A. G. Lafley's concept of opening the door to the outside world to take advantage of the crowdsourcing concept is not only a stark example of the modern digital interactive way of exchanging and promoting ideas but also helping companies small or big (big in this case with P&G) to increase the value of the company.
I had the experience of going to the Innocentive website in one of my prior MBA classes. I can certainly second my thoughts on the effectiveness of the 2-way communication between the recipients and the idea generation team who at the end of the day benefit monetarily.
As Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystem, puts it very aptly, the crowd clearly outperforms any number of employees, something that companies are getting aware of.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Week 2: Threadless & iStockphoto: An accident?
I liked the rhetoric used by the author on crowdsourcing as to how Threadless made money. Was it an accident? Or was it an exploitation of the internet through which it was able to instill passion in the social media to design T-shirts.
Bottom line : the end result is a simple positive skew of the income statement. Less or negligible costs and a whopping revenue to generate a huge profit margin.
One question I would pose is sustainability. Deep diving more on this, how does the company make sure that the design oriented community can be branded to Threadless such that it will stick to them if the company were to expand its product line to more than the T-shirt business.
The other example is iStockphoto. This company is discussed in the article as to how it is part of the crowdsourcing concept that was initiated through the open source movement in software. All this is passion from the people who want o do it and want to discuss and be acknowleged by peers and friends instead of the standard hierarchical corporate organizational concept. However,some of these entrepreneurs end up becoming a disruptive market to the incumbents. The result is that they get acquired by the big guys for a substantial amount, making these entrepreneurs quite wealthy. It is therefore not necessarily an accident! As a side note, only 10% or less of the entrepreneurs make it.
Bottom line : the end result is a simple positive skew of the income statement. Less or negligible costs and a whopping revenue to generate a huge profit margin.
One question I would pose is sustainability. Deep diving more on this, how does the company make sure that the design oriented community can be branded to Threadless such that it will stick to them if the company were to expand its product line to more than the T-shirt business.
The other example is iStockphoto. This company is discussed in the article as to how it is part of the crowdsourcing concept that was initiated through the open source movement in software. All this is passion from the people who want o do it and want to discuss and be acknowleged by peers and friends instead of the standard hierarchical corporate organizational concept. However,some of these entrepreneurs end up becoming a disruptive market to the incumbents. The result is that they get acquired by the big guys for a substantial amount, making these entrepreneurs quite wealthy. It is therefore not necessarily an accident! As a side note, only 10% or less of the entrepreneurs make it.
Week 2: Threadless using brand community for promo
In the week 2 reading, the article on 'The Dawn of Human Networks" is emblematic of the brand community concept that Prof. Frisbie discussed in his podcast for this week's concept.
I like THreadless's campaign of design contests. This brings in new ideas completely free of cost which in turn results in millions of dollars revenue, yet paying the winners a handsome prize. But this total prize amount is simply a fractional amount of revenue. Bottom line is that Threadless costs are rock bottom. Why so? Free idea generation net of prize payment, free promos from the vast online submission and awareness of the T-shirt interested community and just a meager cost of $5 per T-shirt, resulting in huge profit margins.
Besides, the cusomers and the design contest participants all seem to get a sense of empowerment that goes to add a pat on their back for their creativity which in essence is a passion more than making money. This gives us all a sense of satisfaction that we otherwise hardly obtain from our daily working profession which is to a large extent is capital driven.
The silver lining is that their businesses are embraced with a fresh look as evident by their lecture invitations to the Sloan school of Management at MIT.
I like THreadless's campaign of design contests. This brings in new ideas completely free of cost which in turn results in millions of dollars revenue, yet paying the winners a handsome prize. But this total prize amount is simply a fractional amount of revenue. Bottom line is that Threadless costs are rock bottom. Why so? Free idea generation net of prize payment, free promos from the vast online submission and awareness of the T-shirt interested community and just a meager cost of $5 per T-shirt, resulting in huge profit margins.
Besides, the cusomers and the design contest participants all seem to get a sense of empowerment that goes to add a pat on their back for their creativity which in essence is a passion more than making money. This gives us all a sense of satisfaction that we otherwise hardly obtain from our daily working profession which is to a large extent is capital driven.
The silver lining is that their businesses are embraced with a fresh look as evident by their lecture invitations to the Sloan school of Management at MIT.
Week 2: iPhone Forum a free promo dept.
