Jason Dunn

Microsoft released some documentation for software developers recently, and their document on branding was an interesting read. Here’s a short quote:

“Branding is the emotional positioning of a product as perceived by its customers. Product branding is achieved through a combination of factors, including the product name and logo, use of color, text, graphics, and sound, the style of various other design elements, marketing, and most importantly, the attributes of the product experience itself. Successful branding requires skillful crafting of a product image, and is not achieved simply by plastering a product logo on every surface and using the product’s color scheme at every opportunity. Rather, meaningful and high quality branding that enhances users’ experience will be much more successful.”

Much of it is specific to Windows Vista and applications that will install into Windows Vista, but I’d say anyone creating a product should give this a read to help them think about what branding is, does, and why it’s so important. I wish more companies in the world understood the need to create great customer experiences from end to end. Companies often bemoan Apple’s success in many markets, and wonder why they can’t achieve the same thing – they could, if they paid attention to the customer experience and stopped letting engineers and software developers make all the decisions.

That’s a photo (nasty Treo 750 cameraphone!)  from the Switchfoot concert that Ashley and I went to on February the 21st. Switchfoot is a “crossover” band in that they’re started out in the CCM (Contemporary Christian Music) scene and later made a splash in the mainstream music scene. So while they undoubtedly have a large fan base in the secular market now, a good chunk of their long-term fans are of the Christian variety. I first heard of Switchfoot a few years ago when someone I knew was doing a video project and used the song “Dare You To Move“. It’s a fantastic song with great lyrics and a killer hook. When I heard Switchfoot was coming to Calgary, I definitely wanted to go see them, so I bought some tickets (remember the Ticketmaster rant?).

A couple of weeks after I bought the Switchfoot tickets, I heard that one of my favourite bands of all time, Jars of Clay, was also coming to town – and that they were playing at MacEwan Hall at the University of Calgary, the same location as Switchfoot. My first thought was that they were playing the same show, because it made sense: two CCM bands, albet one more mainstream than the other. The curious part was that the show time was 30 minutes apart, and each band was selling separate tickets. I called Ticketmaster to try and get some details, and they couldn’t figure it out either how two bands could be listed at the same location at nearly the same time, but have two separately ticketed events.

I went to the show that night honestly not sure if I was going to see one band or two. When we got there it became clear: Switchfoot was playing in the bigger ballroom at MacEwan Hall, and Jars of Clay was playing a smaller venue within the same building.  So here I was, a fan of both bands, unable to see both concerts because they were happening at the same time. I quite honestly would have paid another $71.90 (two tickets) to see Jars of Clay later that night. Instead I felt conflicted that I had two non-refundable tickets to see Switchfoot, and couldn’t go see Jars of Clay without tossing out the $71.90 I’d alreay paid for the tickets and paying that much again to see Jars of Clay. In retrospect I wish I would have seen Jars of Clay – it would have been worth eating the $71 cost to me.

Why would the event planners make a decision like that, pitting two similar bands, with similar fan bases, against each other? They sacrificed what could have been a golden opportunity to earn more money by creating a mini-festival and charging more for the tickets. Someone wasn’t thinking like a marketing person should.

There’s nothing worse than running a technology news site, seeing a bit of news about something important, going to the official company Web site to look for the press release in their media section, and not finding anything other than old press releases. What possible excuse is there for the press release section of a major corporation to not be updated immediately when a press release is sent out?

I’ve seen this happen time and time again, and even when I get a press release by email I’ll usually want to link to the full thing online. When I email the PR person back asking them where it is on their Web site, the response I usually get is “Oh, we’ll have it up in a few days”. Not acceptable in the world we live in today.