Watching the Apple keynote this week – and reading this – all highlighted the importance of starting with the product to drive differentiation. Everything Apple does is about difference – not just to others in the market but to what preceded it.

Prices then go up over time and are a result of innovation.

As Tim Cook said in his interview with BusinessWeek:

“We never had an objective to sell a low-cost phone,” says Cook. “Our primary objective is to sell a great phone and provide a great experience, and we figured out a way to do it at a lower cost.”

And critically, the product and pricing are optimised for a specific market – where the Apple ecosystem is most vital – America. As Ben demonstrates well:

The Apple ecosystem is of most value in the American markets first, the European markets next, and the Asian-style markets last … therefore, it’s very rational for Apple to optimise its pricing for the American-style markets, and the most logical price is $550/$99.

What Ben is getting at in all of this is a set of marketing fundamentals I see most marketers, miss:

1. Price to product differentiation – not just relative to market but also prior product instantiations. Don’t price solely to category entry point or pricing dynamics.
2. Pricing must exist in the context of broader market dynamics in most cases, but not all. There is little logic to the iPhone Pro pricing relative to other competing products. It is priced on its merits as a “luxury” device. Pro is always the misnomer in tech – it’s code for luxury.
3. Pricing substitution isn’t necessary – each Apple product is priced relative to the market and its brand effect. iPhones don’t sell for less than they are worth in the hope you will buy iPods and other services. There is no “hope” in Apple’s strategy.

Start with: product (innovation & differentiation), position, price. Not with price, the product, then position.

Effectively Apple’s brand power is the point of leverage and “strategy” insurance. The massive investment in the Apple brand creates the halo that protects pricing power and ensures demand. But without effective product innovation, priced and packaged to the core target market, the brand wouldn’t make the difference up.

Stratechery is a great read and well worth paying for.

Great minds don’t think alike – they challenge each other to think again. The clearest sign of intellectual chemistry isn’t agreeing with someone. It’s enjoying your disagreements with them. Harmony is a pleasing arrangement of different sounds, not the same ones. Creative tension can make beautiful music. – Adam Grant

• NDR or Net Dollar Retention is a hugely compelling metric – even if for a cohort of customers. Well work a read if you live in SaaS land.
• The Death Cheaters – not sure what to make of an ex-tailor to the stars charging a small fortune to join a club to extend one’s life.
• How many errors are in this blog post Essay? Made me smile. I view all my errors as “errata” – like the Bible.
• A good to get your hands on – Slouching Towards Utopia – enjoyed it. And an equally good review.
• Grow or die: A framework for turning around your company fast. I love the way Super Goals are explained.
• Great idea to turn that paddock out back into a Hotel Suite.

Hybrid working isn’t the right frame to guide a workplace strategy – I keep saying it because I believe it. It focuses only on one narrow dimension of work – where we work – and then overemphasises it. What matters is collaboration, focus and outcomes. Then pick the best way to do one or all three against the priorities in front of you. If that means you’ll drive a better outcome working from Antarctica, go for it. This got me thinking about it even more. And where there is a collaboration chasm, we might all need to work together for a bit.

Quotes of the Week:

“Rule of 3 in conversation. To get to the real reason, ask a person to go deeper than what they just said. Then again, and once more. The third time’s answer is close to the truth.” – Kevin Kelly

A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals to discovery. – James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)

User generated image using Stable Diffusion

Stability AI and its collaborators announced the first stage of the release of Stable Diffusion to researchers. In short, AI creates images based on parameters you enter – words, sketches, collages and more. They’ve been testing the model at scale with over 10,000 beta testers that are creating 1.7 million images a day.  That’s, well, staggering.

Does AI replace humans? Not at all. But it does amplify our ability to create and make at scale. And then there is this little gem where a person just won first prize (and the corresponding angst) at an art fair with a piece of AI-generated Art.

TL’DR: Don’t think of note-taking in Notion as about creating a note for every idea, piece of work, or event. Think about one note housing many notes within it. All are searchable and discoverable.

Notion is unlike most note-taking apps – because it isn’t one. It’s a database, essentially, but don’t let that put you off. But it does mean you can create notes differently.

Simply put, you can create depth to every note by creating pages within a page.

Here’s how it works. Let’s say I’m producing content for my company. Traditionally every piece of content might be a new note in say, Apple Notes or a document in Google Docs.

