What will not happen to Apple after Steve Jobs’ resignation?

Everyone is talking about Jobs’ resignation and what is going to happen to Apple after Steve Jobs’ leave. But the first thing I thought when I heard the news was  “why everyone’s so worked up about it!?” Yes, without any doubt, Steve Jobs is a legend and founding father of not only Apple but the whole new industry , although let’s face it he didn’t do it alone. Steve Jobs is a very talented top-manager, a person, who has the ability to build a great business and…let it go, (it may not be simple) therefore thing #1 that will NOT happen to Apple is  collapse.  You have to understand, Steve Jobs was building  this company for 15 years, many professionals grew up with it, and therefore significantly nothing will change overnight. The company will still run smoothly, the creative teams will still be working, the new products will be released and successfully sold to customers.

Another thing that won’t happen to Apple is its significant stock deterioration, unless the company will fail to release the new products, which I highly doubt. I’m pretty sure that before leaving Steve Jobs provided Apple with the new products’ ideas for the certain period of time
and don’t get me wrong, customers Love Apple’s Products = shareholders Love Apple’s products, therefore, although now the stock is a little bit shaky, as soon as the investors will realize that the company is still up and running without Jobs, the stock prices will get back to normal.

The third thing that won’t happen is: Apple won’t stop releasing revolutionary products changing the world. As I wrote before, Steve Jobs is a talented top-manager and every talented top manager realizes that the company has to run like a clock with or without him. Also, every company normally has the business and marketing plans prepared for 2-3 yrs. ahead  (and I don’t think that Apple has it differently).

Apple will not say “Farewell Arms” to the patent wars, I think they will become even rougher, now that Jobs retired, the more battles
Apple wins the better.

All in all, Apple at this time is like a steam locomotive: Steve Jobs was running it at its highest speed and now Tim Cook has to support the fire in the firebox and work on his managerial style (different than Jobs’ but still effective). Tim Cook will always be compared to Steve
Jobs, it’s no doubt, but what people will say after the comparison phrase, we are yet to discover.

Building value of your brand or do you think your clients are fools?

I was a fan of TIME magazine for many years.  You have to understand me; English isn’t my native language, so even the fact of reading a magazine in English in my teen years was an achievement. As I grew up and changed, TIME changed as well. (Or my judgment
about TIME changed). I started working in publishing and reading TIME became my weekly responsibility, being a subscriber and a marketing professional in a publishing industry I started to notice some flaws in TIME’s marketing strategy. At first I forgave them, at the end of the day everybody makes mistakes, and it’s TIME we are talking about here…but soon I decided to cancel my subscription and
was bombarded a rain shower of subscription offers and this letter just blew my mind:

I mean TIME, do you think that all your readers are that stupid?

Isn’t it the main idea in newsmagazine is to provide ‘Comprehensive coverage of world news and politics?’

Or isn’t it what you should be
doing as a weekly newsmagazine is to provide “The latest news on business,
technology, and the arts’?

And shouldn’t I the “TIME Person
of the Year and all other Special Issues” be delivered to every subscriber?

But this is a not even about TIME
anymore, it’s about the conclusions that can be made of this letter:

Conclusion #1: Don’t think that your
clients or potential clients are fools, give them the real offers or don’t give
any at all. If you want to add value to your sales package (and to your brand
make the REAL offers to your clients). In TIME example, they could have offered
a free access to the whole archive (that they anyway offer to their
subscribers)

Conclusion #2: Not always the
more the better. (Don’t make your offers sound funny or even ridiculous). In TIME’s
example: ‘The latest news on business, technology, and the arts’ doesn’t add
any value to the offer, if the person subscribes to the newsmagazine it’s expected that he/she would get the latest news… So choose 2-3 strong offers and don’t add trash to your sales letter or presentation. Take away the TRASH!

Conclusion #3: Huge discount, DON’T OFFER discounts over the board, because it’s just not professional and looks
like you and your company are desperate. Make them real. Clients should get the discount FOR something, not just Because…if the client is working with you for a while you can give him/her a bigger discount. But Give a discount of 90% to the client you just met (or any client) sounds just desperate… Don’t do it.

Conclusion #4: Bonuses are good, but don’t give out too many bonuses.

Summary: Publishing industry is shrinking, it’s a fact, and so may be your industry. If you are working in shrinking industry, diversify your services and bring additional value to your products and services by means of diversification. In TIME’s example it’s online content. (If publishing is shrinking, news consumption isn’t going anywhere, contrary it’s growing) Find a way to create a niche for your company, invent
the new market for you if your industry is downsizing, and even if it’s not, it’s always better to have a room for growth through diversification.

