The Human Communication Playbook by Graham Brown (Get the PDF) Graham Brown
Leadership Storytelling Podcast in the Era of the Machine. 7 Storytelling strategies for leaders in the 2020s by Graham D Brown.
- Transformation Storytelling
- Data Storytelling
- Authentic Storytelling
- Customer Storytelling
- Many to Many Storytelling
- Culture Storytelling
- Agile Storytelling
The Asia Matters Report by Graham D BrownGraham Brown
Asia is a $27 trillion economy, 50% bigger than the EU and the US. Here's why it matters.
Graham Brown
Asia Tech Podcast
http://www.ATP.show
Asia Matters Institute
http://www.AsiaMattersInstitute.org
The Human Communication Playbook by Graham Brown (Get the PDF) Graham Brown
Leadership Storytelling Podcast in the Era of the Machine. 7 Storytelling strategies for leaders in the 2020s by Graham D Brown.
- Transformation Storytelling
- Data Storytelling
- Authentic Storytelling
- Customer Storytelling
- Many to Many Storytelling
- Culture Storytelling
- Agile Storytelling
The Asia Matters Report by Graham D BrownGraham Brown
Asia is a $27 trillion economy, 50% bigger than the EU and the US. Here's why it matters.
Graham Brown
Asia Tech Podcast
http://www.ATP.show
Asia Matters Institute
http://www.AsiaMattersInstitute.org
Ebook: 10 Tips to Grow Your Business in 2017 (Download)Graham Brown
10 Tips to Grow Your Business in 2017 by Graham Brown from Up.School. Tips, tricks and hacks to help you become a better lifestyle entrepreneur and grow your business. If you find this Ebook useful, don't forget to LIKE and DOWNLOAD.
(Asia Tech Podcast) 7 Ways to Stay Motivated when launching your businessGraham Brown
Asia Tech Podcast http://www.ATP.show
Asia Tech Research http://www.AsiaTechResearch.com
How do you stay motivated as an entrepreneur? In this Up.School presentation I'll share hacks and techniques I use to stay productive (even when you're not feeling it)
http://www.Up.School
(Asia Tech Podcast) 25 Inspiring Quotes for Startup FoundersGraham Brown
Asia Tech Podcast http://www.ATP.show
Asia Tech Research http://www.AsiaTechResearch.com
From Mark Zuckerberg to Peter Drucker. Who inspires you? Don't forget to check out my free webinar series (link in the file)
(Asia Tech Podcast) 60 Inspiring Quotes for Entrepreneurs Graham Brown
Asia Tech Podcast http://www.ATP.show
Asia Tech Research http://www.AsiaTechResearch.com
From Seth Godin to Richard Branson, words of wisdom from entrepreneurs, rabble rousers and change makers.
http://www.Up.School
Experience is the Brand (How to Build a Brand Worth Talking About)Graham Brown
Asia Tech Podcast http://www.ATP.show
Asia Tech Research http://www.AsiaTechResearch.com
We are in the business of selling emotions not stuff. Stuff is cheap and easy to copy. Emotion, however is a priceless, individual, unique experience. In this presentation, I explain why the future of marketing lies in creating powerful EXPERIENCES that customers can share and conversations that define our brands. There is also a link in this presentation telling you how to get the PDF file.
How to fix a Broken Brand (McDonalds Case Study 2015)Graham Brown
It's not all sunshine and rainbows in marketing.
What happens when your brand is broken?
What happens when you have one of the most globally recognized brands but your sales are flat even though you're spending $1.5 billion on advertising?
What happens when you're losing the youth market and competitors like Starbucks, Chipotle and Shake Shack are eating away at your market share?
Forget brand makeovers, rebrands and a better ad campaign. What McDonalds needs to stay relevant is something far more radical.
In this case study presentation I look at McDonalds. What is the root cause of the McDonalds brand marketing strategy? Why is more "branding" and more of the old ad agency model going to create more of the same problem? And how can McDonalds fix its brand through building a powerful Frontline Brand Experience?
In this presentation, I look at the shift from Branding to Brand Experience and the 3 areas McDonalds needs to focus on to fix its broken brand.
