Minggu, 29 Juli 2012

We Chat - Tencent Aggressive Penetration to Indonesian Market


If you guys haven’t heard, a new chatting application is entering Indonesian Market in its full speed, it’s called WeChat, it’s a Tencent product - the Chinese giant internet company-


If you go to their website :  www.wechatapp.com you can see it’s just like any other chat apps, but what I find interesting is how they are trying to penetrate the Indonesian market

I was enjoying my self in a mall in Jakarta, when I saw this big crowd in a small booth, my mind start to wander, what is this ? and guess what ? it’s a WeChat booth, but there’s something special with this booth besides they use pretty girls, They got Huawei handset and mediapad on their showcase , so WeChat collaborate with Huawei to sell handset and pre-injected Chatting applications – that is so brilliant !

If we Chat open a booth and sells apps only, they’ll be dead in the water, no one will take interest, but when the booth shows affordable Huawei smartphone and mediapad with pretty girls, people will certainly flock, not to mention the main feature that they are selling is the “shake” to make friend, yes you can “shake” your phone to meet new friends using WeChat, so can you imagine pretty girls with smartphone in their hands and shaking to passerby , it is truly a smart marketing move

I won’t go details with the apps feature - you can go to their website for a more details features specification- , from the brochure I took, some of WeChat features are :

1.       Voice message à if they crafted a timeline look it will surely becames voice tweet
2.       Location based à you can meet people near you
3.       Shake à to add friends
4.       Facebook connect
5.       Emoticon library
6.       Inbox message in the from of message in a bottle
7.       Foto sharing
8.       It support  windows phone, iphones ,symbian phone , and RIM will follow shortly

Btw from the info I heard in the “Digital Street” WeChat is now making a TV Ad to support its plan pushing WeChat to penetrate Indonesian Market, talk about limitless budget and aggressive marketing campaign, Tencent is aiming Indonesia with WeChat current as their first campaign.

Kamis, 26 Juli 2012

Urgently Needed: Product Storyteller - Making your product successful


A co-worker which happens to be a dear friend of mine, ask the same questions over and over again: “Why can’t we built good product? And when we launched the product, it sucks! why ? “

After taking some time to digest that particular question, my mind wander to the very same statement that I used to make “We don’t have a product owner!” let me rephrase that “We don’t have a product owner that work by heart!” now the last statement is a bit harsh and a bit too high to achieve (or maybe not), so I’ll tone down abit.. Now my statement is “We need a Product Story teller! “

In Developing a product especially an IT Product, a product development involves several parties, Product manager, Project manager, Executor (Developers, Operators), and Business Person (marketing guy)

The Product Manager is usually the one who makes all the decision, a product manager will assess the product opportunities and manage how to build it.

The Project Manager will manage the timeline, coordinate with all other parties and make sure they meet the deadline and no problem is unsolved

The Executor, do all the dirty works
And The Business Person does all the budgeting and marketing activities, include promotion, etc
So if asked who in the organization represent the customer needs and benefits usually we all point our finger to Product Manager or to Business person, it comes to one of them.

Now, this is the problem

Who hold the product storyteller function ?, everyone in the team should be able to tell what a story what the product is all about, but a single person who act as the “All knowing about the product” is still very needed in the team. The product storyteller function is not about analysis is about combining all elements internal and external to one story, he/she speak in big picture rather than detail, he/she ensure all product features are working solely for the customer benefits in the language that is understood by the customer, thus creating a valuable customer experience.

So let’s put this product storyteller function at the Product manager, it seems like a good idea, but on the operational level, product manager daily routine bogged down its big picture vision, product manager is consumed in details, problem solving, product manager has no time nor the resource to think big picture and speak on fully on behalf the customer. Constant bombardment from technical and operation side will alter product manager orientation from customer benefits to “just get it done on time”. Product Manager has no time for curiosity, discovery and play that will lead to superb customer experience

What if we put this product storyteller function in the Business guy, business guy interact with the market therefore it must have near perfect knowledge of what the market need and what the customer expect, but business guy is always pre-occupied with financial numbers and projection, and sometimes it is very painful and confusing to talk to technical person. To understand the product you need to understand how it works, to understand how it works you need to understand how it made, if the business guy is not logical enough or the technical guy is not savvy enough in communicating its idea/process, it could be very tiring process just to understand the product.

