I love Apple products.

But something has been troubling me, and when I get troubled, I mull, and when I mull, I stew, and when I stew I eventually write something that’s either really funny or insulting, and I don’t feel any jokes coming on at the moment.

People have been calling me an Apple Fanboy for many years.   Before that term became trendy they called me an Apple fanatic. I used to resist these labels since from my point of view I was just reporting the obviousness between Macs and PCs. It wasn’t my fault Apple products were superior.

Anyway this isn’t about who’s better or who’s right . That’s old news.   Apple is kicking butt these days and most of the anti-Apple people I’ve known have finally let go of their irrational embrace of a Windows PC-only paradigm, bought iPhones, iPods, iPads and iMacs and we can finally move on.

And my story starts there.

Because as any true Apple Fanboy will tell you, it feels oddly disorienting to see Apple kicking butt .  It’s what we fought for over the last quarter century, and yet now that we have arrived, the universe is out of balance, only perhaps not in the way you might expect…

iTudes

The other day I was ordering a bound photo album I made in iPhoto. The fastest shipping option I saw was still going to take too long, so I went in search of a more expensive overnight shipping option. I didn’t find mention of such an option, so I called the Apple Web Store Support line – since they would know about shipping Apple’s products. The first sales person I talked to naturally sounded cool – like a “Mac”. When I asked if I could overnight the shipping of my iPhoto Album, after it was printed, the line went dead. I was on my iPhone so figured AT&T’s connection dropped. I called back on a landline and this time got another cool-sounding “Mac”. Once again I asked about paying more money for an overnight shipping option, and this time I think the “Mac” mumbled: “Oh we ble…” he trailed off unintelligibly and the line went dead again. This time it was clear – he hung up. In my ear. Mid-mumbled-sentance.

And that’s how I learned, or intuited rather, that buying Apple products online through iPhoto is unrelated to say, buying iPhoto itself.

Thus started my troubling, mulling and stewing. Obviously, I shouldn’t have taken being hung up on twice by Apple representatives personally. There is obviously a rational explanation. And yet I did take it personally.

“Made in California”

An important part of Apple’s brand is it’s personality, embodied by a slightly cooler than you, slightly smug, rather naturally stylish Californian called “Mac” (and this was true decades before any commercials featuring Justin Long were deployed). And if you’re Apple, you’d recognize it would undermine your brand personality if US consumers dialed the Apple Store and were directed to random, heavily-accented operators in India who sounded like they had been hired by the floor-full, to save a few bucks. No, you would hire considerably more expensive, self-entitled, young Californian-sounding American College Students and you would save the money back by issuing a punishable edict that directed all “Macs” (operators) to move through those calls as ungodly fast as possible – even if it meant outright hanging up in the ear of some dumb customer who didn’t figure out that the information vacuum surrounding Overnight Shipping for iPhoto Products meant Apple doesn’t do that. Click – “Sorry, application ‘telephone call’ unexpectedly quit”.

Little Dog

Apple has always had a little dog attitude. You know- the way a Jack Russell will act all self-important, and snarl and snap like he’s all that. He has to do that because he’s so small and powerless. Otherwise he would be eaten. That was Apple for it’s first 20 years. But like me, maybe you have wondered what you would do if your Jack Russell Freaky Friday’ed into the body of a Great Dane or a Rottweiler. There is no room in our civilization for such a vicious K9, and Animal Control would probably put it down.

Well Apple has grown. And by grown I mean it has inserted itself into the body of a Microsoft, a gigantic swath of the population with iPhones, iPods and now trailing, Mac computers. Apple is enjoying more users than ever before in its history. You might argue that in areas, Apple has become a big dog. The problem, and the reason I currently think I would prefer Google own the digital universe despite their utter lack of aesthetic sensibility, is that Apple still carries itself like a small dog. Utterly arrogant, overly aggressive; a little dictator.

It was cute when the company had no power, it was necessary, endearing even. But now that so many lives are intertwined with that personality, now that a virtual ecosystem has begun to build itself around the company and its behavior, Apple’s personality needs an adjustment; the arrogance, once an asset, has turned destructive.

Knights of the Apple Table

If you spend any time in the Apple Discussion boards you have come across a recurring comment convention. Some aspect of Apple’s service or products pisses a customer off and by way of expressing the injustice, the customer will start by listing, in detail, all the Apple products he has owned over so many years; a precious few can even assert that they owned the first Macintosh Computer in 1984. As if such credentials should entitle them to some premier frequent flier status.
I used to laugh at those people – how lame, I thought, this is a company – you just buy their products or you don’t. Apple doesn’t owe you any more than that. The number of products you willfully purchased is a meaningless datapoint with regard to the little issue you are upset about now.

But is it? During my stewing and mulling, I began to understand why they felt that way. Why some of them intuitively felt that Apple owed them a little bit more, perhaps more than all these new, fair-weather, iPod-gateway, converts. Why being shuttled through the same long cues and dismissiveness, as everyone else felt unjust. And why, after some real soul-searching – I now sincerely feel that way too.

Apple does owe us. Some of us. For we are the loyal minority. The long-timers. The knights of the Apple table. They owe us because we were the kids who fought off the countless bullies on Apple’s behalf at a time that Apple was weakest. We were Apple’s first line of defense. The ones who tucked our precious Mac OS under our arms and carried it away from threat of disaster. We protected it.

We defended Apple’s honor against an inescapable and humiliating tidal wave of proof that Apple was the weakling of the personal computing party.

We fought these countless adversaries with the most valuable weapon of all:

Our own credibility. Because Apple carried so precious little then.

To keep the company alive – in effort of defending the unacknowledged rightness of Apple’s mission, we put our very faces and reputations on the line in defense of an ideal that had not managed to manifest a meaningful footprint. Apple was weak, it faltered, it was shrinking to toy-like proportions, so as far as anyone knew at the time our assertive actions were reckless, self-destructive and ultimately doomed. But through it all – we fanned the Apple embers tirelessly.

