Women I admire, presented in a Springpad notebook
A Springpad Notebook that includes images, links, books, video, playlists
As part of its upcoming Women’s Leadership Forum, the Ad Club of Boston asked a group of us to write blog posts about women we admire. I could have written a traditional blog post about the many women who have in one way or another left lasting impressions on me. But since I’ve been working with my friends at Springpad, I thought it might be more fun to create my blog post in the form of a notebook. Take a look.
Even in a single spring I can include video and links to playlists
Typically I don’t use this blog to stump for Mullen or Springpad. But in this case I’ll make an exception, given that while I may be the CMO at Springpad, I’m also an enthusiastic user, excited about a single platform that lets me create and share such a wide array of data types. Even for this one little notebook I was able to combine photographs (from my own library as well as the web); notes, videos, playlists, books, blog posts and more. What’s even cooler is that I could augment a single “spring” with multiple media, adding additional content and information about each person included. Readers and viewers can simply check the list, peruse the images or discover more about each of the women from books, films and music that I’ve attached.
For me, smart, digital, social notebooks work perfectly for collecting, preserving and sharing content over time. They’re persistent, searchable and even collaborative should I want to invite others to create with me.
So far I’m using Springpad to plan vacations, organize curricula, start my summer reading collection, save content on new interests, and collaborate with others who share my passions. What about you? Are you using the new Springpad?
The pros and cons of an iPad menu
iPad menus going mainstream
Tonight I had dinner at a lovely little Mediterranean place in Tampa. Despite being located in a strip mall — you have to get used to things like that in Florida — the Carmel Cafe had a warm feel, soft lighting, better than decent food, and iPad menus. The latter featured an app that according to the restaurant was custom developed for them and is among the “very best restaurant iPad apps out there.” Not that I’ve used many of the others, but this one truly did offer a carefully thought out user experience.
Using the app, you could scan all the items on the menu, from starters and flatbreads, to salads and larger dishes. You could scroll through the entire menu visually or use a search column to access items by category — wines, salads, pasta, fish, meat. There were even listings to direct you toward gluten free items as well as any listing that contained nuts. Accurate images gave you a peek at every dish offered. And one button let you add it to your orders where they remained stored until you hit a send button alerting the kitchen of your request and adding the price to an easily accessible running tab.
Carmel Cafe’s promise is that you’ll get your dish within five minutes of ordering, so you enjoy total control over the tapas-like experience. Order items as you want them rather than in advance. And never end up with too much food on the table at once. Better yet, the app lets you check your total order and running tab at any time. When it comes time to pay, you settle up directly from the iPad. You can split the bill as many ways as you desire, choose from a range of percentages for a gratuity and simply enter your credit card number to complete the transaction.
As far as restaurant menu apps go, this one is among the most perfectly designed real time experiences that I’ve seen. It makes selection and ordering easier. With multiple iPads on the tables that seat large parties, it lets everyone easily organize and coordinate their orders. And by speeding up input to the kitchen it assures dishes get delivered with amazing alacrity.
A great UX, including tip and payment options adds to usability
But there’s another question. The novelty of the app, the clarity of the photos, the ability to aggregate orders before submitting them, and the attraction of the running tab — at least for the Woody Allen neurotics at the table — pretty much assures that there will be less actual conversation, social interaction and human contact than we might want with friends over the course of dinner. We already know what it’s like to have everyone at a restaurant table glancing at their iPhones, communicating with the people who aren’t there rather than those who are. Add to that a really interactive iPad menu and we have yet another reason to engage with a screen instead of a person.
An iPad menu even eliminates some of the welcome chatter we typically share with a really knowledgeable waiter who might be smarter about ingredients and preparations than whoever wrote the descriptions appearing on the app.
Truth be told, I really liked the iPad menu. It gave me a better view of food I was about to eat. It made it easier to order and try different wines by the glass. It assured me total control over the experience. And if I were I to be wondering how much money I was spending it kept me up to speed on that, too.
But I have to admit to having had a bit less conversation with my dinner companions that I might have if had we ordered the old fashioned way and weren’t constantly distracted by four big screens sitting on the table.
Digital dinners. I don’t think we’ll be seeing them as part of the Parisian four hour restaurant experience anytime soon. But here in America? It’s probably the next big thing.
What do you think? iPad menus? Or stick to the old fashioned printed versions?
What the big boys could learn from the startups
Maybe it’s because they’re fighting to survive. Perhaps it’s because they don’t yet have millions of customers. Or it might be that it’s actually part of their culture. But if there’s one thing that separates startups from established companies, at least in my experience, it’s customer service, personal attention and real time response.
Last night at 9:45, after two hours of entering grades and comments into Coursekit, the platform I use for teaching, I hit publish and instead of sending the grades off to my 25 students, Coursekit presented me with a blank page. All my earnest and time consuming efforts gone. I tried to re-enter them from memory figuring I’d at least be close. But when I hit publish for the second time, this batch disappear, too. After a moment of panic — of course I hadn’t saved them anywhere else — I sent Coursekit a public reply on Twitter asking for a follow in order to back channel.
