Hi
I’m Stuart Noad, Director of Marketing for EMEA, and I would like to introduce you to our new brand. Why should you care about a new colour, and a new logo? Well, maybe you shouldn’t, but I thought you might be interested in getting some insight into why we have spent quite a bit of time and effort changing the way AppSense looks and feels.
At AppSense, like many technology companies, we have been positioning ourselves as part of other software companies eco-systems - a technology that enabled other software to work more effectively. Yes we do this and do it well, but this is not really why our customers work with us. They work with us because we help them manage and get the best from the most critical part of their business – people.
Marketing, I believe, is all about communicating what we do, simply. Not about using loads of jargon (something Dr. Robert Passikoff calls Ethosnomics – or is that just jargon too?), trying to sound clever or mimicking others. Perhaps this mimicking is the reason why so many technology companies are blue? Or is it because all technology buyers are men? Well no - look at the figures, even from 4 years ago. So I must go with my first assumption.
At AppSense we don’t copy - one of the reasons we chose green rather than blue as the corporate colour and we don’t use jargon – well we try not to. Ultimately marketing is about communicating your point of difference. What’s unique about you that makes your customers want to do business with you.
Being able to agree on what is your point (not points) of difference is not easy and requires a certain level of maturity. It’s all too easy for companies to list a whole load of features and then expect their customers to work out what is relevant to them.
Spear Consulting explain this nicely:
“Our technology is so cool, we just need to explain it. And explain it. And explain it”.
If you do have something unique, then tell people. Don’t make your customers try and figure it out.
The pace of technological innovation is now, and has been for some time, frantic. Even PD James thinks so. But she also raises another very good point about how harder life can become with every new cool innovation and every new application, website or device. Go back to the start of technology and why we, as a human race, developed it – to make our lives better. Whether that’s to get heat in to our homes, put food on our tables or let us access the latest sports news while sat on a beach. But every new technology we bring into our lives means something else for us to understand, customize, work out how it fits and ultimately manage. And this is relevant whether you at 19 or 90. Shouldn’t the technology, bearing in mind it’s meant to make our lives easier, do this for us?
Well actually it does, well this is what AppSense technology does. The marketing bit (I have to revert to type at some point!); we are unlocking technology to free human possibility because we understand that when people power technology so much more is possible.
See what you think.
Stuart Noad | Senior Director, EMEA Marketing