With Notion, I have a master list of all the content I am working on. Each of these appears in my master content page. As I develop that content, I simply create a new page within the content master. I share the master once with the team so they can see everything I am working on.

Then, with a click, I can convert that to a board view and develop a workflow on the fly, easily arranging the content by it’s stage of development. And I’ve got one central archive for all the content we have produced.

It’s also simple and easy to create templates in Notion, so you can quickly populate all the stuff you need to produce great content. This might include keywords, categories, affiliate links and more.

And, just get Grammarly – it works great with Notion.

Check out this Notion video from Thomas Frank or swim through the Notion YouTube channel.

TD’LR: You don’t need to pick one note-taking app, but you do need to choose your master app. Define a workflow and set rigour around it.

Angsty videos and medium posts on why folks selected a particular note-taking app mostly miss the real need – how to be productive, collaborate, and, well, forget less.

The answer is blindingly simple – take notes everywhere, anywhere, using anything. Just do it.

The tricks are:

1. First: pick a master system – in my case, Notion – where all those thoughts and ideas can go to live.
2. Second: define a simple workflow to get notes from wherever they were captured and into Notion. The tip here is to make it fast. So, I’ll drop a photo from a whiteboard into Notion rather than trying to recreate it.
3. Third: establish a routine to get all your notes in one place. Every week I have a calendar block marked “download and clean” where everything goes into Notion. I even have a simple Notion checklist of everything I need to look at, from receipts buried in my bag to my notebook, Apple Photos and more.

So what about the notes capture? As I said, just do it.

Here are my big three:

1. Old fashioned pen, paper and index cards. Scribble away, fuel that stationary fetish, and have fun. I use my iPhone to snag whiteboards, brainstorms and more.
2. Use whatever digital app works best for you. Bear is an excellent app for catching notes on the go. Especially the voice capture on an Apple Watch. So, if I am driving home and recall something, I tap Bear on my phone and watch it automatically convert to a text note. Apple notes is OK but not great. But occasionally, I’ll sketch or punch a note in there.
3. Notion is where everything goes and is shared. The point is not the storage in one place – that’s great and sometimes useful at a future date. The point is that through the process, I am creating secondary notes. So, I might capture notes from a team meeting that include a reference to check-in on headcount approvals – they sit in one Notion page for all my Day Notes. But I’ll also flow that action into my 1:1 Notes for the next meeting with our talent team. Equally important, Notion is the only place I share notes – so I have one place to collaborate from.

The underlying philosophy here is time to ingestion – the faster and more quickly you can capture a note, the more you’ll do it and the more productive you’ll be.

The leap in all this is the discipline and habit required. We’re defined by our routines and rituals. So for those struggling to do this, just do everything in Notion and work backwards.

Random but worth it:

1. Bruce Mau is coming to Sydney. One of the many designers I admire. I can’t wait to see him speaking and the movie.
2. A great set of resources for clearer thinking
3. You’ve been waiting to hear this for like 3,400 years.
4. This has to be the coolest fish ever…

“I think most marketers these days agree that the reports of the death of linear TV have been wildly exaggerated. But nonetheless, we have to accept that a lot of people are watching a lot less linear TV than perhaps they once did,” said Ritson.

“That’s a major problem, especially for big brands who have for decades depended on linear TV to build their brands at the top of the funnel through its enormous reach. And that’s exactly where YouTube plays a wonderful role. As a supplement to linear TV, especially on connected televisions, YouTube provides a brilliant way to restore that reach, particularly among the younger demographics that have proven so difficult in recent years to reach out to.”

While Ritson is right, there are two problems with this.

First, the idea of a “top of the funnel” is antiquated. We are in need of the continuous creation of mental, physical and digital availability for our brands across all stages of the funnel. All buyers buy infrequently. The funnel is a broken metaphor. More to come on that.

Digital mediums – Youtube – plays a critical role in generating that availability. The issue is efficiency, effectiveness and reach. That is where the debate starts. So even if we are watching TV less – much less in my case – does that smaller viewing audience more efficiently and effectively create availability? I can’t recall a single ad or brand I’ve seen on Youtube but can recall brands I’ve seen on TV. Samples of one make for terrible evidence.

