Tag Archives: Wall Street Journal

Netflix: It’s About the Customer Strategy, Stupid – Part II

By Steve Robins

Six Solution Marketing Lessons from Netflix

As I mentioned at the end of the last post, Netflix: It’s the Customer, Stupid, Netflix’s recent misadventure is a cautionary tale for solution marketers.  Following are a six key lessons:

#1: As a vendor or service provider, technology upgrades are good.

So, if you rent DVDs and know the market will eventually transition to video on demand, you need to offer video on demand as well – just as Netflx does today.  Streaming is proven and consumers will demand it.  It’s not a matter of if, but when.  However…

#2: Consumers and customers do not share your company’s timetable

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Secretaries, Typewriters and Solutions

This week’s news mentioned 2 intertwined stories, one of which is a hoax.

The Hoax

R.I.P. Typewriter

Last week, India’s Business Standard reported Typewriters about to become a page in history since an Indian typewriter producer was running out of the typewriters they stopped producing in 2009 (sounds kind of inevitable to me but I digress).  Subsequently England’s The Telegraph, The Wall Street Journal’s India site and no less august an institution than the Huff Post ran the same story.

Just one problem: as it turns out though, the typewriter (at least the electronic version) is far from dead – heck you can even pick one up at Staples according to the Washington Post.  (Thanks HuffPost and WashPost for debunking the story).

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Happy Birthday YouTube

– By Steve Robins

YouTube and Solution Marketing

YouTube presents a great opportunity for solution marketers.  But what exactly is the solution marketing opportunity?  Viral videos?  Product pitches? Video marketing?  Read on for more.   Continue reading

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Filed under Access, Information, SIVA - Elements of Solution Marketing, Solution Marketing, Video Marketing

Apple iPad: Solution Evaluation

– By Steve Robins

Rating the Apple iPad as a Solution
iPad Series Part II

Read Part I, Apple iPad: Tablet or Solution

iPad - a complete solution

A complete solution incorporates users, process, content, technology and services

Since January, I’ve been researching the Apple iPad in order to rate it as a solution.  I even took one for a test drive on Sunday (thanks Jeff Berg of Purple Shark Consulting!).  The rating is actually a strategic tool that enables marketers to meet customer needs by offering a complete solution. But the Apple iPad has generated so much hype that it’s a great solution to evaluate.  The iPad received a rating of 4.3 out of 5.  By comparison, most other tablet offerings today would probably score 2.5 or lower on the solution rating scale.  The best possible score is 5 (complete solution) while the lowest is 1 (product, not a solution).  This is an independent evaluation and was not funded by Apple.

Click “Keep reading” below to see the full solution evaluation of the Apple iPad.

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Apple iPad: Tablet or Solution?

– By Steve Robins

The Apple iPad is a complete solution
iPad Series Part I

iPad is here

Read Part II, Apple iPad: Solution Evaluation

In recent weeks, you may have wondered about the anticipated success of the Apple iPad, similar to that of the iPhone and iPods that preceded it.  Yes, Apple builds powerful, well-designed and easy-to-use products.  And yes, despite Apple products’ frequently higher price, consumers have snapped up Apple Macs, iPods and iPhones at a rapid clip (over 75 million people use the iPhone and iTouch today).  At the same time, the media industry itself is all abuzz that Apple devices, especially the iPad, will finally provide a content platform that enables them to make money from their digital content.

Apple doesn’t create technology platforms alone:
Apple solves problems.

But all of this misses one critical point: users have problems to solve and Apple does a better job of solving their “problems” than most other PC or electronics companies (Do you agree?  Comment below!).   So what is this “problem”? As the computer experience has shifted from digital content creation (think spreadsheets and documents – which will always be important) to digital content consumption (music, Web, images, video), people want to be able to access content from anywhere – on the go, at the office, in the living room.  And thus far, Apple has solved the problem better than anyone else.

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