A Guide That Takes the Sci-Fi Out Of Wi-Fi
With O'Reilly, Borders makes T-Mobile HotSpots more accessible

Like many venues that feature a wireless network, Borders has found Wi-Fi to be a great new service with a ton of upside. Wireless computing is booming: 40 million users today will climb to over 700 million worldwide in five years. Enabling customers to go online with their laptop or PDA is not only a great attraction for a retail outlet -- especially a bookstore like Borders -- but it's also a good way to drive sales by getting people to stick around longer.

Borders has seen consistent growth in Wi-Fi usage and an increase in cafe sales since the company put T-Mobile HotSpot service into 439 (out of 450) of its U.S. bookstores last year. "It's a natural fit," says Manish Vyas, who managed the initial rollout of the Wi-Fi program before moving on to become Borders' Category Manager for Digital Music. "Our customers tend to be not only technology-savvy and more educated, but they're usually the kind of people who like to explore. They tend to be very curious. I think this technology marries into that quite well."

There was just one hitch. With all of the buzz about Wi-Fi, and the plummeting cost of Wi-Fi equipment, plenty of people have been willing to jump on the wireless bandwagon. But many aren't sure how to get started when they visit a "hotspot." Borders wanted its staff to help customers find books, movies, and music, not to serve as a Wi-Fi helpdesk, fielding questions on how to sign on and set up.

"Wi-Fi is relatively new, and last year it was still only at the early-adopters stage," Vyas notes. "The feedback we got back from customers on the Wi-Fi brochure was, 'It's nice to have pricing plans and the system requirements. But how do I actually get online?' Our concern was how can we -- and I'm stealing a term from T-Mobile -- 'take the sci-fi out of Wi-Fi?'"

Borders found a way to solve the problem and spur interest in Wi-Fi at the same time, with their own O'Reilly pocket guide -- a 70-page book designed specifically for Borders and its T-Mobile HotSpots. Available for free, the Guide to Getting Unwired at Borders takes basic sign-on information from T-Mobile and weaves it into "how to go wireless" content drawn from several of O'Reilly's popular wireless books. As an added incentive, the guide includes a free, 24-hour T-Mobile HotSpot trial known as a DayPass and a $5 coupon for any O'Reilly book at Borders.

The Opportunity to Partner with Leaders

The pocket guide is unique, not only for Borders and for T-Mobile, but for O'Reilly as well -- including the way it came about. "Honestly, it was quite by chance," remarks David Schmersahl, Manager of Venue Development for T-Mobile Wi-Fi. "We did a press release with Borders around the time that we finished deploying all the sites. Tim O'Reilly read it, contacted Borders, and said, 'Wouldn't it be cool if we could do something along those lines?' The opportunity was thrown in front of us based on the work we were already doing with Borders. We just capitalized on it."

T-Mobile's partnership with Borders began just over a year ago. What drew them to Borders was its brand equity: extremely loyal customers, bookstores that offered a cafe with good seating, and a consistent level of service. People who come to Borders spend an average of an hour in the bookstore, about the length of an average session on the T-Mobile HotSpot network. "In Borders, it's actually closer to an hour and twenty minutes," Schmersahl says. "People find it a very comfortable location to go and get work done. That's what really attracted us."

So when Mark Brokering, O'Reilly's vice president for sales and marketing, formally presented the pocket guide idea to both companies in September 2003 in San Francisco, he knew they were on to something good. "We have quite a few books on wireless that offer a practical, how-to-get-it-done approach for the average user," Brokering says. "We knew we could offer a guide to enhance what, in our view, is one of the best nationwide Wi-Fi venues available."

Borders didn't need much convincing. "O'Reilly's a name that's tried, tested, and true with Borders," Vyas says. "Our staff knows about them, and the books sell very well for us. Customers certainly know the name O'Reilly, so it lends credibility to any type of guide or collateral that was being published."

And T-Mobile? "That was part of the intrigue," Schmersahl remarks. "It was an opportunity to partner with a leader in the tech book space. And it makes for an interesting partnership among the three of us: T-Mobile, a leader in the wireless space; O'Reilly, a leader in the technical reference books market; and Borders, a leader among national book chains."

