacks International. A powerful appeal may speak to more than one of these emotions. And if you are appealing to none of them you’re going to have a lot harder time making the sale.

1. Desire for gain (usually financial)
2. Fear of loss (again, usually financial)
3. Comfort and convenience
4. Security and protection
5. Pride of ownership
6. Satisfaction of emotion

Now, let’s look at how these might translate into a technology workplace environment:

1. Desire for gain (usually financial)
=career advancement, better performance reviews.
2. Fear of loss (again, usually financial)
=job security, avoidance of unpleasant surprises.
3. Comfort and convenience
=less late hours, fewer angry users/bosses.
4. Security and protection
=systems work as they are supposed to do.
5. Pride of ownership
=taking credit for a new and better solution.
6. Satisfaction of emotion
=elegant systems that make the enterprise work better

The moral: people are still people, even when they’re on the job and deciding which technical products to buy. At the end of the day they want to be praised for their good work, have a comfortable lifestyle because they’ve been promoted, and go home at a reasonable hour instead of having to solve headaches. And you can tell them how your product helps them do this.

There’s lots more KISS (keep it simple) creative on tap from Dawn Wolf, Philip Reynolds and me. Come see us at 9 am on Wednesday, October 17 at the DMA in Las Vegas!

Advice for RIMM: make BlackBerry a prepaid phone

Last week brought yet another dose of terrible news from Research in Motion Limited, the company that makes BlackBerry, and I kicked myself for not going short on RIMM a few weeks back when the stock was more than twice as high as it is now. The handwriting is on the wall for BlackBerry just as for Betamax and HD-TV before them, and the shovels are busy in the boneyard of failed technologies.

BlackBerry, however, has something most other zombie technologies lack: an established user base that is, or was, enthusiastic about the platform. So here’s my plan to save the company: turn BlackBerry into a prepaid phone. This solves the problem of users abandoning BlackBerry for iPhone or Android because they don’t have to; they can continue using their BlackBerries as a backup. Many BB users already have multiple phones (remember Obama on the 2008 campaign trail?) so this concept will be an easy one for them to accept. And a package of text messaging can be sold at an attractive yet profitable price that will allow those thumb virtuosos to continue their real-time updates even while in the air. (I never was able to figure out why this is OK.)

The prepaid texting will be offered at a discount for in-network messages, encouraging current users to continue their text relationships with one another. And RIMM can keep its rock-solid network but, since far less bandwidth will be required with a reduced user footprint and no expectation of rich media, sell or rent off the capacity it doesn’t need.

I’ve never had a BlackBerry myself but have had plenty of prepaid phones. They are useful little gadgets with lots of applications. They’re great for kids who tend to leave them in their pockets when doing laundry, for example. And I am about to buy a TracPhone for a guest house where we’re required to have a phone for some weekend guests; it fits the contract and offers a number for them to give out, yet it’s miles cheaper than installing a landline or VoIP modem. Make the prepaid BlackBerry attractive with an initial offer and I would probably try one. Give me or my kids or guests a taste of that thumb power and we just might get hooked and go for an expanded package. There’s a reason they used to call it “CrackBerry” after all.