These were the darkest years. Seriously, Gil Amelio? Really?  It took a level of courage and self-confidence to be an Apple supporter then.

My minuscule part in this legend was as the creative head of a highly-awarded Interactive firm at that time, and there was not one technologist, IT executive, or engineer who thought we should have a Mac in the shop. Like vultures they circled, “Apple is about to fold, Photoshop runs on Windows now, we need to move to PCs now”; it was their repeated and logical assertion.  It became an IT mantra.  And yet we fought.  My business partner and I, against the obviousness, we fought. So my company bought more ugly beige boxes from Gil because “Damnit,” I said, “the OS is BETTER. And I believe in their rightness.  They’ll come back.” Obviously I had no clue Apple could come back – just a deeply wishful belief in the justice of it all.

And I wasn’t the only one. There were more of us. A well-documented, miniscule percentage of the personal computing population – we evangelized, consistently, passionately, angrily even – to the near-death of our professional relationships.

Frequent i-er Program

Apple’s Steve Jobs died and was reborn to rule once more.

Could this have been possible had the believers ceased believing?   I don’t think so.  When I recall the relative viscousness of our fight, no, I don’t think so.

So I stand before you today, Apple, with the scars, and sacrifice that you survived long enough to rise to new power upon, and I ask you to remember.  Not to forget us.

Maybe… maybe you do owe those few something after all? Those few who stayed with you from the 80s onward?  It wouldn’t take much.

You could acknowledge our greater-than-mere-consumerism sacrifice by instituting a literal premier customer status that it takes years to acquire. A good friend of mine, had a simple suggestion: Lifetime Applecare.

Or maybe we just need you to grow up. Go the extra distance and show us all how such a great company – who survived thanks to a relative few fighting proponents – can mature gracefully. Lose the little dog attitude, and for Christ sake – don’t dismissively hang up in your evangelists’ ears.  Find out who you’re talking to before you treat them like annoyances.  I know you think “Hey – this is awesome, look at all the new customers we have now!” But look more closely and you won’t see any evangelism in that body of new users. You’ll just see users. Uninvested users who follow trends. And that’s great, so long as you remain the trend.

Similarly, when you lose your loyal soldiers, the lifers – you’ll have another problem. A population of trained, outspoken digerati who know your strengths and weaknesses intimately and who share a new mission. Look at this post. It’s the inevitable byproduct of such a scenario. And a pretty mild one at this point.

Now that you are strong, it wouldn’t take a lot to get me back. But I… we, are not like the rest of your new customers.

We had an income in 1984. We bought every OS you have ever released and more hardware than some companies do.

The people who call us ‘Fanboys’, who lump us in with this iPod generation of trenders, totally miss the point.

We are not Fanboys.

We are the proud Apple Freemasons, and membership has been closed for a long time.

Apple Freemason Medals of Service

I started with a Macintosh Computer in 1985. I bought half a dozen beige boxes with names like Performa, LC, and Quadra. I bought a Duo. I bought the first iMac (bondi blue). And the second iMac (blueberry). I bought three Powerbooks. I bought the Cube. I loved my Cube. I bought another iMac (AV graphite). I bought two G3 towers(beige and blue), and two G4 towers. I bought several tube Monitors, and on the day it was available bought a 20″ flat Cinema Screen and then the 23″ Cinema Screen. I bought the first iBook. Naturally I bought the first G5 Tower, and then another faster G5. I bought two MacBooks (one white, one black), and I bought the first 30″ cinema screen (with the necessary video card upgrade). I bought an iSight webcam. I bought the first iPod with mechanical spinning click-wheel and surrounding buttons, the iPod with four red glowy buttons, The first iPod Mini, the first Nano (still the best iPod design), and the clip-on Shuffle. I bought the first iPhone, the iPhone 3G, the 3GS, and now 4. I bought the first Airport Base Station. The first Airport Extreme. Numerous Airport Express bricks. The new Airport Extreme 802.11n. And I bought a coveted AppleTV. I recently bought a spanking new Nehalem MacPro Tower. I bought a new 15″ MacBook Pro and an iPad.

I bought every Mac OS ever released. Every version of iLife and iWork. I bought Final Cut. I bought all manner of Apple adapter and cable and battery and mouse and keyboard in multiples. Apple, you kind of made me buy those adapters.

I have spent untally-able dollars at the iTunes Store on music, movies, TV shows, apps and books, as well as photobooks and cards through iPhoto (minus overnight shipping). I have been a dual-account holder of mac.com since it was launched (boasting Virex!), and maintain two Apple developer accounts.

I didn’t buy the iPod Hi-Fi. Sorry, that was the stupidest product I have ever seen. For a while I tried to pretend like I never saw it. So I guess I saved $349 there.

By my rough estimation, I have personally purchased well in excess of $70,000 of Apple products.

I additionally was directly responsible for ensuring that Apple products remained the dominant tools in my company of 550 people for the worst decade of Apple’s lifespan to date.

And this is just what I remember.

During the same period, I purchased maybe 4 versions of Microsoft Office.

You too?  Welcome to the Apple Freemasons.

Let me know you’re out here.

Three years ago some ad agency dweeb leaned into my office and smirked “Dude, our campaign just went social”.

Social Marketing: sequence of events

So after a particularly frustrating day of having Flash-based content crash my browser, I finally buckled under and succumbed to the recommendation of my old business partner Tim Smith and downloaded a little, free Mac Safari plugin called “ClickToFlash“.

ClickToFlash is a simple tool that blocks Flash content in the Safari browser and replaces it with a pleasant, ignorable graphic.  And if you choose to click the ignorable graphic – the Flash movie loads normally.  Simple.

