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John Dodds over at Make Marketing History has a nice post about the differences between Nokia and Apple in their retail experience.

He compares two stores in Oxford St, London and concludes;

The Nokia store is a gallery.
The Apple store is alive.
The Nokia store staff are tech sellers.
The Apple store staff are tech users.
The Nokia store is a place where you browse.
The Apple store is a place where you use.
The Nokia store is about surface.
The Apple store is about corporate DNA

In essence, it's clear that Apple has a brand and Nokia doesn't. This was fine for Nokia when they had the mobile world to themselves, but it looks like they need some serious brand work to prevent Apple from taking some major share in this space.


Posted by Ed Cotton There's a new documentary all about the cult that surrounds the Apple brand.



Posted by Ed Cotton thinking about the electronics we consume (37.83263257682617 , -122.57600784301758) The other day, Piers at PSFK posted an angry editorial about CES.

"Another year, another electronics and gadgets conference that is out of whack with modern concerns around sustainability and the planet. The C.E.S. is an arrogant refusal to admit to the problems the electronics industry has created in terms of material waste, poisonous polution, energy waste and over-consumption."

He is not alone, today's New York Times Magazine has a great piece by Jon Mooallem called "The Afterlife of Cellphones".

The piece explores the world of cellphone recycling and tries to understand why we need to constantly upgrade our phones. Reading the article forces you to think again about waste.

Jon concludes;

"Even the most idealistic visions of how e-waste should be recycled and reused take for granted that consumers and businesses will never reconsider why we are buying and discarding so many of those products, so quickly, in the first place. If the rush of castoffs isn’t likely to stop, we need to clear a proper path for it, considering all the inevitable compromises and costs along the way and delivering those products to as consequenceless a place as possible."

Most companies seem pre-occupied with creating "lust' for their objects that ensures continued market share and admiration.

While on the surface, this doesn't appear to be a responsible attitude, it reflects the realities of the marketplace.

Consumer electronics are the new fashion, so much so, that they are taking share from the fashion business and it's one of the reasons the US sports shoe business is so soft right now.

The presentation below is from the design team at Nokia and it does a fantastic job at explaining how the company creates lust objects. It's all insights and needs driven, but it does nothing to bring sustainability into the mix.

This is a battle about hearts, minds and marketing.

With Macworld coming up this week, Apple and Steve Jobs are masters in the creation and marketing of lust objects, they do it so well.

Governments aren't going to force the issue, pressure groups like Greenpeace have limited voice, change is going to need to come from the market.

If companies want sustainability to be considered, they are going to need to do as good a job as Apple in making it sexy.

On the positive side, it appears to be easier than ever for new brands to enter the consumer electronics space, just look at flat panel TVs for that.

Could here will be a new electronics brand with real sustainability built into its DNA that emerges in the next couple of years?

Could, somewhat ironically, that brand come from China?

Posted by Ed Cotton One of the more colorful aspects of the 2.0 world of blogs and unbridled consumer creativity is finding the occasion when a random individual picks on a brand, creates a space to play with it and stretches it above and beyond the original attentions of its owners.

A great example of this is Ikeahacker; a blog devoted to “playing” with Ikea’s flat pack furniture, in ways that don’t appear on the official list of instructions.

It’s the furniture equivalent of voiding your car warranty by installing nitro tanks. While many of this efforts is playful and come out of an endearing relationship with the brand, others might be of the “Fight Club” variety, all cynical and full of spite.

This type of attack was unleashed recently with this film that apparently exposes the contradictory motivations of consumer goods giant Unilever.

While Madison Avenue maybe cooling on the consumer-created trend, with the fabulous exception of the newish Apple’s iPod Touch spot (see below-original upload first- agency-consumer co-produced version-second), people are still going to do this stuff, regardless of whether you pay them, entice them and brands are just going to have to live with the consequences. The genie is out of the bottle, live with it.
 

Posted by Ed Cotton Although it's hard to gauge the real sales numbers for the iPhone, people are talking about 1.2-1.4 million, I thought it would be interestng to look at the "noise" the launch generated and compare it to other cultural events.

The tool I have used is Google Trends which looks at data for search volumes. This isn't the same as column inches or minutes of news time, but it's still an interesting barometer.

It's clear that the iPhone may have generated more "noise" than any other brand in recent years. It's peak is comprable with that of the Superbowl (the most watched event in the US) and nearly double that of the Oscars.

It's pretty remarkable that a single product can create that level of interest and hardly surprising that Time Magazine continued to fuel the noise by naming it Invention of the Year.

Obviously, all this noise is only good if it can be translated into sales.

As an interesting sidenote, I also plotted the trajectory of Facebook, which appears to be slowly creeping up to the iPhone frenzy noise level, no wonder Google is scared.





Posted by Ed Cotton Borders Books and Music, one of the largest bookstore chains in the country is trying to find new sources of revenue by bringing new experiences to its stores.

These experiences include: mixing and burning CDs, creating photo books, building family trees, all at computer stations, the store is also retailing some electronic iPod related products.

They are testing the idea in 12 stores around the country. On paper it seems to make strategic sense, in reality, having visited one of the 12 stores, it's harder to understand and its a good example of the problem with the retail experience these days.

There's an old fashioned notion in the minds of consumers that stores are working hard on their behalf to create a nice "edited' experience, of course, we know that this experience is fast becoming advertising based, with stores charging slotting fees and pay to play models for brands.

You can see this in the new Borders experience; it feels like a physical version of a catalog where companies have paid to be there. Part of the problem is that the chain has taken a lot of its inspiration from Apple and the emerging iPod economy, but it can't provide an Apple-like in-store environment to pull the vision off.

Clearly, the senior management at Borders have a challenge on their hands, they can't offer the breadth and selection of online players, or even some of the big box electronics retailers, not can they provide an Apple experience, but they also appear to want to generate additional revenue from suppliers.

I don't just want to pick on Borders, because retail is rapidly shifting from an edited to an advertised experience. The consumer is oblivious to what's going on behind the scenes, which is fine, until it starts to impact their experience and in the long-term, that could have serious implications for retailers.



Posted by Ed Cotton