Now more than ever, customers don’t want to be “managed.” They have choices, and engagement needs to be intuitive and reciprocal. A brand can no longer expect to “manage” a customer. Instead, they must design the relationship in a way that benefits both the customer and the brand.
CRM has forever changed. Now is the time to develop relationships together, to understand customers more than ever before, and to deliver value in the most creative ways that differentiate your brand from competitors.
To understand more about how we design relationships that create impact, drop us a line at hello@ogilvyexperience.com.
As we entered 2022, companies were already aware of what a pandemic can do to business. But luckily, 2022 is also the year that we were able to start to put COVID-19 behind us – at least a bit. This was a year of re-emergence for many, brands included. The lessons we learned during 2020 and 2021 brought about customer adoption of digitized brand experiences like never before, and drove home the importance of creating impactful relationships powered by insight and technology.
There is one thing that is true – it takes two to start and maintain a relationship.
Clare Lawson, President, Ogilvy Experience, EMEA
For some brands, the choice to go direct to customer for the first time was a big shift in the business. For those that may have already made the shift, this year was an era of real creative digital transformation with a keen focus on differentiation among brands.
One thing is for sure – unlike some reemerging trends of the past, we will not go back to our pre-pandemic ways. This goes for customers and brands alike. The need to forge true mutually-beneficial relationships has never before been so real. Traditional CRM, or customer relationship management, will be a thing of the past. The idea of “managing” customers must give way to deepening relationships, and together creating relationships that are beneficial to the brand and customer in equal measure.
And we must also not forget that the excesses of 2022 might be a harbinger of a challenging 2023. Inflation is on the rise worldwide and business growth is slowing. We expect brands to take an even more pointed focus on experience and place even more emphasis on both the physical and digital touchpoints that they have with their greatest advocates: their customers. Engagement and retention will remain top of the list for success in 2023 and the fight for true differentiation among brands, especially commoditized products, and offerings, will continue.
Any way you look at it, 2022 was a year of massive change and growth for many. As we move into an all-new year with brand new challenges and discoveries, we hope that something in this publication will inspire you to action, drive you to try something new, or at the very least, make you think. We at Ogilvy hope this new year brings joy, success, and good fortune for you and those you cherish. Cheers to a happy, healthy, and successful 2023!
Onward and upward, Clare & Rajesh
LETTER FROM THE EDITORS
Three Essential Ways to Marry Data and Experience / Ari Sheinkin, IBM
Metaverse: The Innovation Paradox of our Time / Dickon Laws, Ogilvy
Ready Player One: Web3, Metaverse, Gaming / Kaare Wesnaes, Ogilvy
Decoding the Hidden WhoTM For More Effective Personalization / Christopher Graves, Ogilvy
Five Digital Metrics Every Business Should Care About Tim Duncan, Bottle Rocket
Personalization is a Growth Hack / Eric Bader & Heather Watson, Ogilvy
How to Assess Your Organization’s Customer Data Maturity Joey Colvin, mParticle
Digital Analytics in a Downturn / Adam Greco, Amplitude
The Power of M.A.C.H: Five Tips for Rebuilding Your Website Robert Pettique, Bottle Rocket 92 When it Comes to Mobile App Experience, It’s Time to Rethink Who’s Doing What / Thomas Butta, Airship 96 The Cloud Data Warehouse: A reckoning for MarTech Jason Davis, Simon Data 116 Going Mobile: A Deeper Look at Today’s Top 3 Platforms and their Differences / Will McGinty, Harish Patel & Jason Brewer, Bottle Rocket 120 Tomorrow’s Loyalty Turns “Phygital” / Ashley McMillen & Lisa Schneider, The Lacek Group 122 Identity Management in an Insecure World: Picking the Right Ryan Gant, Bottle Rocket
8 Digital Empathy: Can Virtual Interactions Create Meaningful Connections / Dieucam Nguyen and Emily Poon, Ogilvy 100
Creating Experiences That Go Beyond the Moment: How to Create Life-Changing Experiences / Lau Moyano, Ogilvy 103 Intelligence Focus: What We Can Learn from Search Beyond Google / Social.Lab 104 The Power of Voice: What Does Your Brand Sound Like? / Daniel Rodriguez-Arias, Ogilvy 106 The Latest Google Updates and What You Need to Know / Erico Rocha, Jussi 109 How to Choose the Right CMS for Your Organization Rajat Kanodia, Verticurl