How Starbucks Became the Apple of CoffeeGraham Brown
If you owned stock in Starbucks and Apple, you'd be sitting on a 1000% return on your investment over the last 7 years.
The phenomenal rise of these two companies is the result of clear focus on their brand marketing strategy, one which required a conscious split from traditional BRANDING based advertising, to marketing fit for the 21st century: BRAND EXPERIENCE.
In this presentation, we'll look at the success story from the Starbucks side: a case study of how Starbucks became a loved brand like Apple and the 5 factors that underpin its class-leading marketing strategy.
The 6 Ways Starbucks Kills it on Social MediaGraham Brown
Did you know Starbucks gets more tags on social media sites like Instagram than McDonalds, Apple and Coke COMBINED?
No kidding. 19 million tags on Instagram - that's a lot of people sharing the Starbucks experience without the need for advertising.
In this new presentation I look at how Starbucks generates massive "earned media" with its legendary Brand Experience.
Branding is Dead: Long Live Brand ExperienceGraham Brown
What is brand in 2015? Brand is no longer what the ad agency says about your product or service but what customers say, share and experience about your company.
That means how your retail staff interact with customers or how your marketing team creates conversations at your events is more important than what's said in an advertising campaign.
This is the reality of the sharing economy in 2015. Experience is only real when shared and if customers aren't sharing your brand, you might as well be invisible.
Click here to find out more about Brand Experience and why the era of Branding is dead...
The 7 Awesome Ways GoPro Wins in the Sharing Economy (GrahamDBrown)Graham Brown
Enjoy my latest presentation about how GoPro built its brand to a multi billion dollar business with virtually no money spent on Big Idea advertising. The 7 Awesome Ways GoPro Wins in the Sharing Economy (GrahamDBrown)
Download a sample of my latest book here
http://www.grahamdbrown.com/digital-ape-slideshare
10 Facts about Gen Y and Social Media Privacy (Total Youth Research)Graham Brown
Do Gen Y Millennials really care about social media privacy? According to our latest day they care a lot more than you think. 10 Facts about Gen Y and Social Media Privacy (Total Youth Research)
Brand Democracy: How to Tell Stories in the Social Era by Graham BrownGraham Brown
Brand Democracy: How to Tell Stories in the Social Era by Graham Brown
Brand Democracy is a bottom-up approach to marketing practiced by brands like GoPro, Zappos, Instagram, Lego and Monster Energy Drinks. Where brand management focuses on top-down brand positioning, Brand Democracy seeks to create the brand through customer conversations and interactions. Rather than managing the brand, the company curates this peer-to-peer communication by giving customers tools and a platform to share their individual stories.
Set Up, Step Back, Shut Up: The Secrets Behind Lego's Social Media SuccessGraham Brown
Set Up, Step Back, Shut Up: The Secrets Behind Lego's Social Media Success
Brands spend $ millions securing a few words of seconds from celebrities like David Beckham to endorse their projects.
Perfumes, clothing, sunglasses, mobile phones - the list goes on.
Yet, Lego gets it for free.
Dev Dives: Train smarter, not harder – active learning and UiPath LLMs for do...UiPathCommunity
💥 Speed, accuracy, and scaling – discover the superpowers of GenAI in action with UiPath Document Understanding and Communications Mining™:
See how to accelerate model training and optimize model performance with active learning
Learn about the latest enhancements to out-of-the-box document processing – with little to no training required
Get an exclusive demo of the new family of UiPath LLMs – GenAI models specialized for processing different types of documents and messages
This is a hands-on session specifically designed for automation developers and AI enthusiasts seeking to enhance their knowledge in leveraging the latest intelligent document processing capabilities offered by UiPath.
Speakers:
👨🏫 Andras Palfi, Senior Product Manager, UiPath
👩🏫 Lenka Dulovicova, Product Program Manager, UiPath
Ebook: 10 Tips to Grow Your Business in 2017 (Download)Graham Brown
10 Tips to Grow Your Business in 2017 by Graham Brown from Up.School. Tips, tricks and hacks to help you become a better lifestyle entrepreneur and grow your business. If you find this Ebook useful, don't forget to LIKE and DOWNLOAD.