But why would the average person want it?  Most advocates will tell you because it will significantly reduce browser crashing.  Which it does.  But there is something else.  Something I found infinitely more satisfying.

I’d resisted ClickToFlash previously because I thought, at the time, I wouldn’t want to miss out on all those cool experiences, those grey boxes would probably annoy me, and any extra clicking would degrade my experience.

Was I ever wrong on all counts.

ClickToFlash has made surfing the web a pleasant – no, a delightful experience.

The surprise came when I landed on my first page, a news site, which I was fairly sure had no Flash content on it anyway.  Naturally when I landed I saw the article, but what surprised me was what I didn’t see.  What I didn’t see – were ADS.  Just a nice clean page and the content I wanted.

I went to another site, and another, and the obvious realization kicked in that most of the prominently positioned, above the fold and therefore expensive to place ads on the web today are Flash-based (read: sexiest and therefor deserving of being in the expensive locations).

At that moment, with great thrill, I realized ClickToFlash might just as well have been named “ClickToBeAnnoyedByAdvertising.”

Ah… control.  This is what Interactive media is supposed to be!  In an instant I had muted the visual screechings of thousands of uninvited, self-important, flagrant 1st-Axiom-of-Interactive violating Advertisers.

Of course this will all end come the day that the engineering teams relegated down the food chain to advertising agencies finally fire their Flash developers and start focusing on the emerging web spec HTML 5 as a platform of choice.

But don’t worry – that’s not going to happen anytime soon.  The spec is only partially deployed, and fortunately for me, advertisers love Flash.

Way behind the curve, agencies are still staffing up with Flash developers as though the technology can replace creative ideas, as though that one technology can pull them out of the ad industry’s chaotic spiral, as though it were – “the future.” To them, Flash is still cool.

Such is the state of creative teams in most ad agencies.  These poor guys are literally just starting to feel solid ground under their feet after a decade of “viral this” and “social that”.  The desperate wishing that TV spots would just stay important forever has finally waned and most agency creatives have finally, grudgingly, begun to accept interactive media as the centerpiece of their campaigns.  See, advertising creatives don’t like it when the medium carpet is pulled out from under them.  It’s only happened once before and it took them over a decade to accept it;  It’s hard to develop creative solutions when your palette changes so fundamentally everyday.  If technology is not in your blood – you struggle trying to track the advancements and incorporate them into something resembling a mature creative execution that doesn’t smack of novelty-chasing.  So now that Flash has been embraced ubiquitously by advertisers, it will take quite a lot to move that big ship off the Flash gulf stream.  You can rest assured that advertisers will still be using Adobe’s somewhat clunky tool for a long, long time.

And that suits my ClickToFlash self just fine.  That’s right boys.  Graphic banners are boring.  And what the heck is Ajax or JQuery anyway?  HTML 5 (or 6?) couldn’t possibly kill Flash.  Because with Flash you can create “experiences!”  Who knows maybe it will go “viral” or even better, “social”.

Just you keep spending your clients’ money on really humongous, big Flash campaigns.  Buy up all the available ad space for that gorgeous, experiential, Flashtrubation.  Please, I’m begging you.

And the rest of you Mac users – download ClickToFlash.

Internet nirvana awaits.

It’s cold in hell today.  Well, in my private corner of it anyway.

That’s because my default home page – across all my browsers – was just changed to Microsoft’s Bing.com.

In my world – that’s really big news.  I have friends who have responded with utter disbelief.

For the last 24 years I have been, you might say, generally anti-Microsoft.  Or rather – I wasn’t impressed with this company that had defaulted, and then bullied it’s way, into ubiquity slightly ahead of availability of vastly better designed systems (cough – Mac OS – cough).

Yes, of course I was, and to a large degree, still am, an Apple fanboy.  And yet when I think about the companies that I would prefer to have rule the universe, I have always thought Google makes a slightly more benevolent ruler than either of the former.

Over the last 24 years I repeatedly asserted that the day Microsoft developed a product that is better than Apple, and later Google, that I would have no problem adopting it.  And of course that was so easy to say because such a thing had never happened.  Like ever.

But for the last month I have been trying Bing, and guess what, it doesn’t suck.

In fact, it doesn’t suck so much that it’s actually really great.  Dare I say – the greatest Internet search engine available today.

For over 10 years Google has held the status as the top subject in my private Internet kingdom.  The first logo I saw every morning, and the most used internet tool every day.  But all that changed today.

Using Bing, it’s pretty obvious that search results are more relevant, videos more immediate, dynamic and easy to navigate, and images are more relevant, numerous and easy to view.

And, gird yourself Google, I’m about to utter an alien phrase… it’s cooler.

Using Bing, I realized that Google, the search engine, just slipped, unceremoniously, into the bottom half of the hour glass as an artifact of a previous time.  A time when aesthetics necessarily fell by the wayside in favor of functionality and conservative technical etiquette.  Business models had to actually work after the bubble burst- imagine that.  And the growing tidal wave of newbie mom and pop internet users were still a little confused by all them thar buttons and interwebs and emails and such.  Google’s child-like branding and minimalist (read: mundane) approach to interface design and aesthetics made the company and it’s site friendly and accessible.   …Back then.

However, today, Google’s obvious repulsion against anything remotely related to aesthetic beauty or adventurous U.I. has left it with all the design gravitas of a pocket calculator.  Yeah, it works, but there is no joy in using, it’s not delightful, it’s not cool.

As a Google corporate outsider it’s hard to tell how much of Google’s home page (and logo) – which has changed glacially in the last decade – was initially accidental or the result of advanced calculation, but in either case it worked at that time, and it’s unlikely that anyone inside Google has been willing to take responsibility for messing with that success by fundamentally refreshing the product’s appearance and behavior.

“DON’T TOUCH IT!” is the more likely conscience on the primary-colored campus.

