Taking a step back...

For some time now, I've been writing monthly columns on mobile for New Media Age - you can find the latest set of musings on the need to link up brand and product here.

But I thought it might be a good idea to backtrack a little, too - because while products and services need to gel with the brand, they certainly also must be right for the consumer in the first place. There are so many risks of that not happening in big, tech-focused organisations that I thought it worthwhile sharing a piece from a couple of months ago, so here goes...

Keeping true to consumer needs takes clear vision

In an ideal world mobile products and services would be designed to serve the needs of the consumers they target, both in design, execution and price. They would then be marketed in a way that pushed target users’ buttons.

Mobile services can be a time-saver and an essential tool for work and play, but only if they work well and meet a need, be that functional or emotional. If not, the technology is anything from useless to downright detrimental.

In reality, from concept through to execution, marketing strategy and launch, there’s a myriad of twists and turns at which the product risks taking on a life of its own, sidestepping those consumer needs. Often the reasons for this are as human as what drives the consumers you’re trying to please in the first place. Far too often operators or vendors cause us to struggle through what appears to be the result of sheer thoughtlessness. For every good implementation of a mobile service, there are plenty of convoluted and hard-to-use ones.

Internal handovers from one department to the next frequently lose the essence of what made the proposition great for consumers in the first place. Perhaps not enough details are passed on, or internal rivalries or team targets fuel changes. There’s a recession on, but if you choose to go with a solution that’s harder to use or works less well purely for cost-saving reasons, you’re on shaky ground.

Once the product or service is ready, the marketing needs to push the right buttons too. Even brilliant creative work can fail to take interest through to purchase; when it’s less brilliant, it can put a spanner in the works. Remember Orange’s rather clever idea to have ‘mobile trainers’ helping its customers, which was completely undermined by the hugely irritating know-it-all youngster in the ad.

Granted sometimes the concept itself is flawed and has no foundation in consumer reality. I once worked on a project that made no sense to anyone who put themselves in the consumer’s shoes. Yet investments continued because it was the CEO’s brainchild. In today’s market, you’ll pay dearly for such vanity. Similarly, big mobile companies’ need to offer music or sports services sometimes seems more driven by a desire to hang out with celebrities than in meeting consumer needs. Surely it must be okay to be that enabler who isn’t as cool but makes it all work?

It’s surprising how low the priority is on making sure the essence of consumer needs that drive a service travels with the product as it makes its way to the user. Often it’s because we all have our personal experience to draw on - we’re all consumers too. But if we don’t have a chance to see how users react, a concept often takes on its own truths, fuelled by the views of those whose minds are deeply steeped in mobile knowledge. That’s quite different from most consumers out there. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve seen people completely non-plussed about something that seems utterly obvious to its creators.

Of course, what consumers say isn’t the whole story, but it has rarely been more risky not to let them guide you. And no matter how attached you are to your idea, be humble enough to accept that some aspects might be wrong, which means you need to change things to attract those people who will generate your revenues.