How true!  Unless you knew the David and Goliath story in the early years, the symbolism wouldn’t have made sense (Apple being David and Microsoft being the monolithic Goliath).  Further, what we now take as a hallmark of simplistic design is really more than that:  the logo reinforces the approach Apple has taken with all its usability, design, and marketing efforts.  We wouldn’t need to see a logo to know something is Apple’s – that’s how well all of its parts are integrated.  Beyond this, in my view, because of its consistency and discipline in what it produces (products, ads, stores, service), Apple is the rare brand which is much more than the “sum of its parts.”

This conversation with Adam comes right on the heels of watching TED Talk’s “Julian Baggini: Is there a real you?”  where Julian put forward a rather “gestalt” notion of “self.”   He asked:

• Are “You” a thing which has all the experiences (beliefs, desires, sensations, etc.) of life OR
• Are “You” a collection of those experiences?

He gave two examples to support the latter point:

• Water cannot be water without its parts (hydrogen and oxygen).
• A wristwatch is created by its parts, but there is no thing which exists on its own called a watch.

Taking his philosophy to the extreme, there may be nothing but the unknown – parts to the N^th degree.   (What are the parts of hydrogen?  And the parts of hydrogen’s parts?  At some point, we simply don’t have all the answers.)

Nevertheless, this idea really is at the core of how brands are built.  A brand clearly isn’t a person with desires and sensations.  Yet, everything a brand does, says and shows helps to create the brand and its corporate culture – whether they transcend beyond mere branding as Apple has done.

In the interest of “self-awareness,” when was the last time your company did a image/concept board audit showcasing all your “parts”?  Are they working together?  Anything need to be refined?  Anything which can be leveraged to new marketing practices or products that reinforce consumers’ view of your?  My take:  this audit is just as important as a financial audit; however, they often get overlooked.

Back to Julian:  I do think the human “You” is more than a collection of our experience – which was his argument.  Until there are brain transplants, my brain is unique to me and can’t be used to reassemble another homo sapien.  So on that, I disagree with him.  But my brand?  Time for my own self-audit!

Not much liking these matters (ah, the paperwork!), I decided to contact my current mortgage lender, PNC.  Online, their rates were competitive with others.

The process was pretty smooth, but throughout, as the interest rates continued to drop, I kept confirming that my rate would be adjusted lower at the time of closing.  The answer to this was always “yes.”

As the final papers were being prepared for signing, I asked again.  Now the story changed:  I could only drop to 4.00% (from 4.25%), and that would be if I came to closing with thousands of dollars.

I sent them a screen cap of listings from BankRate.com (including theirs) showing the current 15-year rate was 3.25%.  They didn’t care; said it was something to do with loan subordination with my line of credit.

So I called Wells Fargo, the bank which holds my line of credit.  I was approved at the 3.25% rate immediately; there were no issues with loan subordination.  I had the same contact person from start to finish, making the whole transaction feel very “small bank” and personal – a pleasant surprise.

PNC let an existing customer who always paid on time walk away.  How much will it cost them to find a brand new customer?  Why wasn’t the salesperson empowered to revise their interest rate to keep me with them?  I don’t understand this type of marketing or sales logic.

On the other hand, my contact at Wells Fargo has already gotten two referrals.  A much more cost effective customer acquisition strategy!

Imagine this:  you barely know how to type, you have macular degeneration (meaning you have a really hard time seeing), you’ve never turned a computer on before, and you’ve never used a mouse.  Yet, while my father knows little about computers or how to get around online, he was clued in enough to know about Dragon Naturally Speaking software.  His take:  if he could talk to the computer and it would type for him, his online experience would be much better.

After some thought, my sister and I decided upon an HP 23″ TouchSmart All-in-One computer.  We wanted something like an iPad but bigger.  We thought if he could touch it, it would be better than trying to type it.  It was a good call.  We set the monitor’s DPI at 300% and he can see all the icons, but even with Control+, the back button, home button, and menus remain proportionately too small.  (Some add-ons have helped with this.)

For Dragon – it’s great in concept, but not 100% there when it comes to working with and training the software.  For example, the training modules use a very small font size; with the screen set at a larger DPI, what’s showing on the screen is something my dad can read, but he can’t scroll to see what else is “on the page.”  Either way, we’re finding training to be harder than it should be.

