For me, the loss of Steve Jobs is heartbreaking.

I have had the privilege of living at a time where the businesses I have created stood and stand in the sunshine of his genius.

In my lifetime, there has been no equal that could connect product development, technology and marketing.

Steve Jobs was the antidote for the mediocre, the should have and the could have been. His passion and quest for delivering simplicity from the complex showed a respect and understanding of humanity for which modernity has no equal.

He will be missed.

Apple has always had the ability to exceed expectations.

Jobs and team understood how to tease and titillate audiences while telling us what your future technology experiences were going to be. We drank it up, cheered loudly and began a countdown for the long lines that would greet Apple stores around the world and promise life-changing innovation.

This launch became something different for Apple. It was viewed as a test for new leadership sans its iconic voice. History will record this release as the beginning of the Tim Cook era and the moment that Apple lost control of the conversation.

Welcome to the hangover, post-crowd source launch.

While the iPhone 4s has the same form factor as the 4, the brains and functionality are better. Much better. There are those that are already pining that the 4s should have been called the 5 so we can all feel better. Imagine customers wishing for a different name just so they won’t be let down. I can’t remember ever experiencing anything like it. Maybe since New Coke.

But different story, different time.

Apple should stick to its current naming nomenclature and keep the numbers the same if the form factor stays the same. The 4s was the right product name. What was wrong was the way they managed the launch. Yes, having the presentation in Cupertino did hint to less drama and implied the probability that there was only a 4X coming. But the expectations were simply too great and completely unmanageable.

The result? Angry and loyal Apple brand loyalists that feel betrayed, many of whom are journalists themselves.

With the loss of its iconoclastic leader, Apple will need to rethink its launch strategy. Jobs could handle any heat because he always knew the company’s next five future moves. He saw the game board in ways no one could comprehend and because of that view he could say “Bring it” when presenting something with the potential to disappoint.

The new Apple needs to understand that its new realities mandate better management of launches and misplaced crowd perception. It’s a different day, different expectation and a different product. Without Jobs, the crowd is in control, and Apple needs to understand that new dynamic.

Mr. Cook, welcome to the Pinhole Economy.

As we’ve discussed, the in-person experience of a convention needs to be at the forefront. It also needs to make financial sense.

But at its most basic level, we must be entertained.

Going back to the sports analogy in the last blog post, many thought putting baseball on the radio would kill attendance. Now we have television contracts that are in the billions of dollars.

Offering digital or virtual offerings of a trade show will not kill conventions. They must be embraced.

But, the digital experience needs to be an extension of the existing conference. Especially at AIA, where it’s extent is currently an obscure box on the website that displays a mere two clips from the convention.

But that’s not the worst part.

The most frustrating portion of the entire convention experience is located smack in the middle of AIA’s site.

Well how soon is soon?

Simply put, a convention this big must not only be accessible from anywhere, but also engaging. With some thoughtful (but not overly exciting) additions to the convention, architects who are unable to attend the convention will certainly be willing to invest in viewing the show online. Even better, offer more to those who DO attend each year, and you’ll convert the online attendees into in-person attendees over time.

Give everyone access to workshops, but only give education credits to those in attendance. Give everyone access to speaker keynotes, but ensure meet-and-greets with those in attendance. Give everyone access to brochures, but have workshops right on the show floor. You get the idea.

Even more, what AIA needs to give attendees are connections. Engage attendees not only with the exhibits, but also with each other. Make AIA a gathering place where architects from across the nation want to convene and share ideas.

The clear place to start is the convention floor. Rather than a static exhibition grid, create an interactive design that allows attendees to convene and discuss the exhibits as they move around the floor. Set up speakers throughout the show floor to create an intimate vibe. Then build upon these nooks based on the convention location. Hire a jazz band to play hourly at the New Orleans convention. In Cleveland, rock and roll.  In Memphis, blues. Playing upon the location makes the convention enjoyable and relatable.

The goal here is simply to create a connection. Give attendees a chance to mingle with themselves while enjoying some entertainment. Open up the in-person experience. Make AIA something to talk about.

We’ve seen it work before.

One show that seems to get it right over and over again is the TED national conference. TED is a non-profit that brings together new ideas in technology, entertainment and design and has shows throughout the country year round. But it’s the national conference that attracts thousands of eager attendees around the globe, perhaps due to its lineup of world-renowned and inspiring speakers. Best known for promoting ideas worth spreading, TED promises attendees four days of “unexpected connections, extraordinary insights and powerful inspiration.”

