It’s about bringing content into the environment you’re already in, not creating an environment conducive to your content.

Introducing the iPad

The iPad has been highly successful since its recent introduction, selling 2 million units within 60 days. The iPad benefits from a growing base of Apple customers, software developers, partners and media relations, and builds on the functionality of Apple’s previous mobile devices, leading to their adage, “You already know how to use it.” It looks and feels like the iPhone with a larger screen. Apple has leveraged our familiarity with their existing products and added some innovative new steps. With a stunning design and an advanced multi-touch user interface, this larger-screen mobile device is hard to resist.

Balancing The Mobile Experience

The reach of mobile computing continues to expand as sleeker, more feature-rich devices enter the market. At the very least, these wireless smart devices serve as glorified PDAs that enable users to carry around their most important information wherever they go. At their best, they enhance and enrich the user’s lifestyle through a careful balance of convenience, transparency, relevance, connectivity, and flexibility.

Convenience

As mobile devices merged into smarter and more powerful devices they also got thinner, smaller and lighter and Apple is truly innovative in this area. But let’s face it, with the requisite learning curve, a new device can be anything but convenient. It has to be connected, configured, customized and protected. Data has to be transferred from the previous device and there’s usually some troubleshooting required, even for Apple’s easy-to-use products. And there’s the initial cost, too. But once those hurdles are cleared, we have a convenient device that simplifies and consolidates our personal effects.

Ease of use is also a must, because consumers will not use a product that’s difficult, unstable or uncomfortable to use, no matter how attractive it is. The device shouldn’t require the user to change their behavior in order to use it; it should adapt and complement the user’s existing lifestyle. It’s about bringing content into the environment you’re already in, not creating an environment conducive to your content.

Transparency

Of course, by transparent we’re not referring to a device that is actually invisible (or perhaps missing because it was left unattended a bit too long in a California pub), but transparent in that a user ‘forgets’ the device for the content it holds. Apple’s iPad and iPhone stay out of the way of the on-screen content. In fact, they are mostly screen—apart from a highly designed bezel and a few understated controls. The 9.7-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit glossy widescreen dedicates much of the visible area to content, giving users a large frame for exploring and sharing their digital lives on the go.

Relevance

With the hardware and underlying software working in the background, content is the primary focus. What makes the iPad so desirable, like its iPhone and iPod Touch cousins, is the level of personal relevance for the user. There’s prestige in carrying a beautifully designed, cutting edge device, but even after the love affair over having the latest, greatest product fades by a few newer versions, it’s the ability to customize and fill the device with personalized content (photos, videos, music, contacts, files, apps, etc.) that makes it relevant, even essential, to our daily lives.

Connectivity

When you hold the iPad in your hands you’re actually holding the entire dynamic content of the Internet (minus the Flash bits, of course) and the bright, large display creates a rich, immersive experience. It gives users who spend time on social media sites the ability to update their status accordingly. Expect to see “Running on my treadmill with my iPad,” or “Laying on the beach with my iPad,” much like “Sent from my iPhone” email signoffs.

Flexibility

Software-based controls keep the device flexible and simplify the ability to adapt the controls for multilingual use. It allows Apple to dramatically improve the user experience through software-driven OS updates and has the ability to drive additional revenue-generation for content and software developers. As our world changes, the iPad will change and adapt to remain viable longer, making it a great investment.

It Just Fits

The iPad was released in January 2010 to mixed reactions. The biggest question revolved around whether there was a market for a touch-screen device that bridged the gap between Apple’s iPhone and laptops. The iPad’s early sales success can be attributed to the simplicity of use of other Apple products, or it could be that it’s a new kind of user experience that just fits.

In future articles we’ll look at some of the reasons that the iPad is destined to stand out and excel in an industry flooded with smart mobile devices.

Free to Brand Entertainment

Chanel tells a romantic tale in this 2:22 video entitled Night Train. It’s a familiar story, the same one Chanel’s been telling generation after generation.

No longer constrained by rigid 30 or 60-second ad models and fee-based, one-view, network television slots, Chanel is free to produce branded video content in various lengths and portable formats. They can post that content across an array of distribution channels on the Internet, free of charge—just like every other brand, large and small. And so can you.

There are a million ways to market a product. But I suggest you not try all of them.

-Tim Siedell Fuse Industries

What Price Value?

Quality content and production values still count if you hope to engage your audience and rise above the 10 billion monthly YouTube views. Expertly filmed, cast, scored and produced, the Chanel video is classic branding aimed at maximizing emotional engagement and memorability—right down to the final love-to-logo-to-product morph brand punctuation.

But proper distribution and promotion still rule the day. Television provided an expensive, reliable, direct and proprietary fee-based conduit to customers. And while today’s brand marketers are blessed with many relatively inexpensive options to reach their audience, they also shoulder all the responsibility and cost of standing out amid a crowded in-bound and social media marketing free-for-all.

