Marketing 2010.

Marketing 2010 will be the same as Marketing 2009.

Media sellers will continue to claim their media is the best vehicle for you.
Advertising agencies will continue to create many bad advertisements.
Prognosticators will continue to declare that we face a new paradigm.

And reality will go on. Unaugmented.

The true role of marketing will continue to be about meeting customer needs and retaining their patronage. So, rather than make wild guesses about future trends that may or may not impact on your business, I'm going to start 2010 by getting some smart people to offer their answers to the basic marketing questions that will.

Thinking From Outside The Box.

Thinking outside the box is a phrase that has always annoyed me because it conflates two very different problem-solving approaches.

If you think the box is the problem, then you should be discarding it completely rather than merely thinking outside it (with the incremental change that implies). On the other hand, if you're happy with the box but need to approach it in a different way, you could quite profitably focus on thinking inside the box rather than engage in flights of fancy outside it. But, as the following example will show, you crucially need to do that thinking from outside of the box.

Rather than assume that technology has destroyed the "box" marked newspaper production, my friends at Newspaper Club have re-thought the box and acknowledged that is has definite customer benefits in terms of design potential, tactility and portability. By combining that insight with the spare capacity of digital printing presses and some new technology, they will soon be able to let anyone create their own small-run "newspaper" for whatever purpose they choose.

Their initial efforts have been things of beauty and people are lining up to create "newspapers" as promotional giveaways, wedding souvenirs and product samplers. But not everybody gets it - as this comment on a tech-site illustrates.

Ok, how much do you pay for something like this? Would having ads in distract you? Would they distract if they cut down on the cost? How often would you buy it?

If you're a writer, what sort of compensation would you want from an ongoing newspaper such as this.

Don't get me wrong, I love the idea and it's great to see how they did it, but am I curious how much cost and how long it took to do. There's a lot of steps between a one off and regularly published newspaper like this.

That's static inside the box thinking - where your product/service/market is defined by WHAT it is and what it has always been. By contrast, you can build in agility, dynamism and a degree of future-proofing - simply by defining the product/service/market in terms of WHY it is. By thinking from outside of the box.

The Media Is The Message.

Having written in my previous post that Eurostar's failure was a communication issue, I noticed a letter in today's Times from one of the passengers who had been trapped for 14 hours.

"The worst part wasn’t the length of the stoppage, nor the unbearable heat and darkness in the train before our painfully slow evacuation in the tunnel, nor even the lack of food and water. It was the deplorable dearth of information that really made it difficult.

I would much rather have been told that it was going to take 20 hours, then at least I could have accepted my fate and relaxed."

It's nice to have my wild blogging assertions proven correct. If you have to disappoint your customers, it's much better to disappoint them sooner rather than later, it's much better to then tell them what you're going to do rectify the situation and it's imperative that you apologise.

Social Media Panacea.

Snow arrives and the UK grinds to a halt. So too, it seems, do Eurostar trains. Techcrunch highlight the lack of communication 2.0 to bewildered and suffering customers, but that's to miss the wood for the trees.

The problem is not that they're not using Twitter - that's a symptom. The problem is that they have no information to provide. Social media is not the solution to that. A joined-up customer service strategy that acknowledges the ameliorating power of a flow of information, how ever depressing, would be.

Membuat Wallpaper / Background Slideshow Untuk Desktop GNOME

Contoh source code skrip. Perbesar gambar.

Jika kita pernah menggunakan sistem operasi Mac OS X, kita akan mendapati satu fitur dsesktop yang cukup interaktif, yaitu gambar latar belakang desktop (wallpaper) yang selalu berubah setiap tempo waktu beberapa detik (sildeshow). Ternyata, di desktop GNOME Linux, kita bisa membuat wallpaper seperti itu, dan dengan cara yang cukup simpel.

Dari hasil searching saya di internet, saya mendapati sebuah skrip yang berfungsi untuk membuat slideshow wallpaper di desktop GNOME, yang berbentuk file konfigurasi .XML. Intinya adalah, skrip tersebut berfungsi membuat slideshow dari beberapa gambar yang sudah kita pilih, dengan jarak pergantian waktu yang kita tentukan sendiri.

Skrip tersebut sangat sederhana, seperti halnya skrip HTML, yang isinya berisi pengaturan gambar-gambar mana saja yang kita gunakan, dan kemudian waktu transisi antar gambar. Untuk skrip aslinya, saya men-download-nya dari sebuah | halaman internet |.