But technology runs to commodity.  And one day you wake up and the only difference between two competing products is aesthetics and an implied lifestyle.

In hindsight, “change it” is something Google needed to do some time ago.  Embracing the risk, reward and uncertainty of great design would have given the company a chance.  Might have pre-empted Microsoft’s bid altogether.  But you don’t write algorithms to do that, you employ artists, and unconventional U.I experts, you trust their intuition and taste, and you relegate to them some directorial control.  You don’t drown them in statistics, limitations and testing.  That procedurally kills good design.

Look at Apple – the poster-child of industrial design and aesthetics working hand-in-hand with great technology.

Apple gets it.  Pretty much always has.  Except for maybe when Gil Amelio was there.  And it’s not like they don’t do consumer testing.  they do – but they value great design.  And Google could learn a few things about consumers and marketing from the design powerhouse, if they would just pull away from the ones and zeros long enough to appreciate organic, intuitive creativity.  But alas, outside the occasional visiting artist who is paid to perform during the lunch-break (the videos we have all envied), Google does not seem to have any idea how to incorporate the intuitive creative sensibility into it’s products in a meaningful way.

I’m not saying Bing is some design nirvana – it’s far from it.  It even shares many similarities with Google.  And I’m not saying that it is so advanced that Bing can’t be unseated, but for now, it’s just better than Google.  And in the small, small world of search engine powerhouses, that’s all that matters.

I will add that it appeared to be a rather unbecoming defensive move when Google announced an operating system initiative – just as the obvious superiority of Bing’s search over Google’s was settling into the Internet stream of consciousness.  Perhaps a bid to steal some of Microsoft’s thunder – or keep them feeling the pressure of an inferiority complex that should be pretty well entrenched at Microsoft by now.

For now, Google’s well documented subservience to testing and data, and it’s aversion to artistic intuition has done it this one infinitesimally small disservice: it has turned at least one staunch Apple Fanboy and Google advocate into a Microsoft convert.

I’m writing this on a Mac.  One that has never revealed a positive thing about Microsoft.  And I even still want Google, with it’s slightly more trustworthy corporate mission to “do no evil”, to ultimately rule the technical universe.  And yet…

Bing is now my home page.

Sorry Google, you have some work to do, Buddy.

The iPhone mic snags on any button-down collar, um... but not t-shirts.

I can’t be the only one. The only lifelong Apple fan boy who wears shirts with collars on occasion. Am I?

I ask because if there were others, if maybe even one of us worked for Apple on the iPhone team, the iPhone headphones would be designed differently. It’s a fact – no two ways about it. That somehow this critical design flaw should never have survived the Apple design process, unless of course, they really all do wear t-shirts – exclusively.

Hey, I wear t shirts. Cool ones too. But now and again – and maybe more often than some, I wear similarly stylish button-down shirts with collars. And this is where the design flaw reveals itself.

See, the wired iPhone mic catches on your shirt collar. And by catches on your collar, I mean the sharp edge of the mic invariably snags your collar with enough force to tug the earpiece out of you ear, and then the earpiece and mic fall 4 feet to your knees mid-conversation. It never fails. Turn your head an inch too far and – pop.

“Wait, HELLO!? Hold on, I can’t hear you – sorry! Hello? you still there? Oh hi, sorry – my headphone just popped out of my….” Never fails. I really don’t get it.

Oh sure, it looks nice. It looks awesome. And it even feels nice in your fingers; that little wired mic. But by God, as sure as I am writing “mac genius” that headphone catches on my collar and pops out of my ear.

Maybe like you, I’ve become subconsciously sensitive to the problem. I have developed this acute reflex due to “the pull”. That feeling when the cord tugs at my earbud, the mic having snagged my collar. At the slightest resistance, my head freezes and I carefully bring it back to center, just shy of popping the earbud from my ear. There was a point where I would use my patented oval-head-move to release the mic from said collar. I’d gotten pretty good at that too, that oval-head-move; made me look like a pigeon walking down the street. But alas – whatever momentary satisfaction I may have had at releasing the mic – it only caught again a moment later. Without fail.

As a result I finally gave up and now walk around with one hand holding the mic to my mouth. Just like I did years ago with poorer sets designed by your average run-of-the-mill, low-end industrial designers. It would appear to most passersby that I am actually holding the mic to my mouth so that my voice is better heard, but no. The mic works fine without that. No, I am simply trying to keep the earbud in place, simple as that.

Naturally, this never happens when I wear a t shirt. And maybe that’s the idea.

ABOVE: Apple's 16GB iPhone 3G - in White. Optional keychain ring and free pink eraser not pictured.

When Apple started using the color white as it’s industrial design foundation back in the late 90s – it evoked all the coolest parts of Star Wars’ Storm Troopers, 2001: A Space Odyssey – and bathroom fixtures all at once.  It was a powerful design conceit that differentiated the company assertively for a decade – and big-banged out trends that are still rippling their way down the lower design food-chain today.

Then, with the advent of multicolored aluminum iPods, Black MacBooks and silver iMacs, Airs and Mac Pros, it looked as though His whiteness was finally, at long gasping last, bowing out.  And none too soon.

The fact is, the whole white consumer technology thing has been done to death.  There is all manner of non-Apple, white and plastic-chrome “iWhatevers” on the market.  So ubiquitous is the white and “chromed” plastic look that anything done that way today usually has “made in taiwan” embossed on the side or comes from a gum ball machine.

And then Apple unveiled the iPhone 3G.

When I saw the white and chrome iPhone 3G – an exclusive color way for the premium 16GB model – I remember mildly deflating and uttering, “…really…?”  And then I think I just squinted at it – waiting for the coolness to kick in.  A reality distortion field.  A different angle.  Anything.

