Aron Ezra, CEO at MacroView Labs (http://www.MacroViewLabs.com), joins us to discuss toxic apps and how to avoid damaging your brand... Read the Transcript

Aron Ezra CEO MacroView Labs http://macroviewlabs.com

Over the course of his career, Aron’s focus has been on helping his clients to understand how their customers and key audiences think, what information they want, and how best to influence and interact with them. Highlights include serving as a Senior Vice President at the global PR firm Hill & Knowlton, and as a Director at The Advisory Board Company, a consulting firm focused on the health care and higher education sectors.

Get out your smartphones as we honor Hulu and Orbitz with the Self Tending Mushroom for creating toxic apps - that is, apps that actually harm their brands. In addition to these two winners this month, we give an honorable mention STeMie to the Apple Store app for iPad for the same reason. In this article, we explore where these apps went wrong and what we can all learn from their painful experience. Hulu’s popularity is rooted in loads of free TV shows, each embedded with short ads. Their app goes in the opposite direction, confusing current users. Sheridan explains, “$9.99 is the biggest question mark simply because Hulu.com has always been free.” Users of the Hulu website may find themselves quite frustrated at the lack of free content available via the app.  Hulu made one more major mistake - advertising inside the paid app. In the market, it is just not acceptable. Now let’s take a look at Orbitz. Dennis Schaal at tnooz.com quotes Orbitz as calling their app a “hedge on our mobile strategy.” Mistake number one for Orbitz was seeing their app as a hedge versus a central and critical part of a comprehensive mobile strategy. The app lacks many of the features that make Orbitz popular, such as Ortiz TLC, and alerts. Subsequently, the app is just a basic, stripped down travel booking app in the simplest sense. Lastly, one iconic brand known for simplicity, well though out deisgn and functionality, is Apple. It is surprising, then to see the Apple Store app virtually nonexistent for iPad. The lessons in this month’s Self Tending Mushroom award are many. First, no business is immune from the potential of toxic apps. The Hulu and Orbitz apps are great examples of what not to do. When your app defies your brand, even loyal users turn elsewhere. Understand your unique selling proposition and let it come out in your app. Lastly, it is better to have no app than a toxic app that hurts your brand.