(Asia Tech Podcast) 7 Ways to Stay Motivated when launching your businessGraham Brown
Asia Tech Podcast http://www.ATP.show
Asia Tech Research http://www.AsiaTechResearch.com
How do you stay motivated as an entrepreneur? In this Up.School presentation I'll share hacks and techniques I use to stay productive (even when you're not feeling it)
http://www.Up.School
(Asia Tech Podcast) 25 Inspiring Quotes for Startup FoundersGraham Brown
Asia Tech Podcast http://www.ATP.show
Asia Tech Research http://www.AsiaTechResearch.com
From Mark Zuckerberg to Peter Drucker. Who inspires you? Don't forget to check out my free webinar series (link in the file)
(Asia Tech Podcast) 60 Inspiring Quotes for Entrepreneurs Graham Brown
Asia Tech Podcast http://www.ATP.show
Asia Tech Research http://www.AsiaTechResearch.com
From Seth Godin to Richard Branson, words of wisdom from entrepreneurs, rabble rousers and change makers.
http://www.Up.School
Experience is the Brand (How to Build a Brand Worth Talking About)Graham Brown
Asia Tech Podcast http://www.ATP.show
Asia Tech Research http://www.AsiaTechResearch.com
We are in the business of selling emotions not stuff. Stuff is cheap and easy to copy. Emotion, however is a priceless, individual, unique experience. In this presentation, I explain why the future of marketing lies in creating powerful EXPERIENCES that customers can share and conversations that define our brands. There is also a link in this presentation telling you how to get the PDF file.
How to fix a Broken Brand (McDonalds Case Study 2015)Graham Brown
It's not all sunshine and rainbows in marketing.
What happens when your brand is broken?
What happens when you have one of the most globally recognized brands but your sales are flat even though you're spending $1.5 billion on advertising?
What happens when you're losing the youth market and competitors like Starbucks, Chipotle and Shake Shack are eating away at your market share?
Forget brand makeovers, rebrands and a better ad campaign. What McDonalds needs to stay relevant is something far more radical.
In this case study presentation I look at McDonalds. What is the root cause of the McDonalds brand marketing strategy? Why is more "branding" and more of the old ad agency model going to create more of the same problem? And how can McDonalds fix its brand through building a powerful Frontline Brand Experience?
In this presentation, I look at the shift from Branding to Brand Experience and the 3 areas McDonalds needs to focus on to fix its broken brand.
How Starbucks Became the Apple of CoffeeGraham Brown
If you owned stock in Starbucks and Apple, you'd be sitting on a 1000% return on your investment over the last 7 years.
The phenomenal rise of these two companies is the result of clear focus on their brand marketing strategy, one which required a conscious split from traditional BRANDING based advertising, to marketing fit for the 21st century: BRAND EXPERIENCE.
In this presentation, we'll look at the success story from the Starbucks side: a case study of how Starbucks became a loved brand like Apple and the 5 factors that underpin its class-leading marketing strategy.
The 6 Ways Starbucks Kills it on Social MediaGraham Brown
Did you know Starbucks gets more tags on social media sites like Instagram than McDonalds, Apple and Coke COMBINED?
No kidding. 19 million tags on Instagram - that's a lot of people sharing the Starbucks experience without the need for advertising.
In this new presentation I look at how Starbucks generates massive "earned media" with its legendary Brand Experience.
Branding is Dead: Long Live Brand ExperienceGraham Brown
What is brand in 2015? Brand is no longer what the ad agency says about your product or service but what customers say, share and experience about your company.
That means how your retail staff interact with customers or how your marketing team creates conversations at your events is more important than what's said in an advertising campaign.
This is the reality of the sharing economy in 2015. Experience is only real when shared and if customers aren't sharing your brand, you might as well be invisible.
Click here to find out more about Brand Experience and why the era of Branding is dead...