It’s cliched, but it delivers.

TED’s combination of intellectual consistency plus new insights brings attendees back year after year, and makes for a truly unforgettable in-person experience. Plus, among pages of written articles and summaries, its website offers “A Taste of Ted,” a three-minute recap of highlights from past shows. By offering only a taste of the conference, TED leaves much of the excitement to the in-person experience.

While we understand that AIA can not immediately rival the fervor and excitement that is TED, it has to start somewhere. Anywhere, really. Look at Apple’s WWDC. Look at Google’s IO conference. These are events, not just tradeshows. Attendees are highly creative, visual people. We need to cater to them.

And the simplest way to do that is by creating connections. The digital convention? That’s the easy part. But to create an interactive show that will engage and connect your audience? That is a goal that, surely, AIA can reach.

Part 1: Back of the Napkin: Doing Some Math at the AIA Show

Part 2: Rethinking the Convention: AIA and Beyond

A transition from ghost town to bustling convention.  All it takes is some rethinking.

We’ve discussed some issues at the AIA national convention, namely that it could have been better attended. The lack of bodies (plus the pricey cost for a lead) led to an uneventful show with the numbers to prove it. Perhaps the lack of general desire to attend the show – both the actual convention and the virtual show – is where the problem begins.

And where the solution resolves.

Yes, we recognize there are outside forces at work. But AIA needs to find the balance between a unique in-person experience and an accessible online show in order to be relevant. There must be qualities of each that make us eager to explore what the national convention offers on both ends providing fundamentally different, yet exciting experiences. AIA must prove that the national convention can be even stronger than it used to be.

And it must understand it’s the in-person experience that must come first.

Let’s compare the in-person experience to the potential virtual. Of course, many offerings are the same. Key vendor information and keynote speakers aren’t to be magically changed. But certain things at the AIA are simply unavailable online, to their benefit. The energy and buzz of the show floor, networking opportunities, personal interactions with company representatives, and even in-company/firm camaraderie can be huge benefits for in-person attendees.

Now they must build upon these offerings, which doesn’t necessarily require adding more activities at the convention. Instead, understand what makes AIA great and build upon it. Redesign a show into something that simply can’t be missed.

Let’s take some cues from the world of sports.

Nowadays it’s easier than ever to experience a game from the comfort of your living room. Yet, ticket prices in professional sports continue to rise. Obviously, there’s something special about being at the arena for the live event. Maybe it’s the free t-shirts they throw to the fans. Maybe it’s the combination of music and pyrotechnics. Or maybe it’s the feeling you get when you jump out of your seat, accompanied by the screams of thousands of fellow fanatics.

The AIA national convention needs to be an experience. What keeps fans coming back to sporting events isn’t the actual game. It’s the smells, sounds, feelings and people that make attending sporting events so popular. There’s a reason Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference sells out in two hours.

But that doesn’t mean the digital experience can’t be made better. In fact, they should work together. Stay tuned to see why.

Part 1: Back of the Napkin: Doing Some Math at the AIA Show

Flickr photo courtesy of ikaink

Tombstone, Ariz. Bodie, Calif. AIA show in New Orleans.

What do these three locations have in common? Last week, they were all ghost towns.

For those of you who aren’t in the world of architecture, design and building products, the 2011 American Institute of Architects National Convention took place in New Orleans last week.  A rather important convention. In fact, the biggest in the space. Held in a lively town.

And yet, total desertion.

We expected drops in attendance. After all, there’s a global recession out there. For example, in 2009, AIA promotional material “expected” 27,000 for the conference in San Francisco. And by 2010′s AIA in Miami, the conference had 17,000 in attendance.

But it’s not just about attendance, we need to ask the exhibitors. Ask them how the show is performing. And in talking with a few of them, it sounded pretty dire. But doing some of my own back-of-the-napkin mathematical analysis, it looks even worse.

Marketing the show: $20,000

Booth design, labor, setup, booth space: $100,000

Five employees to man booth: (5 x $700 per day in labor, hotel, per diem x 4 days): $14,000

Total cost:$134,000

Sound excessive? Just wait, one exhibitor mentioned they received around 125 leads at the show.  $134,000 for just 125 leads, and a cost per lead of $1,072 and change.

Seems a little pricey.

While results may vary, this type of investment with such little return is unsustainable. There are a million ways to reach prospects at much lower price points.  It’s clear that the convention is beneficial to architects, but it may be time for marketers to rethink about the math that goes with the show.

