Michael Dell 'Friends' his customers - Sep. 4, 2008. (Fortune Magazine) -- Write something about Dell online, and chances are the company will know about it in an hour or so. Dis the company in a blog or a Facebook group, and someone from a crack response team may even chime in, if only to let everyone know that Dell cares. Spooky? Well, this is a new Dell (DELL, Fortune 500): a little more attentive online, and a little more paranoid. When Michael Dell took back the reins of his company in early 2007, one of his first acts as CEO was to give its web strategy a kick in the pants. The computer maker had plenty of hairy business problems to deal with - financial irregularities, a stagnating stock, profits down 28% in a year - but perhaps the most embarrassing was the thrashing its brand had taken online.
On tech blogs and consumer forums, Dell had become almost a byword for lousy customer service. It may be hard to remember now, but the company used to be as famous for good service as it was for good prices. Dell Learns to Listen. The computer maker takes to the blogosphere to repair its tarnished image In the age of customers empowered by blogs and social media, Dell has leapt from worst to first. Start with the worst. In June, 2005, I unwittingly unleashed a blog storm around the computer company. Terminally frustrated with a lemony laptop and torturous service, I vented steam on my blog under the headline: "Dell sucks. " That's not quite as juvenile as it sounds, for a Google (GOOG) search on any brand followed by "sucks" reveals the true Consumer Reports for that company's customers. Thousands of frustrated consumers eventually commented on and linked to my blog, saying, "I agree. " They were a leading indicator of Dell's problems, which the company—and analysts and reporters covering it—should have heeded.
The following April, Dell (DELL) did join that conversation. Has Dell really gotten the blog religion? New Metrics for Success Has It Made a Difference? The crucial word you hear at Dell is "relationship. " Hack This Product, Please! Dell's new IdeaStorm is just one example of how forward-thinking companies are making their customers co-creators Everyone knows about Dell's troubles of late. The hardware maker's once industry-leading "build-to-order" supply chain systems are now the norm, and it's fallen behind in design—areas where competitors such as Apple (AAPL) and Sony (SNE) excel. Customer service has deteriorated since it was outsourced to India so that customers can no longer rely on timely and informative service. Yet visiting with CEO redux Michael Dell, he looks like a new man and is pumped about the challenge of building what he calls "Dell 2.0.
" Launched on Feb. 16, Dell's IdeaStorm (www.dellideastorm.com) looks and feels a lot like Digg.com, the popular tech news aggregator: Users post suggestions and the community votes, so that the most popular ideas rise to the top. Beyond Customer-Centricity Initiatives like IdeaStorm are a starting point. Capitalize on Amateur Innovation The Net Generation Is Knocking. Inside Apple Stores, a Certain Aura Enchants the Faithful. Apple’s Lesson for Sony’s Stores: Just Connect. Why Apple is the best retailer in America - March 19, 2007. (Fortune Magazine) -- "Sorry Steve, Here's Why Apple Stores Won't Work," BusinessWeek wrote with great certainty in 2001. "It's desperation time in Cupertino, Calif.," opined TheStreet.com. "I give [Apple] two years before they're turning out the lights on a very painful and expensive mistake," predicted retail consultant David Goldstein. Yet five years later, at 4:15 A.M., a light flickered on.
Onlookers were bathed in the milky-white glow of the Apple logo, suspended in a freestanding cube of glass at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Central Park South in Manhattan. "People haven't been willing to invest this much time and money or engineering in a store before," says the Apple CEO, his feet propped on Apple's boardroom table in Cupertino. And not just the architecture. That astonishing number, from a Sanford C. You could say that Apple has landed - not only on our street corners and in our malls but also, for the first time, on the top ten of Fortune's Most Admired Companies. Apple delivers strong earnings; Countdown to 1 million iPhones on hold; Outlook conservative. Apple's third quarter earnings handily topped Wall Street expectations on Wednesday, but the total number of iPhones sold to date remain a mystery. Apple reported fiscal third quarter earnings of $818 million, or 92 cents a share, on sales of $5.41 billion. Those results handily beat Wall Street estimates projecting earnings of 72 cents a share on revenue of $5.28 billion.
