In the past weeks, I've been critical of Toyota, Apple and Google. Not only are these companies who I've traditionally respected, but I have used many of their products and I have done so for a great many years.
I expect I will continue to do so.
These are also companies who have a lot of loyal users, some of them passionately so.
I admit, that my recent blog post in which I called the Apple iPad and Google Buzz a pair of "ugly puppies," was a bit over the top. My confession was that I stumbled accross the photo and could not resist using it. OIt inspired the headline.
But I stick to my key point, which is that I believe both these products will fail and they will do so in part because the companies only used traditional marketing and product development strategies to introduce them. They did not use social media to collaborate with customers. They have been sending messages rather than joining conversations or so it seems to me.
It is time for both these companies to rethink how they develop and introduce products.
If you look at the comments I received, you can tell that my post was not well-received. While most comments were respectful, Jean-Paul commented that I seemed to resemble the ugly puppy more than did the iPad. A couple of folk argued that because I was not the target demographic. it was arrogant of me to pan the products. My not being the demographic is not the issue. The issue is that there does not seem to be any mainstream demographic for the product.
Toyota is an entirely different story. I have been following the company's foibles on Twitter, where people have accused me of speaking out through some sort of loyalty to Detroit, despite the fact that I have been driving Japanese cars since 1973, five of them Toyota products.
The fact is that I don't care what the nation of origin is on products. Most products these days are the result of multinational collaborations. What I favor is good products. That means they need to be enjoyable or useful. They need to be a good value and above everything else, they need to be safe.
There is mounting--but inconclusive--evidence that Toyota has known for some time that a significant number of the products they shipped had faulty brakes or sticky accelerators. I have trusted Toyota to make products that my wife, daughters and I can drive safely. That trust is essential to the brand.
If Toyota did this, I have written, it is a breach of trust with it's customers. Some people think that I am gloating that a Japanese company has Detroit style headaches. I am not.
Others think the whole thing should be blamed on dumb customers. When I wrote about a 61-year-old driver whose Prius accelerator stuck, taking him to speeds of 94 mph, Jake Gint tweeted to me, "I just don't buy that 'runaway' does not equal 'driver error.' If you do not know how to stop a car, don't drive."
Jake has one way to look at this issue. I have another. I believe that users have a right to expect quality products and to demand better. This is where social media comes in. Now we can talk about user problems. We can coach each other and we can warn each other.
A great many companies are listening, listening very closely to what we say on blogs , on Twitter, in Facebook and on YouTube videos. It is making a difference.
Yet some leading companies seem to be happy with the old ways. Hell, the old ways have made them leading companies.
As for me, I am more loyal to users than I am any company. I am more loyal to voters than I am any government. I very often praise companies for doing the right thing, but I reserve the right to shout when I believe companies, governments and other institutions are not acting with the user's well-being in mind.
So if that makes me look to some like an arrogant ugly puppy, it's okay. I think the the little guy is kind of cute.
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Thanks Shel.
Hows that for co-creation for shared understanding? ;-)
Iconic88 Thank you. That very accurately summizes what I am trying to say.
Hi Shel, I think a lot of people are missing the point. If I understand you correctly, I see an inference here from your posts is that co-creation should be encouraged by these companies to develop their new products and refine their current ones. There are many sound business reasons to do this.
1) saves time/money
2) it's more efficient because you have a wider input from your customer base than a small focus group. Twitter and Facebook are your focus groups
3) you reduce the risk of failure because through co-creation or co-development with the end-user, the market is getting a product they designed.
4) if the market helps to develop these new products via social media, they'll likely talk about it and share with their friends their story
Listening is one thing for businesses to tune into the social media channels to guage and assess the conversations. Taking action with their audience in mind and in partnership with the development process is the challenge.
Is this close to what you're referring to in this post Shel?
Thank you for allowing me to post.
Kind Regards.
Frankly, this is absolutely ridiculous.
Apple's product launches are arguably the best and most successful in the technology industry or perhaps any consumer product industry. They get an absurd amount of attention and their products tend to make them a crazy amount of money. Why would they change this formula? You're advocating for them to kill their cash cow before it has even failed. Why don't you wait to see if the iPad is actually a failure before you say such things? Trust me, your reputation will thank you.
Furthermore you don't even suggest what Apple (or Google for that matter) should do to tap into this social media. What should happen? "Hey Twitterz, what should we include in our tablet?" If a company of Apple or Google's size actually tried to engage social media directly it would be a huge and unmanageable mess. The volume of responses and data would be massive and most of it stupid. 99% would be people asking for stupid features, people saying stupid irrelevant things or people asking for personal pet features that aren't actually important.
This is not to say that these companies shouldn't listen to customers. They should and I'm sure they do on some level, but a direct interaction with their customers in terms of product launches and product development would be both unproductive and unfeasible. I'm sure smaller companies who receive less attention (and crazy criticism) can have this interaction over social media but I really don't think it would scale to companies of Apple and Google's size.
Also, equating the iPad with Google Buzz is also a non-starter. Google Buzz is already in the marketplace and failing. People don't like Google Buzz. We don't know about the iPad yet. These products also have different bars for success. Google Buzz, as a social network, has to be widely successful among social groups otherwise nobody will use it and it will die. The iPad just has to sell a lot and make money. I'm pretty confident it will do that even if nerds don't like it.
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