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Jun 29th, 2010 by Laurence Vincent

A cloud above the rest

I am an avid fan of Amazon. It’s a company, a service and a brand that has consistently over-delivered for me, and as a result, I’m inclined to use Amazon for all my online purchases. I’m also inclined to recommend it to others.

First disclosure out of the way.

You should also know that I’m a giant nerd who still plays with digits in my free time. I own and manage a few websites; I’ve custom coded a web app or two; and I’m constantly moving data through a network of cloud-based services, which gives me great peace of mind.

Second disclosure out of the way.

I recently received an email from Amazon’s cloud services platform asking me to participate in a survey. Amazon wanted to know why I had not used CloudFront, a service that is part of its cloud computing suite. I use Amazon’s simple storage service to keep my photographs safe and sound, and I signed up for CloudFront because I thought it might be a good service for hosting some of my sites. But when I went to the page, this is the description that greeted me:

Amazon CloudFront delivers your static and streaming content using a global network of edge locations. Requests for your objects are automatically routed to the nearest edge location, so content is delivered with the best possible performance.

Now I consider myself a fairly sophisticated guy, but I have no idea what the above paragraph means.

Granted, I’m no engineer, but why do service descriptions have to be so technical? If a true digit-head needed to know that CloudFront uses edge locations, couldn’t that information have come later? Words like ’streaming content’ and ‘global network’ have become so over-used that they actually make a description more ambiguous. I just need to know what CloudFront does.

It turns out that CloudFront is a brilliant service that makes it easy for a web developer to use several other Amazon cloud services (such as storage) to serve web pages and other digital content. Imagine you’re developing an iPhone app. You could use CloudFront to store and retrieve information stored in an Amazon database, bundle it into an XML stream and send it to a user’s iPhone—simple right?

As I said before, I don’t mean to pick on Amazon, because I’m a fan. But it’s time for tech companies to use plain language, and while also avoiding bland, generic statements. Look at how 37Signals describes Ruby on Rails:

Ruby on Rails is an open-source web framework that’s optimized for programmer happiness and sustainable productivity. It lets you write beautiful code by favoring convention over configuration.

Ok, so maybe the “programmer happiness” comment is over the top, but at least I know what the product does. Maybe CloudFront should describe itself as:

Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery service that helps developers create powerful digital applications that take full advantage of other services on the Amazon platform. It’s fast, global, and very cost-effective.

My copy won’t win any awards. But at least you have a better sense of what CloudFront is.

Laurence Vincent is a group director, strategy for the Siegel+Gale Los Angeles office.

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Dec 14th, 2009 by Laurence Vincent

Wireless disconnect

AT&T wants you to use less wireless data.

Last week The New York Times reported AT&T is considering communications programs that encourage you to do so. The initiative is intended to reduce the burden on AT&T’s network, due to the explosive popularity of Apple’s iPhone. Before changing consumer rate plans based on actual data usage, AT&T would inform consumers on how their data consumption affects performance of the entire network.

This plan creates a brand gap.

AT&T and Apple have spent two years promoting the iPhone’s value, and its Applications or “Apps.” In fact, “Apps” are one of the biggest drivers of the iPhone’s popularity—so much that new competitive offerings (i.e., Blackberry Bold, MyTouch 3G, Droid, etc.) include similar “apps” platforms. BUT, promoting “apps” AND launching campaigns to curb data usage will send a conflicting brand message to AT&T’s current and potential customers. It’s akin to tobacco companies advising you not to smoke while depicting smokers in glamorous, energetic lifestyle scenarios.

The truth: Apple and AT&T created a remarkable brand platform with the iPhone. Twice as many people choose AT&T for their smart phones over other competitors. “Apps” are an essential touch point for the brand. Though AT&T may prefer encouraging users to consume less data instead of changing pricing strategies, the program will likely fail, create a brand alignment challenge—or both.

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Nov 10th, 2009 by Laurence Vincent

Healthcare for your brand on a budget

Average Americans aren’t the only ones fretting over healthcare issues. Brand health is becoming one of the hottest topics in the CMO community. Two forces are driving the sudden interest in metrics and “brand dashboards.” Managers are growing more metrics-focused because of the rising use of online media in the total marketing mix. Online media allows managers to see a direct cause-and-effect relationship between a demand generation initiative and sales. It’s only natural that the same managers would start to ask, “How much is my brand driving sales?”

