Daphne Kwon, ExpoTV (Podcast and Interview Transcript)

Daphne Kwon: Yeah exactly, and there are so few of us nowadays. Yeah, on the polarization I can’t be smart enough to know to be able to speak to what a great brand is whether it’s polarizing or not. I think the way that I see it is it was easy to be polarizing and then ignore the negatives and just go after the positives you know the people who loved you and to really focus on them. And I think because now the message is no longer in the control of the brands and it will become decreasingly in their control that they need to be embracing as opposed to, and even if they are polarizing, they do need to embrace the messages that are being put out there because they are getting louder and louder and louder that are not in your control. Whether it’s negative, whether it’s people who use it a different way, whether or not it’s a different demo, there is a million different voices out there about products and brands have to figure out how to embrace that as opposed to ignore it and continue broadcasting their, one way we are fantastic, messages to everybody. So I would buy only because it’s Guy Kawasaki saying it and Mike saying that brands are polarizing I would buy that but what I would say is so what, now what do you do, how do you embrace all the voices that are out there that are completely out of your control.

Lisa Padilla: Right, embrace them, and empower them in whatever way that you can because one thing that occurs to me that I am thinking back to a project that I did with Philips Consumer Electronics a few years ago, it was a universal high-end home remote and it controlled not only your sound system and all that but other smart appliances and systems inside your house including your TV and it had a browser on it and looked sort of like a tablet. And the target distributors for that were not individuals at that time and that was maybe 5 years ago, our target for that product was OEM and home system and now that power seems to be so much in the hands of the users not only individual users in our neighborhood, not just for the creation of that creation to be as high a quality as possible but also with the distribution. And ExpoTV has other sort of Web 2.0 bells and whistles that allows you to share those videos, embed them, sort of look at popular ones that kind of thing. So I think it’s great, I think it’s really what you are doing.

Daphne Kwon: Thanks. And you know it’s funny because the Philips story it’s interesting and I think that you don’t have to take the people that don’t like your product and you don’t have to try and win them over necessarily. What I think needs to happen is that Philips high-end product, you need to be very sure that the people that are getting it, their expectations were set properly. And so we think that a lot of the negatives that are out there you know somebody like Philips can learn from what their expectations were not set properly, they were not high-end enough or they weren’t tech savvy enough and you have to change your product to simplify it if that’s not who are going for but reaching out to these people who were dissatisfied whether it was by marketing or whether it was by being in the wrong channels of distribution and appealing to the wrong people, imagine say you know there is a product that you hated but the manufacturer came back to you and said we appreciated your feedback, we are sorry for that and maybe this product would be more something that you should consider or just said, sorry that was the wrong product for you. You know just reaching out is a way that I think you can create a fan and you don’t have to have created a customer for that product, they can still be dissatisfied as long as you listen to why they were.

Lisa Padilla: Oh that’s right. Your integrity as a company is very important and that goes all the way into support too.

Daphne Kwon: Yeah. I think tech support is an area also that I think Web 2.0 or whatever number we are on will really help fall with people helping each other, people informing each other. User gen video does not have to be either semi-professional or sound really extremist, crazy, dangerous active of trying to light something on fire or jump off a building or something and so user gen has ways to develop I think and it can be much more informative and purpose-driven than it is now.

Lisa Padilla: And so http://www.expotv.com and do you want to tell us about any other news or upcoming things we should look out for with regard to your company.

Daphne Kwon: Thanks for the pitch. I think the only thing I would say is we actually were one of the companies that participated in the Facebook application and the one about advertisers and privacy; we are actually getting a ton of great feedback from the people who participated, one person was even asking why it didn’t show up the next time and how do they make it show up. I think that there are certainly privacy concerns and I am sure Facebook will address them properly whether or not it’s fast enough for some people I can’t say. But I think the thought of having people understand who you are and many different things that you do, we are finding that it’s really fruitful for us. And the only other thing I would say is we have some great holiday programming, some great suggestions for the holiday all on video and that’s all live on our site so hopefully everybody will have a very satisfied holiday knowing what they are getting.

Lisa Padilla: Better informed. Daphne Kwon, thanks for joining me today and I will let you go now.

Daphne Kwon: Thanks so much, it was ton of fun and thanks for all the people that wrote questions as well. Thanks so much Lisa.

Lisa Padilla: Yeah. And thank you to the caller, Mike thanks for calling in, it’s always nice to hear from you. Join me soon again on http://www.lisacast.com and that’s Lisacast on BlogTalkRadio and stay tuned to http://www.blogtalkradio.com — With that, I leave you and catch you next time. Thanks for listening.

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