But no – with all the industrial design ‘tump’* of Hasbro’s plastic iDog, here was my favorite company’s most awesomest product announcement on Earth and it carried itself in the housing of a 10-year old Hello Kitty school supplies compartment.  With free pink eraser.  I half expected to see a keychain ring hanging off one corner.

The application of ancient white plastic to the high-end iPhone model smacked of an obvious attempt to re-invigorate the material.  To wrest ownership of the scheme back from the i-mitators.  To scotch tape the bastard if necessary, back onto a pedestal, by serving as an indication of one having afforded the “high-end” model.

But instead, the thing felt old and just made me wonder if the exceptionally cooler looking 8GB model in black would be fine after all.

Turns out it is by the way.

I do have an old friend who chose the white model.  On purpose.  He said he thought it was cool. I said, “…really…?”  And he said, “Yeah it’s totally cool.”  I wasn’t totally convinced.  I know him better than you do.  I think, like a lot of people, he just liked the idea that it would passively communicate the status of his greater purchase price.

I asked my wife what she thought about the design choice – she told me that it was probably just targeting girls.  I look forward to my friend reading that.

Either way – I hope it’s the last time we see such a cheap use of shiny white plastic in Apple’s industrial design for a long time.

The Apple I love sets trends.  I’m willing to forget this ever happened if the next iPhone has that sweet black anodized metal border of the iPod Touch, and… it’s gone? Oh now that’s too bad.

*Footnote:  ”TUMP” is a word I learned years ago from my friend and business partner Tim Smith, who’s southern roots go a little too deep to entirely shed the stigma of banjo playing on the porch.  As it was described to me, it’s a cross between “tip over”, and dump and thump.  Both evoking an action and a sound, I have come to find it a surprisingly useful word, even when describing the unfortunate unveiling of the white iPhone.

Sorry for the belligerent title. But you know it, I know it, and everyone you know knows it, except maybe those 11-year-old-girls at the mall who smell like strawberry lip-smacker and buy Live Strong-knock-off rubber bracelets that say “I’m Rad” at Wet Seal, that music-based ringtones are so very lame.

I’ve used them. I confess. At a time when there were no other options, before phones networked with PCs. And yet, like most others, I can honestly say – the following is always true:

If you liked the song before you made it into a ringtone, you come to dislike it after it’s a ringtone.

No matter how cool or witty the song choice may have seemed when you assigned it, all humor and hipness mysteriously evaporates into embarrassment the instant it rings in public.

You only hear the first 6 seconds of the song, which on repetition generates a kind of pavlovian annoyance for you and everyone around you in ear-shot.

You realize that at some point you actually started answering your phone to make it stop ringing – not to have a conversation with the caller.

You either a) start apologizing to the nearest ears every time your phone rings, or b) try to ignore their stares and honestly pretend like you didn’t notice them there.

Having been interrupted or annoyed by your ringtone, associates start cracking jokes and making fun of it, so you get pretty good at telling the story of why you chose that song, via one of two tactics, either you try to make the song sound emotionally meaningful to you, or you try to paint yourself as a fun, free-spirit who is just so fun and, well, free-spirited that having a silly song on your phone is just a sign of how fun and free-spirited you are. No matter your story-tactic, ultimately you’re just hoping your sincerity will convince these people to no longer think of you as somewhat dim and immature.

You find yourself changing the song choice often in an ultimately futile effort to find one that does not result in all of the above. Through this process you spend a lot of money.

You occasionally have to remind yourself that everyone else uses music ringtones, so yeah, it’s totally cool and there’s nothing wrong with you doing it too. At some point you realize that you’re reminding yourself of this more often than you would if it were true.

And finally, as music alone, the song sounds like crap on the phone’s scratchy, tiny, treble speaker.

Did I miss anything?

Are we so desperate for customization that we swallow any half-baked business plan the carriers spoon feed us?

Maybe not. Some people use online tools to side-step the carriers and convert their songs into ringtones – on purpose. Which must mean that those users actually want music-based ringtones. We think the more sophisticated of those users are just too busy to explore the landscape enough to find cooler alternatives.

There are even music-based ringtone hawkers on the net who write custom songs – specifically to be used as ringtones. With lyrics and everything. I’ve never met anyone who actually uses such a thing, but assume someone does.

Then you have the adults among us, the sophisticated, mature set, who choose “classical” music as ringtones. As though somehow appreciation of these classic sonnets by kings over the centuries makes their beepy midi better than the latest Baby Mozart puppet show. Spare me.

Yes, music has a place on a phone, in a media player app.  And someday users across the globe, who have insanely stylish alerts, will look back at this time in history and softly chuckle at the music-based ringtone users of today.

“Viral Marketing” is a myth. Always has been. It never existed. And as you’ll see, even if it had, you would want nothing to do with it. “Word of Mouth”? Less toxic, but critically, equally incomplete. Social Network Marketing? Swarm Marketing? Mobile Marketing? Just more opaque containers. In a revealing display of the industry’s ongoing struggle with interactive, none of the terms in use today comes close to illuminating how an advertiser can approach inspiring that Holy Grail of interactive marketing, a User-distributive spread…  Until now.

The term Viral Marketing (or “v-marketing”) was coined by Harvard Business School professor, Jeffrey Rayport, in a rational December 1996 article for Fast Company The Virus of Marketing. Rayport is a passionate, engaging public speaker, and a brilliant thinker. And in 1996, a time when ad agency executives were still uttering the words, “…’new media’, huh?”, “Viral marketing” might have resonated for some and brought an easy mental image to this strange new behavior of consumers online. Unfortunately, Rayport’s metaphoric, arm’s-length reference to the term “viral” was almost immediately shortened to nil and ham-fistedly adopted as the all-purpose agency weapon of choice, it’s obvious limitations unrecognized by over eager marketers, desperate for answers.