I am in the process of buying an iPhone. WHat do I do? Go no further. It is right here:
iPhone community has an icafe that talks about how to buy one for newbies like me, futher illustrating how they go down the path of enabling Apple to do free promo and marketing.
I used Apple to just highlight how marketing has changed through community branding. The company creates a loyalty brand and once done, the community almost makes a promo dept. free of cost.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Week 2:Apple Brand community
The podcast on brand community deserves so much credit in our contemporary age with the advent of social networking and other cyber technologies that has become part of ur daily lives.
I really liked the analogy that Prof. Frisbie highlighted using Grateful Dead fans and how despite their period going back to the rock n' roll era experimented the concept of brand community. Brand community as manifested by the 'Deadheads' brings out the real experience of the product, the journey of experience of the product with constant improvisation.
Prof. Frisbie brought out several other examples of the 80's. Let me highlight another which is in the entertainment world, Startrek and StarWars fans who form their Darth Vader and Spock club through which Century Fox was still able to reload the first episodes before the filming of the pre-sequels.
The latest ones need no reminders, the strongest to me in my list is the Apple Brand community. I know many collegues of mine would only use Apple products regardless of its price, limited capabilities at Office atleast a few years back. However, its constant experimentation with this loyalty brand community (a large and a strong one) has made Apple products come of age that is on par for desktop/laptop levels. In addition, with the innovative ideas fueled by Steve Jobs that has made the computer/mobile space disruptive in many ways has only received more acceleration through its Apple Stores and Online Apple clubs. As a matter of fact, if one sees a problem with Apple, the response by posting in the Facebook clubs is much faster than any other application or product where one has to wait for the customer support to answer back. In the case of Apple, the brand community is so strong that one can either figure out the solutions from the social Apple Club media postings or get a response almost instantaneously.
I really liked the analogy that Prof. Frisbie highlighted using Grateful Dead fans and how despite their period going back to the rock n' roll era experimented the concept of brand community. Brand community as manifested by the 'Deadheads' brings out the real experience of the product, the journey of experience of the product with constant improvisation.
Prof. Frisbie brought out several other examples of the 80's. Let me highlight another which is in the entertainment world, Startrek and StarWars fans who form their Darth Vader and Spock club through which Century Fox was still able to reload the first episodes before the filming of the pre-sequels.
The latest ones need no reminders, the strongest to me in my list is the Apple Brand community. I know many collegues of mine would only use Apple products regardless of its price, limited capabilities at Office atleast a few years back. However, its constant experimentation with this loyalty brand community (a large and a strong one) has made Apple products come of age that is on par for desktop/laptop levels. In addition, with the innovative ideas fueled by Steve Jobs that has made the computer/mobile space disruptive in many ways has only received more acceleration through its Apple Stores and Online Apple clubs. As a matter of fact, if one sees a problem with Apple, the response by posting in the Facebook clubs is much faster than any other application or product where one has to wait for the customer support to answer back. In the case of Apple, the brand community is so strong that one can either figure out the solutions from the social Apple Club media postings or get a response almost instantaneously.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Week 1: Regarding the Internet making you dumber
The article by Nicholas Carr in the WSJ on "Does the Internet make you dumber?" explains the reasons why the world we live in makes us think shallower and superficial.
The vastness and accessibility of the internet tempts everyone (I am not even sure who doesnt surf the net) to not stay focused in one subject, considering the immense choice of hyperlinks in any website that one opens.
Even if one attempts to host a webpage that seldom has links but indepth content, it unfortunately bores the user due to lack of links. Also, it turns out that almost most of the websites are not even authored in depth, considering the fact that the web authors understand that viewers of their site will simply spend no longer than a few minutes trying to just grasp the concept instead of going deep. They also understand that users who want content go to books to get details. All this has degenerated the thought process of inidviduals, especially the younger generation where unfortunately the schools of learning also encourage or tout themselves as providers of digital media or content for their classes.
So how do we get smarter? Well, humans are the most intelligent race in this planet and we should be cognizant of thie fact that we need to use the web in a discrete manner and not expect it to be 'one in all' source or information library. To elevate ones' cognitive thinking, it is therefore important that each of us make this conscious effort.
The same is true in an earlier blog that I commented on the downfall of newspaper where one can get the essence of true journalism which would only erode if newspaper circulation goes down. End result here is also the same - erosion of cognitive skills.
The vastness and accessibility of the internet tempts everyone (I am not even sure who doesnt surf the net) to not stay focused in one subject, considering the immense choice of hyperlinks in any website that one opens.