The 7 Awesome Ways GoPro Wins in the Sharing Economy (GrahamDBrown)Graham Brown
Enjoy my latest presentation about how GoPro built its brand to a multi billion dollar business with virtually no money spent on Big Idea advertising. The 7 Awesome Ways GoPro Wins in the Sharing Economy (GrahamDBrown)
Download a sample of my latest book here
http://www.grahamdbrown.com/digital-ape-slideshare
10 Facts about Gen Y and Social Media Privacy (Total Youth Research)Graham Brown
Do Gen Y Millennials really care about social media privacy? According to our latest day they care a lot more than you think. 10 Facts about Gen Y and Social Media Privacy (Total Youth Research)
Brand Democracy: How to Tell Stories in the Social Era by Graham BrownGraham Brown
Brand Democracy: How to Tell Stories in the Social Era by Graham Brown
Brand Democracy is a bottom-up approach to marketing practiced by brands like GoPro, Zappos, Instagram, Lego and Monster Energy Drinks. Where brand management focuses on top-down brand positioning, Brand Democracy seeks to create the brand through customer conversations and interactions. Rather than managing the brand, the company curates this peer-to-peer communication by giving customers tools and a platform to share their individual stories.
Set Up, Step Back, Shut Up: The Secrets Behind Lego's Social Media SuccessGraham Brown
Set Up, Step Back, Shut Up: The Secrets Behind Lego's Social Media Success
Brands spend $ millions securing a few words of seconds from celebrities like David Beckham to endorse their projects.
Perfumes, clothing, sunglasses, mobile phones - the list goes on.
Yet, Lego gets it for free.
Dev Dives: Train smarter, not harder – active learning and UiPath LLMs for do...UiPathCommunity
💥 Speed, accuracy, and scaling – discover the superpowers of GenAI in action with UiPath Document Understanding and Communications Mining™:
See how to accelerate model training and optimize model performance with active learning
Learn about the latest enhancements to out-of-the-box document processing – with little to no training required
Get an exclusive demo of the new family of UiPath LLMs – GenAI models specialized for processing different types of documents and messages
This is a hands-on session specifically designed for automation developers and AI enthusiasts seeking to enhance their knowledge in leveraging the latest intelligent document processing capabilities offered by UiPath.
Speakers:
👨🏫 Andras Palfi, Senior Product Manager, UiPath
👩🏫 Lenka Dulovicova, Product Program Manager, UiPath
In his public lecture, Christian Timmerer provides insights into the fascinating history of video streaming, starting from its humble beginnings before YouTube to the groundbreaking technologies that now dominate platforms like Netflix and ORF ON. Timmerer also presents provocative contributions of his own that have significantly influenced the industry. He concludes by looking at future challenges and invites the audience to join in a discussion.
Epistemic Interaction - tuning interfaces to provide information for AI supportAlan Dix
Paper presented at SYNERGY workshop at AVI 2024, Genoa, Italy. 3rd June 2024
https://alandix.com/academic/papers/synergy2024-epistemic/
As machine learning integrates deeper into human-computer interactions, the concept of epistemic interaction emerges, aiming to refine these interactions to enhance system adaptability. This approach encourages minor, intentional adjustments in user behaviour to enrich the data available for system learning. This paper introduces epistemic interaction within the context of human-system communication, illustrating how deliberate interaction design can improve system understanding and adaptation. Through concrete examples, we demonstrate the potential of epistemic interaction to significantly advance human-computer interaction by leveraging intuitive human communication strategies to inform system design and functionality, offering a novel pathway for enriching user-system engagements.
Removing Uninteresting Bytes in Software FuzzingAftab Hussain
Imagine a world where software fuzzing, the process of mutating bytes in test seeds to uncover hidden and erroneous program behaviors, becomes faster and more effective. A lot depends on the initial seeds, which can significantly dictate the trajectory of a fuzzing campaign, particularly in terms of how long it takes to uncover interesting behaviour in your code. We introduce DIAR, a technique designed to speedup fuzzing campaigns by pinpointing and eliminating those uninteresting bytes in the seeds. Picture this: instead of wasting valuable resources on meaningless mutations in large, bloated seeds, DIAR removes the unnecessary bytes, streamlining the entire process.
