Chris Walterbach's blog

The rumored announcement of an Apple tablet device is making techies and fanboys jittery with excitement.

Since I have an iPhone and a Macbook Pro, I’m not really in the market for such a device but wondered what people (other than first adopters) would find useful about it.

The Kindle concept-

One theory is that the new iTablet (we’ll call it that until tomorrow when the name is released) would be used similarly to Amazon’s Kindle reader. I can see how that would be a useful device and it could possibly take a big chunk of market share away from Amazon.

The “big iPhone” concept-

Another theory is the new device will be used as a big iPhone (maybe a big iPod Touch since no one would use it as a phone) and be compatible with all of the apps the iPhone uses.  This one I don’t get.  If it’s a tablet “computer” the apps aren’t really necessary.  I’m assuming it will have Safari installed and I could go to say, Pandora.com instead of running a separate app for it.  Then again, the iTablet version of Safari would actually have to work with flash, so in that case perhaps apps would be still useful.

The “business use” concept-

Bringing a laptop to a meeting can be cumbersome.  Using the iTablet for presentations or demonstrations could be very helpful.  Clinics and hospitals use tablet pc’s for patient check-in.  Pharmaceutical Reps use tablets to outline information for Doctors and to have them sign something that says they saw the rep that particular day.  By entering the health care industry vertical, it creates a huge opportunity for Apple to produce new revenue streams and to compete with Microsoft in the same arena.

Overall, I think a tablet device is/would be a great idea for Apple to release at this time (compared to the Newton days) since the number of uses for such a device has skyrocketed due to the millions of apps out there.  Having Kindle as a well-known competitor device for customers to compare it to will also help.   We’ll see tomorrow what Steve Jobs’ vision is for the device.  I’m hoping for something Earth shattering that will change computing forever.  Or maybe we’ll just get a souped-up, much larger iPod Touch.  We’ll know in just a few short hours!

-Chris

Recently Domino’s Pizza announced they were changing the recipe for their pizza.

In the above-linked USA Today article, consultant Howard Gordon mentions “I don’t know of any (restaurant) company that has attempted this.” In any industry, changing a winning formula seems like business “suicide.”  Gordon later makes a powerful statement; “Once you’ve built a brand, that’s your brand,” says Gordon. “To change it means that everything you’ve stood for isn’t right.”

This youtube video is a short documentary that was edited into a commercial I recently saw on TV.  It tells the story of how Domino’s received feedback from customers about their pizza (via Twitter users, mostly) and took those criticisms and used them as motivation to make a better pizza.  Dominos has set up an exclusive website for the campaign where customers can view the documentary as well as a Twitter feed featuring tweets about the new pizza.  Obviously they haven’t filtered or changed the tweets because some of them are pretty critical of the pizza.  One such tweet says “Dominos new pizza crust recipe is like eating really buttery, garlicy bread…fail. Bad breath factor, over the top!”  Yikes.  Again, this is all part of the campaign, so I suppose you have to take some bad with the good feedback.

So why make such a drastic change?

Many companies try to improve the quality of their product or even advertise they have a “new and improved” product.  However, publicly admitting in one of your advertisements that people didn’t like your product is either sheer madness or pure genius.  Perhaps this means Domino’s is the first mature company that will drastically change how others do business.  There are numerous companies in the mature stage of the product/company lifecycle.  Maybe when growth stagnates, you throw a “hail mary” and go for it all? Due to the unprecedented nature of Domino’s Pizza’s strategy, there isn’t really much to compare it to.  Again, maybe since no one has thought to do this before, they are on to something here.

Think of the costs associated with doing something like this.  I’m sure there were plenty of focus groups (some were featured in the documentary), new product development, marketing research, advertising, etc.  This was not just an ordinary marketing campaign.  I can only guess that either the execs at Domino’s thought the amount of publicity a “stunt” like this would create would exceed the value put in to the change or they were truly desperate to make significant change to turn around the company.  What other reason would there be for alienating your best customers that loved your pizza and have kept you in business for fifty years?  I would think they’d have to gain _many_ new customers and retain a lot of their long-time ones to make this venture a success.