Dave’s Take

As a happy iPhone owner, I am always surprised when I ask fellow iPhone users what their favorite mobile applications are, only to hear, “I don’t know.” How can anyone who has the foresight to own an iPhone not have any personal favorites from among the more than 50,000+ iPhone applications now available for download? How do they not feel strongly about any of the incredible programs that make our lives so much more enjoyable, or at least somewhat easier?

Apparently the iPhone owners I’ve quizzed are not alone in failing to find favor in any specific application. According to a new AdMob report, more than half of the available iPhone applications have less than 1,000 active users. Even more surprising, despite having millions of iPhone owners, only 5% of all the iPhone apps have more than 100,000 users. The report was based upon a survey of 15 million users and clearly points out the difficulty and frustration facing app developers to create a hit.

The reasons for iPhone apps failing to find a following are numerous. Experts cite several reasons for lack of usage, including bad user experiences, old apps, too new of apps and apps designed for too specific of niche users. Regardless of past failures, a full 37% of all mobile traffic is attributed to smart phones, assuring a bright future for those developers who know how to market to the masses. My personal belief on why so many apps flop is two–fold: first, it’s not needed. I’ve looked at dozens of iPhone apps that are silly and of no real value to a user. Just because you can design and develop an app, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s needed; and second, lack of word of mouth. People tend to keep great apps a secret, as if their mere mention will make them go away or become so popular they become blasé.

Therefore, in the name of bettering the iPhone community, I am sharing my favorite apps in hopes you find them helpful and download them ASAP. Here’s my list of the best iPhone apps available, with all but two being offered for free:

Sports Tap (free): Great app for following your favorite sports teams. Posts real time scores and news.
Sportacular (free): Another great sports app that not only shows scores and news, but also provides Vegas lines and fan input.
Pandora (free): Pandora radio is the best radio app out there. Gives you access to thousands of free Internet radio stations.
Showtimes (free): Want to see a movie at the spur of the moment? No problem, with Showtimes, you get timely listings for all the theaters in your area and the play times of their movies.
Flashlight (free): I don’t know if this is my favorite app, but it is definitely my most useful app. It turns your phone into a flashlight, which is extremely handy for everything from reading restaurant menus to hitting your front door lock with your key at night.
Around Me (free): This app gives you the nearest business from a list that includes places like banks, bars, coffee shops, gas stations and hospitals.
Google Earth (free): Drill down from space to anywhere on the planet. Check out its new feature—earths’ oceans.
Amazon.com (free): Buy, sell or trade all from your phone.
Translator (free): Translate English into dozens of other languages—great for travel.
Shazam (free): This is my favorite recreational application. Shazam allows users to identify any song within seconds of sampling it. Simply open the app and click the “tag now” button. Shazam will sample whatever music it hears, analyze it and then provide you with the ability to buy or download the song. How good is it? I’ve used it numerous times to identify songs everywhere from TV backgrounds to bars. It has never failed to tell me the song and singer.
At Bat 2009 ($9.99): For baseball fans, this app is worth the money. It gives real time game stats, live video, news and standings. The free version (at bat lite) is great for free, but lacks video and other real time features.
WordBook ($1.99): As a writer, I need an accurate source of spelling wherever I go. While lite (free) versions of dictionaries are available for download, WordBook is a much better version and worth the two bucks.

These are just a sampling of my favorite iPhone apps. I’ve currently got 80+ loaded on my phone and use all of them (at least occasionally). Check them out and see what you think. If you like them, pass them on to other users. Maybe we can change some of these apps from unknown to fan favorites.

As a rule, I am not a follower of populists or flavor-of-the-month consultants. I find them generally as shallow as televangelists. However, I just finished reading a new book, Tribes, by well-known author and entrepreneur, Seth Godin. It is one of the most poignant self-help books I have ever read. I call it self-help and not a business book because it contains some of the best advice I’ve ever read as to how one can achieve happiness and success in business and in life. Forget Wayne Dyer, Stephen Covey and all the other business gurus. Godin has surpassed them all with a simple, easy to understand, business guide to the 21st century.

