Marketing, and Open vs. Closed.
by Steve Tsuida, September 24
Open™ works. Open™ is wonderful. I get Open™.
I love how easy it was to hack-update the Calgary Springbank airport in my X-Plane flight simulator (to reflect the 2,000 foot lengthening of runway 16/34).
I have hundreds of community-built add-ons for my workaday software.
I'm about to post a tutorial on how to tweak your janky type 3057 turn signal bulbs for longer life, using 3M metal foil tape.
Having said all that, Open™ isn't a prerequisite (or a barrier) for success. You're surrounded by lots of successful Closed© platforms. (We can look at the psychology of Why® in another post.)
More on successful Closed© platforms. after the break.
Successful Closed© Platforms
A La Carte.
Car's aren't [really] Open™. Sure, you can buy gas from any station and drive on any road (much the way you can charge your gadget on any wall jack), but less than a handful of us buy our cars unassembled. Try this experiment. Call Riverside Honda (403-253-6531), and ask for an OEM 1.5-litre, 16-valve, SOHC, i-VTEC® 4-cylinder engine. Just the engine please. When they ask why, let them know you're next stop is Stampede Pontiac where you're going to pick up a bare steel frame and unpainted body panel kit for a 2008 Solstice®. And yes, you're having Porsche apply Einszett Glanz paint and finishing. Tires? Costco, baby! Your Open™ car will combine hot neoeuropean styling with the best fuel efficiency in its class. Click. Hello?
Could there be an Open™ car? Yep. But people are happy enough with turnkey Closed© cars.
What Not To Where.
Go to Calgarytraffic.com. Look at the traffic temperature map showing realtime trafic congestion reports gathered from all of those tens of thousands of dashboard GPSs. Actually don't bother because it's not there. Why not? Because all of those tens of thousands of dashboard GPSs use Closed© formats. Even though we're stuck in traffic right next to each other, your GPS and my GPS can't share user-generated points of interest or send bluetooth pings to our phones which would in turn text a community server with standardized "I'm stuck, don't come here!" data.
Are the telcos working on using our handsets GPSs to create a traffic data service? Yep. Where will we watch that traffic data? On those millions of already-bought Closed© dashboard GPSs.
State the Nature of your Emerging Market.
Oh no! Fire! Someone Google "+emergency +services +fire". Actually, read the first few chapters of Herbert Asbury's The Gangs of New York for a darkly comical history of Open™ emergency services.
Even private security firms call 911© once they've prescreened the situation.
Pret a Portage.
From Twitter Air:
Speedbird_B747 – "AIMB flyin 2 LAX. Delta 218 GTFO runway!"
Delta_CRJ200 – "^URS. FCFS."
TowerGuy – "Im in ur headsetz. Givin U altitudz."
According to Flightaware.com there were over 47,000 arrivals at airports in the last 24 hours. At some point almost every single one of them was directed by a rigid, Closed© system. That's a very good thing because some of you were on those flights, and the rest of us live underneath them.
So.
Open is good.
Open works.
Closed works too.
Closed sells just fine.
Open doesn't necessarily displace Closed.
Open doesn't equal competitive advantage. Competitive advantage is an art in itself, not just a switch you throw.
Preview: A Quick peek at an upcoming look at the psychology of Why®.
Chiconomics (A preview.):
- It's not a music player. It's a scarf.
- It's not a smartphone. It's the fourth piece of a suit.
- It's not always about Open or closed, sometimes it's about In or Out.
Steve Tsuida is Kryos' Graphic Designer. He has no formal training in marketing, so technically he’s completely full of it. Even so, he’s read a lot of books, and he thinks a lot about this stuff.
