Maybe it’s just me, but whenever I read about, listen to something about, or watch something about UCC, I feel like there’s this wild race to innovate with the next big thing that’s “going to solve everyone’s remote collaboration and UCC needs!” While I’m all about innovation, as I’m sure you all are too, something that Colin Birney said today during LAVNCH WEEK 2.0 really resonated with me: “I’m all about innovation, but to do it you have to have a great base to work from.” So, say you already have a great base of products and AV customers in your wheelhouse — you may have a leg up in this new innovation space. If you don’t, why should a customer choose you to take a leap with?
This reminds me of my time in advertising agencies. I worked for this big ad agency that did a lot of really boring, but really necessary stuff, in digital. Can you guess what that was? We developed rich-media banners. That’s it! Rich-media banners. But guess what: Rich-media banners are still very much in demand. We did the boring stuff really well, so we were always the go-to firm for it. Clients always came to us for that particular thing. It was only because we were masters in rich-media banners that we could even flirt with the possibly of pitching more fun, creative projects to our clients. But it was the foot in the door we needed to shift into a bigger group within the agency. Eventually we grew out of doing just rich-media banners. But, at the end of the workday, that was always what we did best.
Scroll down to see the latest innovations in UCC in this newsletter, along with a column or two that I hope will get you thinking, moving and grooving.