Despite Rayport’s loose analogy, the fact of the matter is that there never was a practicable connection between a virus and any form of legal marketing that any of us have employed in the last 15 years. And yet – walk into any ad agency in the country today and say you want a “viral campaign”, and they’ll smile knowingly and give you the thumbs up.

Before I go further, we’ve got to do this, here’s the definition of “virus”, really, humor me here:

virus |ˈvīrəs| noun
• Any of various simple submicroscopic parasites that cause disease- unable to replicate without a host cell.
• An infectious disease caused by a virus.
• A harmful or morbid corrupting influence on morals or the intellect. Something that poisons the mind or the soul.
• (also computer virus) a segment of self-replicating code planted illegally in a computer program, that has a detrimental effect, such as corrupting the system or destroying data.
(from the Latin “virus” meaning “toxin” or “poison”)

…that, plus “Marketing”.

You can see why marketers loved this term. Seriously. In the face of a strange, new medium, where content was suddenly, confoundedly, intertwined with a rapid stream of complicated, new technology, where audiences had become vapor- diffused, elusive and unpredictable, behaving nothing like the reliably passive, pre-aggregated viewership that marketers were so used to, the “there” no longer being there, where virtually none of advertising’s old skills and tactics got traction – and ultimately, where an utter lack of control hung thick in the air of every ad agency conference room across the country, “Viral Marketing” brought an immediate sense of relief and comfort, because “Viral Marketing” seemed to promise control.

To a population of office workers suffering under an ongoing reign of computer viruses, where the viruses were clearly a type of offensively potent “winner” over the Internet-connected masses, this term brilliantly dovetailed two perviously disparate data points, and in doing so, created the first sensation of power any advertiser had ever had relative to Interactive.

Just imagine, being able to create an ad that you could literally unleash on unsuspecting Internet consumers – one that would spread surreptitiously and offensively mind you, “infecting” vast multiples across the consumer population- powerfully, virilely, unstoppably changing brand preferences as it devoured it’s unwitting hosts, until the World succumbed to the disease of your clients’ brand positioning.

That’s admittedly extreme, but never-the-less it is “Viral Marketing”‘s clear linguistic suggestion. And too many advertisers allowed this not-so-subtle suggestion to color their unconscious hopes and expectations, falling victim to one of advertising’s own superficial methods of persuasion.

The Myth Persists

Ultimately, it was to the decade-long (and still running strong) detriment of advertisers who eagerly drank this infected kool-aid. The true virus is the subconscious subtext that Viral Marketing is some sort of actual deployment tactic that gives advertisers control over the medium or their audiences. Or a valid deliverable an advertiser might offer a client. All of which placated advertisers, pulling their innovative attention away from the real challenges.  This was the critically destructive impact of the misnomer. Such was the perfect storm in advertising then that virtually no one questioned or challenged the term, rather it was fervently embraced and espoused across all levels of the industry – despite the fact that no one really knew what to do with the idea.  And so it remains, for good reason.

A vast majority of advertisers who still use the term today, have probably not read Rayport’s article and recognized it’s undercurrent of proposed misrepresentation and unintentional User behavior, which just doesn’t ring true today.  Wish as marketers might.  And ultimately it’s this suggestion of power and control that is the concept’s undoing.

Some have had to learn the hard way, that “Viral Marketing” isn’t really. Today, when the term is spoken, advertisers now in the know experience a reflexive double-take that “Viral” doesn’t mean “Viral” at all, it means “…something cool… that will hopefully be embraced by Users and shared”.

A lot of terms have been employed over recent years to try to explain the nature of such a spread. At Red Sky in 1996, we called this phenomenon (the sudden user-distributed spread of a piece of content or an ad)  ”Friend to Friends Marketing”. If unwieldy, to this day I think that name rings truer than “Viral”, because “Friend to Friends” connects, if ever so naively, with the actual, functional, activity that causes such a spread.

Today the term “Word of Mouth” is often used in place of, or in addition to “Viral”. “Word of Mouth” is generally considered an advance in the thinking, and different than “Viral” to the extent that WOM perhaps is not dependent on a distributable digital item, but rather a good impression of a product or brand that can be communicated through the users’ network, both in, and out of the medium. WOM never-the-less does not sufficiently suggest any actual strategy or tactic that an advertiser might use to market in a way. If “Viral” is the worst offender, grossly referring to the mere spread of a meme via an inaccurate functional metaphor, Word of Mouth comes in second revealing nothing but a past-tense condition, void of an approach to marketing. Then there’s “Swarm Marketing”. Do you see a pattern? A swarm may be an interesting behavioral metaphor with respect to users’ interconnectedness, perhaps more accurate in its distantly observed behavior than a mere “social network” but again, it does not illuminate a direction, a plan of action that marketers can act against. Just another coat of paint on a box we’ve never figured out how to open. Ultimately, each of these terms only do service in assessing a previously generated condition, what happened – after the fact. Long after the campaign ran it’s course, long after the planners and strategists and creatives did their work, and after the media buy, after, by some stroke of good luck, some critical mass of users saw fit to share the thing or idea with their friends and connected networks, only then do these terms find any relevance. Advertisers step back, and look at what happened, and where it happened and announce that it spread “virally”. That it was spread, and consumed through “word of mouth”… by a swarm… in a social network.  …via Mobile.

And all of this matters to those of us who wish to understand and recreate the phenomenon.  To work in front of, and through the opaque walls of those terms.  If you’re like me, you want to know what you can actually do, proactively, to make that kind of spread happen.

Peeling Back The First Level Of Granularity

I’ve heard a lot of smart people opine on this subject. And I have not liked their answers. The more naive answers have centered around facilitation of a spread, such as variants from adding “a send to a friend button” to “seeding communities”. But clearly these do not inspire a user to send a piece of content to his friends. Others circle around the idea that the content (the ad) must be “relevant”. As you have probably seen in other posts on this site, I agree with that premise. However, again, in terms of inspiring a “Viral Effect”, a successful Word of Mouth campaign, it is incomplete. Relevance to the target User is unquestionably necessary, but let me draw a distinction, it must be relevant for an individual User to adequately consume and positively regard a piece of content. But that does not reveal why a user will pass it on in multiples.