So while you are probably sitting at your desk wondering how it could possibly be worth the costly investment, know that there are ways to rethink the convention.  Ways for exhibitors to be in touch with their audience. In fact, a better audience. Stay tuned.

Part 2: Rethinking the Convention: AIA and Beyond

Flickr photo courtesy of n0ll

One of the classic misfires of social media over the last four years is the method of the hard sell.

Buy this. Half off on that. Et cetera. Ad nauseum.

While this method eventually morphed into a softer sell, i.e. engagement and badges, it’s still a sell. And these examples are what dominate social media examples and monetization strategies.

But what if you’re product is different, when it’s not about the sell? What if the many of those in possession of your products are completely unaware until a problem arises?

Welcome to the world of building products.

When people buy an existing house – that is, one that is already built – they become the owners of a whole lot of specified items they never realized. Stuff like fireplaces, drywall, insulation, tile, flooring, roofing materials, garage doors, HVAC and even paint.

No longer can building products marketers sit behind the adage that social doesn’t apply to their businesses. Everyone uses social media. With the explosion of mobile use, there is no U.S. demographic underrepresented by social any longer.

So how does one get started if the C-level isn’t sold or has no social experience to begin with?

1. Own your customers questions

24-hour customer service via Twitter isn’t for everyone, but developing social content with customer service in mind should be. For example, product managers and marketers know the common issues that customers and specifiers have, so why aren’t they producing answers to these questions in video, blog posts and updates?

If optimized correctly for SEO, these also become long-term assets that bring users to your sites over and over.

2. Get into data

Yes, it’s not about the sale with building product social media, but you can use it to generate better data about usage. Use social media properties to drive people to your sites in order to better understand the who/what/when/where/why of your products.

3. Show off

Every company has success stories, and often these success stories are buried in a PDFs, or worse, in a rep’s head. Not only get them on your site, but use them as content to share with your users. Plus video, photos and interviews are some of the best ways to make a success story come alive.

As mentioned earlier, there is no excuse for not having a social presence, nor should it deviate from existing marketing and communications. If you curious about hearing more about social media and building products, please let us know.

Flickr photo courtesy of Moosicorn

A lot has been written about the long-term viability of Google.

Fortune magazine weighed in with a cover story, “The Search Party is Over,” but the magazine was hardly alone. MSNBC wondered aloud last week, what’s up with the wind farms and the automated cars?

These notices that Google has dallied outside of their core services causes us to continually ask, are the search giant’s best days cached?

Hardly.

Society needs to stop viewing Google’s through search engine-relevant goggles, but instead as an information relevance company.

Images, videos, news, shopping, books, blogs and readers were just hints at the highly-focused tools they’re developing to better connect with consumers and businesses information needs. Their entire mobile operating system, Android, was developed to access more consumer behaviors and make Google-driven results even more relevant. And for every person crying foul over privacy, 10 others are happily relinquishing their anonymity to find better pizza or the finest in designer shoes.

In the battle of easy versus privacy, the smart bet is on easy.

Which brings me to the other company who gets easy, Apple. Steve Jobs understood the power of easy as the tech industry was birthed and has since built an organization that creates highly personalized form factors that make it easy to experience information.

Apple and Google are easy in search of easier.

And this is just the beginning of how companies need to refocus and build consideration for services and products that deliver easy.

Flickr image via nerovivo

In the race to have the latest shiny object, chasing cool has become the siren song of the tech/marketing moment.

And at this moment, it’s cool to have your own branded, mobile/portable app. We can’t go a day without a large B2B or B2C company producing an app or a tech company picking sides in the Android or Apple OS “war.”

Every. Single. Day.

But because of competitive envy or sheer bravado, so many company branded mobile apps that get produced are half-baked or woefully missing the point. That doesn’t mean app development is dead, it’s just that marketers need to stop the assembly line.

Branded mobile apps must deliver a consistent brand message and experience that understands the consumer. For the owner/creator, the app must provide useful feedback and insight (data).

I recently came across a hospital system promoting a mobile app that helps patients find the nearest emergency room with the shortest wait time. On the surface, it achieves cool, but is also functional. It provides a service that ER-goers wouldn’t have otherwise, and the hospital system (in theory) can at least get some usage and/or geographic statistics from users.

In this instance, the app crossed the chasm from cool to useful.

To make the leap, there must be substance. Anyone can build an app these days. Google’s announcement that we all can build our own Android app (We are all developers?), proved that.  The publicity you could potentially receive from telling the press “LOOK AT ME, I HAVE AN APP!” is running on fumes. At one point, it didn’t matter what type of app companies came out with, if you were the first baby bottling company from Louisville to have a branded app, that was enough.

