Tag: Apple

Coke, enduring and endearing

The verdict is in. Marketing folks all know by now that top of the list reigns COKE.

My first wage (selling Vietnamese worthless currency in Subic Bay on my way to the US a few days after the war had ended) was spent on Coke, from a vending machine. I remembered til this day the taste, slightly burning but thirst-satisfying.

A few days before that, when we first landed on the Bay, a priest and a nun, one with a sandwich, the other with a coke, welcomed us to safety.

No wonder the brand sticks.

It was there, welcoming survivors.

(The priest by the way stood not on the beach, but by the water, waiting).

I am aware of controversies surrounding water plants in India to supply for Coca Cola plants.

But as a brand, it has so far stood the test of time.

Heinz pickles and ketchup should have come close. Hershey chocolate also. (in time of uncertainty as we are currently in, consumers cling to brand steady)

http://images.businessweek.com/ss/06/07/top_brands/source/1.htm

But beverages like Coke is hard to beat.

It engages all your senses: taste, touch, smell, visual and even auditory (as you pop open the can, you hear that sizzling sound).

Branding is emotional, even primal.

Anybody can put sugar and water together in a can, and slap a logo on it.

But somehow, one strand at a time, Coke manages to stand tall. It made a mistake with New Coke. But then, out of crisis, we got Coke Classic.

Coke doesn’t stray and respond hastily to tyranny of the moment.

It is rooted in Atlanta, home also to CNN and CDC.

Between those two, no virus can escape undetected and unannounced.

Google is working frantically on Google ME. It will be a personal branding engine. Can you imagine near 7 billion people trying to get online, and get in line  for their 15-minute of digital fame. We will need millions of server farms to accommodate these digital passports.

Personal branding will be to the next generation what reputation and trust were to our village elders.

Except, in this global village, the branding bar is set really high, thanks to COKE. Eagles’ latest CD tried to imitate Coke wavy graphic.

And I can’t remember the time without a can of Diet Coke next to me. That was before the mobile phone took over that sacred spot. Speaking of which, Apple however “hot” couldn’t even make the top 10 list . Something can’t be “coked up” overnight.

Happiness all around

If I were the man who sold my company for almost a Billion dollars, I would go off to Rock concerts around the world, instead of sitting down to write a book.

But Zappos former CEO thinks differently. He wants to go on a crusade. That crusade is to “deliver happiness”.

Moving people up the Maslow‘s scale, customers and employees alike.

Bezos saw the potential in Zappos.

So they deliver shoes with return/exchange No Question asked.

Nordstrom in a box.

Shoes and ties used to be made in Italy.

Now in China.

As the costs of production go down, competition goes up, companies like Zappos-now-Amazon, deliver the intangible “and the shoes is you”.

Verizon’s campaign “you rule the air” resonates “Empire of the Air” (back then, it refers to radio spectrum).

So, we are down to ads which speak of either You or I (Ipad, I phone).

What happens to He or She? or the Softer side of Sears?

BTW, the World Cup field invader was a T-shirt designer from Italy (Superman shirt).

Superman will be detained in South Africa long after this Sunday’s final is over (perhaps to help w/ super clean-up of the very field he invaded).

Poetic justice.

Back to Zappos. From top to toes, the only item that needs try on the most is shoes. Yet Zappos manages to turn this rule of thumb on its head: go ahead and put them on. Order online, we deliver and keep delivering until the shoes are fit.

Who would have thought of that (maybe besides Victoria Secret).

Imagine Playboy with similar campaign: “go ahead and view the video. And if you are not satisfied for any reason – 3D version included – you can return and money back guaranteed. Oh, must be 18 to order (but not to view).

So, modern-day success stories come back to old day success stories; keep the employees happy, in turn, keep the customers happy, which lead to happy stakeholders. In Zappos’ case, Sequoia Capital.

Starbucks plundered a bit until Howard Shultz is back at the helm (Apple and Dell both had similar epiphany).

What they should have done is “deliver happiness”, then sold to Amazon, then wrote a book which in turn is delivered by Amazon who bought the company in the first place. This time, it’s in both Kindle version and in print. Happiness in a box or in bits. China is taking a chapter from this playbook. It has to deal with workers’ demand.

Unhappy workers make for unhappy customers. Ford learned this early in his “Wheels for the world” dream. He paid people decent wage and turned them into customers.

Happiness all around.

tricycle economy

Easy to propel forward. Easy to stop and stand still.

No fear of falling (gravity) and no incentive to pedal forward (inertia).

The blessing and curse of a stimulus-dependent economy.

To move  forward, one needs to fight both gravity and inertia.

An extra wheel offers the illusion that things are stable and safe. But it does not create momentum.

If we start with Apple and ATT network, then where are the “B”‘s companies which are the engines of growth? BP?

Then we got C for China. They are going to play soccer today on world’s stage.

This comes after their space exploration and oil exploration.

China has government subsidies as well, But it empowers the province level to bid for businesses.