It took a mere 10 minutes for them to reply and even that came with an apology for the delay. They were “in a meeting.” (Funny I’d never believe that from most companies but at 9:45 pm it seemed likely for startup.)
Within another couple of minutes I was on the phone with one of their lead engineers Jim Grandpre. Jim only had a phone with him, but even then he managed to access his servers and summon the second set of grades. He explained that something had gone wrong with the cache at their end and that it wasn’t due to anything I’d done wrong. (+1 for honest admission of fault).
He then promised that he’d recover the original grades as well as the feedback notes in the morning and would either enter them for me or send me a file so I could do so myself.
Sure enough, the next morning I had everything back. Including a very clear explanation that no one had access to my grades or notes other than he and his co-founder CTO and in no case would either of them access it without my permission.
OK, so American Express comes close to that kind of service when you want them to credit you for a charge you didn’t incur. And Zappos (Mullen client) might take equally good care of you over the phone.
But how many other companies can you think of who are that responsive and then deliver. Not Bank of America, that’s for sure.
Coursekit’s product is awesome. I would probably keep using it even without such responsiveness. But the fact that there is a real human with a name and accountability to solve problems like this makes me loyal forever. I just hope that they can make their customer concern part of their culture as they grow and prosper.
What startups are you getting service like this from?
We’re mobilizing Mobile with our friends at Google
I’m on a bit of a mobile kick as you might have noticed. That’s in part because Mullen has been hard at work getting our own mobile capabilities into high gear and also because we’re in the midst of a really cool project with Google to launch Go Mo, an initiative to get small businesses across America (and eventually the world) to optimize their sites for mobile.
It’s hard to think of anything that isn’t mobile anymore. Search is mobile. It’s pretty frustrating when you’re looking for something from a smartphone and it comes up like this.
Entertainment is mobile. In many cases it provides more options than the alternative. (Note how HBO GO actually trumps HBO On Demand for depth of content and choice.)
Travel is mobile, from booking flights and hotels to checking in. And the list goes on: shopping from mobile sites, making digital payments, executing stock sales and bank transfers, connecting with friends via social media.
More importantly, it’s evident we all have to stop thinking of mobile as its own medium or category. It’s part of everything – in-store, print advertising, physical experiences, customer service, data and analytics. Yet there’s a tendency to treat mobile as an afterthought or at least to develop mobile apps and utility off to the side.
Our program with Google is an attempt to change that. We both believe that given the proliferation of smart phones that everything – from strategy to content — has to start with mobile.
One of the more fun things we’re doing is mobilizing Mobile, Alabama. We thought that helping optimize sites for an entire town’s local businesses would be a great way to demonstrate the value of having a mobile site and the alliteration was too good to pass up. Google will help up to 500 local businesses get optimized for mobile, even hosting the sites free of charge for a full year.
I’m heading to Mobile next Monday to speak at an event encouraging ad agencies to learn, think and create in the mobile space. Jason Spero, Google’s head of Mobile Advertising, will join me. He obviously knows a hell of a lot more than I do about mobile proliferation and consumer trends, but I can share at least a few thoughts on how ad agencies can ready themselves for the biggest shift ever in marketing and engagement.
If you’re down there, stop by. You can register for our Mobile for Advertising Agencies and start to Go Mo yourself.
Oh, and the video below, on how Lulu’s optimized for mobile, was shot by my filmmaker friend Max Esposito.
Answers from your friends in advertising and digital
A month ago I crowdsourced questions here and on Twitter for the instructors at BDW’s Making Digital Work workshop.
We settled on five.
How do we get clients to embrace more innovative work?
What can we learn from software startups?
Do agencies have a role in social media?
How do we stop the talent drain?
What kind of people should we hire?
Here are the answers from my good friends and teachers Matt Howell, Gareth Kay, Kim Laama, Tim Malbon, Sheena Matheiken, Scott Prindle and John Winsor.I weigh in, too.
Some of my favorite soundbites:
Matt Howell on innovation: If we’re serious about selling more progressive work we have to get serious about investing in prototyping, showing how something works and how you’d interact with it.
Gareth Kay on social media: One of the biggest problems with social media is that people are too focused on the media part of social media instead of on the social part.
Sheena Matheiken on software inspiration: Developers in general, especially the creatively inclined ones, are such doers. They just create stuff. They don’t sit around and noodle. They make and prototype.
Tim Malbon on software inspiration: Try not to treat what you’re trying to make like a piece of traditional media. It doesn’t need to be designed massively up front. It can be cruder; it can be quicker.
John Winsor on retaining talent: Traditionally agencies are siloed. The creative department stands on a pedestal. The account people are there to serve them. Strategy is somewhere in between. But great ideas come from everywhere so you need to set up a system that accepts that great ideas come from everywhere.
Scott Prindle on hiring: The core quality is an entrepreneurial spirit. Someone who is passionate about the digital space, maybe someone who thought about being in start-up. They have to come into the into the agency and quickly generate ideas and move things forward.
One thing about all of these folks is that they’re willing to share. Ideas, advice, insights. Take a look and connect with them on Twitter. It will be worth it. Thanks for stopping by.
