Chia-Lin Simmons

EPISODE 2014.5: VROOM, VROOM!

admin — Fri, 14 Mar 2014 22:13:01 +0000

iTunes Radio beats Spotify to take 3rd place in U.S. music streaming, eyes up #2 spot
iTunes Radio to break out as separate service? Pandora still dominated but will that change? State of the music service = still wild Wild West even in the US
High fidelity player? Ponoplayer uses flac vs mp3 resulting in better sound quality. Time for a format shakeup?
Apple Announces CarPlay
Goldman: There Will Be as Much Mobile Commerce in 2018 as E-Commerce in 2013
New Report Shows Social Media Leads to Coupon Searches

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Brand Value on the street

admin — Fri, 14 Mar 2014 21:36:01 +0000

As a marketeer, I spend a lot of time dealing with branding. I spend a lot of time obsessing about creating a recognizable brand, a brand that has hard financial value to the consumer. There are agencies you work with to look at how your brand stacks up against others. The these companies help you see the raise and fall of your brand value.

Last week, I got a “street” sense of brand value without working with an agency.

My house was burglarized. A team of thieves came into my home for approximately 3 – 10 minutes and walked out with things I possessed. Things that had brand and monetary value. What they took and what they did not take was interesting.

In a house full of electronics, headphones, etc. the burglars took only the following items: (1) iMac with its associated chargers/electronic plugs and the keyboard (2) an iPad (3) an SLR camera from Sony (4) jewelry (5) chinese new year red envelopes from my tree in our house [left from our party]. That’s it. I had a television, many high-end speakers that were portable and non-portable, high-end headphones that cost hundreds of dollars some of which are still in boxes. But all they took really was the Apple products.

Apple has brand value on the streets. My other electronics such as speakers and headphones are amazing products but lack resell value on the streets. For example, I have multiple sets of headphones in my home that amount to over two thousand dollars. They are high-end audiophile headphones. But the headphone brand of choice for resell on the street is likely Beats. People love that brand and they would likely purchase those items used. Since none of our headphones were Beats headphones, they had little to no street value for resell in the black market that the burglars deal with. You can bet that if my headphones were Beats, they would be gone now too.

So real life brand test. In 10 minutes or less, what would you take that have real brand and financial value on the street?

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EPISODE 2014.4: SLIPPERY SLOPE

admin — Wed, 12 Mar 2014 02:16:07 +0000

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EPISODE 2014.3: ONE OR THE OTHER

admin — Wed, 12 Mar 2014 01:48:32 +0000

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EPISODE 2014.2: SOFTWARE IS EATING THE WORLD

admin — Wed, 12 Mar 2014 01:28:16 +0000

This week, John Federico (@gadgetboy) and Chia-Lin Simmons (@chialinsimmons) talk about the latest news in digital media and what it means for you.

You can send comments and questions to comments@odmcast.com. We try to answer everything you send “on air.”

Visit http://odmcast.com to subscribe to the podcast. While you’re there, be sure to subscribe to our announcements list via email.

Subscribe to the YouTube channel.

In this episode:

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ON DIGITAL MEDIA EPISODE 2014.1: IS THIS THING ON?

admin — Wed, 12 Mar 2014 00:53:25 +0000

Can you believe it?!

We’re back!

It’s the ODM crew (and special guests) but with an all-new web site, and live show.

Yep, we’re using Google Hangouts to record each week and it’s totally transformed our ability to produce the show.

This week, John Federico (@gadgetboy), Chia-Lin Simmons (@chialinsimmons), Craig Calder (@ccalder) and our guest, John Wall (@johnjwall) of Marketing Over Coffee talk about the latest news in digital media and what it means for you.

You can send comments and questions to comments@odmcast.com. We try to answer everything you send “on air.”

In this episode:

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Good Art (or Tech) is popular because it’s good right?!?

admin — Thu, 27 Feb 2014 23:05:52 +0000

When folks go to Paris, one of the things that they do is visit the Mona Lisa at the Louvre. After all, it’s an amazing piece of art work right? It’s popular and considered worthy of visits by millions annually and for being on the Louvre because it’s amazing, right? Or is it?

Popular = Good?

Princeton Professor of Sociology Matthew Salganik began thinking about this a few years ago. No, not about art, but more about “success”. What makes a thing successful? Specifically, he thought about how much of success is attributable the “inherent qualities” of the successful thing itself, and how much was just random chance or luck?

To test this idea, he set up multiple virtual worlds to which he invited teenagers at random to and they had the ability to stream 48 separate tracks of music. All of the music were from unknown bands so none of the teenagers would have necessarily have recognize them as already popular music and all the words had the same music. From there, the teens were allowed to download the tracks that were their favorites. The idea was that in these separate universes, if a track of music was inherently successful, wouldn’t they be popular across all these multiple universes of teenagers online?

