Ikea, Where’s the Video Instructions?

By Mark Evans in Video No Comments

I’m not a handyman but I’m handy. I can saw without cutting my fingers or hands, hammer without bending nails, and unclog a toilet while holding my breath. So, you’d figure that assembling furniture from Ikea would be a snap.

Wrong.

After swearing off buying anything from Ikea as a rite of passage in becoming a real adult, I succumbed recently in an effort to refurbish the home office without pillaging the corporate bank account. The magic about Ikea is how wonderful they make everything look. You stroll through the showroom and the world seems like your oyster…until you get everything home and suddenly realize it has to be assembled.

So, you unpack all the boxes, pull out parts, which includes lots and lots of little pieces (screws, widgets, etc.) and hunt for the instructions. What’s amazing is the instructions haven’t changed in years; they’re still black and white, no-frills, step-by-step instructions that assume everything is just so easy to follow.

Wrong.

Needless to say, the assembly process is frustrating, time-consuming and a serious threat to relationships if you do it with someone else. And you end up with extra parts, which I’m pretty sure Ikea doesn’t supply as a convenience.

It struck me there are some easy things Ikea could do to make things a lot better and easier. First, it needs to colour-code its instructions and the parts to remove a lot of guess-work that goes into assembling things.

Second, Ikea really, really needs to embrace video. While it’s nice the instructions are online, not having videos that how show how things are put together is a mystery, particularly given we live in a video-centric world. For all the things that Ikea does well, its inability to embrace video is puzzling. Instead, it has a YouTube channel dominated by videos about cooking and food.

Here’s an example of what Ikea should be doing with video.

Seven Keys to Capturing the Attention of Bloggers/Media

By Mark Evans in Blogs, Media 12 Comments Tags: , , ,

One of the most frustrating things for start-ups is how difficult it can be to capture the attention of bloggers and the media. They have created compelling new services and products, they have interesting stories to tell, and would love even a little coverage to support their efforts.

Unfortunately, attracting the attention of bloggers and media is a major challenge. It is particularly surprising for blogs given there are no real estate limits. For large blogs, volume is the name of the editorial game so you would think it would be an easier process. As someone with nearly 15 years as a newspaper reporter, you figure I might have an edge but it doesn’t seem to be the case. Like everyone else, my efforts are hit and miss, mostly miss.

So how do you capture the attention of bloggers and the media? Here are some tips:

1. Craft a good story rather than pitching what your company does. Bloggers and reporters tell stories so make their lives easier by giving them one on a silver platter. Make sure the story has a twist or hook that makes it different. It could be you have created something innovative, unorthodox or unique. Whatever your edge, play it up. A good example is Guardly, an iPhone app that launched yesterday that lets you notify friends and family when you have a personal emergency. Guardly is not your run of the mill startup but it’s one that resonates with many people, which is probably why it attracted some nice coverage in TechCrunch.

2. Give someone a “scoop”. Having a story that no one else does has always been a prize within the news game. Today, the rules are still the same. The downside of exclusives is the risk of alienating every other blogger or newspaper but if it means getting coverage in GigaOm or TechCrunch, for example, it can be worth the gamble.

3. Demonstrate success. Bloggers and the media really like two things: success and failure. Too many startups try to capture coverage when they haven’t done much of anything other than create a new service product. Unless you have something really special, this isn’t newsworthy. If, on the other hand, you attract thousands of customers or users, that is far more interesting because you have done something many companies fail to achieve.

A good example is WineAlign, which I did some work for two years ago. At the time, WineAlign founder Bryan McCaw was convinced he had created an innovative new service that would let people make smarter buying decisions at liquor stores in Ontario. But when he pitched the story, the response was deafening silence. Fast-forward two years and 15,000 registered users later, WineAlign just got great coverage in the Toronto Star.

4. If you’ve been successful in the past, make this part of the marketing efforts. It’s a spin-off of point #3. If an entrepreneur has been successful in the past, there may be interest in their latest efforts.

5. Have high-profile investors or advisors. Again, you’re looking to capture someone’s attention at a time when thousands of other companies are trying to do the same thing. Having recognizable investors or advisors can raise a company above the crowd. Look at the attention lavished on anything that Marc Andreessen invests in. This includes RockMelt, the browser that captured the spotlight only to quickly disappear.

6. Recognition at conferences and shows. Whether it’s Demo, 500 Startups Demo Day, TechCrunch 50 or another event, winning best of show can attract the spotlight and separate your company from the crowd. Look at what Mint.com or Yammer were able to do after winning the top prize at TechCrunch 50.

7. Relationships.Building relationships with bloggers or reporters can give you a better chance of getting your story covered. Bloggers and reporters people, they’re not writing machines. Like everyone else, they do things for friends, people who have done them favours, helped them out, or people they like.

Relationships are the biggest reason you should consider hiring a PR agency because a PR person’s most valuable asset is their Rolodex. A good PR person is building relationships every day, something that they can leverage when it comes to pitching a story.

Here’s the Thing About Twitter and I

By Mark Evans in Social Media 3 Comments Tags: , ,

I have a love-hate relationship with Twitter. On one hand, it’s a fascinating and valuable resource to discover news and content from a wide variety of people. On the other hand, it’s a distraction, a time-suck and a productivity killer.