Godin’s title is a reference to what he sees as the most empowering group existing in society today — tribes. He defines a tribe as a group of people that are connected to each other, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea. As he sees it, tribes differ from mere groups because of two major things: a shared interest and a way to communicate. He reveals that the reason for the timely success of tribes now is the Internet. The Net has broken down the biggest barrier to the successful formation of tribes—geography. Social networks like Twitter, FaceBook and Linkedin are all providing empowerment to their members by facilitating instant and widespread communication. And when like-minded people can communicate, anything is possible.

Why are tribes so important? Because from tribes, come leaders and from leaders, we get movements, and movements change the world. When similar people connect for a common cause, their group action or movement can provide the foundation for changes in everything from business to government. He goes on to write that leadership is not management — leadership is about creating change. Why is change good? Because without it, everything eventually dissolves (just ask GM, IBM and ACME Buggy Whips). He further contrasts the difference between leaders and mere managers by pointing out how leaders have followers, managers have employees; managers make widgets, leaders make change. In short, anyone can lead a tribe to success, if they are committed to the mission.

Godin thinks good leaders do three basic things: motivate, connect and leverage. They motivate through involvement, empowering their members to take risks and seek a better future. He explains that the key emotion all leaders should strive to elicit is caring. By nurturing and encouraging people to care, really care about a product or issue, you unleash their true motivations. He further writes that anyone can be a leader. There are no secret requirements like education, money or heritage; it all boils down to doing what you believe in. But, unfortunately we are trained to avoid leadership throughout our lives. He believes fear is our biggest obstacle to success because we are taught to worry about criticism. Seth concludes if you paint a picture of the future and go there, people will follow. He lists several entities that get the tribe mentality – among them, Apple, Skype, Wikipedia and the Grateful Dead. All of them depend on the use of emotions and true belief in their products, (with the Dead taking tribal membership to a whole new level). All of them have members (employees/fans) that truly believe in what they are trying to accomplish and will do everything in their power to help meet those goals.

I encourage everyone to read his book. Not only is it simple and to the point, but at only 147 pages, it doesn’t require a great deal of time and effort to digest. If you’re not sure of his whole theory, check out his website at www.sethgodin.com. His blog is informative and enjoyable. You might not feel the tribal instincts right away, but I guarantee you will look at your boss with a different slant from now on.

I have been reading and hearing a lot about content marketing lately and how important it is for successful online advertising. Just what is content marketing? Basically, content marketing or aka, inbound marketing, is the practice of intentionally creating content that draws people to your business or service from other locations. In short, it is marketing focused on getting found by potential customers.

Content Marketing differs from traditional marketing in that with outbound marketing, businesses are trying to find customers. This is the basic strategy of channels like direct mail, print, outdoor, TV and spam. While these are what old school advertising is comprised of, they are as we all know, very wasteful and inefficient. For example, to get ten interested customers to a car lot, a dealership will advertise to thousands of people who are not in the market for a car and therefore will pay little or not attention to the campaign, regardless of how good it may be.

Besides being based upon a “shotgun approach,” outbound marketing is becoming less and less effective for many reasons, including technology. Technical innovations are advancing to the point of making old school advertising obsolete. Innovations like caller ID, TiVo, Do Not Call lists and spam blockers are slowly but surely changing the way the world markets and advertises. With consumers under more time management pressure than ever before, the idea of someone forcing them to sit through even a thirty-second ad is abhorrent. Fill their inbox with unwanted spam and not only aren’t they buying your product, they are hating your product.

With content marketing, you start with interested customers and then try to direct them to buy from you by carefully channeling them to your business through a myriad of techniques. Producing a video for YouTube that features your product is one way companies are using inbound marketing. Viewers see the video, like the video and then visit your sight where they view your product with less skepticism. If done properly, viewers will be unaware that any advertising is even taking place.