74 A Story to Sell / Tim Burke, Eicoff 80 The Human Touch in the Digital Age Raghid El-Yafouri, Bottle Rocket 84 Extreme Fandom / Richard Brett, Bridget Jung & Brian Corrigan, Ogilvy 86 Gen Z Transforms Loyalty / Montanna Cervenka, The Lacek Group 98 Dark Patterns: What Are They and Why Your Business Needs to Know / Deb Gelman, Bottle Rocket 114 Taking a Look at Centralized Cryptocurrency Exchanges: A Top 4 Experiential Analysis / Liam Gilmore, Bottle Rocket
EDITORS: Rajesh Midha and Clare Lawson MANAGING EDITOR: Jana Boone DESIGN AND ART DIRECTION: Stefani Guest, Laura Berner, Luis Vilches, Aracelli Huggins, Mikayla Engelke, Ben Clark CREATIVE DIRECTION: Roberto Fara PUBLISHER: Ogilvy Experience CONTRIBUTING COMPANIES AND ENTITIES: After the Glass Breaks, Airship, Amplitude, Bloomreach, Bottle Rocket, Eicoff, IBM, Iterable, Jussi, Liftoff by Bottle Rocket, mParticle, Ogilvy, Radar, Simon Data, Social Lab, The Lacek Group, Thematically Speaking, Verticurl Printed by Creative Color LLC, Garland, TX 75040 EXP. Magazine. © 2023. All Rights Reserved. Neither this publication nor any part of it may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written consent of EXP Magazine. Published by Ogilvy Experience, Dallas, TX 75254. Where opinion is expressed it is that of the authors and does not necessarily coincide with the editorial views of the publisher or editorial staff of EXP. Magazine.
A short-form podcast for people curious about product-led growth, B2B marketing, and purposeful impact.
Ever wondered what you can learn from unrelated topics like B2B marketing and Ancient Greece or product-driven growth and infomercials? Join experienced B2B marketers and friends, Ari & Rajesh, as they navigate their way through decades of experiences in search of practical knowledge and insights, all discussed through the lens of various seemingly unrelated themes or stories. During each chat, they will wander purposefully through life and work experiences to uncover new learnings that B2B marketers and product-driven companies can apply to their everyday lives.
For those too young to remember, before there was digital music, companies like Columbia and BMG offered mail-order record clubs. The pitch was irresistible – 12 CDs for one penny. Of course, once you signed up, they pursued you with a Terminator-like tenacity to purchase the full priced Kenny Loggins greatest hits album.
My roommate Dave McCann outsmarted the marketing with a strategy understood by 16-year-olds across the country. You could just change your name and sign up again. Because our house was on the corner, he simple filled out a new application with our side entrance as the address and changed his name from Dave McCann to Dame McCann. Why, with the infinite names in existence, he chose to alter one letter of his first name and transform himself into what sounds like a royal British woman, I never understood.
Working at the intersection of data and experience today, I picture a team of brilliant marketers at Columbia records using advance segmentation models and beautiful design principles befuddled to understand why a struggling 24-year-old actor and a mature British baronetess share a common taste in music. I see them brainstorming a marketing experience that delights both slackers and high-born women.
It’s a ridiculous example but, let’s be honest, it captures an important truth about most organizations even 30 years later. Every company I meet with sincerely wants to client centric. They want to create relevant experiences for the individual. But do they truly know the person on the other end of the experience?
To test reality, I encourage organizations to look at their customer data and ask how well they know their audience. Is the data integrated for a 360 view of the individual or is it siloed by functions? Is it easily available in formats for creators and dynamic creative processes or is it buried in a database? Are they able to get beyond personas to see real people in detail? In other words, can you tell Dave from Dame?
The inevitable result is that no company has a complete view and traditional businesses often struggle with the basics. If it were just a data question, we might leave it to the CIO, but winning organizations understand that customer insight is foundational to the creative experience.
In fact, in a digital world, your user experience and your user data are inseparable. The future of our profession is data-driven experience.
As a best practice, consider three essential ways in which we should all be marrying data and experience.