As much as Twitter is a big part of my digital world, it’s a beast I try to manage so it works for me rather than against me. To keep things under control, here’s my approach to Twitter:

1. I use Twitter when it works for me. When I’m busy with work or personal stuff, I pretty much ignore Twitter and, to be honest, it’s not missed. In many ways, Twitter is like a parade: if you bend down to tie your shoe, you might miss several parade floats but there are dozens more coming down the road soon.

2. I don’t feel the need or desire to document my daily existence through tweets. I’m not sure many people care that I drink coffee, play hockey, visit certain places, go to different cities, or watch TV.

3. Twitter is not a personal toy. You may get a hint of what I do during non-works hours but it’s never going to be a full-disclosure medium. It never ceases to amaze me how many personal details people are happily willing to disclose via a steady flow of tweets.

4. Twitter’s real value for me is connections and access to content. The world is too busy and there’s too much content being created to keep up. I leave this grunt work to my followers who pick off the most interesting content, and then share it.

5. There’s no need to follow a lot of people. I have a little more than 300 followers, which provides a healthy enough and large enough collection of people. I’m not sure how anyone gets any value in following thousands of people: it’s like going to a humungous party in which you only manage to talk or listen to a few people. The party could have easily been 100 people as opposed to 1,000, and the experience would have been the same.

6. Twitter works for me, not the only way around. I don’t spend hours scouring tweets, looking for places to have conversations or adding new content. I’m always amazed to see people actively tweaking day and night. Being on Twitter this much would be mentally draining.

So, that’s it. The tao of Twitter, according to me.

Nortel: Messy ‘Til the Bitter End

By Mark Evans in M&A 2 Comments Tags: , , , ,

If Nortel was a movie, it might be called “The Company That Couldn’t Shoot Straight”.

Two years after filing for bankruptcy protection, Nortel is still on life support but refuses to go away quietly even as it divests its last assets – a patent portfolio chock-a-block with all kinds of wireless goodies.

Yesterday, Nortel unveiled plans to sell 6,000 patents to Google for $900-million. The deal, however, is structured so competitive bids can surface. Among the parties rumoured to be interested are Research in Motion, which covets Nortel’s LTE assets.

If it was as simple as an auction happening, that would be one thing. But in the whacky world of Nortel, nothing is that simple. According to GeekWire, Microsoft says it has a “worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free license to all of Nortel’s patents that covers all Microsoft products and services, resulting from the patent cross-license signed with Nortel in 2006.”

What it means is the sale of Nortel’s patent portfolio could become a complicated and messy situation, which could not only see competitive bids but a legal battle over who owns or controls the patents.

Seemingly lost within the shuffle is that the patents are the last chapter in Nortel’s disappointing demise from tier-one telecom equipment supplier to non-entity. What was once the star of Canada’s high-tech industry is going to disappear into the history books.

Hammered by hubris, a series of strategic and tactical mistakes, weak senior management and, finally, an unwillingness to fight until the bitter end, Nortel will soon disappear, although the battle over the patents could see the “patient” hang on for a few more months.

Do the Number of Mobile Apps Matter?

By Mark Evans in Apple/iPod, Wireless 5 Comments Tags: , , , , ,

If you listen to Apple, size matters when it comes to the number of mobile apps offered to iPhone users. It’s seen as a strategic strength compared with rivals such as Android, BlackBerry and Microsoft, which have smaller but growing portfolios.

But in the scheme of things does size really matter? Does it really offer a distinct competitive advantage? Here’s where I’m coming from: On my iPhone, there are about 50 apps – many of them downloaded on a whim because they’re free. Of these apps, you know how many I use on a regular basis? Less than five, and I suspect that most people fall into the same camp.

It means if every mobile platform offers the same small group of must-have apps (let’s aggressively assume 250 apps will account for more than 80% of total usage), then having more than 100,000 or even 50,000 apps doesn’t matter.

Yes, I accept the argument that having more apps offers the opportunity to serve the needs of many niche markets. And I recognize there’s marketing mojo in having a large app collection. But if push comes to shove, size doesn’t matter at all as long as consumers have their “basic” needs covered.

I’ve been thinking about this thesis for awhile but it was thrust into the spotlight after reading Randall Stross’ column in the New York Times yesterday on Nokia’s use of Windows Phone 7. One of the people quoted was Thomas R. Eisenmann, a professor at the Harvard Business School, who said:

“What is often missed is the diminishing returns after 1,000 applications. If a platform attracts the thousand-most-popular apps, then it provides almost anything a reasonable person would want to do with a smartphone.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Living Analog with a Digital Layer

By Mark Evans in Social Media No Comments Tags: , ,

At a dinner party last night, there was an animated discussion about social media, which included how teenagers and children use social media in ways their parents would consider unthinkable or strange.

One of the comments, which I think captured the essence of how younger people use the Web and social media, was that: “Young people have analog lives with a digital layer”.

It’s a simple statement but the more you think about it, the more sense it makes. It’s not that Facebook, Twitter or text-messaging have replaced real-world relationships, it’s that young people complement their analog lives with a digital layer that makes their relationships different or feature a new dynamic.

For young people, the tight integration of social media and digital tools, including the fact big chunks of their lives are photographed or videoed, is the new reality or, at least, their reality. For the rest of us, it makes for a fascinating case study.

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