And if we skipped to S, we have Singapore. And it is a success story there.

Singapore now allows casinos. But only after it opened to tons of industries and foreign companies with rep offices.

Singapore economy is not run on three-wheels.

When you are busy, like Apple having sold 1.7 million I-phones 4 in a  few days, you don’t rely on third wheel, or any wheel.

You start flying, on adrenaline. Confidence feeds itself. Fear of falling on this side of  winning keeps one humble, but not from moving forward.

The wheel needs to come off to return our economy to a fast-moving Tour-de-Lance. G-20 countries seem to agree. Our muscles will be sore.

It will be good for us because muscles toned are muscles healed. Just another paradox.

Other countries, like China, have to struggle with limited language, limited natural resources and limited world trade (it barely joined WTO at the turn of the century), yet it hums along. Hence, besides IQ, EQ and SQ, we will need CQ (not the magazine, but C for confidence. Yes, we can). History tends to reward those who tried and failed than those who failed to try. We need that frontier mentality. Bold thinking, ballsy moves and gut-level execution. Time to take off that extra wheel.

 

Third place, third screen, third world

Known as the third place (away from home and work), Starbucks did not stop after opening up in Forbidden City, China.

It has just opened for business in Vietnam (where the I-phone, our third screen – after TV and desktop – recently made a stirring appearance).

Vietnam young consumer segment and older generations with French-cafe habit are low-hanging fruit.

It will have to acquire prime real estate and make an inroad into tourist centers, or M&A with existing Viet-Thai International who operates Highland coffee chain.

Either way, the WiFi Third Place is here in once Third World., Cheryl Crow‘ s pipe-in music (if it makes you happy, and why the hell are you so sad).  After all, Hard Rock cafe has beaten Starbucks to the punch.  Now the hard part is how to translate those “tall ice latte” into Vietnamese.

Those slim bodies are ready to put on some weight.  Soon, location-based promotion will pop up on those I-phones, showing tourists where to get a foamy caffeine fix. It’s no longer Third World but where ever there is a Third Place with Third Screen, that’s home.

No need for coded song (White Christmas) to launch an evacuation. Just stay put for the next Cheryl Crow’s spin on an old Carpenter’s song “While life goes on around him everywhere he’s playing solitaire”. Third Place, third screen, anywhere.

Reflections on connections

The medium (social network) resembles Amazon software source code (we recommend to you these people, read their profiles).

You have to open a personal account like you would at Harmony.com, and boom, you start the handshakes : “Hello, my name is…”.

Personal branding 2.0. Except, when it comes to cross-cultural connection, the First and Last names in Vietnamese are in reverse.

With one or two middle names in the mix, good luck at finding your high school friends. I couldn’t. We met again in the late 80’s.

But I can’t find him on LinkedIn.

Anyhow, LinkedIn has made it as a serious site for professionals to keep in contact, keep each other updated . It is like an elevator that takes

you up to the roof top to join an exclusive party in progress.

There are a variety of personality in life, and online.

Some just show up for the event. Others want to get the most out of it.

For me, I enjoy being exposed to links that I otherwise would miss.

It’s as if through my old and new acquaintances, I have a window to a whole new world (without leaving my desktop).

And not to mention Connections of connections.

The network effect.

At some point, we will be “connection-overloaded”. Like an old teacher at a reunion, who can recognize an old student’s face but cannot recall his name.

But one thing is for sure: we will never be alone again, professionally. There will always be someone out there who needs to hire and fire, to explore an opportunity or recruit a candidate. Or stumble upon an aha moment. And most beautiful of all, when there is a shared event (9/11 or Haiti), we grieve together, as human family should.

No matter how you want to stratify this, at the core, we all want the same thing: building an enduring personal brand, in an increasingly globalized world. Competition gave way to collaboration. And the industrial mind-set is so passe in this Post-industrial age (cloud computing and mobile computing) that if we refused to change, it would be like riding a horse carriage, reading under a lantern. Ford and Edison have done well with or without the buy-in of the Amish.

For my 300 Linked- in friends, you are my Amish family. Interacting locally (on LinkedIn), while living globally. That way, I won’t be like a sales colleague who was caught staring at the office phone and said, “it doesn’t ring”. Well, pick it up and call someone. Anyone. You are in sales. And not at an in-bound call center.

And in this Web 2.0 environment, Google them first before making that call. And be sure to first Google yourself, to see it in the eyes of the beholder.

 

Nano in the wind

Kansas didn’t expect its slow number to be a hit, but there it was: Dust in the Wind.

I am privy to have met three gentlemen, all Vietnamese nano technology scientists.

Through them, I learn about our next frontier, not out there, but right here e.g. coconut shells from which carbon nano tubes can be extracted with the right equipment and technique.

It will be a while before these findings found themselves into your Wal-mart stores.

But for now, nano tech has defense, health care, pharmaceutical and solar applications.

I am sure the ethicist and novelist have debated the implications of nano toxicity and runaway technology (Prey).

