Molecularist

I’ve been a proponent of using the PC, browser, or mobile in a unified way – basically, using the channel most suited for a particular activity. One area that can get overlooked is a service subscription process. Of course, it can be easiest to sign up using a PC, but for some services, signing up from the phone might bee just as easy. For example, signing up with a short code via SMS makes it easy to capture already a subscriber’s phone number.

I think it is a challenge to actually make sign up simple for some services, say a blogging app. But, it can be done, for example, by having simple defaults for the person who signs up via the mobile, that then can be changed when they get to a PC. I think Kodak does this with their uploader app. You just upload, even if you don’t have an account. You can then go to your PC and complete the process.

What triggered my thoughts here was Mobile Mike’s insightful comment in his report from his and Russ’ most recent Mobile Monday. I think he also hits it on the head for the quick demo and sign up process (been there, suffered that!):

Link: This is Mobility � Blog Archive � Mobile Demos – Grabbing Attention vs. Creating a Stir.

I know all the reasons why people keep the registration process mostly on the PC, but I still think it’s wrong. Let sign up for your service be as much of an impulse event as possible. Let one user recommend it to a friend and start using it right there at the gathering they’re having, without needing to go back to a PC to sign up and then use at some future point. If I’m at a concert and someone tells me about photo sharing software they’re using, you bet I want to start using it right then. Delaying that event will cause a lot of loss in terms of users. When I sign up later at my PC there’s nothing for me to do, I’ll probably forget about the app pretty quick. The positive use I could have had at the event where I heard about the software is a powerfully marketing tool, use it by enabling it. You need to be able to capture that event if you’re working on a mobile social application. The software and service are situated and realtime, the sign up and start of use should be as well.

Russ made a comment on the most recent change of logos at Palm.

Link: Russell Beattie Notebook – New Palm Logo Analysis.

Call me a stick in the mud, but I think the new Palm logo doesn’t have the same cool-factor that the first one did. The old one reminds me of BMW – especially when you see it as a button on a device – it conveys a sense of technical excellence. The new one is like a dot-com startup which alludes to the old logo, but then adds orange as a sign of "innovation," but I don’t think it works.

…

Not to mention the fact that they’re throwing away years of brand-recognition as well…

Being from a marketing group at Nokia, I think deeply about corporate brands. Whenever we did anything, such as Lifeblog or Series 60, we always thought of the look and feel of the app and marketing material, consistency, clarity, credibility, made gradual changes, and so on.

I was blessed to receive brand training (brand culture, more like it) from the top gurus from Nokia themselves, the ones who have been growing it for the past 10-15 years. One of the first exercises was to find dumb-brand-director moves at other companies. My example was the big change Palm did (that very day) from the strong brand recognition of the Palm name and colours to Palmone and the stupid garish brown and orange.

Yes, that was basically brand suicide.

I get a feeling that Palm finally shot that stupid brand director and brought back the old one to straighten out the brand again. But, the change will be gradual. And a lot of equity was lost – hmm, might that help explain Palm’s invisibility in the current market? We always point to the contributions of brand screw ups to the fall of a company.

Palm’s best bet is to fade to just the name, no button or anything. Turn the text black or blue (no pun there, just get rid of the orange). They should also run a brand building campaign to expunge the orange – maybe a ‘Palm then, Palm now’ campaign, maybe even a ‘Palm oops’, too, and laugh at the orange (I mean, you can’t really hide it any more).

I heard some other things I don’t know if I can repeat, but I get the feeling that over the next few years, Palm will regain their brand recognition and take a better ownership of their historical brand.

I mean, why throw away the lead? Now they are like everyone else and have to (re)gain it.

 

I was doing the usual following of interesting links and stumbled again onto the Rabble site. It’s pretty cool, but it doesn’t support my operator, so I can’t really play with it.

But, here are the guys behind it. I read their site and really feel that these guys get mobility. Their thinking centers around user created content (note: NOT consumption of content).

I was reading some stats last night – communication will still be the biggest chunk of mobile revenues. Obviously voice will always dominate (most forecasts have been saying for years now 70-80% of total mobile revenues), but p2p (i.e. communication) is the next biggest and includes messaging (text, picture, video, email, chat).

As I have said before, people want to communicate. The new phones with imaging and video capabilities are allowing folks to communicate with their own content. Services that make it easy for folks to capture, manage, and share their personal content will be the winners in the mobile space. My money is on Rabble.

Here’s a quote from their site. Go and read more of their thinking.

Link: Mobility is the key.

A PC without the internet is still a PC. A mobile device without the network is useless. We cannot refer to people as "users" anymore; they are mobile nodes on a participatory network which is constantly morphing around them as they move about.

Another great line from Rabble: ‘You’re still blogging from your PC? That’s so last year.’