Melding: The Shape of Future Products (Digital Friday/Product)

Hello, I’m Jim Glover, That Branding Guy, for Once a Day Marketing.  Today is Digital Friday and I’m going to share a strategy I call “melding”.  You can then assess if leveraging it would be a strategic advantage for your business.

Melding is a situation where you combine various digital features into one product.  Companies don’t often think about doing that.  For example, right now there is a bit of conflict going on between Apple and Google.  Apple sells the iphone and Google offers the android.  For years a large percentage of Google’s map application users have been iphone owners.  Now, Apple is launching their own mapping application, i.e., melding it with their other offerings.  This has numerous implications for Google and future business trends.

Start thinking about how to meld different digital offerings into or along with your product.  It’s important not to keep doing business the same old way, there are no barriers here except your imagination.  You may want ask your customers what they would like to have and then you can begin revising your product/offerings to deliver a melded result to your customers.

Let’s take a look at mobile applications as an example.  We know there are thousands of mobile applications, apps for the yellow pages, coupon based, entertainment oriented or calendars of events, etc.  There is a separate app for everything, which seems a little confusing to me.  Melding is the solution.

I know someone in Taos developing a single application for the whole community.  It will be divided into two parts, local and visitors.  If you are local you select that area, you will find all the information you need to have a great experience living in Taos.  When the visitors section is selected, it’s the same thing, the app provides tourists in Taos access to all the information they need to have a great experience visiting Taos.  One app serving all needs, rather than a half a dozen apps that have to be sought out separately.

The Taos app is a very good example of melding as is the Apple/Google illustration.  In the future, melding is going to happen more and more.  Make the effort to look at your company and identify opportunities to meld multiple digital applications into one to provide a better product to your customer.

That concludes Digital Friday.  Join us next week for Smart Monday.  To discuss an online or face to face service engagement and enhance the marketing and branding for your organization, contact James Glover: (505) 501-1330 or onceadaymarketing@gmail.com.  I’m Jim Glover, That Branding Guy, for Once a Day Marketing and we’ll see you next time.