We need those debates just as we had when the atomic bomb was first invented.

As a nation, I don’t think we have responded well to Secretary of Energy Chu’s call to action (that if all our roofs get a new coat of white paint, we would reduce carbon emission substantially). The upcoming Kyoto summit should divide up carbon ration per nation.

Nano is the new plastic. Dustin Hoffman‘s counselor would have to redub his line  in “the Graduate“. Every 40 years or so, we see a new game changer e.g. from dirty coal to clean room. I’d rather see creative destruction than self-destruction.

Next Gen has grown up digitally e.g. Kindle, Reader and whatever else. Broadcast your line, your script and your ads to our hand-held device.

24/7 streaming. “We are mad like hell, and we won’t take it anymore”, yelled a generation of Network audience.

This time, they seem more in control, and participate in reallocating “power, to the people”. Nobody is leading this time.

Just the Net which is neutral. Emanuel, White House Counsel, or Emanuel, Fox News White House correspondent, both are treated the same, as far as the Net is concerned. Just 1 and 0, at whatever broadband speed you buy.

All that remains…nano in the wind. Years from now, Kansas’ Dust in the Wind is stilled listened to, more than all their other rock numbers combined. Quite unintended. Just like our many scientific discoveries, among them, nano technology.

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I am “FONT” of you

The New Zealand health-care admin lady wanted to go for broke with her emphatic mode (ALL CAPS).

She got what she had wanted: people’s and the court’s attention. Fired, compensated but out of a job.

http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/148175

To make sure forms were filled correctly, she applied a new tactic, ALL CAPS, and perhaps not without a dose of her own rudeness. People were made to feel “small” , their intelligence insulted. It’s her cheap “high” at the expense of  co-workers. It’s like the Bad Behavior Brigade who try to patrol the Parisian streets for Urine Sauvage where it says:

“DO NOT URINATE HERE”.

The court sided with her, not her employer.

It’s all in the font.

IKEA changed its font on the “I” and got complaint mail.

This reminds me of Readers Digest, especially the large print issues, which has just filed for bankruptcy and will be available only 10 times a year (down from 12).

Not sure their font size will shrink or not, but readership certainly has. Remember the Saturday Evening Post?

There is no reason to apply all CAPS (only when your key board got stuck, or it’s a life-threatening situation e.g. SOS!).

It’s an equivalent of shouting and screaming.

The co-workers were offended. The boss was offended, and felt that sacking her for the sake of many was worthwhile .

Either way, the culprit got her day in court, but did not learn her lesson. In fact, she will when looking for a job and found that everywhere else, HR have revised their workplace Netiquette, and while at it, they use her for a case study. GOTCHA!

Apple in my eyes

 

Everybody loves a winner.

Today’s is Apple, starts with the “A” in the alphabet.

Not bad for a college drop-out who then learned calligraphy, hung out with “evangelist” Kawasaki, forced out then came back to the tune of billions. He embodied the “I” in I-phone.

I remember my first encounter with personal computers, and of course, it was a Mac.

Silicon Valley back in the early 80’s was brimming with S Asian programmers;  the Vietnamese-American community were working 2 or 3 shifts a day as assemblers (before the offshore trend).

You got to have a garage: garage band, garage sale, and start-up in garage. It’s cool to be in a garage, although it was meant for cars.

In California, you don’t freeze to death by sleeping in a garage, unlike in the cold Winter of the Northeast. Thus, it allows for start-up mindset and venture capitalist, risk takers, trend setters or just drifters.

You definitely find yourself there, because to go further West (young man), you will have to fly to Hawaii.

The best you can do is driving North, through Red Wood, onto Portland and Seattle.

Meanwhile, South of SF is sufficed.

It will keep you busy “coding” for a while.

What Steve Jobs brought to the business world is his signature turtle neck and a little bit of rebellious streak.

Meanwhile, he doesn’t mind to surround himself with the likes of Kawasaki, long before having an Asian partner becomes a hip (Yahoo, YouTube).

People of the Valley are not only Californians, but also tribal members of the Tech world. You don’t talk shop, you talk Tech. You are not the Man, you’re the Burning Man.

I remember attending a speech by Armstrong when he became CEO of AT&T. And having been at various start-ups

such as MCI and Teligent, I had a nagging feeling that you could not fake “coolness”.  In other words, you cannot be both the old IBM (blue suit) and the new new thing (like Apple). The elephant cannot walk.  Sure enough, after some “reality checks”, IBM sold off the hardware division to Lenovo to pursue the higher margin world of convergence and Cloud, while AT&T back then sold off NCR and other assets.

I admired the crowd Apple stores were able to draw in.

Apple takes it to the mass, at a boutique level, and bridges the gap between high-tech and high touch.

It’s been a long way since 1976 garage days. A lot of Chinese take-outs, brainstorming and risk taking.

It’s really tough to be number 1. Now the hard part is to stay King of the Hill. Apple in the post-Jobs era. Gotta Think Different this time.