How Apple Zags when Others Zig

Even Apple's advertisements are radically different (source of image)

It is interesting to note how contrarians thrive better than rule book followers.

Continuing on my theme of "Zag" as a business strategy, consider Apple. The darling of the digital world, Apple overtook huge oil conglomerate Exxon Mobil to be the world's most valuable company last year.

With Steve Jobs and now Tim Cook at the helm, Apple has poo poo-ed virtually every advice dished out by marketing, PR, management, and business gurus in the last few years. Consider the following:

1) Instead of cultivating the media, Apple has gained notoriety by shunning requests for information while maintaining a top secret operation. Till today, people are still determining if the purported "leaks" of an iPhone prototype left in the loo are intentional or just an urban legend.

2) Going against the grain, Apple does not encourage its employees to talk about the company's products or culture on any social media platform. In fact, its internal policies on employee communications appear rather harsh and draconian.

3) Everybody knows that Steve Jobs ruled the roost at Apple with an iron-fist. In an age where gurus are preaching more power to the people, Jobs has maintained a command-and-control approach in how its products and services are rolled out with an eye on virtually every detail. The stage is always his at the launch of new products at the CES show.

4) According to Steve Jobs, Apple does "zero market research". Quoting from Jobs himself:

"We figure out what we want. And I think we’re pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it, too. That’s what we get paid to do. So you can’t go out and ask people, you know, what’s the next big [thing.] There’s a great quote by Henry Ford, right? He said, ‘If I’d have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me ‘A faster horse'."

5) Apple owns its entire system, from its operating system, application platforms (like the iTunes store), technology and interfaces. Anyone of us with an Apple device knows how fiendishly difficult it is import a movie in a different format to an iPad or iPhone which only plays limited formats. And yes, they hate partnerships and strategic alliances!

How does the world's most beloved technology brand do it then?

1) Focus almost all your energies on designing and building an insanely great product, right down to the nitty gritty details. Under Jobs' seemingly obsessive leadership, every detail is thoroughly scrutinised to ensure that they meet high quality standards. An example was how he spent 30 minutes debating the shade of grey for the bathroom signs in Apple stores!

2) Hire the greatest team of talents in the world and cultivate them like crazy. Everybody knows that Apple does not just pick anybody off the streets with an Ivy League MBA. The selection and interview process for Apple can be rather gruelling.

3) Build a strong corporate culture with robust core values. Much has been written about Apple's culture of innovation, which prides itself on empowering employees to create great products. Quoting from Jobs again:

"My job is to not be easy on people. My job is to make them better. My job is to … take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better, coming up with more aggressive visions of how it could be."

4) Ignore everybody else - competitors, customers, shareholders - except your employees. By eliminating all distractions and adopting an almost "Zen" like approach in its business strategy, Apple succeeds in creating aesthetically beautiful and functionally superior products.

5) Differentiate your products and services from everybody else. A key competitive advantage of Apple's computers, smartphones and tablets are their abilities to challenge conventional wisdom and norms. This constant push towards being an innovator has them leading the pack and blazing the trail for others to emulate.

As we think about Apple's experience, consider what we can "think different" in our business area from what other's are doing. What breakthroughs can we design into our products and services that are unmet by the competition? How can these ideas be implemented? As Apple has shown, zigging while the rest of the world is zagging, may sometimes be a superior business strategy.

Zag: A Book Review

"In a world of extreme clutter you need more than differentiation. You need RADICAL differentiation. The new rule: When everyone zigs, zag."

That, in a nutshell, is what Zag: The #1 Strategy of High Performance Brands is all about. Written and designed by Marty Neumeier from Liquid Agency, Zag is pretty short (you can probably finish the book in half a day or less) but packed with lots of punch.

With differentiation at its core, Zag distils in simplified form the wisdom of thought leaders like Jack Trout, David A. Aaker, and Al Ries as well as books like Blue Ocean Strategy while presenting its own view of marketing and branding. At its core is the model with four elements - Focus, Difference, Trend and Communication - which can be represented as follows:


Courtesy of Liquid Agency

To capitalise on all four elements, Neumeier teaches us that there are 17 checkpoints which one should look at. These are namely:

1) Who are you? Where do you have the most credibility?

2) What do you do (ie what is your purpose in 12 words or less)?

3) What's your vision? Paint a vivid picture of your future, test and refine it.

