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December 13, 2010
Darrell DeLong
1. I think there are a ton of companies that over look the love factor between customer and the purchase. Repeat customers are taken for granted now a days. To me the love factor pops when service is a little above and beyond your competition.
   The time where the customer gets the ahha, is when they hear their neighbor give the referral, “ohh yaa I have heard of them” or I would shop there over the store down the street. And then you get the most vital piece of information, why you differ from your competition, the love factor.
   The part that is missing now a days is the personal connection. Did you remember the customers name, or give them a random email or call to see if they need anything. When I am at work the time where I feel the customers love is when they tell me, “I remember you from last year”. Love is hard to add to a business strategy but easily seen.

December 13, 2010
Brent Robertson
2. Thanks Darrell,

   Yes the love factor is difficult to grasp because it requires a company approaching its customers from an authentic and generous perspective. Trusting your customers and caring enough about them to bring them into the fold and treat them like you truly appreciate them isn’t often a function of a strategic marketing plan of the past. The way I see it is, give your customers all the fodder they need in which to tell the world their version of your story. Trust them to do this, because you have treated them well. Where it often fails, is a company either doesn’t trust enough in what they do, or they don’t realize the best stories are told by their customers.

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March 8, 2010
Suzi Craig
1. Seth Godin refers to the art we create in business as gifts: whether you are a sales rep at Nordstrom’s who works there for the love of knowing your favorite customers better than their spouse does or you are a CEO like Zappos’ Tony Hsieh who offers his new trainees $2,500 to leave on their last day of training, just to see how much they want to stay.

   Per Godin, and now me, art is a gift. And, by its definition, a gift is not given for reciprocation. A gift is given for the shear act of giving. What you get in return cannot be monetized.

March 18, 2010
Pete Larson
2. Art can serve many purposes (or none, but in that case is it still art?), but in my opinion one of its most powerful is the conveyance of an abstract idea or set of concepts not easily conveyed by any other means. A single painting, photograph, sculpture, building, can embody the essence of a society, a value system, a relationship of the part to the whole. It can deeply move us to embrace a new idea, better understand our place in the world, or help us to understand the boundaries we impose on ourselves. This is more elegant and powerful than any thick treatise.

   Art can be as permanent as the traditional examples above. It can also be transitional, changeable, temporary, uncontrolled, like the seasons. Medium may be constant, but manifestation fluid. In that case its effect is about our relationship to it; how it appears at a given point in time related to our individual or societal internal state. Here the right combination of timing, internal state, and manifestation of art creates powerful results.

   Then, Mood + Art = Change.

March 20, 2010
Brent Robertson
3. Interesting thinking Pete. What your driving on here is arts ability to create a new future, or multiple new futures depending on your perspective or state of being when you interact with it. As your perspective or state changes, so can it’s influence. This is a beautiful notion.

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February 3, 2010
Infochemist
1. To speak nothing of the tremendous opportunity for industry vertical development.

   We will see teachers far better able to manage class and curriculum based on new apps probably written by BlackBoard.

   Medical professionals will have a great tablet to improve care.

   But most of all, we can all now clearly visualize Captain Kirk acknowledging the Enterprise’s status on a tablet handed to him by a gorgeous and capable ensign.

   

February 3, 2010
Brent Robertson
2. Medical professionals and education are already taking a keen interest in these products. It might finally be the tipping point for the Electronic Medical Record.

February 3, 2010
Jeff Cotrupe: MarketPOWER, LLC
3. I’d say this tablet phenomenon may take on biblical proportions.

   Brent, appreciate the dialogue on Twitter, great piece here and attention-getting photo above.

February 4, 2010
Brent Robertson
4. Thanks Jeff, appreciate the feedback!

February 4, 2010
Joe
5. Nice photo. Where’d you get it.

February 4, 2010
Bruce Kaechele
6. Brent, I hear everything you’re saying and agree that the possibilities are exciting especially in ed and med but (not to be a downer) there is also a scary side to this.

