Author Archives: Zach Graham
Last week Amazon started shipping it’s latest version of the popular eReader, the Kindle, with “Special Offers & Sponsored Screensavers.” At $114, the price tag on the ad-supported version of the Kindle is $25 cheaper than it’s comparable model. In the weeks since it was first announced, there’s been plenty of grumbling about having ads on the device. Some others are debating whether $25 is enough of a discount to have to endure the ads. But the people having these arguments have it all wrong. I’m not buying one until they launch a model with more ads. Or at least ads in different places. Hear me out.
The latest Kindle uses ads on the home screen and menu page to subsidize a portion of the cost of the device. It’s a smart strategy from Amazon, aimed at getting more Kindles in more people’s hands by lowering the base price even further. But the content on the Kindle (the books, magazines, newspapers and blogs) is still pay-as-you-go, and free from advertising. Consumers and reviewers ought to be demanding it the other way around.
As both the device manufacturer and the publishing clearinghouse, Amazon has taken a page from Apple’s playbook. Sure, they probably make some money on the devices, but more importantly, they lock people into purchasing content for the device from them and only them. It’s the modern day equivalent of giving the razor away for cheap so that you can make a killing on the blades. The only problem is that consumers are used to getting those blades for free.
Now that I’ve had a night of good sober sleep, I’m able to take a step back and reflect on the past few days and what I learned. There was certainly a lot to take in at SXSW, but I’d like to focus on one of the key things that stood out and how I think applies to the trip itself.
The most informative and engaging talk of the week was Jared Spool’s presentation about the different types of user experience design and how and when to use them. He sprinkled just the right amount of humor throughout his deep look at the design types, and he wasn’t afraid to share his knowledge with the audience.
My biggest complaint about the content of the conference is that there were far too many presentations focused on “what we did” and far to few that were brave enough to show “how we did it.” Spool was the best example of a ‘how’ focused talk, and he was the only presenter I saw that offered to send out their deck afterwards. Bravo to you, Mr. Spool. But the quote from his talk that had me thinking was this one: Experience focused design seeks to fill the space between activities.
We often think of online experiences as holistic things. You can’t break them down into pieces – everything counts as part of the experience. And yet when he said it, it made sense. Maybe our brains don’t distinguish between the experiences of filling out a registration form on one site from another. The connective tissue of an experience – the transitions between tasks and the creative layer on top of them – make the biggest impact on our impression. I know that was true for me at SXSW. Sure, there were several great presentations, but when I think back about it weeks, months and years from now, my memory of the experience will be defined by connective tissue just as much as the speeches. It was the first conference where I saw more iPads (and iPad2s, which launched on the first day of the conference) than laptops in the audience. I’ll remember how miserable I was with my app-lacking blackberry. I’ll remember getting to know several bright and talented fellow CMers for the first time, bumping into old friends and colleagues from past jobs, meeting new people from interesting companies, waiting for the shuttle, getting food from a truck, eating in a parking lot, and marveling at the spectacle of all the rest.
Photo Credit: Richard Tseng
No one argues that games are a huge part of our culture (especially here, btw), but I’ve been hearing something you don’t often hear; we as marketers ought to be integrating the principles and qualities that make games enjoyable into our brand experience.
In yesterday’s keynote, Seth Prietbatsch showed how the mechanics of game play are being used successfully in some unexpected places. From the classroom to loyalty marketing programs, game mechanics can improve poorly designed systems. For example, “Grades are a naïve implementation of a status mechanic,” Prietbasch said.
After a few other examples, he used a crowd participation exercise to illustrate the power of a large group to achieve surprising results. Each of the 2,500+ members of the audience was given a card with different colors on each side. There were 5 or 6 different colors in all. He issued a challenge to the audience; organize each row into holding up the same color, by trading cards with neighbors in front or back if needed, within 90 seconds.He said that he’d only tested the exercise on a group of about 25 prior to this, and in the end it worked. Through cooperation, we were able to self-organize without the benefit of a leader and without being able to communicate to people beyond just a few feet from us. This exercise was used to show how large unorganized groups could overcome complex challenges.
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