Turns out, this is not true. Each of the worlds had the top tracks and where one music track is the most popular in one virtual world, it was 40th out of 48 in another. What Professor Salganik’s research shows is that chance/luck/happenstance early in the world, influences the success of the track and from there, peer influence takes over to lift that track of music to success.

I am tracking down this research to read in full because I think it perfectly mimics what I understand about marketing and technology product success. In my many years in the valley as a marketeer, I hear plenty, and have participated in plenty of companies where I was told the technology was superior, therefore, the company’s “win” was assured. That there was “inherent success” for the product. That is after all, what VC’s invest in in Silicon Valley in many ways, they invest in “good” technology. I think that is true because it’s important that there needs to be (as mentioned in Professor Salganik’s research) a minimum threshhold of quality. You cannot make a poor quality item popular out of thin air.

But what the investment and the teams fail to recognize is that success of a company’s product is sometimes a question timing, serendipity and I would say some marketing skills to lift a product into awareness and nudge the peer influencing that is required to make a product a success. Marketing is often under appreciated in its role to create a success out of technology. We chalk it up in the Valley that a product was successful because it’s good.

Really? I believe that Professor Salganik’s research goes far into giving credit to success to some level of serendipity and I think the power of the peer influence (that does not come out of no where, it comes from PR and marketing!) to make a good product a success.

Is there inherent beauty in the Mona Lisa? There are qualities of artistry and beautify there. But me, I’m never one to follow the crowds, I like to make the crowds. So I like spending time in the new artist wing of the museums and art galleries!

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Creative and Productive Meetings

admin — Mon, 10 Feb 2014 17:43:18 +0000

I know, you’re thinking looking at the title of the post that creative and productive meetings are not possible. I would not blame you for thinking otherwise. Like many of you, I have attended many meetings (dial-in, video and in person) that does not achieve the goals it set out for. This is especially true for “strategy” meetings. The truly amazing strategy and innovation sessions (and believe me, I have attended and ran them) seem to have energy and amazing results. How do you get that result everytime?

Writers and Strategy Consultants Chris Ertel and Lisa Kay Solomon have spent the last 15 years helping leaders across multiple industries by designing and leading strategic conversations on crucial topics for their businesses. Their book, Moments of Impact is available for sale starting this month. They have developed toolkits and knowledge around this rather important topic and now folks can benefit from their 15 year expertise. They’ve offered up a teaser toolkit for folks to check out at their website at: www.momentsofimpactbook.com.

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We’re back!

admin — Wed, 05 Feb 2014 00:35:31 +0000

For over 2 years, close to 3, the On Digital Media crew (ODM) had been on hiatus from doing the podcasts. We had been dispersed between California, New Jersey and even Massachusetts and getting 4 to 5 super busy people to allocate about 1 1/2 hour of personal time was challenging. We had all been caught up on major projects and I specifically had been engrossed in launching a connected car service that would compete against XM Radio, iHeart Radio, Pandora etc in the car. We all kept in touch and sometimes managing to sneak in drinks when one of us is traveling to New York or San Francisco. However, I missed chatting with the guys weekly. I missed talking about the latest news in digital media and technology.

I am excited to report that after a long hiatus, we are back to doing what we do best: insider-baseball-like chats about the technology and digital media industry. In our hayday, we had been cached and listened to by the marketing team at P&G, listeners included the VP of Internet Research at Morgan Stanley, executives at Sony Erickson, Nokia, etc. Instead of just audio as well, we are now recording on Google Hangouts (good or bad…) You’ll see a tighter and faster-pace show as well, with potential opportunities for an increased number of guests to join the show.

We are excited and would like to invite you to join us at the On Digital Media website on Thursday, February 6 at 8pm ET!

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BlackBerry shuts the doors on its “Center for Excellence”

admin — Fri, 11 Oct 2013 15:00:31 +0000

Those who know me know that I was never a huge fan of BlackBerry smartphones. I’ve always been a multimedia person and after extensive business discussions with them in 2005 – 2007 where they did not feel the need to build multimedia into their product plans, I gave up on them.

However, that doesn’t mean that I didn’t feel a pang of pain when I saw that they were shutting down their “Center for Excellence”. Anytime we see companies shutting down innovation centers, it makes me depressed. Perhaps it’s my fear that big companies are not interested in innovation anymore and merely see innovation as the area of start-ups and when time is ripe, they would then acquire. While that is a viable model and one that works well, it also does not take into consideration some interesting products came out of large innovation centers such as Bell Labs?

BlackBerry shuts the doors on its “Center for Excellence” (via Pando Daily)

On October 10, 2013Months after it opened, BlackBerry has officially closed down its “Center for Excellence.” The company had opened the center last February in conjunction with the local government to support and protect tech jobs in the city of…

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