The Halo Effect, or Why Some Apps Stink the Place Up
If you stop for a moment and just look at them closely, you’d have to agree that latest iPhones, Android phones and BlackBerries are truly amazing devices. Their sophisticated good looks and superb usability makes them nearly irresistible. “Sleek and sexy with big brains,” says CNET. (Sometimes it’s hard to believe we’re talking about phones.).
Photo Credit: artwork_rebel
Smartphones come with a halo effect. The halo effect isn’t just a metaphor—it’s a real unconscious cognitive bias. In a famous study published in 1920, the psychologist Edward Thorndike asked officers to rate their soldiers and found high cross-correlation between all positive and all negative traits. What the halo effect says is that one trait influences expectations of others. And the halo effect around smartphones is serious business. For Apple, the halo of the iPod and iPhone and iPad have helped to drive sales of its whole line and, it could be argued, even sparked the rapid growth in mobile apps and smartphones for providers other than Apple that we continue to see today.
High Expectations
The downside of the halo effect is risk of not meeting high expectations.
We think this that the halo effect and challenge of high expectations are important factors for event and meeting planners to understand. The smartphone’s halo effect sets up high expectations for how meeting and event apps will work. It is not enough for a branded app from respectable organization, even a free or disposable app, to be merely, sort of, good. At the very least, an app has to be worth the time it takes to figure out how to use (a serious problem for many apps) and a pleasure to use. Ideally your apps have to do what they is intended to do and dazzle you a little at the same time.
Branded apps simply can’t expect to meet expectations if all they do is provide the same information that can be found online or elsewhere. Using the app has to be different experience—just as smart phone is better and different from a computer. And a good app has to work with, not just on, the phone (stay tuned for our views on mobile web versus native and why we don’t think mobile web is really good enough). Anything less reflects poorly on the event, association and sponsors.
Most organizations cannot afford to have a poorly performing app because the potential for brand damage is too high and too public—no matter how low the cost of development. In app stores and marketplaces, customer reviews are the coin of the realm. Bad apps—and the companies that produce them—are mocked in reviews by an unforgiving online culture. Who needs that?
What all this means is that branded apps—those apps that offer users another touchpoint or experience with your brand such as an event, a sponsor, a corporation or an association—need to be excellent and to refect the values and quality of the brand and do something that has value. An app that can inspire a user to ask a question during a panel, an app that finds a way to quickly serve attendee needs, an app that solves problems, reduces the hassle of business travel and meets expectations also has a halo effect.
And that halo is one that gives a glow to your brand and event.
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