Something Anybody Can Use

The interesting part was how well -- and how quickly -- they all worked together. Everyone signed on about a week after that initial September meeting, and the guide was approved and ready for press in December. By March, it was available at every Borders bookstore with a T-Mobile HotSpot. "These were three very strong and very different companies looking to co-brand a piece without compromising anyone's brand identity," Brokering comments. "And it went incredibly well. Everyone recognized the challenges and collaborated to make things work."

O'Reilly's pocket guide format was perfect: small enough so that Wi-Fi newcomers wouldn't be overwhelmed, but meaty enough to answer any questions they might have on using the service and configuring their laptops and PDAs. "You pick it up, it looks like something anybody could use," Vyas says. "And it's an a la carte approach, where you don't have to read the whole thing to get the information you want."

Authors Rob Flickenger and Brian Jepson, veteran geeks of the O'Reilly Network who have authored and edited many O'Reilly books, worked tirelessly to compile content from the existing O'Reilly wireless guides, and then contributed quite a bit of new material. They also included numerous screenshots so that people who use Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux could set up easily. T-Mobile supplied HotSpot information and served as technical reviewers. Borders wrote the introduction.

One of the book's key features -- and the one that provided the O'Reilly design department with the biggest challenge -- was the cover. "As we began to lay out how those three logos live together, it was interesting," Schmersahl says. "Luckily, Borders and T-Mobile have a wonderful working relationship. Where the O'Reilly logo lives is exactly where it should, as it does on all their books. Visually, it's very nice."

The entire process turned out to be an exciting undertaking for all involved. "It was fun," Vyas says. "You have your daily grind and the usual work you have to do, and this was different. People would walk by and you'd show them proofs or samples, and they'd say, 'Wow, this is really great.'"

A Model for Collaboration

Customer response also has been enthusiastic. Once the pocket guide went on display, Borders introduced it in its email newsletters, in-store magazine, and in-store newsletter as "a fast, easy, civilized guide to Wi-Fi" (while T-Mobile's HotSpot awareness campaign drove people toward Borders). The free guides moved quickly. A month later, Borders stores started requesting replenishment copies.

Calls into T-Mobile's HotSpot customer care center have been equally encouraging ("Is this really free?" is a familiar comment). Many of T-Mobile's other venue partners -- airport clubs among them -- have begun to approach the company and say, "We like this idea, can we get a book for our venue as well?" T-Mobile has already talked to O'Reilly about similar HotSpot guides.

"What the O'Reilly pocket guide offered was an interesting and refreshing repackaging of our offer at the exact time that we needed it," Schmersahl says. "Our brochure had gotten a little stale. We needed to energize the Borders field staff, and the presence of the O'Reilly book really did that for us. It's not that we saw the sales spike after the book; it's just that the growth, which was extreme to begin with, has continued after the book. Without it, I think that would have dropped off."

T-Mobile now uses the pocket guide as a training resource for new hires in its HotSpot customer care center outside of Dallas, Texas. "This three-way partnership has worked out much better than anyone ever dreamed it would," adds Schmersahl. "We were all excited about it from the beginning, but the outcome of this pocket guide has been received with a lot of enthusiasm and excitement from the executive teams at T-Mobile and Borders, and everybody from there down."

For Borders, the pocket guide has helped the company enter a new realm. "In the course of business, we have any number of different partnerships," Vyas says. "What's unique about this one is that we were able to 'Borderize' a technology that was not an everyday thing for us. We brought Wi-Fi into the Borders fold, using O'Reilly as a partner that we've worked with for years. We were able to present the material in a way that really speaks to our customers."

O'Reilly sees this project as a great example of how it can work with other businesses to redeploy content and solve information needs. "Our partnership with Borders and T-Mobile is a great model for collaboration," says Mark Brokering. "We have a lot of content available through our books and web sites that we can customize and use in new ways. We look forward to doing more of this kind of thing with other companies and organizations."

To find out more about the O'Reilly books that were tapped for material to create the Wi-Fi pocket guide for Borders and T-Mobile, check out our wireless.oreilly.com site.