But for folks worried about iPhone sales Apple's results may not have totally soothed investors. In a statement CEO Steve Jobs said: "iPhone is off to a great start -- we hope to sell our one- millionth iPhone by the end of its first full quarter of sales -- and our new product pipeline is very strong. " That statement would indicate that the most optimistic projections were off a bit. Nevertheless, one million units in a quarter isn't chopped liver. But the real story of the quarter was Mac sales, which came in strong. Apple shipped 1,764,000 Macs in the quarter, up 33 percent from a year ago. Lego CEO Jørgen Vig Knudstorp on leading through survival and growth. Sometimes a CEO’s most challenging leadership transition is not a matter of switching jobs but of guiding the company onto a new path. Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, a former McKinsey consultant who came to the family-owned Lego Group as an outsider in 2001 and was named CEO in 2004, learned that a series of distinct leadership approaches was needed as he moved the 76-year-old Danish toy maker onto a firmer financial footing, reoriented it toward growth, and opened it to ideas from enthusiastic users.
What leadership approach did you apply to pull Lego back from the brink? By 2004, when I became CEO, things had gone awfully wrong at Lego Group. To survive, the company needed to halt a sales decline, reduce debt, and focus on cash flow. It was a classic turnaround, and it required tight fiscal control and top-down management. And then how did your leadership approach change? Now we’re in a third phase, pursuing organic growth. Collective Creativity on the Web: Q&A with Cecilia Weckstrom of The LEGO Group. Cecilia Weckstrom is an innovation and consumer experience specialist at The LEGO Group. She heads up the Consumer Insight & Experience Innovation team there. Indirect Collaboration's Tim Lillis interviewed Cecilia about incorporating customer insight into the product design process. Lillis: So, you're in charge of the Consumer Insight & Experience Innovation function at the LEGO Group. What does that mean? Lillis: What are some of the successful and unsuccessful ideas generated by this group?
Weckstrom: Mostly in my experience it is not a matter of unsuccessful or not – more about timing. Lillis: Is the Design By Me program related? Lillis: Are the kits generated as part of Design By Me available to customers besides the one who designed them? Weckstrom: Yes, but at the discretion of the designer. Lillis: There is such a robust worldwide community of LEGO builders, has this community unofficially steered product design at the LEGO Group? Apple/Macintosh - Analysts Expect Apple To Exceed iPhone Sales Goals. Apple sold a million iPhones in the U.S. in the first 76 days.
But will the Mac-maker reach its announced goal of 10 million units this year? Analysts are betting the answer is yes, and then some. Indeed, some pundits are forecasting Apple is on track to sell 20 million in 2009. Apple has sold about five million 2G iPhones worldwide, and some analysts estimate the total is closer to six million. Others say the company could not meet its 10 million goal if the new 3G iPhone had not debuted at a lower price. Morgan Stanley's Bet Morgan Stanley raised its target price for Apple's shares from $185 to $210 and predicted iPhone sales will double in 2009.
Specifically, the investment bank is projecting Apple will sell 27 million iPhones in 2009 with an average revenue of $550 per unit. "We believe the market generally expects a doubling of iPhone units with the lower price point, and we believe this is realistic, if not conservative," Morgan Stanley said. Ringing in Agreement iPhone Economics. Digital Life by Chin Wong -- The Mac clone myth. Drug Launch Consumer Research Case Study | Communispace. Study Results Reveal Alli(R) Patient Satisfaction Linked To Weight Loss Achieved; Not Treatment Effects. 'Two nobodies from nowhere' craft winning Super Bowl ad.
By Bruce Horovitz, USA TODAY USA TODAY's Ad Meter tracks the second-by-second responses of a panel of viewers to ads during the Super Bowl and ranks them best to worst. Click on an ad in the above playlist (ads are listed alphabetically by brand) to watch. Click here for complete Ad Meter results. It wasn't just the Arizona Cardinals who met their match in the Super Bowl — so did Madison Avenue. And it could be a game-changer. For the first time, it wasn't an ad agency that created the best-liked Super Bowl commercial. It was two unemployed brothers from Batesville, Ind., whose ad for Doritos — created for an online contest for amateurs — won them $1 million from Doritos maker Frito-Lay, and leaves ad pros with a lot of 'splaining to do. What the duo did was beat 51 big-budget advertisers and won USA TODAY'S 21st annual exclusive Super Bowl Ad Meter real-time consumer testing of how much they liked the ads as they aired.
We "beat the king of commercials," says Herbert.