If you’re already applying these principles of data-driven experience, congratulations. You’re a market leader. If you’re not there yet, it’s imperative to begin. If you want to start simply - designers, introduce yourself to a data-scientist. Data folks, make friends with a designer. Celebrate that we collaborate at the intersection of the creative process and the scientific method. Only together, can we find the beautiful data-driven experience that brings Dave and Dame back together.
1Start with data-informed design. The best companies build experiences around behavioral insight. They move beyond personas and design around real people.
2Plan for dynamic creative delivery. Winning organizations tailor experiences to the individual, often based on real-time insight. We may visit the same url, but our experiences are tailored to us.
3Iterate based on experimentation. Leaders build iteration and testing into their experience. They spend less time up-front planning, and more time refining based on actual performance data.
The Metaverse. NFTs. Virtual humans. There’s no small amount of hype around these new forms of digital engagement, but how should brands use these tools to influence people effectively?
The new wave of digital tools is designed to transport us to virtual realities; a world of digital people, possessions, and spaces. The tools may be new, but the art of storytelling is not. It has always been about creating meaningful human experiences through virtual realities. Every work of fiction, from the books we read as children, to the video games we play today, to the best films we watch, presents a world inhabited by characters who exist only in the shared imaginations of creator and audience, a world where we forge powerful emotional bonds.
For the savvy communicator these manufactured worlds present opportunities for very real emotional impact and genuine human connection. The platforms we tell stories on are changing, but success still depends upon the bedrocks of influence, creativity, and empathy.
These new storytelling vehicles - be they digital people, digital possessions, or digital spacesfeed into the fundamental human desire to learn through empathy. Empathizing through stories is part of our nature as social beings, but making meaningful connections requires skilled creators, with deep insights into the lives of the people they are trying to engage. We borrow meaning from a wealth of life experiences, and from cultural immersion, to bring these stories to life, and the expression of that authentic connection is the key to influence. Just as it always has been.
Technology now enables us to personalize these storytelling connections, unlocking remarkable creative possibilities, lowering costs, and enabling engagement and real time reach.
The real value of digital possessions like NFTs, for instance, lies not in their status as objects but in their role as a medium for connecting people in a shared story that evolves as people engage.
This is possible due to innovation in artificial intelligence. AI can gather data from users on a vast scale, analyze that information, and generate content based on people’s behavior. The ability of AI to learn and create has already transformed the way we produce personalized content online, and that potential is only growing. AI is getting more sophisticated and opening the door to creations such as meta-humans, and generative art in the world of NFTs.
When strategizing the creation of digital influencers or other digital communications programs, brands should consider what communities they can borrow influence from, and what team capabilities they will need in order to create the right cultural codes.
A good starting point for brands to begin with is empathy, taking care to feel what audiences are themselves feeling, and using new digital capabilities to offer relevant and meaningful experiences. Whether the connection is digital or analog, empathy is what makes it real.
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY: OGILVY
One question that is on the mind of many retailers today is how to connect digital ecosystems with our physical store experiences. One of my favorite examples of who is doing it well is Nike. When you think of digital experiences, Nike may not be the first name that pops up in your head. However, they are constantly staying ahead of the game, and they’ve been able to quickly adapt and deploy digital consumer experiences in a multitude of areas.
As a self-proclaimed “sneaker head,” I spend way too much time scouring the internet to find the latest designs or pre-order exclusive shoes. I’ve also spent too much time returning shoes that I’ve gotten in the wrong size online. Recently, I was buying a new pair of sneakers on the Nike app and I saw a feature called Nike Fit. Nike Fit is a tool that uses augmented reality and AI to scan your feet and tell you your ideal shoe size for Nike footwear. The entire process took me less than a minute, and I was given a simple, effective solution to enhance my shopping experience. Nike is successfully carving the path for brands, demonstrating that a “sell the lifestyle” ethos can work just as effectively in the digital world as it does in the real world.
NIKE IS SUCCESSFULLY CARVING THE PATH FOR BRANDS, DEMONSTRATING THAT A “SELL THE LIFESTYLE” ETHOS CAN WORK JUST AS EFFECTIVELY IN THE DIGITAL WORLD AS IT DOES IN THE REAL WORLD.