No more.

Anything in marketing worth a dime must provide value, to both sides. No matter how cool.

After crab fisherman, a hospital marketing leadership position may be the most difficult job in America. Not only is there a need to do more with less, there’s the hard work of aligning messages and strategies for a board, CEO, CFO and medical staff.

Toss in healthcare reform and new communication technologies, shake and serve cold with two olives.

With a drink in hand we’d like to discuss how reform and technology can be more friend than foe and create new marketing opportunities in a multi-blog format.  This is part 1. Here is part 2.

Part 1: Reform = Change

I’ve often thought that “reform” is too harsh of a word to accompany healthcare, yet we see it far too often. We all want to be healthy and we all want to be cared for.

Reform has a draconian feel and reminds me of the place bad kids are sent or something chairman Mao cooked up. So let’s start off thinking about how healthcare will evolve over the next few years.

While the 2,000+ pages of Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) have been mocked for their complexity and legislative ugliness, there is a clear attempt to affect markets, provide more people access to care and in time create greater cost control, the effect of which will change healthcare markets and offer consumers new kinds of choice.

More People and Access

It’s estimated that 47 million Americans are uninsured. Here’s some quick facts about this segment courtesy of Maggie Mahar’s excellent healthcare blog, Health Beat:

• 15 million have earnings between $25,000 to $50,000
• 9.7 million live in households with income over $75,000 per year
• 19 million are 18-34 years old
• 11% of the uninsured are in fair to poor health
• 50% of all uninsured adults suffer from a chronic condition
• 75% have gone without insurance for more than one year
• 55% have not had insurance for more than three years

Marketing Implications

For hospitals the changes will be double-edged. Healthcare providers will feel a surge of new patients, many of which will have disproportionately greater healthcare challenges. But the challenges will still be manageable if a hospital is positioned to work with patients in efficient and holistic models. Those that are able currently to provide break-even and or profitable Medicare services will see significant opportunities for growth and income.

The key challenge will be combining access points for populations that are less mobile with marketing that can close the gap with hospitals that have clinical leadership positions. New participants will have more choices and will need to believe that your hospital can deliver on the promise of quality care and respond to their health needs.

Those “healthy, wealthy and young” represent a cohort that everybody would like. Unfortunately many in this group have failed to see the value of healthcare from a risk-reward perspective and have decided to manage risk through disengagement.

To reach this segment, healthcare providers will need to expand the offering to more holistic and complete care, showing a benefit for staying healthy.

The current proposed penalties for non-participation may not be enough to drive enrollment until the penalties reach high enough pain points by 2016.  Healthcare systems will need to create programs and messages that show a benefit to keeping healthy versus fixing the sick. Think about life style messages versus immanent health challenges.

For those who can create a strategy to reach this new segment of “newly insured and healthy” the marketing opportunities will be significant.

Creepy flickr photo of the Mansfield State Reformatory courtesy of Krystn Palmer Photography

Healthcare marketing is changing dramatically. PTP is looking at what those implications are for marketers in that field in a multiple-blog post format.

You can read Part 1 here: Change from a Healthcare Marketing Perspective

Part 2: Upside and Downside of Cost Control

The unseen levers of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) are the reimbursement models that promise to create efficiency and improved care.

Hospitals that have above-market reimbursement models from private pay and or Medicare Advantage will have two options—become more efficient while improving on care to participate with an expanded payment base or ignore the changes and depend on private insure and the kindness of major gifts.

Initially, insurance companies will feel the brunt of healthcare evolution and begin to mandate better efficiencies from hospitals. The phasing out of Medicare Advantage will erode a significant profit pool and force insurance providers to take a harder look at their current payment schedules.

Maggie Mahar highlights a quote in her healthcare reform blog post from a MedPac study:

Hospitals with the greatest resources are less aggressive about containing costs and therefore have the highest Medicare ‘losses’ (the difference between Medicare rates and a hospital’s average costs).

Mahar references other insights that discuss the pricing power of marquee hospitals which have historically reduced the willingness of insurance companies to negotiate more aggressive payment models.

PPACA is intent on eliminating pricing premiums and will reward those that are able to deliver reliable and quality driven healthcare in a cost effective environment. Providers that provide clinical excellence and cost control will experience significant growth and opportunity.

Look for hospitals that may not have the high end cache to start gaining more market share and be more competitive than historically have been.

Flickr photo courtesy of ordinaryfool