• Home
• About Us
• Our Work
• Blog
• Talk To Us

Southfield, Mich. It’s been quite a week at jacAPPS.  First, the smartphone application developer received word that its app for Spartan Sports Radio Network was honored as the winner of the “Best Use Of New Media” category by the Michigan Association of Broadcasters Broadcast Excellence Awards.  A few days later, jacAPPS was a 2012 winner of Corp! Magazine’s DiSciTech Award in the Digital Division.

Corp! Magazine & The Michigan Association Of Broadcasters Honor jacAPPS

“While we’re not in it for awards, this is valued recognition for the great work that our team has done,” comments Paul Jacobs, Vice-President/General Manager of jacAPPS.  “A lot of hard work goes into creating great mobile applications, and it’s nice to be recognized.  Now the staff is on me to buy a trophy case!”

jacAPPS’ business philosophy has always been to put the customers before the code.  Will Tieman, President of the Spartan Sports Network observes, “We developed this application with jacAPPS to make a statement about who we are and what we do. Its effectiveness has enabled us to reach a larger listening base and future brands our network as a national leader.”

jacAPPS has created over 600 apps for customers around the world, including The Ann Arbor Art Fairs, The Detroit International Jazz Festival, C-SPAN Radio, public radio’s “Car Talk” program, and many others.  Crain’s Detroit Business recently ranked jacAPPS as the number one application developer in Southeast Michigan.

For more information, contact Paul Jacobs at pauljacobs@jacapps.com pauljacobs@jacapps.com or visit www.jacapps.com.

Email This

Apps, Awards, Creativity, Mobile

From the “Department of Self-Aggrandizement,” please permit me to give props to the hard-working team at jacAPPS for their accomplishment that we’re celebrating this fall.

Three months after Steve Jobs opened the Apple App Store in the summer of ‘08, we hung out our mobile apps shingle with the urging of our digital guy, Tim Davis. And the result has been nothing short of spectacular. We just passed the 500th mobile app milestone, along with more than 11 million downloads – and rising.

Like everything else here at Jacobs Media, it started with radio and the notion that individual station brands deserved their own mobile apps. Surprisingly, some of radio’s biggest broadcasters took a different direction, building their own “umbrella apps” that featured hundreds of their stations.

You cannot underestimate the success of iHeartRadio or CBS’s Radio.com – apps that aggregate hundreds of radio stations under a big tent. Many smartphone owners swear by these apps, allowing them the ability to hear “favorite” stations, while providing a diversity of choice.

But our contention was that consumers are less focused on corporate brands than they are on hometown stations in their markets – or in cities where they once lived or visit. And for individual stations, the app experience has been powerful.

Early on, we developed apps for small market stations owned by individuals or small groups, like The Coast (KOZT) in Mendocino, CA. Their app lives right next to Pandora, Facebook, and Google MAPs on the iPhone desktop. Along with owner Tom Yates have been companies as diverse as Greater Media, Entercom, Cox, Bonneville, and many others.

jacAPPS has found a true partner in Christian radio, as well as public radio brands from NPR’s Car Talk to Atlanta’s WABE and Michigan Radio. C-SPAN Radio and other spoken word services have also found their way into both the Apple and Android stores as we expanded platforms and evolved with new smartphone operating systems.

That’s the power of the smartphone experience, amplified by the convenience and sheer fun of pushing an app and have something remarkable occur. And with apps, the ability to dish up an experience that the consumer cannot get on a mobile website is part of the charm that Steve Jobs understood, and the rocket scientists at Research In Motion never have.

At jacAPPS, our entire staff is Michigan born and raised, allowing a team of rust bucket natives to show off their talents every day. And while the majority of our apps have been designed and built for the radio industry – and we thank you profusely for your support – a growing number of projects have gone well beyond frequencies and call letters.

The 500th app, for example, is for Taste of Atlanta, a 10 year festival that celebrates the city’s restaurants and chefs. It is a great example of the versatility of the app experience, and how it enhances the lives of smartphone owners everywhere.

Our ability at jacAPPS to custom-design apps, and to apply the marketing and research disciplines that many of us in radio have practiced for decades is the “secret sauce” that explains our success to date, and our ability to grow this company over the next several years.

Thanks to all of you who have come on board and enjoyed the experience, as well as our jacAPPS staffers who are proving that something exciting is happening here in the Metro Detroit area that has nothing to do with carburetors or soul music.

If we can design an app for you and/or help you develop a mobile strategy, talk to Paul Jacobs.

Email This

Apps, Creativity, Detroit, Future

A lot has been said, and will be said by people more eloquent than me about the passing of Steve Jobs. There are many perceptions of him that have intensified over the years as he became a cult figure in our culture – genius, control freak, entertainer, hard-driving executive, perfectionist.

But perhaps the video below provides insight into Jobs in his own words – a famous speech he gave to the Stanford graduating class in 2005. I learned more about him in these 15 minutes than I did from all those Mac World presentations.

Email This

Apple, Creativity, Jobs, Technology

In a recent AdAge piece, resident curmudgeon and truly great media observer, Bob Garfield, discussed a new “expert crowd sourcing” model that is making waves throughout the agency world.

At the forefront is the virtual Victors & Spoils founder John Winsor, who says the concept is to “create a new operating system for the advertising industry” utilizing the skills of hundreds of freelance creative thinkers. Thus, the client comes away with a great campaign or creative idea while paying only a fraction of the price.

We witnessed this first-hand at jacAPPS, our mobile apps division earlier this year. We were in need of a new logo but the last thing we wanted to do was spend thousands of dollars to have agency or even graphic arts company do the work.

So thanks to our tech savvy sales rep, Alex Young, we turned to www.logotournament.com.

For a mere $400 (we could have cheaped out and only offered $275), we had artists from around the globe submitting logo ideas and concepts. We even had the ability to contact designers whose ideas were in the ballpark, but needed a tweak or two, a different color treatment, or images moved around.

At the end of the process, we had more logos than we knew what to do with, and more importantly, several wonderful possibilities without having to spend the big bucks. And we had the benefit of scores of designers working on our “account.”

OK, they’re not all winners, but that’s always the case when you go through this exercise. And the bottom line is that we had a lot of really good ideas to choose from without investing a lot of money.

And that’s the point of Garfield’s article, and virtual agencies like Victors & Spoils, GeniusRocket, Poptent, and GiantHydra. Instead of a single shop attempting to develop an idea or solve a problem, you have hundreds of creative thinkers working on your project. As Winsor points out, “We’re trying to create a meritocracy.”

How can we use that same line of thinking in the radio business? How can we utilize the collective brain power of our audiences – or even the entire industry – to solve problems, create our way to new solutions, and do better work more efficiently?

And by the way, here was our winner – a designer from Istanbul, Turkey who uses the screen name ysonmez. He’s a 45 year-old graphic designer who has worked at national agencies as an Art Director and Creative Director. How would we have ever run into this guy here in Southfield, Michigan?

There’s more to crowd-sourcing than just a catchy Internet name. Let us know your thoughts below.

Email This

Creativity, Design, Social Media, UI/UX

In an interview with Chuck Davidson, Starbucks Innovation Executive, he discusses the development process of their two current apps for iPhone and select BlackBerry devices. He also talks about the awareness of these applications. Customers say they hear about the apps from friends or through social media.

Full Story Here

Email This

Apps, Creativity, Marketing, Mobile, Smartphones