Considering this company is aware that people might have vision problems who use their program (in training, they highlight this fact), why isn’t there a short quiz at the beginning of the set-up wizard asking about what the issues are (e.g., I just want to dictate more than type my emails and letters vs. I’m a slow reader due to dyslexia or nystagmus vs. I have visual issues that make reading and using a computer more difficult for me), and then take them to the type of training program which will work best for them?  Part of my frustration is that I don’t know this program, so I can’t teach him.

After a couple of days of training him on things like how to close a program (and what  a program is), how to use the mouse (because the touchscreen is great, but the mouse is still helpful), etc., we realized that he would benefit from a program that “talked to him” (e.g., read him web pages).  So we bought a program, Natural Reader, which despite installing twice, will not read aloud to him.  Customer support is only available via email.  They are slow in responding.  I’ve tried everything I know how, but I can’t get it to work.  So here’s a company that caters to people who want help with reading for one reason or another, and they only offer email support?  Clearly their business model got in the way of their customer service model!

Despite all this, my father was upbeat as I left yesterday.  After a successful search session, about a topic of interest to him, he said he’d “sensed the nectar of the fruit” the Internet could offer.  Hadn’t tasted it yet, mind you, but sensed the possibilities.  While he’s never been mechanically inclined, the gleam in his eye reminded me of when he’s learning a new game:  he loves games and if he approaches the Internet this way, as a game he can win, the web will be fun and fruitful, vs. frustrating.

Why is this relevant in a general sense?  Do you know if you have a special needs target?

• If you’re a restaurant who has a large older population, do you have a large-size print menu?
• If you’re a movie theater, do you have someone who can help seniors to their seats?
• If you’re a shopping mall, is there above-ground parking for people who see less well in low-lighting conditions?

It’s not just about vision; hearing, muscle strength/agility/dexterity, nutritional requirements – you name it, can impact people and, consequently, who your business can attract.  We call this “holistic usability.”  Maybe it doesn’t matter much now, but as the 76 million Baby Boomers continue to get older, this target segment is going to impact your business more and more.

Take a few minutes to read your customers’ comments, or – better yet – listen to them talk.  In conventional research, we’re always talking about what can be done to get consumers to overcome hurdles to buying your brand.  What happens if they’re dissatisfied with a category of products/services because no one thought to make one small change?  A small change with a big return?  That’s a pretty simple formula for increasing market share in these still-hard economic times!

There are two aspects to this:

• The use of superlatives is becoming (more of) a turn-off in concept statements and advertising.  I am seeing this more with younger participants, but I hear it from time-to-time from the “older” folks as well.   “Best” or “better than” is not the tone they want to hear; using or including the “best of something” (e.g., best quality ingredients) – if the key benefits support the claim – is more acceptable.
• Greater value is being placed on the parts (individual) vs. the whole.  I haven’t heard in quite some time someone say “that’s a great CD.”  They like a particular song.  They download it, put it on their iPod or other device, and customize their listening experience.  That focus on being able to customize experiences is helping to drive how they react to new products and ideas.

For example, I can’t image Pepsi coming out with an ad campaign today saying “The Choice of a New Generation.”  This new generation would blog about the ridiculousness of that claim – “you’re telling us what’s our choice?!”

If this is all sounding very left-brained and logical, that’s not my intent.  I’ve often said that unless there’s a connection between a consumer and a brand, a sale will never take place.  That connection can be emotional and/or rational, but it needs to happen.

And yet, my sense is that there this is an evolution to individuality that’s becoming more pronounced.  Companies need to become increasingly more sensitive when choosing how to position themselves and their products.  Until this morning, the best case example I could give was the “I’m a Mac” campaign from Apple.  As you know, they put it out there – I’m a PC vs. I’m a Mac.  In effect, they’re asking, “which one are you like?”

But just today, I saw a headline of “Design-your-own skincare, including ingredients and concentrations” (via Springwise).  Of course, I had to go visit this site.  Turns out that you can custom blend your own cosmetics from natural ingredients. From the www.mycodage.com/an website:

Convinced that every skin is unique and deserves special treatment, in 2006 Amandine and Julien, with the help of many experts, developed a technology that allows you to customize your product to suit the specific needs of each skin.  Codage was born.  100% made in France, CODAGE today delivers worldwide – from its French laboratories directly to you.