Dari skrip yang saya dapat tersebut, hanya tersedia empat pilihan gambar saja, dan untuk menambahnya, kita tinggal meng-copy dua section dari skrip tersebut, yaitu Section nama file awal, dan section nama file berikutnya dan waktu transisinya (dalam detik).

Dari skrip defualt yang saya dapat tersebut, waktu transisinya sangat lama, yaitu satu jam (3600 detik). Karena saya mengharapkan efek pergantian yang cepat dan interaktif, maka saya ganti saja menjadi 15 detik.

Cara mengaktifkannya sangat mudah. Setelah kita selesai membuat skrip XML, kita bisa meletakannya di manapun yang penting satu direktori dengan gambar kita (misal /home/anu/Pictures, atau /usr/share/backgrounds). Setelah itu, kita klik kanan pada desktop GNOME, dan pilih 'Change Desktop Background' kemudian pilih 'Add`, dan pilih opsi 'All Files', kemudian pilih file skrip XML kita tersebut. Jadilah sekarang desktop slideshow di GNOME aktif, dan tentu saja, menarik untuk dinikmati!

Begitulah, skrip untuk membuat wallpaper/background slideshow di desktop GNOME. Sangat sederhana, dan tidak membutuhkan efek compositing desktop ataupun resource memori yang besar.

Akhir kata, selamat mencoba, dan salam Linux selalu !!

The Importance Of Being Consistent.

The national rail company changed their website and it led me to send a couple of intemperate emails to their senior executives because the new journey planner left me baffled. I tweeted about it and some people seemed to agree with me.

Now, admittedly there were seeemingly issues with Firefox which meant that the crucial calender icon did not appear, but there were also loading time and loading order issues for others who could see it.

My main gripe was, as the screengrab above shows, that the user is faced with a variety of visual cues (drop-down menus, and empty boxes)which meant for me that I had no idea what protocol to use when I came to inputting a date. There was no drop-down menu, there was no calender icon and the box being filled with "Today" gave no clue as to what date format to enter.

In this era, it's fine (and perhaps obligatory) to speak in multiple voices to your heterogeneous audience, but that doesn't allow you to do so within the same instruction/message. At best, that leads to confusion. At worst, you commit the grievous sin of making your prospects feel stupid and helpless when you should be making them feel smart and empowered.

Getting Close To The Customer.

In Gary Vaynerchuk's talk that I mentioned in the last post, he recounted how officials of the NHL had resisted his idea that they should respond to every tweet and social media message. They felt it would be costly in terms of time and staff even though he pointed out that he personally got more than they did and he responded to all of them himself.

I'd go further. I'd insist that every senior executive regularly spent a day with the people employed to do that job. It's a much better way of understanding your customers than an orchestrated focus group and shows more internal commitment than that gimmicky policy of working on the shop-floor at Christmas.

Tetap Damai ber-Linux dengan BibbleTime, aplikasi Alkitab Digital di Linux

Pada posting saya beberapa waktu yang lalu, saya pernah membahas tentang menjalankan sebuah aplikasi Windows yaitu Alkitab Digital 2.7 di desktop Linux dengan menggunakan Wine. Nah, ternyata, di lingkungan Linux pun sudah terdapat aplikasi sejenis yang sebenarnya sudah sangat bagus dan lengkap, namanya adalah BibbleTime.


Bibble Time adalah sebuah aplikasi Alkitab digital yang (secara khusus) dibuat untuk desktop KDE, namun tentu saja dapat dijalankan di desktop X11 apapun. Seperti kebanyakan aplikasi berbasis Qt, Bibble Time memiliki interface yang sangat eyecandy dan enak di pandang. Dengan dominasi warna biru, serta splash screen yang elegan.


Dan tentu saja, keunggulan aplikasi ini adalah pada isinya. Bibble Time telah menyertakan beberapa versi Alkitab, yang antara lain adalah King James Version (KJV). Selain itu, yang paling luar biasa, Bibble Time juga menyertakan alkitab versi Bahasa Ibrani dengan tulisan Ibrani (Hebrew). Hal tersebut tentu sangat bermanfaat bila kita ingin sedikit mempelajari bahasa Ibrani. Selain bahasa Ibrani, Bibble Time juga disertai dengan bahasa dan tulisan Yunani Kuno.