Even if one attempts to host a webpage that seldom has links but indepth content, it unfortunately bores the user due to lack of links. Also, it turns out that almost most of the websites are not even authored in depth, considering the fact that the web authors understand that viewers of their site will simply spend no longer than a few minutes trying to just grasp the concept instead of going deep. They also understand that users who want content go to books to get details. All this has degenerated the thought process of inidviduals, especially the younger generation where unfortunately the schools of learning also encourage or tout themselves as providers of digital media or content for their classes.
So how do we get smarter? Well, humans are the most intelligent race in this planet and we should be cognizant of thie fact that we need to use the web in a discrete manner and not expect it to be 'one in all' source or information library. To elevate ones' cognitive thinking, it is therefore important that each of us make this conscious effort.
The same is true in an earlier blog that I commented on the downfall of newspaper where one can get the essence of true journalism which would only erode if newspaper circulation goes down. End result here is also the same - erosion of cognitive skills.
Week 1: Concept of Occasionalization
The article authored by consultants from Booz Allen & Hamilton has captured and explained the concept of internet marketing by contrasting it to traditional marketing methods (offline) based on segmentation.
Occasionalization is the paradigm change in the marketing concept when focusing on internet or digital marketing. The usage has been very aptly categorized into 7 ways, something each of us can resonate in our daily lives both socially and professionally.
No longer is age, gender, wealth and other demographic data is sufficient in current marketing methods. In fact, it is often a failure since surfers of all ages and demographics spend time in 7 different occassions ranging from quickies which lasts less than a minute to greater than an hour for surfing. These behaviorial patterns based on 4 variables such as:
- Session length
- Time per page
- Category concentration
- Site familiarity
which appear to be well understood as per the article is a useful tool for marketeers to focus on creation and placement of communications. It turns out three usage occassions - loitering, information please and surfing - are the most likely ways to involve shopping than others. Through detection of these three usage occassions is how marketeers can target ads. They can detect these occasions, there are dfferent methods described in the article that gives them the bandwidth to design different online strategies.
Already, one can get a glimpse of how technology assist marketeers if you go to Google, Yahoo and Amazon to highlight some major and more frequented sites/search engines.
Moving forward, technology is further being developed that can help marketeers target smartphone users especially in the wireless world, where it can detect the identity of the mobile user and thereby figure out the users' details such as age, gender, demographic identity and professional background helping the marketeer to target on the user's interest.
Implementation of hte occasionalization concept is just the beginning.
Occasionalization is the paradigm change in the marketing concept when focusing on internet or digital marketing. The usage has been very aptly categorized into 7 ways, something each of us can resonate in our daily lives both socially and professionally.
No longer is age, gender, wealth and other demographic data is sufficient in current marketing methods. In fact, it is often a failure since surfers of all ages and demographics spend time in 7 different occassions ranging from quickies which lasts less than a minute to greater than an hour for surfing. These behaviorial patterns based on 4 variables such as:
- Session length
- Time per page
- Category concentration
- Site familiarity
which appear to be well understood as per the article is a useful tool for marketeers to focus on creation and placement of communications. It turns out three usage occassions - loitering, information please and surfing - are the most likely ways to involve shopping than others. Through detection of these three usage occassions is how marketeers can target ads. They can detect these occasions, there are dfferent methods described in the article that gives them the bandwidth to design different online strategies.
Already, one can get a glimpse of how technology assist marketeers if you go to Google, Yahoo and Amazon to highlight some major and more frequented sites/search engines.
Moving forward, technology is further being developed that can help marketeers target smartphone users especially in the wireless world, where it can detect the identity of the mobile user and thereby figure out the users' details such as age, gender, demographic identity and professional background helping the marketeer to target on the user's interest.
Implementation of hte occasionalization concept is just the beginning.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Week 1: Linked In CEO comments: My thoughts
The Charlie Rose interview with Linked In CEO Reid highlights the value of online networking playing a bigger role than ever before in areas such as job seeking and idea generation instead of the traditional methods such as mailing in resumes for job interview that was the predominant method about 5 years back and going through class room based learning for idea and concept development for an area someone is interested in.
I personally use Linked In to network to market myself. However, more impactful to me was finding some of my school friends at a professional level through Linked In as well as through Facebook at a social level. These tools or social networking engines have not only been tremendously beneficial but actually has created a paradigm shift in the younger generation which in essence has forced the older generation to accept this new social media lifestyle, some of them out of reluctance while the rest out of willingness.