Another proven way to successfully content market is through social media. Blogs, communities, chat rooms and individual postings are a great way to use nuance and attitude to draw qualified customers. An obvious avenue of effective inbound marketing is SEO. Proper search engine optimization makes the search for your product or business that much easier, which is what content marketing is all about. Building your site with solid SEO techniques and making your inbound links as optimal as possible are sure to maximize your search engine rankings. There are dozens of techniques to enhance your inbound campaigns. They can be found, not surprisingly, on the Internet and in blogs, discussions and communities. Review them and put them to work for you as soon as possible.

Remember, content marketing has to be worthwhile on its own to be successful. Viewers shouldn’t be aware that any advertising or marketing is even taking place. If it doesn’t survive the smell test, it probably won’t deliver. But if done properly, content marketing is not only cheaper and more effective than traditional channels, but by empowering your customers, you will create a customer loyalty program that will last for years. And that is crucial to any effective marketing campaign.

Along with flying cars, robotic maids and personal jetpacks, I place interactive television as one of the biggest lies fed to American consumers in the past century. As recently as 2001, American TV viewers were promised a whole new world with the installation of interactive TV or iTV as the industry calls it. We were baited into expecting everything from video on demand to interactive gaming would be but a click away from the average middle-class living room. Unfortunately, just like the Jetson’s space car, truly interactive television is just a dream.

A crude forerunner to iTV was first tried in the 1950s with the “Winky Dink & You” children’s TV show, where kids could tape a magic screen on their home set and draw along with the show. This eventually led to more refined attempts in the 80s and 90s to incorporate everything from t-commerce (buying goods in real time off your remote) to sending Email and files from your living room. The end game? To keep TV relevant by making your television as important to you as your computer and the Internet. Big companies like Microsoft, Bell South and Time Warner jumped headlong into the fray, spending hundreds of millions of dollars before realizing their mistakes and folding up shop.

There are an unlimited number of reasons why the majority of attempts at iTV have failed, ranging from exorbitant start-up costs to delivery compatibility issues. The few remaining iTV services are limited to video on demand and a few frivolous offerings like real time traffic and weather reporting. Shopping, videoconferencing, web surfing, banking and TV Emailing have never been fully developed and aren’t expected to do so in the near future. Which is a shame, because from an advertisers point of view, iTV could be a godsend. Think of the possibilities of real iTV: ads with guaranteed demographics; immediate feedback from customers; sales delivered for a fraction of the present cost per impression and those are just the beginning. The ability to change camera angles, display stats or watch a longer and more in-depth analysis of any news story is now just a dream. Same with Internet access and high def videoconferencing from anywhere—all dead for now.

Hopefully, declining viewership coupled with a recovering economy will motivate the major players into playing nice with each other and giving iTV the chance it deserves. I know the advertising industry will be waiting and watching.

Last week, I blogged about how Twitter and other social media sources were great for creating buzz, but lousy at delivering sales. Who could have dreamed that they would now be the main source for real time information about what’s happening with the revolutionary situation in Iran? The Iranian government has clamped down on most forms of news dissemination, including the shuttering of newspapers and television stations. MSM sources as well as protesters have adapted Twitter to get the truth out about what is going on in the Islamic republic. Just another example of how people will adapt to new channels of information if they are kept topical and relevant.

In a recent study compiled by Borrell Associates, direct mail is given a fatal diagnosis for future relevance. According to the report entitled, “Direct Mail Doomed, Long Live Email,” the future of DM is apparently as bleak as that of a Lehman Brothers resurgence. How sick is the patient? Borrell predicts a whopping 39% decline in direct mail spending over the next five years, sliding from $49.7 billion in 2008, to a meager $29.8 billion by 2013. On the other hand, Email, which claimed over $12 billion in 2008 expenditures, is expected to more than double in committed spending over the next five years.

