Welcome to the Daily Lark, the rants, ramblings and musings of Andy Lark – serial opinionator, mover and shaker
Well, it’s been a bizarre year so back to doing some writing and thinking. One of the many challenges in writing consistently is the mental hurdle of churning out something worthwhile every time. So, I’m going to try some new formats. Short reflections, ideas, observations – sitting alongside pieces into which I put more effort. Let me know what you think.
I get asked a lot about how to use Asana effectively in marketing.
There are heaps of tips I’ll post here over the coming week but these tubes are a great starting place.
The endless diatribe about whether marketing is a science or art is entertaining but ignores the point that marketing is also about the process. It’s a set of processes that when done right unleash effectiveness.
Also, take a look at Simple for more advanced marketing resource management. And Asana and Simple work well together.
Great essay from Marc Andreessen. Well worth a read.
Part of the problem is clearly foresight, a failure of imagination. But the other part of the problem is what we didn’t *do* in advance, and what we’re failing to do now. And that is a failure of action, and specifically our widespread inability to *build*.
Watching the scuffle with Apple and HEY playout is interesting. Am wondering if we have reached that watershed moment when Apple will have to acknowledge their incredible market power (not a monopoly but at least a duopoly) and how punitive pricing punishes rather than enhances the developers we all depend on to create the next big thing.
Does the world’s largest company really get to decide how millions of other businesses can interact with their own customers? In fact, Apple’s policy distances you from your customer.
I get Apple’s argument – it is our platform, play by the rules, we know what is best for customers. Without denying Apple’s right to make money – and they are pretty savvy at that – perhaps its time for them to acknowledge they can’t hide behind that mask and its time for fair and equitable pricing? They’ve got a distribution chokehold on the community.
So what do we want? I’m not saying IAP shouldn’t exist, or shouldn’t be an option. For some businesses, it might make sense. If Apple is sending you all your customers, it probably does make sense. The 30% rate is still highway robbery, as Congressman Cicilline recently said in an interview, but the fundamental problem for us is the lack of choice.
Apple, please just give your developers the choice! Let us bill our own customers through our own systems, so we can help them with extensions, refunds, discounts, or whatever else our own way. It’s our business, not your business. And Phil Schiller’s suggestion that we should raise prices on iOS customers to make up for Apple’s added margin is antitrust gold.
It’s one thing to argue what is right for customers but as the subscription economy continues to boom, its another to exercise total control over it in a dominant ecosystem. And if they are they need to give us as consumers much better control and transparency. Dealing with, for instance, family purchases and subscriptions is a nightmare for most parents.
The simple answer is a small commission for marketing and enabling the sale of the app, then the consumer chooses how they want to subscribe. When you publish an Android app you can freely choose between using Google’s subscription mechanism and paying them a cut, or implementing your own solution and not paying Google anything.
The argument that developers could just stop making apps for IOS is weak. Apple simply has too much market power and reach to ignore. What developers could do is stage a mass walkout, perhaps, but at what cost? Ultimately Apple needs to take a fresh look at what is right for consumers and developers.
One thing is clear beneath all this. The rules don’t apply equitably and are at best nebulous. in some cases popular apps don’t function as they should – The Audible app has no in-app subscription mechanism, Kindle doesn’t let you buy books through the iOS app. Subscription-based email apps like Microsoft Outlook are permitted on the app store without Apple getting a cent.
So, Netflix, Spotify, Amazon, Microsoft are all companies with enough size and power that Apple could be in serious danger if any of them decided to pull their apps from iOS, and even more potential trouble if they decided to challenge Apple’s practices from a legal standpoint. If you are too big to fight, you get a free ride. If you are smaller, obey or get out of the store.
This issue goes beyond just the HEY skirmish. It’s time they reviewed their approach to subscriptions, not just products, and do better for developers and consumers.
Interesting chatting to CMOs on the shifts in marketing spending during the apocalypse. The majority I’ve chatted to reflect The CMO Survey at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business which found that 30% of marketers surveyed have not experienced changes to their marketing budgets while 41.3% even reported gains and just 28.4% reported losses. On average, marketers reported a 5% increase in budgets during the pandemic and expect digital spending to grow by 4% in the next year. The top two goals? Building brand value and retaining current customers. Social media continues to be a key part of marketers’ planning. In fact, the report found that 84.2% have used social media for brand-building and 54.3% have used it for customer retention.
The nutty bit of those last two sentences IMHO is the expected impact of social on brand. I get it for customer retention but brand building, nope.