   So far as I can tell, advances in this kind of technology have done nothing to simplify life – in fact, just the opposite is true. In your second paragraph you use the term “deeper entanglement”. This is a perfect description of any teenager’s (the next generation of professionals) daily existence. Have you seen them clutching their phones to their chest no matter where they go? Consuming media at a rate of 10.5 hours per every seven hours of media consumption time each day!? (Source: Jan 2010 Kaiser Family Foundation: http://www.kff.org/entmedia/mh012010pkg.cfm)

   Some studies suggest that they can handle this level of “entanglement” just fine and their brains are being quickly rewired to do so. Great (read sarcastically) they can accomplish tasks, maybe even memorize/study at the same time as they text and update and listen. (Other studies reveal less desirable side effects.) Is this good? Is this creating linchpins (http://surfthedeepend.net/2010/01/seth-godin-indispensable/) or robots?

   What about actual thinking? Actual alone with their thoughts time? Where they consider a subject uninterrupted for a significant length of time. Where they learn about and become comfortable with themselves as individuals – with a brain and an identity separate from their technology enabled network of distractions. When will they do the hard work needed to understand and love themselves for who they are? And, of course, it’s not just teens.

   My fear is that we are heading toward a world of mass psycho-interdependency where, because we are so connected, our inner individual selves get pushed farther and farther down and become indistinguishable from the group’s. Maybe we’re already there.

   **Interesting observation you make about Amazon renegotiating. Here’s a good write up by Bob Lefstez (@Lefstez) on the total impact of the as yet unreleased iPad: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2010/02/03/ipad-impact/

February 4, 2010
Suzi Craig
7. Forrester’s points are well taken on the coming “Splinternet” age and it seems as if the iPad is confirming that reality — the fact that AT&T is the only network available and Jobs’ decision to compete in markets where he could opt to partner (i.e., Amazon) is going to have impact beyond whether or not you are the owner of an Apple product. You really need to think about your choice from all angles.

   I think it’s AWESOME that our technology is amping up and we are on the verge of bringing life-changing technologies like augmented reality down to earth for us to actually put into play.

   Before we get to that vision, though, I’m curious to see how the bumpy ride plays out. I won’t buy an iPad right now because it won’t replace the other devices I already cling to and I’m not ready to add another device to my collection because, for me, I’m not an early adopter. I’m kind of a “pre-teen” adopter. I have to NEED that device in order to purchase it, not just want it to play with it.

   So, here’s my question: if we are in the Splinternet age where the web is creating monopolies and silos, are we also going to cause an even bigger gap with those who are not yet ready to make the leap to bigger technologies? I think there needs to be greater communication to the masses about why the tablets are revolutionary — for the reasons you all have been citing (medical, education, etc.).

   In other words, let’s take the technology out of geek land! Give everyone a reason to care so that when they decide to make a choice on technology it’s not just because it’s an Apple or Sony brand. If Daddy Warbucks is going to force us to choose, it’s up to us to push back and make that choice a real choice with as few comprises as possible. We can’t do that without all the information at our hands, so I charge you early adopters: talk about the iPad and augmented reality and all that cool stuff with people who you think may not care. I guarantee you it’s because they just don’t know why to care.

February 4, 2010
Brent Robertson
8. Bruce, interestingly enough, there have been a bunch of recent studies suggesting that the younger generations being able to multitask (or do multiple things that use the same part of the brain) are just false, actually quite the opposite. One notable, when observing the quality of written papers by MIT students, it was observed there was no connection between paragraphs, in other words, they would write a paragraph, go off and do something else and then return and write the next. Hmmmm

February 9, 2010
Are we losing ourselves in the race to be connected? « Ladder to the Attic
9. [...] an excerpt (full post here): So why all the buzz now? What has changed? And what does this onslaught of tablet PC’s [...]

May 22, 2010
Dwayne
10. I really want one of the new IPADs, but will probably wait. I would be one of the users however that wants to use it as a power user might. For example why not be able to perform graphic design tasks with it? It would be perfect for painterly types of works. With a larger model, web design and coding could be accomplished as the larger typepad wuld make typing easier.

June 28, 2010
ForceFactor
11. Well I do not typically comment on blogs but I discovered yours while I was doing a bit of job researching in Google today therefore i decided I would leave a simple note. I must admit that I’ve gotten a bit distracted going through and reading a few of your posts… I ought to probably be doing work. You have some good insights here, so I’ll add you to my personal Google Reader for the future. Cheers!

June 28, 2010
Brent Robertson
12. Thank you ForceFactor! We hope to keep distracting you with new posts soon.

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