A bit stilted in the French to English translation, but how much more personal can you get than that??

As always, I’m interested in your thoughts!

I wanted to buy American.  I’ve never owned an American car before, yet given these economic times, I thought supporting US jobs was an important thing to do.  And I did my homework, taking more than a month to narrow my decision down to four cars.

As I’m sure you know, what “American” is can be debated, so I ended up with a couple of cars on my list that have a greater connection to US jobs than did some of the American cars I considered.

It’s not important that I ended up with a Hyundai Sonata.  What is important is that my experiences at a couple of Ford dealerships turned me off completely to that brand.

The first Ford experience was in Santa Monica.  The very first day I started looking, I stopped in to just look at a couple of cars.  I was told that all the sales people were in a meeting and no one could help me.  This was on a Friday at 1PM.  How is it that you leave no one on the floor at all?  When the president gives his state of the union address, one cabinet member gets left behind.  They couldn’t do this at the dealership?  The woman at the desk was less than helpful:  there was no literature out and when she called for someone to come with some, they never came; after 10 minutes of waiting, I left, never to return.  (The receptionist’s comment:  “Well, what do you want me to do about it?”)

While the Marina Ford dealership at least had someone on the floor who was nice and a manager who seemed engaged, and the Valencia dealer had a lovely salesman (who, for whatever reason, seemed a bit inflexible on price), it was the Galpin Ford dealership Sunday afternoon that sealed the “can’t-buy-a-Ford” deal.

Yes, we were greeted before entering the showroom.  I was looking at test driving a Fusion.  As we started our drive, I asked the salesman if there was anything he wanted to tell me about the car.  His answer:  “If you’re interested in it after you’ve driven it, I’ll tell you more about it then.”  What?  Don’t you want me to fall in love with the car when I’m driving it?  Sell me on all its cool features?

The car was actually a bit more comfortable for me to drive than the Sonata.  Not by much, but enough for me to consider exploring price, despite his off-putting sales style.  So…

First, they didn’t have a car with the options I wanted – just the more expensive package was available.  (And if I wanted that options package, they could order it, but he said it would take 8-10 weeks for it to arrive.  When I got my Volvo, they didn’t have the car with the options I wanted at the dealer I bought it from; they arranged for me to get the car from an unrelated dealership in a town close by.)

Next there was the nearly $600 in car-alarm related features that I didn’t need – which was a Galpin thing that you just had to accept.  “We put it on all our cars because our customers want it”  Well, I’m a customer who didn’t want it or need it.  I had no option – and it seemed like it was just another way for them to make a profit.

And then there was the extra closing costs, that if I remember correctly, ran another $400.  The one item that got to me was the $102 to prep my car for delivery.  That’s washing the car and filling it with gas – something every other dealer I’ve ever visited throws in for free at the time of sale.

And finally, the guy didn’t even know all the incentive programs Ford was running at the time or he chose not the mention the big “year end event” promotion terms.

We were then asked, “If you don’t have any other questions, I have another person waiting for help in the showroom.”  No hand shake, no business card, no good-bye.

As we were driving back to the Hyundai dealer, my sister who’s spent most of her life in sales, was recounting the worst bits of this over and over again – something she’ll only do when the situation is egregious.  Shockingly bad is all I can say.

And it doesn’t matter to me how many times the salesman said Galpin is the largest Ford dealership – this isn’t the way that you get someone to support an American (or any) company.  In fact, it epitomized the “ugly American” stereotype that Europeans often accuse us of:  boorish, superior, with a bit of stupid thrown in for good measure.

While I’m not a mystery shopper, if I were, this isn’t a report I’d want to get if I were the client.  Am I soured on buying American wherever else I can? Certainly not.  But it’s unlikely that next time I shop for a car Ford will even make my list, which is a shame.  You can have the best product around, but if you have a lousy representative, it’s all for naught.

P.S.  Can you tell me why the name plates on Chevy and Ford need to be so ugly?  And big?  On the Chevy in particular, it was a real turn-off.