They are also very quick to capitalize on digital trends such as the metaverse and NFT’s. In 2021, Nike built a metaverse to allow their consumers to meet, socialize, and take part in promotions. They also engaged users with a whole range of brand experiences, such as a digital showroom to dress avatars in Nike attire, providing a sneak peek into future products, and even allowing users to cocreate new items. Within five months of its launch, Nikeland amassed seven million visitors. Nike’s early involvement in the metaverse allowed them to quickly move into the NFT space as well. (An NFT is a digital asset that lives on a blockchain and represents real-world objects like art or music that are essentially unique and one-of-a-kind.) Nike’s first collection of NFT sneakers called CryotoKicks Dunk Genesis was released in April of this year. They launched 20,000 “Cryptokicks” NFTs, which sold for $7,500-9,000 each. One of them, by Japanese contemporary artistTakashi Murakami, sold for a remarkable $134,000.
One of the ways that Nike has retained their competitive edge is by continually adopting new innovations into their ecosystem and providing continuous value for their customers. From a consumer perspective, I’m curious to see how my shopping experience will become more personalized and effortless as more retailers prioritize digital transformation. I’m sure many companies will look at Nike’s digital success and “just do it”.
Every sight, sound, or confusing UI can impact whether someone ends up as a lifelong advocate for your brand or heads down the street to check out the competition.
The birth of modern customer experience as a discipline can be traced back to 1994 when Steve Haeckel and Lou Carbone published the seminal article Engineering Customer Experiences . In the article, they provide what has become the foundation for the modern, holistic view of experience: Experience is the ‘takeaway’ impression formed by people’s encounters with products, services, and businesses — a perception produced when humans consolidate sensory information.
The world has vastly progressed in the quarterplus century since the article’s publication. Now, consumers and businesses are connected to one another in ways that would be indistinguishable from magic to someone looking forward from 1994 — when the average price of gas was $1.11, and the coolest new technology was Netscape Navigator
Today, experience is everywhere, all of the time. The line between in-person and online interactions is quickly disappearing. And thanks to 24/7 access to the internet through our smartphones and other connected devices, by the time a potential customer, client, or patient thinks to themselves, ‘Maybe I need…,” their experience has already begun. Every sight, sound, or confusing UI can have an impact on whether someone ends up as a lifelong advocate for your brand or heads down the street to check out the competition.
PUBLISHED BY BOTTLE ROCKET
How can you prepare for the future of experience? Here are our favorite 10 “truths” as explained by our industry contributors and experience experts throughout this report.
001
Understand that the sheer definition of experience has changed forever. Everything is experience and experience is everything.
002
Creating truly great experiences requires considering not only the physical or digital spaces where a user interacts, but rather the entire ecosystem of your business and how all the pieces and parts work in harmony to deliver on customer expectations.
003
Understand that customer, user and consumer expectations are changing at a breakneck speed. Staying close and listening intently will be the key to success. Keep their needs at the front and center of your strategy.
004 The impact of investing in experience is proven. Invest wisely, don’t just spend money.
005
Digital experiences can, and will, drive retention and loyalty for your brand.
006
Experience at the core of your business strategy could be the differentiator your business needs.
007
Technology is advancing just as fast as customer expectations, bringing endless opportunities for engaging connection points.
008
The future of experience includes physical, digital, and human experiences that are deeply connected to people’s emotions and priorities in their personal journey of life.
009
When building or innovating on a digital experience, aim to build the best possible experience ecosystem possible. Customers expect every experience they have to be as good, or better, than their last best experience, no matter the type of company.
010
The ability to interact with any brand or company in a true omnichannel fashion is what will be required to stay relevant in an experience-driven world.
Emerging technologies often take many years to become adopted by the mainstream. This has been referred to as “The Rule of 10”, which suggests that it takes 10 years for a new technology to become viable, and then a further 10 years for it to reach widespread adoption. For example, TV was invented in 1927 but didn’t become widely used until the 1950s. Bluetooth was created in the 1980’s but wasn’t defined as Bluetooth until 1994 and didn’t hit mass usage and adoption until 2004. MP3’s was first used as a file format in 1993 but nobody really benefited from it until 2001 with the launch of the iPod and that took until 2007 to reach peak penetration.
The perception of innovation is often one of break-neck speed, despite the fact that it can actually take up to 20 years for a new technology to become mainstream. This paradox is due to the fact that innovation is often associated with small groups of people with big brains, few constraints and big budgets, who are able to quickly develop and implement new ideas.
I am not sure that has ever been true – in fact if you were able to ask any of the above inventors, I expect you will find that few of them felt exceptionally gifted, few had lot of money to play with and few felt their progress was rapid!