Yang paling menarik dari itu semua adalah, kita bisa membuka semua versi Alkitab tersebut dalam satu window, sehingga kita bisa melihat dan memahami semuanya dalam satu tampilan. Hal tersebut tentu sangat bermanfaat bagi kita yang ingin mengetahui perbedaan-perbedaan kosakata yang digunakan dalam berbagai versi Alkitab.


Aplikasi Bibble Time dapat kita jumpai dalam repositori beberapa distribusi besar, dan sebagi contoh adalah Ubuntu. Selain itu, bagi kita yang ingin mendapat Bibble Time pre-installed, kita bisa memilih dua dari distro turunan Ubuntu, yaitu Ubuntu Christian Edition, dan Ichthux.


Secara keseluruhan, aplikasi Bibble Time adalah sangat lengkap, fungsional dan interaktif. Satu kekurangan terbesarnya hanya satu, belum mendukung terjemahan versi Bahasa Indonesia. Mungkin pada versi Bibble Time berikutnya, akan ada anak bangsa yang akan membuat versi terjemahan untuk di sematkan dalam aplikasi ini.


Semoga bermanfaat, dan semoga desktop Linux bisa memberi kita lebih dari sekedar manfaat praktis teknologi, tetapi juga spiritualitas.

Mengkompresi / Memperkecil File MP3 menggunakan Audacity di Desktop Linux Ubuntu

Pilihan kualitas suara. Semakin rendah, maka kualitas suara akan semakin rendah, tetapi ukuran file akan semakin kecil. Kualitas normal sebuah file mp3 adalah pada kecepatan 128 Kbps. Kualitas "kompromis" menurut hasil coba-coba saya, adalah berkisar antara 48-64 Kbps. Pada kisaran tersebut, file mp3 kita akan menyusut hingga tinggal sepertiganya saja. Kualitas di bawah kisaran 48 Kbps sudah sangat jelek dan tak layak dengar.

Omong-omong, saya baru saja mencoba sebuah aplikasi Windows yang fungsinya adalah untuk memperkecil ukuran file mp3. Tujuannya adalah untuk menghemat space memori handphone saya yang secuil itu. Awalnya saya berharap besar, tapi ternyata saya kecewa! Ternyata aplikasi tersebut hanya mampu meng-kompresi file mp3 hanya setengah dari ukuran asli. Hummmh.

Nah, sebenarnya, saya sudah memiliki cara sendiri yang ternyata lebih ampuh, yaitu menggunakan aplikasi Linux yang bernama Audacity. Semua pasti sudah pernah mendengar Audacity bukan? Ya! Itu adalah aplikasi open source sound editor yang sangat powerful. Bagaimanakah cara untuk memperkecil ukuran file mp3 menggunakan Audacity?

Pertama, instalasi Audacity. Karena aplikasi ini sudah tenar, maka sudah ada di repo distribusi besar dunia. (Sebagai contoh saya memakai Ubuntu).

$ sudo apt-get install audacity

Kedua, buka file mp3 kita. Melalui File>Open, atau Ctrl+O. Ketiga, pilih menu File>Export, dan masuk pilihan Options. Pilih filetype output ke mp3, dan pilih Quality-nya ke kisaran 48-64 Kbps. Semakin rendah, maka semakin kecil ukuran file, tetapi kualitas suara semakin jelek. Dalam hal ini, saya memilih kualitas pada 48 Kbps. Setelah itu kita OK. Final, kita sudah memiliki file mp3 dengan ukuran yang lebih kecil. Dalam contoh saya, file asli mp3 saya berukuran 3,8 MB, dan setelah saya turunkan kualitasnya ke pilihan 48 Kbps, ukuran filenya menjadi 1,5 MB. Sangat besar bukan penurunannya?

Begitulah cara mengkompresi file mp3 dengan Audacity di desktop Linux, sangat simpel dan mudah sekali! Selamat mencoba!

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Ada pilihan kualitas suara pada opsi Export file di Audacity, yaitu dari 8 Kbps sampai 320 Kbps. Kualitas standar adalah 128 Kbps (ukuran normal). Dari hasil coba-coba saya, kualitas yang “paling kompromis” untuk kegunaan di simpan di media phone selular adalah kualitas antara 48-64 Kbps. Kualitas di bawah 48 Kbps, walaupun ukurannya sangat kecil, tetapi kualitas suaranya sudah sangat jelek dan tidak layak dengar. Bagi kita yang punya gadget ber-storage memory besar, saran saya adalah tak perlu pakai proses kompresi, karena kualitas suara mp3 akan menurun.