4) What wave are you riding? List the trends that will power your success. Some examples are below:


Courtesy of Liquid Agency

5) Who shares the brandscape? Who are your competitors and how do they rank? How can you be number one or two (aka the Jack Welch way)?

6) What makes you the "only"? Complete the sentence: Our brand is the only ____ that ____.

7) What should you add or subtract? If in doubt, be brutal and err on the side of sacrifice.

8) Who loves you? Determine who makes up your brand community and how participants can contribute and benefit.

9) Who's the enemy? Which competitor can you paint as the bad guy while you're the hero?

10) What do they call you? Choose a name that is different, brief, appropriate, easy to spell and pronounce, used as a URL, suitable for "brandplay", and legally defend.

11) How do you explain yourself? What are your truelines (that tells why your brand is compelling) and taglines (what can be used with customers)?

12) How do you spread the word? How can you unpack your name, trueline and tagline, enroll brand advocates and compete at touchpoints where you can win.

13) How do people engage with you? Which touchpoints let you compete in white space? How can you map your value proposition against customer touchpoints where you can win?

14) What do they experience? Map your customer journey from non-awareness to full enrollment.

15) How do you earn their loyalty? Be loyal to your customers, ditch discounts that can result in "disloyalty" and give loyal customers tools to refer new ones.

16) How do you extend your success? Choose between a house of brands and a branded house, and add extensions that reinforce the brand's meaning.

17) How do you protect your portfolio? Avoid the C-Sickness - Contagion, Confusion, Contradiction and Complexity.

Beyond the 17 points, Neumeier also introduced a rather novel way to "Renew Your Zag" based on that old kiddy game called Scissors, Paper, Rock!  The game is cleverly used an analogy for companies at different stages: "scissors" for start-ups with only one brand that is razor sharp, punching holes in large "paper" companies, "rock" for medium-sized organisations with momentum that can damage "scissor" companies, and "paper" for large companies that can smother "rock" companies.



Courtesy of Liquid Agency

In other words, focus beats size, size beats momentum, and momentum beats focus.

In summary, Zag is a pretty compelling read and a great trigger of ideas.  What I especially like about it is that the company itself has a blog where you're encouraged to "steal ideas".  In an age where companies are trying to impose more piracy protection through acts like SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), that is certainly a breath of fresh air!

Relentless Focus - A Strategy for Success

Courtesy of Lifehack

Ever wondered why some people can accomplish so much while others simply drift by? After all, don't we all have only 24 hours a day and 7 days a week?

The trick is not in doing multiple things at once. In fact, the more multi-tasked you are - checking your Facebook account, listening to a sermon on iPod, reading the papers, and writing an essay - the less productive you will be.

Success in any endeavour lies in being relentless focused. It requires immense concentration of one's thoughts, energies and efforts on the task at hand, completing it before embarking on the next.

Naturally, there will be longer term projects that you're involved with where working non-stop for 12 hours isn't feasible. For example, writing a programme for a new application, designing and building your new home, or organising the company's year-end ball. For such activities, break them up into smaller bite-sized tasks that you can tick off.

An important thing to note about being relentless focused is to be fully absorbed in the present. Do not let your mind wander along the warm and sweet paths of nostalgia or to drift into the exciting future. Your only responsibility is to throw yourself heart and soul into the moment.

To be relentlessly focused, you need to shut off all distractions. This may be as trivial as turning off all notifications on your iPhone to selling your television set or iPad - whichever is gobbling up more hours of your life.

You need to also find a quiet space to do your work. This can be anywhere from a bedroom, a Starbucks Cafe, to a spot in the neighbourhood park. If at all possible, go somewhere that offer minimal human interference.

Some amount of sacrifice is also needed on the road to success. Instead of partying every Friday night and spending the entire Saturday hungover (and feeling sh*tty), why not alternate it with a healthy activity that will sharpen your mental and physical prowess? Go for a walk or a run, cycle for an hour, or spend two solid hours reading a mind tingling book.

Finally, schedule a fixed time of the day to be relentless focused on the task at hand where possible. Maintain the discipline of writing/dancing/knitting or doing whatever you need to do every day (or every other day if your time doesn't permit). Make it a part and parcel of your day so much so that it becomes a positive habit that is hard to break.

In a world flooding with information and perpetually connected devices, it pays to retreat to a corner to relentless focus on what's important as opposed to what's urgent. Yes, your friends are expecting you to respond to their tweets, but maybe that can wait until you have completed what you need to do, when you need to do it.