I should however highlight the cons which is glaringly in the area of privacy. With the advent of these enginese, there is absolutely no concept of privacy. Especially in Facebook, I see almost everyone posting their photos such as their house parties and trip details. This is something I still refrain from doing so. I always am concerned about the security breach, a recent one that was in Facebook, that could possibly result in the access of ones' photos and social details falling into the hands of unwanted elements. It is therefore very important that we should shoulder the responsibility of constantly educating kids about the security and identity issues that one could compromise in the event of posting everything in social media networks.
I would therefore feel comfortable and certainly advocate keeping the network moving at a professional level and hence my strong support for LinkedIn, therefore supporting the ideas and concepts that Reid talks about in the interview.
I personally use Linked In to network to market myself. However, more impactful to me was finding some of my school friends at a professional level through Linked In as well as through Facebook at a social level. These tools or social networking engines have not only been tremendously beneficial but actually has created a paradigm shift in the younger generation which in essence has forced the older generation to accept this new social media lifestyle, some of them out of reluctance while the rest out of willingness.
I should however highlight the cons which is glaringly in the area of privacy. With the advent of these enginese, there is absolutely no concept of privacy. Especially in Facebook, I see almost everyone posting their photos such as their house parties and trip details. This is something I still refrain from doing so. I always am concerned about the security breach, a recent one that was in Facebook, that could possibly result in the access of ones' photos and social details falling into the hands of unwanted elements. It is therefore very important that we should shoulder the responsibility of constantly educating kids about the security and identity issues that one could compromise in the event of posting everything in social media networks.
I would therefore feel comfortable and certainly advocate keeping the network moving at a professional level and hence my strong support for LinkedIn, therefore supporting the ideas and concepts that Reid talks about in the interview.
Week 1: The downfall of newspaper subscription
Let me start my blogpost (the first one for this course) with one of the topics that is near and dear to me which is reading newspaper. The three part audio dialogue between Prof. Acito and Frisbie resonates very well with what I and my wife enjoy every morning which is getting up early in the morning and allocate some portion of our time reading the Wall Street Journal while enjoying our morning coffee.
Talking to many of our friends, two things have surprised us. The ability to read in general has almost become minimal. Instead, many of them spend time getting updates over their smart phone. While I am an avid follower of news and updates through my smartphone and Yahoo mail during the day, I believe that none of the electronic devices should displace newspapers. First off, newspaper reading regardless of ones' interest section (mine is the marketplace section in WSJ) gives more details and also gives you the ability to fold and read anyway you want. I work in the technology sector and I do know that the consumer market is certainly looking at flexible screens (OLED) that could perhaps one day get closer to newspaper type reading.
Now, when it comes to ads, I would lean more towards the digital space. For example, when one goes to Yahoo, it posts ads depending on your internet viewing profile. This is certainly something that helps an individual become interested in the shopping experience directly rather than persuing through a bunch of ads in the papers that caters to the ubiquituous locale, which instead I would rather spend reading articles in the paper instead of the ads. The only time I occasionally skim through the ads section in the newspaper is on Sundays on an infrequent basis such as Best Buy and Frys electronics etc.
Also, the power of the language comes from a good journalism, besides just news.
Here is one link from the NY times that discusses the newspaper circulation issue: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/business/media/28paper.html
Talking to many of our friends, two things have surprised us. The ability to read in general has almost become minimal. Instead, many of them spend time getting updates over their smart phone. While I am an avid follower of news and updates through my smartphone and Yahoo mail during the day, I believe that none of the electronic devices should displace newspapers. First off, newspaper reading regardless of ones' interest section (mine is the marketplace section in WSJ) gives more details and also gives you the ability to fold and read anyway you want. I work in the technology sector and I do know that the consumer market is certainly looking at flexible screens (OLED) that could perhaps one day get closer to newspaper type reading.
Now, when it comes to ads, I would lean more towards the digital space. For example, when one goes to Yahoo, it posts ads depending on your internet viewing profile. This is certainly something that helps an individual become interested in the shopping experience directly rather than persuing through a bunch of ads in the papers that caters to the ubiquituous locale, which instead I would rather spend reading articles in the paper instead of the ads. The only time I occasionally skim through the ads section in the newspaper is on Sundays on an infrequent basis such as Best Buy and Frys electronics etc.
Also, the power of the language comes from a good journalism, besides just news.
Here is one link from the NY times that discusses the newspaper circulation issue: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/business/media/28paper.html
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