Koneksi Data Handphone Nokia dengan Desktop Linux Ubuntu

Dalam banyak hal, Linux adalah sebuah sistem operasi yang sangat modern. Apakah itu? Yaitu dalam hal deteksi hardware. Baru-baru ini saya membeli handphone Nokia 2330 Classic yang ternyata memiliki koneksi Bluetooth. Maka saya pun langsung mencoba meng-koneksikan handphone tersebut ke desktop Ubuntu 8.04, dan ternyata sangat lancar, tanpa perlu menginstalasi driver apapun. Device bluetooth yang saya gunakan adalah USB Bluetooth Class 1, yang di Linux terbaca sebagai Bus 003 Device 004: ID 1caa:0001.

Langkah untuk mengaktifasinya sangat mudah. Tancapkan USB Bluetooth, pastikan service Bluetooth Manager diaktifkan, kemudian restart sistem atau restart desktop GNOME (logout). Aktifkan Bluetooth di HP, dan klik kanan pada icon bluetooth di panel atas kanan GNOME, kemudian Browse Device, dan pilih Connect. Akan ada notifikasi di layar HP bahwa desktop Ubuntu meminta hubungan, kemudian masukan password terserah kita (123, 1234, 1111, 222, apapun). Setelah password di masukan, sekarang desktop Ubuntu yang akan meminta password, masukkan password yang kita tulis di HP. Jadilah sekarang HP Nokia terhubung dengan desktop Ubuntu 8.04 dengan sempurna. Di desktop, HP kita akan terbaca seperti semacam device removable media, dan semua folder konten HP kita akan terbaca seperti pada sebuah drive USB Flashdisk.

Untuk mengirim file dari komputer ke HP, tinggal klik kanan pada icon bluetooth di panel GNOME dan pilih Send File, kemudian pilih satu file, dan pilih device kita, kemudian Connect. Untuk mengirim file dari HP ke komputer lebih mudah lagi, karena kita tinggal mengcopy dari content folder HP yang terbaca seperti halnya drive USB Flashdisk.

Bagi kita yang masih memakai KDE 3.5x, fasilitas pengiriman file dari komputer ke HP dengan OBEX lebih praktis, karena bisa mengirim banyak file sekaligus. Caranya pun sangat mudah. Setelah HP kita terbaca di Konqueror seperti halnya Flashdisk, kita tinggal klik kanan pada icon bluetooth yang ada di panel KDE sebelah kanan bawah, dan pilih Send Files. Pada jendela pengiriman file, drag-lah beberapa file sekaligus ke kolom pengiriman, dan klik Send. Jadilah kita mengirim beberapa file sekaligus dari komputer ke HP.

Selamat ber-Linux ! ^^

Bernostalgia dengan Winamp di Linux

Untuk urusan memutar mp3, di Linux sudah terdapat banyak pilihan aplikasi yang selain mampu memutar dengan sempurna, juga memiliki fitur-fitur yang sangat lengkap, sebagai contoh adalah AmaroK, dan Exaile.

Pun jika kita menyukai pemutar mp3 ala Winamp, di Linux kita bisa mendapati XMMS dan Audacious, yang memang didesain sangat mirip dengan Winamp. Namun, bagi kita yang notabene merupakan “veteran” pengguna OS Windows, kadang masih suka teringat dengan nostalgia lama dengan aplikasi-aplikasi Windows, seperti Winamp (yang sudah sangat melegenda).

Lalu karena hal itu, saya mencoba menginstalasi Winamp dengan Wine. Sistem yang saya pakai adalah Ubuntu 8.04 dan Wine 1.00 dan Winamp 5.22. Tanpa perlu konfigurasi Wine, saya langsung eksekusi file setup Winamp, dan proses berjalan sangat lancar. Setelah instalasi selesai, langsung saya jalankan dan ternyata ada beberapa Error! Winamp 5.22 tidak bisa berjalan dengan lancar pada modus Modern Skins dan Bento Skins (terasa berat dan patah-patah). Kemudian, saya ganti Skins ke Classic, saya restart Winamp, dan sekarang berjalan lancar!