Inspiring Distribution

To understand, facilitate the creation of, and incidentally perhaps better label this type of marketing, one must first understand the psychology that drives this kind of interaction at all, this kind of content and meme sharing. One must understand the psychology of communication.

Human beings are story-telling animals. We are, at our core, communicators. Always have been. As far as my research has revealed, this core need to communicate spans cultures and time. More precisely, we are communicators within a society. This is how we survive as a species. Further, as members of a society we are constantly measured against others; where communication is our primary tool for managing that measurement. Look at communication behavior closely and you will see that we do not communicate with altruism. We have a goal. Our goal is the increase of our individual status compared to others in the society.

Within Maslowe’s “Esteem Needs” (the level it’s safe to assume most Americans experience most of the time), literally all human interactions are governed by the continuous adjustment of status. Status is the very currency of human communication. Status, in one form or another is the basis for all communication. Also note that status is a relative measure – to gain higher status I can either increase mine or decrease everyone else’s. Most people are constantly and unconsciously engaged in ongoing status battles. You see this dynamic being played out in virtually every conversation. In virtually every exchange. It is universal in our society.

And folks – therein lies the answer.

The distribution of digital content and communication by an interactive media User can be interpreted as an attempt on the part of that User to increase His social status within the online society.

When a User’s recipient responds with any level of praise– “That was hilarious, Dude! Thanks!” (I say “Dude”… sue me) an increase in status is confirmed. Conversely consider the deflation that accompanies the reply “Yeah, I saw that last month, you just saw that now?”. The user’s status has lowered. And pray the recipient is so kind. Even a lack of response is the tactic of some for managing status. The range and subtleties of these interactions, and the emotions they impact are powerful evidence of Status jockeying.

Now, we must take this insight one step further, we must bring “Status” into the advertisers’ toolbox, and identify our role, as the creators of ideas, of content- of relevant value. As I hope you can see, it is not enough merely to provide relevant content or a relevant experience. Let’s connect this insight to the first rule of Interactive:

Interactive AXIOM #1: The User Is Your King, & You, The Content Creator, Are A Subject.

What does it mean then, to serve our King if we now know that the King, confronting communication in this medium, is in point of fact, always engaged in a war for status? That when he considers sending a piece of content, or sharing a view, or even responding to someone else’s blog (hopefully with our marketing message), his primary goal in doing so is that it result in an increase in His status and/or a decrease in his recipients’?

Got it?  Clearly our role, as the creators of content that we hope He will send on, as the creators of positive brand memes that we hope He will share, is to provide our King with content or ideas that will, as He perceives it, raise His status.

I call this proactive planning approach to inspiring the User-distributive spread of an ad, or a meme, “Status Marketing“.

Status Marketing

Status Marketing is a proactive strategy that results in positive “word of mouth”, that results in a “viral effect”. Status Marketing must be the foundation of every online marketing campaign being planned today.

This is a very different exercise than merely attempting to create a “powerful brand message”, “relevant content”, a hilarious ad, or seeding a swarm or mobile network. These approaches, these types of marketing, are simply lacking in the direction necessary for motivating audiences who are entirely in control.

If you look at the main components of every single successful online campaign throughout the life if the commercial Internet, you will find effective “Status Marketing” plans at work – not “Viral” marketing plans, not “Word of Mouth”, and not “Social Network Marketing” or any of the other after-the-fact or container observations. You will find Status Marketing strategies and executions that either intentionally, or unintentionally, tapped into this single powerful principle.

Conversely look at those campaigns that failed to achieve wide-spread, “viral” distribution, and you will see an utter failure to acknowledge the Status concept, or you’ll see an ineffectively executed attempt to raise the target audience’s status among their peers. Either way, this is the key, folks.

Identify what will help your King raise His status among His peers and network, what kind of content, tools,  images, ideas, and data, will provide Him with that result, should He send it, and you will have discovered the Holy Grail of online marketing.

Status Factors

In a bit of an arm’s race, the form of ideas and items that are going to raise a user’s status will change over time, based on numerous dynamics.  But there are a number of basic factors that will enhance the likelihood that your User will subconsciously perceive the potential for an increase in His status.  To wit, one might argue that what’s important is not whether an ad actually does raise the User’s status, but that the User believes it will, if only He sends it on. That said, if the belief isn’t paid off, your brand may not get another chance with that uUser (see: AXIOM #2 – section: Branding the Promise).  Here is an admittedly incomplete short list of status-enhancing factors:

1)  Relevance – I give you permission to say: “No Duh”.  And while critical, this topic, alone, is usually the extent of the discussion in other Viral Marketing / Word of Mouth circles. The distinction in this context is that relevance will be measured by the User not necessarily just on whether the item resonated with Him, but how He feels it may resonate within His network.  Remember you are providing tools for the user to, Himself, enhance His brand. It’s a skew that should dramatically change the way you approach the subject of “relevance” for your audience, and the creation of your marketing plans.  Typically, this topic relates to the perceived value in the offering.  If it’s a joke – how funny is it?  If it’s news, how timely is it?  If it’s a tool, how useful is it?  But in this context, most importantly – how valuable will He feel His network will feel it is?

