pkward.com ideas and observations - Comments

Tim Wirth comments on classical music, grief, memory, regret, leadership, and the long view

Tim Wirth — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 21:37:47 +0000

Inspiring presentation... But why am I not surprise to see that you chose it!?!

Paul K. Ward comments on mac's customer experience: is it freedom, or discipline? apple's secret sauce

Paul K. Ward — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 13:13:47 +0000

So, to provide more clues about Apple's secret sauce, I offer two words:

1. Leverage
2. Desire

Paul K. Ward comments on mac's customer experience: is it freedom, or discipline? apple's secret sauce

Paul K. Ward — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 01:01:02 +0000

If it works for you, then that's fine ... although you might want to take another approach in which you can experiment with some of Mac's unique apps (iWork and iLife). There are also other apps that let you use Windows and OS X simultaneously, which would assist in the A/B comparison. If you do that, I think you'd be a perfect person (given your Windows background) to answer the question: what is it about the Mac? Simplicity? Or something else?

chantdoc comments on mac's customer experience: is it freedom, or discipline? apple's secret sauce

chantdoc — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 20:27:24 +0000

Hi Paul! Thanks for asking. I bought a MacBook back in April, very unexpectedly, after my Sony Vaio crashed. It was actually cheaper than a new Vaio and I thought I'd give it a try. I realized that if I needed to work on my website, I would have to install Windows and use the Apple "Boot Camp" application. I went to the Genius Bar and they did help me, but, as it turns out, I mainly use the Windows side of the MacBook because it is so much easier and more useful for me. I feel kind of guilty for now using the Mac side but it just doesn't make sense for my work, it takes too long to get from one thing to another. I can't multi-task as easily.

Kind of weird??

Paul Ward comments on Losing customers in the downturn: Fickle people, or practical ones?

Paul Ward — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 22:39:44 +0000

It's a great point, Angela! I feel sure that Whole Foods was trying to deal with shareholder concerns that its growth rate was slowing, meaning that they might be saturating their markets. One way to deal with that is to broaden your appeal, but without losing your core brand values. Maybe the timing was serendipitous, but my impression is that Whole Foods is managed well enough that at least some of their investments and campaigns were triggered by internal concerns about macroeconomics.

Angela comments on Losing customers in the downturn: Fickle people, or practical ones?

Angela — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 21:13:03 +0000

I'd be curious to know if the WholeFoods "value" campaign was actually a reaction to the downturn or if they were arleady looking to reach out to a wider customer base and the timing happened to coincide. Either way, I think it works. As a WholeFoods customer, I'm happy! Still, as you suggest, I'd bet most companies respond too slowly to be effective and responsive.

Paul Ward comments on Wal-Mart, Scott, Duke. Time to get excited?

Paul Ward — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 19:18:00 +0000

I've got a chart and lots of text on this, but in a nutshell, the five forces are:

1. The tastes, values, styles and aspirations of the customer.
2. The opinions of people whom the customer trusts.
3. Data independent of opinion or the marketing communications function of the company in question.
4. The "brand" of the company, as expressed in value, values, differentiation relative to others, etc. This is the expression of the company in their corporate social responsibility and traditional integrated strategic marketing.
5. The actual behaviors and messages delivered during the customer's experience with the company.

Forth Bentham comments on Wal-Mart, Scott, Duke. Time to get excited?

Forth Bentham — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 14:39:00 +0000

Dear Paul, i'm curious about your five forces of CEM.
Please let me know.
thanx.

best regards,
vince
(levranceconsulting@gmail.com)

Paul Ward comments on Experiencing Wine

Paul Ward — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 00:50:00 +0000

Thanks for the link, Adam!

The point I was making has less to do with social networks in the pedestrian sense, but those that rely heavily on analytics and profiling to automatically recommend other content (including advertiser products). What I'm looking for is a site that will determine all kinds of parameters about WHY I like wine.

There is a travel site I've found that gives you a "personality" quiz and then describes your travel style based on the results. It was spot on for me. With this information (in theory) the travel site could make the right kinds of recommendations to pique my interest. The business benefit is that the "hierarchy of values" alignment between my passions and the offered travel packages would be so strong I'll be likely to buy, likely to pay more, and (presumably) likely to enjoy the package and refer others to it.

Right now, the best I've seen on wine-oriented social network sites are reputation/recommendation systems where people review wines. The user generated content is spotty, and one person's wine tastes are actually quite different from another's -- reputation systems have scalar rankings (one dimensional), whereas preferences for wines are multidimensional. The spottiness of the content is also a major issue. There are so many wines, I haven't yet found a site that has wide AND deep wine content.

Thanks again for the links! It could be a great resource -- especially for this wine lover!

Adam J. Martin comments on Experiencing Wine

Adam J. Martin — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 23:25:00 +0000

One thing you can count on, besides taxes and death: There's a social network for virtually every niche interest you can name:

For winer lovers, checkout this overview of social networks: http://www.calwineries.com/learn/wine-social-networks
http://www.openbottles.com/

For almost everything else, check: http://www.ning.com/