What Price Strategy?

This multitude of options places a premium on integrated strategies even for the Chanel’s of the world as they compete with every brand under the sun, including yours. Of course, not every brand benefits from an opulent brand equity, a product men love to smell and women love to wear.

But Night Train’s nearly half a million YouTube views to-date proves proper product planning, positioning and promotion strategies are still the best way to create real value out of an ocean of on and offline marketing and medium options.

Videos, blogs, SEO, email, podcasts, microblogging, fan pages, micro-sites, proprietary online communities. As you plan your next marketing foray into these new frontiers, don’t neglect the benefits of integrated strategy, planning, content and production values.

“The word website
is becoming a misnomer.”

-Ed Illig, Brainstorm

The Importance of a User-friendly Website

Brainstorm’s Ed Illig spoke on the importance of a user-friendly website at a recent Linking Indiana winter event.

He cited three very different market sector website case studies: Anderson University, a higher education site; Lumina Foundation, a non-profit; and RCA, a commerce site.

Using these examples, he described what user-friendly means in different spaces and where he sees things heading in terms of usability, user engagement, brand, metrics, and more.

You can view the talk on Blip.tv in full here:
The Importance of a User-friendly Website [32:21]

Or in three bite-size, lunch-ready segments here:
(Part 1 of 3) The Importance of a User-friendly Website [12:40]
(Part 2 of 3) The Importance of a User-friendly Website [11:45]
(Part 3 of 3) The Importance of a User-friendly Website [8:47]

Marching Bands are Just Homeless Orchestras, Half-Empty Thoughts Volume 1
Written by Tim Siedell and illustrated by Brian Andreas

“I wouldn’t say I’m antisocial
as much as I’d say it’s hard to meet interesting people in an attic.”

- Tim Siedell, @badbanana

About the Book

Marching Bands are Just Homeless Orchestras, Half-Empty Thoughts Volume 1, by Tim Siedell, is a light and easily read collection of select quips from the man behind the wildly popular @badbanana persona on Twitter and Facebook.

Unlike the ever-flowing nature of Facebook and Twitter feeds, Marching Bands are Just Homeless Orchestras brings Tim’s bursts of abbreviated wit, self-effacing observations and social commentary into a traditional book format — and turns them into a keepsake.

And who better than Tim Siedell, an icon himself in online social realms, to present us with a snapshot of a trend toward modern-day shortened writing forms he’s been instrumental in propelling.

“Tim Siedell clearly has no life, but he’s extremely funny while not having one.”

- Rob Reiner, famed actor, director, writer and producer

Seasonally Set

‪Punctuated throughout by the whimsical and lyrically expressive line art of Brian Andreas—an apt accompaniment—Marching Bands are Just Homeless Orchestras is a must-have memento of a cultural era in flux. It also makes a fitting holiday gift for any busy friend or loved one with a throng of online tweeps and peeps.

A One Man Brand of Broad Appeal

In addition to Tim’s ongoing thoughts on Twitter and Facebook, his work has been cited in The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and on NPR, The Huffington Post, The Today Show, MSNBC, Mashable.com, Fast Company, PC World and Maxim.com.

Published by StoryPeople Press, Tim’s book is currently available for pre-order (shipping the final week in November) on Storypeople.com and Amazon.com.

Eventually, your logo becomes
a touch point by which your audience
either recognizes or mocks your brand.

The Struggle

Many businesses struggle through the development of their business or product logo because they believe the logo is their brand rather than understanding it is but one representation of their brand. No logo can carry your brand without additional context and meaning.

The Context

Context is built in the way your brand conducts itself out in public—obviously frequent and consistent exposure in target-rich environments, but service, quality, aesthetics, ethics, price points, messaging and human and online interaction—in essence, everything defines your brand. That’s your logo’s context for representation.

The Paralysis

Often a sort of paralysis sets in as those uninitiated to the development process wrestle with how to cram an entire brand into a logo mark that has no brand yet. A common inclination is to use a design-by-committee approach and crowd source it by inviting the opinion of anyone and everyone.

Of course, if you ask fifty people for their opinion you’ll get fifty opinions. This method can further confuse and often derail the process resulting in delivery delays and unsatisfactory results as typically, elements from a number of logos are mashed together into one design to appease everyone’s input.

The Summation

A logo is one symbol of your brand, so it’s critical to get it right. Weigh, assess and classify your input, then discuss it with your design professional. If you’ve hired the right firm, they’ll have the demonstrated experience and expertise to take into account all the pragmatics and issues involved with properly deploying not just a logo, but an entire brand.

Eventually, your logo becomes a touch point by which your audience either recognizes or mocks your brand. It is important to get your logo right, but don’t expect it to be your brand from the outset.