The other factor is money, or more precisely, the scarcity of money. Marketing budgets are usually the last to recover when an economy rises from the ashes of a recession. Every expense is scrutinized. Before investing money on a brand, it’s helpful to assess your brand’s overall health. Think about it: Would you be willing to let a doctor perform a procedure on your body without first doing an examination? Probably not.

When funds are scarce and investments are heavily scrutinized, you owe it to your shareholders to assess your state of wellness, or lack thereof. Unfortunately, many managers think that measuring brand health is a massive endeavor that requires quant jocks running loose with expensive studies, time-consuming audits, and complex statistical analyses. They fear that in the end they’ll be sitting around a table scratching their heads trying to make sense of all the data sets, still clueless where to invest. It doesn’t have to be this way. Here are four time-tested diagnostic areas to consider when assessing your brand’s health.

To read the full article click here.

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May 20th, 2009 by Laurence Vincent

Toward Sustainable Branding

“Realistically, this thing must live for three to five years.” He was the CMO of a rapidly
growing technology company and his disclaimer came shortly after he approved our
strategy recommendation. He justified it with two reasons. First, he needed a shelf life
of three to five years to justify the financial investment. But his second reason was far
more interesting. “We’ll be bought by then and we’ll either have to lose the brand or re-
invent it to match the new company.”

Welcome to the age of disposable branding. The longevity of the modern brand identity
shrinks each year, which is good for strategic branding firms, but not necessarily good
for brands and the cultures they serve.
(more…)

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Nov 20th, 2008 by Laurence Vincent

Stalking Digital Experience

In the past decade, the web has matured as a critical touchpoint for brands. Online has continued to grow, audiences have matured, and the tools available to make the web more useful, interactive, and experiential have proliferated. Yet, despite advances in technology and demographics, the optimal online experience is often challenging and elusive for leading brands to accomplish.

Earlier this year, Siegel+Gale launched an initiative to study the best practices and common challenges of some of the web’s most innovative purveyors. We interviewed senior executives in four distinct industry segments: media and entertainment, information services, financial services, and sports. While we discovered nuances specific to each segment, all respondents sounded a common concern: how do you manage and measure the sometimes obscure, always alluring benefit of online experience?

(more…)

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Aug 26th, 2008 by Laurence Vincent

Want to learn more about how to articulate your organization’s digital brand voice in the Web 2.0 World?

Join Larry Vincent, Group Director, Strategy of our Los Angeles Office for a one hour webinar, sponsored by the BAPTIE Online Marketing Community on Wednesday, Sept. 24th to learn how to effectively transition your organization’s brand voice in an ever-changing Web 2.0 world.

For more information about the webinar or to register:

http://www.baptie.com/liveandonline/show.asp?e=189

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tags: events

Jul 16th, 2007 by Laurence Vincent

Everything Your Brand Wants to Know About the Social Media, but Was Afraid to Ask

What is social media?
At the basic level, social media provide the tools to develop a relationship between one and many users. It’s a conversation. A brand site is “social” if it allows and inspires conversation as it appears in the “comments” section. If it uses “rating and reputation” and tools to facilitate engagement, social media will allow and encourage a dialogue to develop. Some social media provide tools for people to contribute online, like YouTube, while others are intended for rating and criticizing, like del.icio.us and Digg. Still others are tools for questions and answers, such as YahooAnswers and HelpShare. These days the most headline-grabbing are MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, and, of course, Second Life—a content-providing and community subset of the social media. Just using a blog, videolog (vlog), or podcast format doesn’t automatically qualify something as a social medium. Genuine social media depend on running commentary, criticism, and conversation. In short, social media are about participation. In our digital democracy, social media are the public forum. In our actual democracy, social media are the newest frontier of the First Amendment, as we see in citizen journalism sites like NowPublic and Current.tv, which inspire users to report news and events.

A BRAND IS SOCIAL IF IT ENCOURAGES DIALOGUE, PARTICIPATION, AND RELEVANCE.

What are social media tools and how are they used?
There are many different types of social media tools, with more being developed every day. Social media tools fall into roughly four categories:
+ Social Networks: MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, InnoCentive, Second Life
+ Tools: Blogger, YouTube, PodcastNation, Twitter
+ Rating and Reputation: Technorati, del.icio.us, Digg.com, NowPublic
+ Questions & Answers: YahooAnswers.com, HelpShare, Wondir

(more…)

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tags: social media, whitepapers