In this work, we equipped AFL, a popular fuzzer, with DIAR and examined two critical Linux libraries -- Libxml's xmllint, a tool for parsing xml documents, and Binutil's readelf, an essential debugging and security analysis command-line tool used to display detailed information about ELF (Executable and Linkable Format). Our preliminary results show that AFL+DIAR does not only discover new paths more quickly but also achieves higher coverage overall. This work thus showcases how starting with lean and optimized seeds can lead to faster, more comprehensive fuzzing campaigns -- and DIAR helps you find such seeds.
- These are slides of the talk given at IEEE International Conference on Software Testing Verification and Validation Workshop, ICSTW 2022.
LF Energy Webinar: Electrical Grid Modelling and Simulation Through PowSyBl -...DanBrown980551
Do you want to learn how to model and simulate an electrical network from scratch in under an hour?
Then welcome to this PowSyBl workshop, hosted by Rte, the French Transmission System Operator (TSO)!
During the webinar, you will discover the PowSyBl ecosystem as well as handle and study an electrical network through an interactive Python notebook.
PowSyBl is an open source project hosted by LF Energy, which offers a comprehensive set of features for electrical grid modelling and simulation. Among other advanced features, PowSyBl provides:
- A fully editable and extendable library for grid component modelling;
- Visualization tools to display your network;
- Grid simulation tools, such as power flows, security analyses (with or without remedial actions) and sensitivity analyses;
The framework is mostly written in Java, with a Python binding so that Python developers can access PowSyBl functionalities as well.
What you will learn during the webinar:
- For beginners: discover PowSyBl's functionalities through a quick general presentation and the notebook, without needing any expert coding skills;
- For advanced developers: master the skills to efficiently apply PowSyBl functionalities to your real-world scenarios.
The Art of the Pitch: WordPress Relationships and SalesLaura Byrne
Clients don’t know what they don’t know. What web solutions are right for them? How does WordPress come into the picture? How do you make sure you understand scope and timeline? What do you do if sometime changes?
All these questions and more will be explored as we talk about matching clients’ needs with what your agency offers without pulling teeth or pulling your hair out. Practical tips, and strategies for successful relationship building that leads to closing the deal.
Essentials of Automations: The Art of Triggers and Actions in FMESafe Software
In this second installment of our Essentials of Automations webinar series, we’ll explore the landscape of triggers and actions, guiding you through the nuances of authoring and adapting workspaces for seamless automations. Gain an understanding of the full spectrum of triggers and actions available in FME, empowering you to enhance your workspaces for efficient automation.
We’ll kick things off by showcasing the most commonly used event-based triggers, introducing you to various automation workflows like manual triggers, schedules, directory watchers, and more. Plus, see how these elements play out in real scenarios.
Whether you’re tweaking your current setup or building from the ground up, this session will arm you with the tools and insights needed to transform your FME usage into a powerhouse of productivity. Join us to discover effective strategies that simplify complex processes, enhancing your productivity and transforming your data management practices with FME. Let’s turn complexity into clarity and make your workspaces work wonders!
Why You Should Replace Windows 11 with Nitrux Linux 3.5.0 for enhanced perfor...SOFTTECHHUB
The choice of an operating system plays a pivotal role in shaping our computing experience. For decades, Microsoft's Windows has dominated the market, offering a familiar and widely adopted platform for personal and professional use. However, as technological advancements continue to push the boundaries of innovation, alternative operating systems have emerged, challenging the status quo and offering users a fresh perspective on computing.
One such alternative that has garnered significant attention and acclaim is Nitrux Linux 3.5.0, a sleek, powerful, and user-friendly Linux distribution that promises to redefine the way we interact with our devices. With its focus on performance, security, and customization, Nitrux Linux presents a compelling case for those seeking to break free from the constraints of proprietary software and embrace the freedom and flexibility of open-source computing.
GDG Cloud Southlake #33: Boule & Rebala: Effective AppSec in SDLC using Deplo...James Anderson
Effective Application Security in Software Delivery lifecycle using Deployment Firewall and DBOM
The modern software delivery process (or the CI/CD process) includes many tools, distributed teams, open-source code, and cloud platforms. Constant focus on speed to release software to market, along with the traditional slow and manual security checks has caused gaps in continuous security as an important piece in the software supply chain. Today organizations feel more susceptible to external and internal cyber threats due to the vast attack surface in their applications supply chain and the lack of end-to-end governance and risk management.