2)  Discovery – This is key.  The User must have the sense that He discovered it. That He has unearthed the find.   On the contrary, are you likely to share an item or idea if you feel it is commonly known or previously distributed?  Will you send it, or announce it if you feel it may have already been “discovered” by your network?  What would that do to your status?  To honor this factor on behalf of your User, consider what it means to make your ad/idea appear to be rare.  To have it, in fact, intentionally appear largely unknown or previously unseen.  A piece of work that appears to be well travelled or well marketed – will that help, or hurt the likelihood that your User will send it on?  Consider executions like “Subservient Chicken” and the ancient “Blair Witch Project”, the grandfather of “look what I discovered” viral marketing.  These arguably “best of class” executions well demonstrated that items need not be polished and “professional” in the graphic sense, and in fact, the raw, unprofessional aesthetic of the work rather enhances it’s “unlikely to have been seen before” perception.  Conversely, pieces that are beautifully polished and appear to be the result of large, well-funded teams, may not hold the same knee-jerk sense of scarcity (and therefor value!) that something appearing to have been created by teams of one or two people do.  Consider that strange little one-man video clips on YouTube achieve a critical mass of sheer distribution that any Fortune 100 Company would kill for.  It’s about relevance, but it’s also about your User believing that “it probably hasn’t been seen before”.

3)  Own-ability – The Users’ brand must be allowed to dominate the “conversation”, and own the exchange.  This critically applies any rise in status to Him.  Items that allow the User to customize content, create, and exert His creativity are powerful examples of “own-ability”.  Excellent examples include OfficeMax’s “ElfYourself”, and Burger King’s”SimpsonizeMe”.   Further, when a user espouses His own thoughts, he entirely owns that exchange.  Thus providing him with data, or information that He feels confident will make him appear smarter, righter, funnier, etc, can be effective.  Conversely, items that are too-heavily branded with product logos and messaging or too thick with brand or product references can undermine this factor, wresting perceived shares of status away from a User and minimizing the likelihood that He will wish to share or send it on.

4)  Control – The User must feel He is in control of the content, His actions, and His status.  Prescriptive marketing distribution tactics (“send this ad to a friend!”) can actually weaken the likelihood that the User will comply.  Give up- the User is in control.  You’re not.  The User must be allowed to “invent” the idea to send something on or share an idea.  This runs to the heart of what so many comedians will tell you is a critical component of comedy – trusting the intelligence of the audience.  Similarly here, we must trust that the User will a) invent the idea to send it along, and b) know how to send an appropriately designed item on- should He decide to.  On the surface, this means that some items should appear to be for the User’s sole enjoyment- even though it is hoped that He will forward the item.  Facilitate the downloading or saving of the item for the User’s “personal use”.  Post it in a format that interfaces with popular social networks – without “suggesting” what to do with it.  He’ll know what do do after that.  To a degree these tactics, and the extra effort that may be required by Him to distribute an item, can also enhance the perception of its scarcity.  Which can be a good thing.

This is nowhere near an exhaustive list, nor must all of these factors be in place to their full extent to generate sufficient distribution.  But it hopefully illuminates some of the most basic principles impacting Users’ perception of Status-Building.

The term Status Marketing reminds us what ultimately drives the distributive online interaction that our Users engage in every day, and further, what our job is, as servants to our interactive Kings.  Ultimately we must empower Users to be smarter, funnier, more insightful, talented, and connected, in their battles, amidst their societies, for Status.  This is the one and only engine that drives online distribution.

Take Status Marketing to heart – no matter who your target User is – and your campaign will succeed.

EVERY INTERACTIVE CONSTRUCT MUST PROVIDE REIMBURSEMENT OF VALUE EQUAL TO, OR IN EXCESS OF, THE USER’S SELF-APPRAISED INVESTMENT OF TIME, ATTENTION AND EFFORT OF ACTION.

All the rules of economics apply to this system- though nothing physical is exchanged.  In this economic exchange the User must perceive being the inordinate beneficiary, where time, attention and action are His currency.  Whereas, promise and (not “or”) payoff of value are the currency of the Interactive content creator.

Ultimately value – and not the communication of value – is the light that attracts the moths in this system.

Some of you are thinking this is obvious.  And yet, all too often, more often than not, advertisers do not demonstrate such an understanding.  How often are we asked to “register” before gaining access to content of undisclosed value?  How often does a click on a banner ad result in redirection to more marketing messaging?  How often does “Click Here” reside, where rather, something wonderful that creates a sense of curiosity should?

This axiom operates both at the macro and the micro.  On the one hand it is the foundation of an ongoing relationship with the user, and on the other it drives every unique rollover and click.

Every click or interaction represents a User’s investment- a prepayment that is based on a perceived promise, and must be rewarded with a payoff.

Not a tagline, a payoff. Failure to pay off every such prepayment is akin to thievery.  No wonder users are so skeptical of most online advertising.

BRANDING THE PROMISE

Have you ever wondered why, on the one hand, visitors to Disneyland will go to such great personal cost to get to the theme park, and wait in line for up to 3 hours or more to experience a 4 minute ride?  And further, why these same humans won’t give your proposition so much as a click?

Disney has done an excellent job branding their promise.  They have consistently (not occasionally, or once) paid off the “users’” prepayment with inordinate value.  Consistently, the pay off at the end of the line was “worth it”.  Thus the willingness to prepay again.

What is the pay off at the end of your click?  And at a higher level, what is the payoff at the end of all your clicks?  Do you pay off with inordinate value?  Do you even think in those terms?   If you do pay off, have you done it consistently for years, and plan on continuing for many more?

There is an opportunity for every brand out there that is willing to make a commitment to paying off every marketing based click- for years to come.  Should a brand take such a stance, it will be rewarded with a huge and consistent user response.  Users will come to trust the brand. They’ll know that when that brand says “click here” it’s worth it.  More specifically, they will come to trust the marketing.  They will seek the marketing out.  They will go to great effort to find that button to click. 

One of the admitted issues here, is that advertising tends not to work that way.  Campaigns are changed quarterly, or more frequently, few in the advertising industry contemplate multi-year initiatives.

And yet.  That’s what is required. In order to brand the promise of your brand.  Got it?