One of the more famous quotes attributed to Steve Jobs involved his pitch to John Sculley to join Apple as the company's CEO. "Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?"
One of Mr. Job's gifts, his biographer Walter Isaacson told an audience at ad:tech in New York yesterday, was his ability at "connecting emotion to technology."
It seems the desire to raise technology beyond, well, technology, has become inherent in the space. Speaking to executives at the conference yesterday, we learned of several technological applications that were "game changers." Others were going to "remake the space" and numerous people said, "Nobody else is doing this." It should be noted that claims were in several cases made by companies that offered, at least to a technology civilian, very similar solutions.
In sales terms, having heard the pitches, we couldn't help at the end of the day but wonder who was over-promising and, therefore, likely to under deliver.
We found we had a similar issue with a presentation made at the show by David Fischer, vice president of advertising and global operations at Facebook.
Mr. Fischer offered a speech, it seemed here, to elevate the audience. Based on the buzz afterwards, he succeeded.
Facebook, Mr.Fischer said, is about personal connections and, for brands to have success, they need to to do the same. But connecting is just the first step.
The second step involves engaging consumers. Brafton quoted Mr. Fischer as saying, "With Facebook, people can feel like they're part of your brand."
The final step involves "inspiring" consumers by offering the type of experience that heightens their emotional connection with a brand or business. That's where we ran into the whole hyperbole thing again.
Sure, there are brands that inspire consumers to the point of becoming rabid fans (Mr. Jobs created a few of those), but many others become popular simply because they work and are consistently reliable. Mr. Fischer, in fact, made essentially the same point, identifying consistency and relevancy of offers as keys to creating inspired consumers. So, why not add "repeating," as in keep doing steps one and two over and over again?
Of course, we'd also add a fourth step: "measuring." But that is for another discussion.