Features versus functions: how not to hype a new smart phone

I’ve been seeing a lot of commercials recently about the new Motorola Droid Razr phone. My dad asked me after seeing a recent ad: “what does that phone do?”. I didn’t have an answer. All the commercial showed was the phone flying through the air slicing everything in its path.

Why would I want to go buy that phone? After seeing the ad, I know nothing about what it does or why it is special. And I’m not in the market for a phone that can cut a fire hydrant in two either.

Case in point, the new Razr commercial:

And another longer ad showing features:

It seems that most smart phone manufacturers use features to sell their phones rather than actually showing users what they can do with their phones.

Now, contrast that Razr ad with a typical Apple ad, this one for FaceTime:

To me, the apple ads speaks more to me and captures me emotionally instead of shoving features down my throat (Dual-Core 1.2 GHz Processor + 1GB RAM, made with Kevlar Fibre, etc…).

Most people still don’t know a megapixel from a megabyte but they can immediately see the value of FaceTime, a dead simple UI and actions they do in every day life to help them make a decision on what phone to buy.

The apple commercials never talk about megapixels, megahertz, or RAM. They just show you what you can do with the iPhone. It reminds me so much of the PC versus Mac ads. The PC ads were always fighting over who had the most RAM or hard drive space, when most people really want a pc to get online and print without hassle.

Is the iPhone superior to the Razr? If you look only at specs, maybe (no Kevlar!) But If was going to buy a new phone, I wouldn’t know why I should buy the Razr unless I wanted to slice my way through town.

Create an infographic of your LinkedIn profile with Vizualize.me

My LinkedIn profile has a lot of great information about my career but it isn’t very compelling to look at. A new site called Vizualize.me takes your LinkedIn profile and creates a infographic from your career timeline, skills and recommendations. It’s in beta right now, but is open to all. Check it out.

My Day2 Video

I’ve been working with ISITE Design for about 9 months and recently started a program with them called Day2. Its a perfect solution to a problem that we were facing with our redesign last year.

Here’s a description from the Day2 website:

Day2 is a new way of thinking about your website and digital marketing campaigns.

As marketers, we’re always focused on the big project – The website launch, the microsite creation or the media buy. When the project is done, the internal team disbands, the consultants scatter, and we move on to the next big thing.

Smart marketers know the real work happens on Day2. This is when you can see how visitors interact with your site. It’s when you get real data on what’s working. And it’s when you can start to make changes that have a significant impact for your visitors and your business.

We’ve already run several A/B and multivariate tests that are showing significant lift over control and actionable data to help us determine the next item to test. As an early adopter of the program, I was asked to do a quick video on why Day2 is important to us. Check it out!

What keywords drive 97% of Google’s revenue?

Google gets most of it’s revenue from Adwords. But did you ever wonder what the top 20 keywords that drive that volume?

WordStream, a provider of hosted software that automates most of the manual work involved with creating and optimizing both paid and natural search engine marketing campaigns, has done some research to discover which keyword categories get the highest costs per click (CPC) in Google’s AdWords solution.

It’s hard to believe that the top 3 categories of Insurance, Loans and Mortgages make up over 45% of the volume.  When you are spending $45.91 a click you better make sure all of your reporting is in place and you can track inquires, leads and subscribers.

It must pencil out for the Insurance companies to be spending this kind of money or they wouldn’t be such competition.  If you don’t sell Insurance or loans or mortgages, be sure you are still tracking your spending and can report on how your users flow through your site and have attribution to show for it.