Walaupun berjalan lancar dengan skins Classic, tetap saja ada ke'aneh'an saat saya coba menggeser-geser window Winamp ke berbagai sudut desktop Linux. Window Winamp akan meloncat-loncat tak tentu arah dan kadang menghilang sama sekali. Karena bingung, saya restart, dan kembali normal. Tapi saat saya coba geser-geser lagi, akan terulang hal yang sama. Walaupun begitu, dari segi suara, Winamp berjalan sangat normal di Linux. Mungkin saja nanti ada yang me-porting Winamp agar menjadi binari Linux dan semakin melengkapi pilihan aplikasi pemutar mp3 Linux, mendampingi AmaroK, Rhythmbox dan Audacious.

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Dulu saya sempat menjumpai versi lama dari 'sebuah aplikasi' yang diberi nama Winamp Linux, namun setelah saya download, ternyata itu adalah aplikasi yang sudah sangat tua dan membutuhkan library-library tua yang sudah tak dikembangkan lagi. Alhasil, saya tak bisa menjalankan aplikasi tersebut di sistem Ubuntu 8.04 saya. Mungkin saja nanti ada yang kembali tertarik memporting Winamp ke Linux. Atau pun kalau tidak, pada versi-versi Wine berikutnya, kita akan dapat 'bernostalgia' dengan lebih lancar bersama Winamp di Linux.

Customer Service Isn't New.

Gary Vaynerchuk and Tony Hsieh have picked up a lots of plaudits for focussing their Le Web talks on customer service. Deservedly so. But this is nothing new. That they seem so insightful to many people is simply an indictment of the levels to which things have been allowed to fall.

Customer service has always been there. It's encapsulated in the P of product. If you think that your product is simply that which your customer buys from you, you're deluding yourself. They're buying the product/service plus everything that you provide to make the consumption of that product an enjoyable and fulfilling experience that makes them better at doing something.

I once heard a marketing professor postulate a 5th marketing P (for Phacilitating Services) to emphasise just that fact. He was right because his base example of this was IBM's reputation for post-sales service and support in the 60s, but he was also wrong. Wrong because separating it from the product suggests that it's a marketing option you can choose to prioritise or not.

Customer service shouldn't be the centralised, prescriptive provision that all too easily conjures up images of mission statments, faux sincerity and ranks of low-paid transient phone-jockeys. It should be a distributed, pervasive culture in which everybody can fearlessly act on their own initiative to right a wrong or create a memorable interaction. Customer sevice is not an add-on, it's a necessity.

You Heard It Here First.

The Nokia store that I criticised on this blog back in April and August of 2008 is to close.

In this report, it is claimed that the failure of the £4 million investment was because "the store may have proved a little “extravagant” in terms of cost". No, it was because you couldn't use the phones. And worse than that, it was just a store.

Addendum: The Apple store across the street continues to flourish, but I notice that the staff are getting a little more officious. I recently witnessed people being dissuaded from using computers to check their email because this is an "iphone activation area". Are they in danger of becoming just a store? Not yet.

Behavioural Marketing.

Iain really liked this campaign and bracketed it with Burger King's Whopper Sacrifice. While I like it, it's not much more than a digital version of the traditional promotional competition. The key for me is that it's utilising technology rather than the behaviours related to that technology. It works but it's not new.

Social media and digital aren't inherently new behaviours, they're new technologies/ecosystems that facilitate existing behaviours. But where Burger King was really smart was in placing a new version of that behaviour - Facebook friending - at the centre of its interaction. A behaviour that hadn't existed without the technology.

Marketing is all about behaviour, but changing behaviour is really difficult to do. It's much smarter to adapt your marketing to existing behaviours in a way that gets the user to think about your product/service and perhaps become inclined to change another behaviour.

Don't Just Focus On The Big Idea?

Last week, Faris (a big thinker) asked me "What's the Big idea?" We were in a pub - where such questions often get asked - and it was the day of the UK ad industry's Battle of Big Thinking where a number of mutual friends (including Amelia and Katy) had, no doubt, spoken eloquently and brilliantly about a variety of ideas.

But were they big ideas? Is social media a big idea? Is branding? Faris and I agreed that fire and alcohol might both be classified as big ideas, but we weren't sure about the rest.

Big idea are big because they are so rare and yet businesses are obsessed with having them, be that in their product range or their marketing. That seems like a futile effort to me. The only important big idea for business is their underlying strategy which should underpin everything they do - though, of course, the search for the big idea often causes them to ignore that fact.

That aside, it's much better to focus on having a lot of arguably smaller ideas: small ideas that can have immediate impact, small ideas that can generate further small ideas and small ideas that might just turn out to be slightly bigger than you first thought.