The software team must secure its software delivery process to avoid vulnerability and security breaches. This needs to be achieved with existing tool chains and without extensive rework of the delivery processes. This talk will present strategies and techniques for providing visibility into the true risk of the existing vulnerabilities, preventing the introduction of security issues in the software, resolving vulnerabilities in production environments quickly, and capturing the deployment bill of materials (DBOM).
Speakers:
Bob Boule
Robert Boule is a technology enthusiast with PASSION for technology and making things work along with a knack for helping others understand how things work. He comes with around 20 years of solution engineering experience in application security, software continuous delivery, and SaaS platforms. He is known for his dynamic presentations in CI/CD and application security integrated in software delivery lifecycle.
Gopinath Rebala
Gopinath Rebala is the CTO of OpsMx, where he has overall responsibility for the machine learning and data processing architectures for Secure Software Delivery. Gopi also has a strong connection with our customers, leading design and architecture for strategic implementations. Gopi is a frequent speaker and well-known leader in continuous delivery and integrating security into software delivery.
A tale of scale & speed: How the US Navy is enabling software delivery from l...sonjaschweigert1
Rapid and secure feature delivery is a goal across every application team and every branch of the DoD. The Navy’s DevSecOps platform, Party Barge, has achieved:
- Reduction in onboarding time from 5 weeks to 1 day
- Improved developer experience and productivity through actionable findings and reduction of false positives
- Maintenance of superior security standards and inherent policy enforcement with Authorization to Operate (ATO)
Development teams can ship efficiently and ensure applications are cyber ready for Navy Authorizing Officials (AOs). In this webinar, Sigma Defense and Anchore will give attendees a look behind the scenes and demo secure pipeline automation and security artifacts that speed up application ATO and time to production.
We will cover:
- How to remove silos in DevSecOps
- How to build efficient development pipeline roles and component templates
- How to deliver security artifacts that matter for ATO’s (SBOMs, vulnerability reports, and policy evidence)
- How to streamline operations with automated policy checks on container images
Transcript: Selling digital books in 2024: Insights from industry leaders - T...BookNet Canada
The publishing industry has been selling digital audiobooks and ebooks for over a decade and has found its groove. What’s changed? What has stayed the same? Where do we go from here? Join a group of leading sales peers from across the industry for a conversation about the lessons learned since the popularization of digital books, best practices, digital book supply chain management, and more.
Link to video recording: https://bnctechforum.ca/sessions/selling-digital-books-in-2024-insights-from-industry-leaders/
Presented by BookNet Canada on May 28, 2024, with support from the Department of Canadian Heritage.
SAP Sapphire 2024 - ASUG301 building better apps with SAP Fiori.pdfPeter Spielvogel
Building better applications for business users with SAP Fiori.
• What is SAP Fiori and why it matters to you
• How a better user experience drives measurable business benefits
• How to get started with SAP Fiori today
• How SAP Fiori elements accelerates application development
• How SAP Build Code includes SAP Fiori tools and other generative artificial intelligence capabilities
• How SAP Fiori paves the way for using AI in SAP apps
State of ICS and IoT Cyber Threat Landscape Report 2024 previewPrayukth K V
The IoT and OT threat landscape report has been prepared by the Threat Research Team at Sectrio using data from Sectrio, cyber threat intelligence farming facilities spread across over 85 cities around the world. In addition, Sectrio also runs AI-based advanced threat and payload engagement facilities that serve as sinks to attract and engage sophisticated threat actors, and newer malware including new variants and latent threats that are at an earlier stage of development.
The latest edition of the OT/ICS and IoT security Threat Landscape Report 2024 also covers:
State of global ICS asset and network exposure
Sectoral targets and attacks as well as the cost of ransom
Global APT activity, AI usage, actor and tactic profiles, and implications
Rise in volumes of AI-powered cyberattacks
Major cyber events in 2024
Malware and malicious payload trends
Cyberattack types and targets
Vulnerability exploit attempts on CVEs
Attacks on counties – USA
Expansion of bot farms – how, where, and why
In-depth analysis of the cyber threat landscape across North America, South America, Europe, APAC, and the Middle East
Why are attacks on smart factories rising?