This is the reason why technical person often fight business person, it’s lack of understanding and communication, Each side tells a different story and there is no one combining those stories, no one is persistently safe guarding 1 story, this is the role of Product Storyteller, Product Storyteller should be positioned in the company to break down walls, facilitate talks, discussion, coordination and collaboration, creating 1 story that gives superb experience to customer.

The Product Storytellers function, must have that “embedded will in its DNA” to relentlessly tell the story of the product to all areas in the company or maybe even outside the company, the Product Storytellers is the product evangelist, this is important because this practice will create a unison story in the organization which will put everyone on the same understanding page. The product Storyteller Passion will catch on to others, the passion will get challenged, and the Product Storytellers will fight and iterate on the product idea, creating a cycle of curiosity, discovery and play.

The Products Storytellers has to have a “T” shaped working characteristic, it has deep knowledge of a specific item and has broad interest and knowledge to other items, the "T" shaped working characteristic will enable the Product Storyteller to push collaboration between organization functions, he/she need to be able to communicate fluently with others and most important it must have endless passion to the product.

So does this mean we need a specific position for the product storyteller? I didn’t say that, we do know that we desperately need the function, where you want to put it depends on your organization structure.

Have Fun searching that one passionate, resourceful, creative, good storyteller guy as your product storyteller; p

Senin, 02 Juli 2012

One weekend with Indonesian Pre-teen and their twitter behavior


I’m sharing my experience hanging-out for 3 days with 50 middle class pre-teens in an Indonesian Summer Camp observing their mobile behavior, this blog will not be talking in numbers and facts, but I do believe the experience I had with 50 Indonesian middle class pre-teens will give us all valuable insights.

Before my weekend experience with 50 Indonesian middle class pre-teen, I always believed that :
Most of twitter user is using ubertwitter application, therefore :
a.       Most of twitter user will user blackberry
b.      Most of twitter user will be in the age range of 25-40 years old
This believes comes from a publication from salingsilang.com an Indonesian digital research agency that I saw in 2011, this believes stick in my head, until recently I had the opportunity to spend 3 days in an Indonesian Summer Camp with 50 kids 12-14 years old, from my interaction with them changes my perspective 180 degree,  my findings are :

1.       They used facebook and twitter as their main digital social network
2.       Their average twitter followers are  in the range of 300-400 followers
-Can you imagine a 12 years old have 300 followers in their twitter account ? I was shocked hearing this fact-
3.       They usually follow an artist in twitter and than send a request  “please folback (follow me back)” this is how they acquired many followers and it’s common courtesy to respond this request by following back or you’ll be considered rude and be left out from the rest of their peer group – as a pre-teen it is the last thing you want from your peer group-
4.       They are very reactive in their twitter behavior, re-tweeting is consider as courtesy therefore they re-tweet between each other, some by request some because they want to share information that they have.
5.       Their main handset preference is Blackberry due to BBM function (Gemini and Onyx), sometimes their parents wont allow them to have a blackberry, so they turn to Nokia X2 or Samsung and the less fortunate ones will use Nexian, very little pre-teen uses iPhone

They emphasize on GPRS connectivity, MP3, camera, twitter and facebook function, and Bluetooth (to share pictures and mp3 between handset) Touch screen is not relevant to them
The average handset price is around 700-2.5 million Rupiah, their parents bought them their handset, and some parents bought them second hand handset, which they don’t mind as long as they have those functionality.

My conclusion is twitter pre-teen market is a very “noisy and reactive” market which is mostly untapped, each pre-teen are able to acquire follower very easily with the “courtesy” behavior, with the right approach and the right conditioning, we can harness the “courtesy” behavior and optimize their strength in distributing contents and creating Word of Mouth.

And not to mention pre-teens are the early adopters of application and digital technology, using pre-teens as your basis to create your WOM strategies is highly recommended

The challenges is how to connect with pre-teens smoothly because any sign of over endorsement will cause a negative WOM within the peer groups , and  this peer groups is very powerful, treat them nicely you’ll reap great harvest, treat them badly you’ll reap a thunderstorm.
Have fun with your pre-teen twitter audience J

Ps : not much pre-teen that I encounter uses pinterest