Google’s Motorola Back in the era of feature phones, Motorola was one of major players in the consumer mobile industry. Will Google’s purchase of Motorola return the brand to its former glory? How will storytelling affect the future of the company?

1. A!lied Storytelling in Marketing
Googling Motorola’s Story
I n May 2013, Google bought Motorola for $12.5 billion. It marked both
Google’s biggest acquisition to date and the company’s transition from a
search-and-software company to a consumer gadgets maker. Google’s CEO
Larry Page has grand ambitions for Motorola and he intends to realize it by
emphasizing the need for reinventing Motorola by creating better
experiences.
But reinventing the experience will take time. The company noted it had
inherited a 12 to 18 month product pipeline from Motorola. While Google has
a legacy of successful innovation, there are no guarantees with Motorola.
Google’s CEO Larry page talks about consumer experience as, “You
shouldn’t have to worry about constantly recharging your phone. When you
drop your phone, it shouldn’t go splat. Everything should be a ton faster and
easier.”
If Google is to succeed, it needs to focus on the basics. Experience needs to
be defined on customer, not industry, terms. Good experience is about
reliable, everyday technologies not the ones that necessarily win awards.
From the customer’s point of view, experience is defined in the detail: not
winning in the game of high-end technologies but getting the simple,
everyday tasks right. This approach is true to Google’s legacy of building
apps that don’t “wow” audiences but apps that drive mass participation
through removing friction and bad experiences.
Google’s challenge is to navigate Motorola away from the manufacturer’s
mindset: a mindset that aims to provide customers with a complete, fixed
experience out-of-the-box supported by ad agency campaigns. The modern
customer doesn’t like Motorola’s pre-installed apps and this lack of control
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2. contributes to a perception of unreliability. According to a recent Fixya survey
based on 700,000 responses, the biggest issue cited by Motorola users was
“preinstalled apps” (30% of all responses).
Partnering with youth
The modern mobile experience is too big for one company to control.
To become a successful handset company, Google needs to leverage the
youth market because youth, not Google, will decide whether the handsets
are relevant or not.
What CEO Page’s defines as “new experiences” for the mass market
tomorrow already exist in the youth market today. The most widely used
mobile technologies today were first born in the youth market e.g; SMS,
Facebook and Instagram. SMS was perceived as inconvenient by adults but
youth found a way to make SMS work which then later influenced the adult
market turning SMS into a trillion dollar industry.
Despite its fall from grace, Motorola still has Fans, particularly male students
(20 - 24 years old). Google is also an active participant in student life (student
ambassador programs, Code Jams and Google Droidettes) while Motorola
has a legacy of successful youth products (Startac, Razr, Pebl) it needs to
rediscover. Even existing products such as the Atrix and Razr are rated
above Galaxy and iPhone in terms of customer satisfaction.
Google needs to create bottom-up experience, embedded in the everyday
simplicity of mobile use. Google can co-create this experience with existing
Fans and win the youth market by taking part in their storytelling process
rather than controlling the narrative.
Both Google and Motorola have Beachheads within the youth market which
they need to build upon. If Google is intent on developing the technologies of
billions, it needs to start here.
Launching a phone won’t change the game. Discovering
their story will.
Creating what the head of Google+ Vic Gundotra refers to as a phone with
"insanely great cameras" will not help Motorola regain customers. Motorola
challenge isn’t hardware, it’s relevance.
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3. Relevance means Motorola standing for something. Rather than trying to
become everything to everybody with a “game changer” handset as per old
Motorola’s strategy, Motorola needs to focus on the somebody it can become
relevant to.
The most sustainable relevance is when people tell their everyday stories
using your brand. 85% of brand experience happens without the brand.
Technology itself becomes boring but the stories people tell with it are
relevant. By removing the dominant Motorola story, Google can focus on
giving Fans better tools to tell their own story. It’s not about the phone that
counts, it’s what people do with it that counts.
By bypassing the mobile operators and developing their own mobile
ecosystem around a positive, reliable experience, Google can reduce the
distance between the customer and Motorola but this requires the
development of a Frontline. Google is already taking the first steps in creating
a Frontline by opening its own retail stores. Now, the challenge is making the
Frontline into a space that’s relevant to its Beachhead in the youth market.
***
Discussion points:
1. Are you measuring customer experience on your terms or theirs?
• What steps can you take to ensure product improvements are relevant
to what’s actually important to customers?
For some companies, it’s a matter of asking better questions.
Instead of asking, “What do you think of these new features?” ask,
“Would you rather have this feature or that?”
For other companies it’s about switching their focus from pleasing
internal stakeholders to external ones.
2. Who is your storytelling partner in the market?
• Instead of marketing to your customers, you need to market with them.
However, it’s not about inviting everyone to take part will yield unwanted
results. It’s about inviting the right people to partner with you. It’s about
working with your Fans. Do you know who they are?
3. A Frontline is where a company interacts with the market. For many
companies, this happens in their retail space and customer service
department. Where is your Frontline?
• HINT: advertising is not a Frontline
Find articles, case studies and podcast on the role of storytelling in marketing: http://GhaniKunto.me