So why on earth is one of the most traditional advertising channels headed to Boot Hill? Ad experts attribute DM’s fall to several factors, including:

• Expense—as the USPS continues it’s downward spiral (2008 losses topped $2 billion) it’s forced to raise already high rates. Combined with a weakened economy, even Vana White knows that spells doom.
• Aging Demographics—the average age of non-profit off-line donors is 65+ and they are one of the few consistent DM targets.
• Low Success Rates—even the best of DM houses will only promise returns in the .05 – 4% range. In fact, industry estimates show only 2.8% of all direct mail results in any kind of a response. Not bad, but hard to compete with the immediacy and excitement created by today’s new media channels.
• Green Movement—the EPA estimates that four million pounds of direct mail is being thrown away annually, with only a mere 30% being eventually recycled. Internationally, a full 30% of ALL worldwide mail is comprised of U.S. junk (er, direct) mail, resulting in the sacrifice of over 100,000,000 trees. Non-profits are reporting an overwhelming response from contributors to cease with the DM campaigns.
• State Laws—it’s called junk mail for a reason—people hate it. Currently, twelve states are considering laws to limit or eliminate direct mail, with expectations pointing to only increased regulatory pressure.

Despite these harbingers, direct mail’s death may be slightly exaggerated—at least in terms of total destruction. DM experts point out that only traditional direct mail is in danger of extinction. They believe small, demo-targeted DM campaigns will continue to be a part of any agency’s successful multi-channel campaign strategy. In fact, some observers predict direct mail will evolve to be a major player in driving viewers to online programs. Maybe, but as far as I’m concerned, the relevance of direct mail has left the building…to which I say, “Thank you, thank you very much.”

Lately there has been more buzz about Twitter than the plight of the U.S. economy. The MSM has beaten the tweet phenomenon to death, making it out to be just one step short of sliced bread. Celebrities are tweeting, politicians are tweeting, even people who don’t normally embrace new media (Elizabeth Taylor, Larry King, John McCain) are sharing their most inane thoughts via the tweet. Which begs the question, ”Why do we need to be alerted to someone’s mindless140 character thoughts at any time of the day or night?” Personally, I don’t really care when Ashton Kutcher is headed to the grocery store to buy salad fixin’s or what Paris Hilton’s latest buzzword is. In my opinion, only twits tweet. However, actual social networking can provide substantive advantages to the businesses that embrace it.

Before you write me off as another guy who “just doesn’t get it,” think about this: While 83% of the Internet population is using some form of social media, less than 5% actually turn to it for advice on purchasing decisions. In a new study, “How People Use Social Media” by Knowledge Networks, researchers have discovered that social media is indeed lighting a new path for friends to connect, but not one that provides any real guidance on buying products or services. Not only is twitter and it’s brethren not the go-to, one-stop shops for quick advice, but only 16% of social media users say they are more likely to buy from a firm or service that advertise on social networking sites. The overwhelming way people decide on major purchasing decisions? Word of mouth. Wow, what a concept! The good news is that these stats prove you don’t have to spend big money on social sites to be successful, just provide a relevant presence for your company or service.

Despite their apparent inability to create sales, social media outlets are on a popularity upswing and businesses that ignore them do so at their own peril. Like any other tool in the toolbox, social media outlets should be kept in your marketing mix. I advise clients to open and maintain accounts on social sites like Facebook, Likedin and Tagged. I also encourage them to post informative blogs highlighting their solutions to popular problems and concerns. While they probably won’t make the cash register ring, they will keep your business or product topical and in people’s minds, which is half the marketing battle.

So remember, to keep the buzz about your company or product fluid, invest some time and thought into social networking. Concentrate your efforts on sites that allow you to create a positive image, not just a 140-character punch line. In other words, leave the tweeting to the birds.