Second, drawing two mediums into a compare and delete debate is futile. The reality is all marketers of any quality will be working the media mix for outcomes. It’s not either, or – but rather where to allocate the spend across a mix. As more of us consume formats that move – TV, video, social the real losers will be static media. Not just in terms of the reach and efficiency of that media but also the complexity and cost in making that media work.

What is true is that we must adjust all marketing to reflect the attention span of audiences – short formats for intercepting the “feed” and much longer formats for engagement.

“Six second bumpers and 15-second spots. A smart mix can build a great story … languishing behind is the 30 and its cousin, the 45-second spot, which generate the lowest ROI across all screens … 30-seconds is too complex to automate, too simple to convince. It’s too short if I’ve chosen to engage with it, and it’s far too long if I’m forced to watch it. Consumers tend to skip the platform if they’re faced with the forced 30-second spot. Hence skippable format and the burst of the six second bumper. It’s long enough to grab my attention and over before I have the chance to object.”

The best performing ads, created by only 15 per cent of advertisers, were longer than three minutes, per Hunt.

So, go long, go short – but don’t get trapped in the middle.

Travelling in Australia is well predictably unpredictable these days. Predictable stratospheric pricing for hotels and flights with unpredictable service levels appears to be the strategy pursued by the big brands.

Another trip with Qantas Melbourne to Sydney and back, another cancelled flight. Predictably, if you book a flight between 1 pm and 4 pm, you won’t be flying on at least one of the legs. In my case, 57% predictability. So, another day with hours lost and plans that needed to be reshaped and 58 minutes on the phone while Qantas attempted to move me to a more convenient flight and failed.

Rather than offering us all $50, how about Qantas simply eliminating a few more flights? Today it feels like a classic “book and switch” scheme – they lock you in knowing the flight won’t likely happen and switch you indiscriminately to another flight when it is too late to book with another carrier. This would also increase competition on routes – clearly not something Qantas would be a big fan of.

Hotels remain a mixed bag. The Star is clean, modern and well put together. Reflecting that it’s a casino hotel, my room was without a desk and with plenty of room for one – and a balcony. OK, value for money. I’m still stumped on why so many Hotels aren’t putting desks into rooms.

My go-to in Sydney – Spicers Potts Point – was sadly fully booked, so I tried the Hotel Challis around the corner. Another hotel pitching itself in the boutique category but nothing like one in reality. Tiny rooms, half a desk, no vibe to speak of, disinterested staff, and average amenities. Let’s call it a slightly above standard budget hotel. Not worth the money despite the location.

Not much dining out on this trip. Not sure what is going on in Barangaroo, but to say it was a ghost town on a Wednesday night would be an understatement. Give CHI by Lotus Dining a shot – great food, and you might get the whole place to yourself. They take Liven, so clock up your rewards and enjoy.

1. We know creativity matters; doing it well is another thing. Creativity is one of the hardest things to nail as a B2B marketer. Agencies that understand B2B and are willing to work within B2B budgets are near impossible to find. A great read on the lack of creativity in most B2B marketing and a terrific interview with the DocuSign CMO on how they nailed it with Hard Hat.
2. 60:40 Rule debunked by Prof Byron Sharp. Well said and argued.

Will it buy any of the love lost since returning to the skies? Unlikely. What the frequent fliers – yours included – want is an idea of what improvement looks like and when it will happen.

For many of us zipping between Melbourne and Sydney, we know the probability of a flight being cancelled is extraordinarily high. Book a 2.30 or one of its past-the-hour cousins, and there is a good chance (based on my experience) that the flight will be cancelled and consolidated with another. It’s not hard to figure out when this is due to a real issue as your new flight will now be inconveniently later. In the main, it’s 30 minutes later.

How about Tile or Apple Tags for our bags – so at least we know where they are and don’t have to suffer painful wait times tracking them down?

Or some certainty on the cost of fares coming down on international routes. $50 doesn’t cover the incredible increases in the cost of travel – especially for small businesses?

At least Alan Joyce – a CEO that should be regarded as one of Australia’s best – has acknowledged the pain many of us experience every week.

Will it make up for lost love for the brand? Not so much. But the gesture matters.

And hopefully, for the exceptional staff, he has in the lounges and onboard, it will relieve some of the grief I see them getting every week from angry and frustrated passengers.