Cyber risk predictions
Axis of attacks – Europe
Systemic attacks in the Middle East
Download the full report from here:
https://sectrio.com/resources/ot-threat-landscape-reports/sectrio-releases-ot-ics-and-iot-security-threat-landscape-report-2024/
State of ICS and IoT Cyber Threat Landscape Report 2024 preview
Why everything we believe about youth mobile services is wrong
1. Why everything we believe about Youth
Mobile services is wrong
by GRAHAM BROWN on FEBRUARY 9, 2012
Why (Most) Youth Mobile Services are Doomed to Failure
Amp’d, Disney, Helio, Virgin Mobile India and Blyk – just a few MVNOs that have tried
to capture the youth market and been dashed at the rocks of failure. They failed because
the youth market is less about “Big Ideas” amped by your creative agency and more
about doing the small things well – like customer service.
So what does it take to win the hearts and minds of today’s 2 billion mobile owning
youth?
Let’s start by looking at where youth mobile services go wrong because, as we’ll discover,
simply doing the opposite of the received wisdom is the key to success.
Too many mobile services are easy come, easy go
Img (c) Flickr
http://www.mobileyouth.org
2. Here are the 3 biggest mistakes made in servicing youth:
Provide the cheapest mobile service
Sell a lifestyle (extreme, aspirational, cool)
License the brand to a mobile provider
Mistake #1: Provide the cheapest mobile service:
There is a common misconception of youth – they want everything free. In our
research we identify the 3 key pain points of youth mobile usage and cost isn’t one of
them. Youth don’t want free, they simply want control. They don’t want cheap services
they want a service that guarantees them this is how much they’ll be spending in the
month – no hidden surprises.
On this matter, Blyk is wrong, Boost Mobile is right: I don’t care what Blyk said
otherwise, you can’t build a youth mobile service giving everything away for free. What
youth want is control. If they wanted everything for free they wouldn’t be lining up
outside Apple Store for the latest iPad or iPhone 4S. They wouldn’t be buying Air
Jordans or getting drunk at Spring Break. These all cost dollars.
Here’s how one customer puts it on the Boost Mobile website:
“I LOVE the fact that my plan eliminates the worry of overages or hidden charges. I
know exactly what is expected each month and it helps me keep my monthly budget
balanced. Boost’s pricing has kept me loyal because it allows me to have all the services
of a contract plan at an affordable price that fits into my tight budget!”
- Kelita S. (Capron, VA)
Even in Africa, the logic holds true. In Kenya – where the average GDP is less than
$5,000 youth aren’t gravitating towards the cheapest option. In fact, our
2012 mobileYouth report shows that in Kenya, the cheapest mobile services have the
highest churn rates. Conversely, Safaricom is the most expensive and has the most loyal
customers even though its proposition is based on a large, young prepaid base. How?
Because Safaricom built its proposition on long term customer relationships, value
added services (like MPesa) and marketing that aimed to create Permission Assets in
youth communities (rather than typical agency fare of cool celebrities + campaign).
http://www.mobileyouth.org
3. Mistake #2: Sell a lifestyle
Lifestyle doesn’t sell mobile. Your brand means nothing. Hiring a PR or marketing
agency to make you “more youth” will not change a thing. Who cares if your brand is
well known in snowboarding or hip hop? Who cares if you have a sponsorship with
Lewis Hamilton or Lady Gaga? Sure, it wins you ad agency awards but this isn’t about
awards to satisfy them but winning customers.
Unfortunately it’s not what brand managers and agencies want to hear. Where’s the
room for the “Big Idea“? What about our “Life is for Sharing” advertisements? The cold
truth is that youth don’t buy mobile services on the base of lifestyle – they buy because
of simple, convenient customer experience. Common things done uncommonly
well – the unsexy stuff – getting the billing right, a good range of handsets, good
customer support, retail presence.