I was recently reminded of this sage saying when a potential client asked me why anyone would even think about advertising during a recession—especially a record setting recession like we are facing now. My answer, “Do you cut out electricity when times are tough?” My point being a lot of business owners fail to recognize advertising and marketing as the essential business necessities they are. Skeptics look at advertising as a “luxury” that they can use when they can afford it. Unfortunately, nothing is further from the truth. Advertising and marketing are every bit as important to your business as your utilities.

A recent McGraw-Hill study of 600 businesses found businesses that maintained or increased their ad spending during a recession experienced a whopping 250% increase in sales compared to those who cut budgets. Another study shows businesses that advertised during a recession saw their market share increase 2.5 times on average. In fact, statistics have proven companies who aggressively marketed in the recession of the ‘80s grew their market share 4.5 times faster than companies who reduced their marketing budgets.

Why does advertising in bad economic times work? First of all, rates are cheaper. Media channels across the board have cut rates and yet still have plenty of avails. Television networks have become so desperate for fillers that they no longer confine infomercials to late night rotation. Not only are paid block programs more common, their increased placement proves people are still buying, regardless of the economy. And if you think television is open to negotiation, check out radio and print. Plenty of inventory with few takers, assures those who dare advertise tier-one placement for ROS schedules. Finally, another big reward for advertising when times are tough is image enhancement. Psychologically, advertising in a recession not only keeps your brand in people’s minds, but it also increases your image as a successful business.

One last caveat about advertising in a recession—don’t wait. Studies reveal 80% of businesses that waited until a post-recession market to advertise saw a zero increase in market share. Which brings us to another slice of sage advice, “You snooze, you lose.” It doesn’t take courage to advertise in a recession, just common sense.

I have been closely watching the national debate about whether to save GM or let it die a slow death.  As the once proud owner of a GM product (Caddy CTS) I have witnessed firsthand the absurdity of the giant automaker’s day to day business model and can say without hesitation, GM’s biggest obstacle to success is GM itself. Where to start… Let’s see, how about the time when one of my tail lights burned out.  For the sake of convenience, I took it to a Jiffy Lube to have the bulb replaced.  After an hour of debate and discussion, the three guys working on my one bad light bulb sadly informed me that they could not complete the minimal job due to the design flaws in the car.  Design flaws in a Cadillac light bulb? Apparently, in order to replace one 95 cent bulb, you must first remove the entire rear speaker system from the car, seriously.  Forced into taking it into my local dealer, I was informed that since my car was still under warranty (barely by 2,000 miles) they would graciously replace the tail light free of charge.  If it had not been covered by the 50,000 mile guarantee, it would have cost $87.00 to replace.  A 95 cent bulb costs $87 to repair.  As crazy as that sounds, it only gets better… or more surreal.

The next item on my trip to crazy town was courtesy of a bad headlight.  Once again, I tried to get a cheap repair at Jiffy Lube, only to be informed that in order to replace a simple headlight on a CTS, one must first remove the front bumper and grill.  Forced to return to my dealership, I was informed the headlight was not covered by GM’s bumper to bumper warranty (because the headlights are beyond the bumper?).  Even more incredible, the cost to just buy the bulb was $292.00!  Then, they get to add on an hour of labor @ $85.00.  When confronted as to how any light bulb could possibly be worth $292.00, my service advisor reluctantly offered to let me buy the bulb at any auto supply store (wholesale price-$175.00) and then bring it back to them for installation.  Needless to say, my reaction was less then agreeable.  Taking pity on me, the service rep agreed to get the dealership to cover it once on a “Good Will Warranty”.  Thank God, because it turned out that the ballast was blown, bringing the retail cost of my one headlight to the outrageous sum of $1,250.00!  Needless to say, after my warranty expires, the dealership and I shall forever remain strangers.

So forget about the stress tests and TARP fund thresholds… the real reason GM is tanking lies not in the stars, but in GM itself.