ExperienceCurve

Geek Chic: Rails

37signals has built 5 new software products over the last couple of years, and has knocked every single one out of the park, two of their products earned “best of the web 2005″ from business week, not bad for a couple of years. Currently over a quarter of a million people use those products, which means they are no longer the niche player they once were. One mind boggling fact though is that even with quarter of a million users, support requests are so infrequent that they are generally handled by the founder, Jason Fried (a fact I discovered on a duct tape marketing podcast)

Many factors have contributed to 37signals deserved success, not least their heritage as a “usability” company, and their focus on keeping it simple. What I am wondering though, is whether the development platform/web framework they use for all their products, the geek chic “ruby on rails“, has contributed to the simple, consistent, and clearly superior Customer Experience.

Now, i’m not a programmer by any stretch of the imagination, but I have taken a few tutorials, and viewed a few of the video screencasts of “rails” in action, giving me some limited insight. It seems that the “rails” “write once” philosophy forms an incredibly tight relationship between the User Interface and the database. In other words you write one piece of code and it creates all the UI elements and database stuff automatically. The “creating a weblog in 15 minutes” screencast provides a great example where the programmer creates an item in the program called a “post”. A post has a title and a body that contain text, and as the programmer specifies this, a web view of a post is created, with a title and a body. Not only that but the functions for creating, deleting, and viewing lists of posts are all there as well, with the requisite “create”, “edit”, “delete” buttons.

What this illustrates to me is really the “power of patterns” on customer experience, and the value of consistency. I “think” that because all of the 37signals products were built in rails, they have some consistent patterns that help users learn, and adopt their products. This is not taking away any of 37signals design chops, but I think there are so many details that “rails” is helping making more consistent that 37signals can focus on building a great products.

Clearly well designed, usable, easy to learn products are leading to very strong adoption rates, and the dirty little secret of software sales is that “adoption” is what makes a software product successful. The CRM industry has an awesome failure rate, not because the software doesn’t “scale” or whatever other consulting buzzword you want to put in there, they fail because no-one uses them. This is the reason that salesforce.com actually invests a “shit load” of money in usability (I was getting pitched on salesforce.com at one time and the figure they threw out of how much the spend on UX is huge).

Anyway, why would I mention CRM? Because 37signals has a product in the works called sunrise, you’ve been warned.

References:

• the 37signals blog Signal vs. Noise
• Ruby on Rails Site
• A blog for Rails N00BS - wonderfully named Nuby On Rails

Some additional links courtesy of nubyonrails

• http://podcast.rubyonrails.org — Interviews with Rails pros
• http://rubyonrailsworkshops.com — Opportunities to learn Rails

• http://rails.techno-weenie.net — Practical Answers
• http://railshelp.com — Searchable documentation

On the subject of “rails” hosting I’ll take an opportunity to plug my host here, I host half a dozen sites on site5. Apart from the fact they host “rails” apps, they have lots of features for people who host multiple sites and they provide a shit load of storage space, i mean 11 gigs of space, 400 gigs of bandwidth, 5 domains, for about 8 bucks is pretty good.

My only complaint is they don’t have phone support, but their email support has been very responsive and knowledgeable.

I got rather a kick out of these two voicemails my Mum left for me, the first one has a few seconds of silence as both my Mum and Dad try and figure out what is going on. I like my Dads advice “click on red”, take that to the usability/icon lab.

Mum and Dad Collaborate on leaving a skype voicemail

Finally Mum calls back and leaves another voicemail

Harkens back to the early days of answering machines, “hello? is it working? well this is…”

Last wednesday, February 15th Guinness (a generally forward thinking and creative marketer) launched a blog. As opposed to the usual puffery and inauthenticity that can be associated with some of the “Corporate Brand Jobs” that pass for blogs, Guinness is a surprisingly conversational, authentic affair. In an effort to try and quantify what they have done right, i’ve got a little mini review that covers the four aspects of the blog that I think are important for engaging customers via blogs:

• Language - tone and style
• Design - branding, look and feel
• Content - what is it about
• Participation - interaction & co-creation

Language

Written a conversational tone, the blog eschews much of the language of the marketeer for a more engaging, inclusive, and even confessional tone at times.

C’mon, when was the last time someone at a big company admitted that something innovative they were doing was a bit scary? The result of this is the blog fulfills the goal of being an “engaging conversation” that others can participate in.

Design: branding, look & feel

Guinness Chalkboard Logo

What is more down to earth and more “Guinness” like than a pub chalkboard? Well maybe not in the States, but the chalkboard metaphor serves the brand and the blog beautifully. This is a very good example of the “brand integrity” that stems from focusing on what it looks like, feels like etc. it all rings true and nothing feels out of place.

Content: tell us something we don’t know

It’s early days, but the content so far is pretty interesting, and gives out background information. I particularly like the storyboards and scripts from some current campaigns. But then again, I’m interested in marketing and advertising. The point being, they are sharing things that are not common knowledge and could be characterized as “opening the kimono”… a little.

Participation: Is it a conversation?

Not all blogs require participation, but a marketing blog that is trying to engage its audience in a more meaningful way beyond the broadcast metaphor has to have it. In many ways blogs have participation and co-creation built into their DNA with trackback & comments, and this is where many big brands fail. Many marketers and brand managers that treat their brand a monolithic entity that is only built though tightly controlled communication, are often terrified of what customers might say. The Guinness blog gets a B+ for participation, as they’ve hobbled trackback and comments are human moderated, which takes away some of the conversational aspects of the blog.