You still don’t think Facebook is worth 50 billion? Now, think again!

I like when the stock brokers and investment bankers discuss the social media.

Often, they have no idea what they are talking about, but  at least, it means that they start to consider it as an industry and as a business that has the right to exist. 

They considered the social networks not so serious, something in between the email service and a webpage resource, that may bring you some revenue between the lunch and the tea.

But when Goldman Sachs announced that our Beloved Facebook is worth 50 billion dollars the audience began to roar: everyone try to add their 50 cents in a debate “if Facebook is worth these 50 billion or not.”

The blogs posts of  ’social media gurus’  were changing the headers faster than the speed of light ( what else than Facebook could give us such a good occasion to PR ourselves): “ is it worth ? is it not worth it?”

 I saw on a blog of one social media professional two opposite opinions within the 24 hours!

The fact that Goldman Sachs were the ones who announced that figure $50 billion dollars doesn’t add any trust to it. Plus here’s the trouble with that Russian investment firm ” Digital Sky Technologies”, that someone try to tie up to the Russian mafia and someone else to Putin. (Same thing to me).

Everyone is trying to express their opinion, trying to answer the question, that Fred baby  Paul baby was asked in the movie ”Breakfast at Tiffany’s” :
“ANSWER THE QUESTION.
IS SHE OR ISN’T SHE?
WHAT?
A PHONY.
I DON’T KNOW.”

Same here, we don’t know and no one knows:-)Is it worth it or isn’t it?  Except for maybe Zukerberg.

Just recently the company announced that it earned on 1.86 billion on ads!

And everything became much more simple: 1.86 bn divided by the amount of users it would be $3,72 of the ad money spent per each user. Isn’t that much, right? How much do you think the ad revenue will grow in the next 10 years?( FYI: spending on advertising  in social networks grew 55% from the last year. Impressing right?)

How much do you think will it be reasonable to spend on each user on FB? 10 dollars? Nah. 100?

 That’s what Goldman Sachs projected by naming the price of 50 billion dollars for  Facebook . It means that each user’s attention will cost 100 dollars. (my attention costs much more… and for the whole YEAR! much, much more)

So price of 50 billion seems pretty reasonable to me. People spend literally days on Facebook.

So if we are discussing the business side of this venture,- it looks very-very sweet and delicious. The number of users will grow, thanks to the PR Facebook is doing right now: the Social Network Movie , numerous books and Bloomberg “Game Changers” episode etc etc. Same will the spending on ads grow.

So those of you who think that this 50 billion dollars price for Facebook is ridiculous – Think again.

P.S. And if you would like to talk about the privacy issues on Facebook ( and social media in generally) - this is absolutely different story. And not that sweet and delicious.

Come back soon to read more about our Time : the Social Media Time.

Yours,

Ellen

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Customer service satisfaction or Much Ado About Nothing?

Customer service satisfaction issue astonishingly bothers me today.

You have to understand, I’m from Ukraine…We, Ukrainians, aren’t used to American customer service. We got used to the service like “you need it, go get it”, we have to go to the postal office to pay our electricity bill, we don’t have online banking (at majority of the banks) and we have to file taxes personally (no e-file, e-tides etc.), but today even the “prepared” person like me got bewildered.

Let me start from the beginning:

I have made an order in one online store… a month ago. After not getting any response in a week I made an attempt to write and received the strange email, stating that the order will be sent to me by the manufacturer directly. After waiting for 20 more days I decided to call… After spending 20 minutes on hold I got to the customer service rep, who told me that they have no idea where my purchase is and that I have to call to the manufacturer.

The “manufacturer” appeared to be the “back” office of the same company and after spending another 20 minutes, I was told that “they have called to the manufacturer(!) again? , but the item is out of stock and that’s why they offer me another item the same quality and price.”

When I checked out the item online, it appeared to be the mass market product that I can easily buy at the local pharmacy for 20 dollars. (Huh?) (hmmm)

Later today a pharmacy lady told me that she won’t sell me the item because she doesn’t have no change… too Ukrainian.  The lady was Russian though, so maybe she tried to keep me in tonus.

She also added that I buy too many medications on my ID and that it goes on my record and added couple more nasty things in my address. (So sweet of her!)

I’m thinking, maybe it’s something wrong  with my face or voice today? Or something wrong with the customer service standards?

I hear too many customer service complaints lately. And how do you hire your customer service representatives?