Smart youth mobile services know that getting these right means changing how we view
young customers. Mobile providers see the youth acquisition game as one of
cool advertising and cheap offers but as the logic goes, it’s easy come easy go. In the
modern era, retention is the new Acquisition. Operators should think less about “cool”,
“entertainment” and “lifestyle” and more about how they can reduce the numerous ways
they annoy their customers. Stop trying to delight youth and start trying to do common
things uncommonly well. In the Customer Experience module of the 2012
mobileYouth report we detail the 3 areas of customer experience and how operators can
add value in each. By changing the metrics from ARPU to loyalty we yield different
results.
Traditionally, mobile asks the question “how can we maximize ARPU from this
customer?” When it comes to youth that doesn’t make sense. The effort required to shift
a mobile user from $50 to $55 a month (10% uplift) is significant. If you changed your
metric to loyalty based measurements (such as churn or EMI like NPS and SMART
index) the math makes sense: the cost of acquiring a new customer + lost revenues for
existing customer ($800 a year) vs the uplift from ARPU gain ($60 a year).
http://www.mobileyouth.org
4. Boost Mobile, for example, thinks differently. Rather than sell a lifestyle product and
maximize ARPU gains, Boost asks the question “how can we reduce this customer’s
phone bill?” The longer you’re a customer, the cheaper your bill. Great idea because 65%
of youth buy mobile phones based on what their friends, not what ad agencies say. Long
term customers recommend the most.
Mistake #3: License the Brand to a Mobile Provider
It’s tempting to think a lifestyle brand exported to mobile can help monetize an existing
franchise but think carefully. Mistake #2 highlighted how youth don’t care for lifestyle
branding in mobile. What wins the youth mobile game isn’t branding but customer
experience and operations. The staff and expertise needed to win the retention game
aren’t the same staff and expertise needed to create exciting lifestyle brands like MTV,
Disney or Red Bull.
Virgin Mobile discovered this to their peril in India. Virgin licensed the brand to their
local partner Tata who had little expertise in delivering the customer experience
expected of the Virgin brand. As in many of these licensed cases customers sign up on
the premise of lifestyle branding expecting the pizazz familiar with the mother brand
and are left with a shoddy experience that doubly disappoints.
Apple outsources its production to Foxconn in Asia but controls its retail operations
because it’s in the retail touchpoint (its Permission Asset), Apple can generate a NPS of
+75% (and +90% in its most successful stores) creating one of the most profitable retail
franchises in the world. The key for mobile providers and brands considering this space
is understanding what creates value and what doesn’t. Control the front end, outsource
the back.
Be the Exception
Kenya’s Safaricom has the highest loyalty rates, prices and NPS scores in its category
even though it built a market on young, prepaid mobile owners. Boost Mobile has the
highest loyalty rates in the prepaid segment in the US even though it charges above the
market average price.
http://www.mobileyouth.org
5. Despite these obvious anomalies, mobile operators will continue to see youth as cheap
and provide discount tariffs to win the market. Brands will continue to try and squeeze
extra revenues from their licensing by partnering with mobile providers in local
markets. All along operators will look at the results of these endeavors and agree that
youth are unprofitable, fickle and too expensive to reach.
When we look at our own mobile choices we’ll probably find we gravitated to the
provider who simply got things right rather than the one who delighted us with offers
and technology. Sure, we’re paying a little more than the next guy, sure we don’t have
the latest phone but we’re comfortable and that’s what we want. The problem is that
while every single mobile industry employee knows this the machine they work in keeps
pulling them back to the received wisdom of failure.
Safaricom ex-CEO Joseph grew the business from a starting point of just 5 employees in
Kenya. He took the Kenyan position in the Vodafone group because some insiders say he
didn’t have the traditional background of a telecom CEO. These examples demonstrate
that the received wisdom behind this schooling – Price, Brand Management, Efficiency
– is wrong.
And that’s why these success stories remain the exception rather than the rule – because
the rule is broken. There is only one Facebook, one Google search engine and one Apple
iPad despite countless imitations. Anomalies win because they challenge the
conventional wisdom.
Contact us for report, workshops, webinars and more:
Josh Dhaliwal
Director, mobileYouth
http://www.mobileYouth.org
http://www.mobileYouthReport.com
Tel: +44 203 286 3635
Mob: +44 7904 200 513
http://www.mobileyouth.org