On the plus side the Guinness is up front on their comment moderation and explains in detail why it must moderate everything that shows up on the blog.

That sort of explanation certainly humanizes the problem. I don’t want them to lose their jobs either, and it also gives me a little empathy for them as blog pioneers in an enormous company. I mean, lets put it in perspective; this is a huge company, and I can’t even imagine the hoops these guys probably had to jump through to get this blog out there. So kudos on that front.

Global Brands and the Challenges Facing Officially Sanctioned Blogs

What works well for “global micro brands” can be a bit of a problem for global big brands. As the Guinness blog is an “official blog”, and not an employee sideline, it is severely constrained by the various rules and regulations surrounding marketing alcohol. The biggest problem of course is that if you are in the USA, and you’re honest when answering the questions on their landing page, you will not get to the blog. You will get an “Access Denied Landing page”. The Guinness Blog is getting totally hammered for this by a lot of people in the US, and in fact my main reason for writing this piece was to hammer Guinness for it, until that was, I lied, and got to read the blog, and though “hey, this isn’t bad”. Especially as the first post I saw was a post explaining all the legal and corporate responsibility reasons for having it.

There is a very unfortunate phrase on the “access denied page” that is “Now Leave the Guinness site”, meant I’m sure as guidance, comes across as “Get Lost”

In the words of Gaping Void

Emphasis Added, I think that’s a meme right there, I’m tagging it.

Anyway, with all the rules and regs with marketing alcohol, couldn’t they have got round it with Scobleizer equivalent for Guinness, or would that be considered too much of a shenanigan?

Doh, Emily at How to Blog pointed out that I didn’t link to the Guinness blog, well here you go.

Anyway, Cheers,

Karl

Alcohol is often marketed with the thinly veiled message that alcohol is a social lubricant and will likely get you laid. In this case though they are not beating around the bush with their tagline “the ultimate panty remover”

The Complete Campaign Landing Page (new window)

What the Hell is Absinthe Anyway

Absinthe is a very strong (60% to 70% by vol) green alcoholic drink that has slipped in and out of fashion and in and out of favor with the courts for a couple of hundred years. It is a distillation of the wormwood plant, green in color, with rumored hallucinogenic properties, give it a rather unique “position” in the alcoholic spirit world that is reflected in the art world. Some movie sightings of la Fée Verte (The Green Fairy”) such as Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Interview with a Vampire, From Hell, Van Helsing, and HBO’s Carnivàle do hint at this drink’s reputation.

It’s all about context

Absinth.bz “seems” to have taken the position that absinthe could be the new “Roofy” with this recent campaign. Now I say they “seem” to have taken the position, but this may be one of those unfortunate marketing choices, that seemed like a good idea in the pitch meeting, but in the cold hard light of day, sounds far worse than intended. I have heard the term “panty remover” before in reference to a particularly swish car, and in that context it didn’t strike me as wildly inappropriate. I could even see “the ultimate panty remover” as a tag line in an ad campaign for a particularly ostentatious car and I don’t think I would give it much of a second thought. But in the context of a “barely legal*” alcoholic beverage, with a reputation as a hallucinogen, it does give you pause.

This landing page that was served up when I clicked through from a site that proported to be “the mens portal” and the “online equivalent to maxim” so this is a pretty specifically targeted ad. I imagine this is an ad that the company only wants a select few people to see, if you go to the front page of the site, it actually could pass muster as work safe, with the sauciest reference being to one of their product packages “Ab-SIN-ity”. Which begs the question, how can you possibly expect to hide anything this salacious on the internet?

The one aspect of this campaign that helps position this more as erotica as opposed to “endorsing date rape” is the quote here from Marilyn Mansons wife.

Aside: I’m not entirely sure what inhibitions this attractive young lady has to lose, but clearly she lost them.

I’m actually very much on the fence as to whether this is a brilliant ad, or a huge marketing error? It could potentially destroy the company, or propel it to stardom? Who knows, but I’m fascinated as to what happens next.

Afterthought: In some ways this reminds me of that Dudley Moore film “Crazy People” where he is an ad man so “crazy” he tells the truth, like this bit of copy:

Reference:
One of the more interesting wikipedia article details Absinthe’s long history

A friend pointed me to another related article on Absinthe in Wired

As the number one search on Technorati. Ironically enough Measure Map is also making a strong showing, related to the recent acquisition of the Adaptive Path tool “measure map” by Google. Ironic because measure map is a tool that helps bloggers measure their stats and “influence”. Well if you ever doubted Scobleizers influence, you can do a search on Yahoo. Looks like google shut it down as a googlebomb, but I think that speaks volumes regarding influence as well.

Now many companies are certainly coming to understand that the blogosphere is important, and I think this illustrates how blogs can create and transmit influence very quickly.

To put this in terms that marketers and advertisers might understand, blogs are like the perfect medium for “viral” ideas, not only do the ideas travel like wildfire, they create permanent records of the idea through all the links back and forth between the blogs. Blogs are like amplifiers for ideas, whether that be a new product, or a social experiment.

Not to get all William Gibson on your asses, but based on my limited understanding blogs do kind of act like a brain in that the “paths” and “connections” between ideas and concepts are important for memory.