The confusing truth is that we (as consumers) have never adopted tech as quickly as we do today, while at the same time will never again
adopt tech as slowly as we do today. It’s a flywheel of progress that makes the 10-year rule harder to accept as a yard stick for the future.
However, there is one consistent aspect of the ‘rule of 10’ that will never be eroded.
In many instances, the reason for the ‘rule of 10’ is down not to the rate of technical development but what we commonly refer to as ‘product market fit (PMF)’; unless the technology is needed and has a serviceable audience willing to shell out one or both of their most valued commodities (time and money) then it won’t get traction.
It’s a common issue and certainly one we see all around us in the era of the ‘metaverse’.
The metaverse in of itself as a term is a paradox: to some, the metaverse is a fantastical extension of the current internet, a digital universe that is still under construction, a blank canvas in which we are all starting to build and experiment.
A space in which businesses can extend their reach and engage with customers in new and exciting ways. A space in which we will see the convergence of the physical and the digital. Likened to
To others, the metaverse umbrella term for technologies that are currently being developed and commercialized and that have the potential to provide us with new and immersive experiences that blur the lines between the physical and the digital. They have the potential to transform the way we live, work and play. They have the potential to change the very fabric of society. But, they are also technologies that are in their infancy and that are yet to find their footing in the mainstream.
The PMF for the ‘Oasis’ vision of the metaverse is poor (potentially with the exception of the gaming community, but that’s another story).
The current batch of metaverse offerings are failing to solve a current problem that people have in their lives. There is no pressing need for most people to don a headset and enter a virtual world when they can do everything they need to do in the physical world. The current crop of metaverse products are also failing to offer an experience that is significantly better than what people can get in the physical world. They are not as useful as mobile technology and they are not as entertaining as output from
DICKON LAWS, GLOBAL HEAD OF INNOVATION, OGILVY LEX AI CO-AUTHOR the infamous ‘Oasis’ experience in Ernest Clines 2011 Sci-Fi novel ‘Ready Player One’ Ogilvy will be launching its new Emerging Technology Lab, REALITY, at the end of 2022. The Lab’s vision is to be a matchmaker, translator, and risk manager for Ogilvy’s clients.fully-fledged game studios. Their UX is the equivalent of the early version of Blackberries i.e., weird new interaction patterns that are all fingers and thumbs and trial and error.
Metaverse environments like Decentraland and the Sandbox saw rapid grow in revenues between 2019 and 2022 as brands poured into these spaces to buy land, anticipating a gold rush of consumers to follow. But the ‘build it and they will come’ approach failed. The average daily active users on those platforms are sometimes closer to the number of digits on your hands and feet combined.
Early investors who created the metaverse gold-rush argue that it is not the current avatar-led experience that they are buying into, but the underlying tech and its potential development and application for future use cases.
But that reinforces the point about product-market-fit – they admit it’s not ripe yet.
As Ruth Bram, Executive Producer at Meta said at the Meta Quest Showcase earlier this year “the hardware and software need more work, and it may take five to 10 years to fully bring it to life.”
Very few ‘consumers’ care. For the value to be realized, the job to be done is to make the metaverse work for them, not make them work for the metaverse.
That’s more easily done if you discard the paradoxical definition of the metaverse and focus on the portfolio of underlying tech that sits or has been placed under the blanket term.
Breaking out the unique attributes and use cases for things like AR, VR, AI, Web 3, and all the other wonderful acronyms that exist in emerging tech, is easier. While it might be ‘emerging’, this is still tech with a history. With a trajectory. With more easily defined use cases and semi-established relevance for the mass market.
The way to accelerate emerging technologies by making them have better ‘PMF’ is the role of the creative services industry. Creatives have long been at the forefront of technology adoption, due to their inquisitive natures and willingness to experiment. This has been the case with some of the most important technologies of our time, such as Apple’s design-focused products under Johnny Ives and Beats by Dre headphones from Dr Dre and Jimmy Iovine. Steve Jobs also traveled the world to
understand human nature before he became a tech mogul, creating his famous ability to predict human needs.
Creative services have the ability to look at a problem and the ingredients on the table and work to use creative thinking to forge a solution that others can’t see. We have the ability through storytelling to explain to end users the value a service has on their lives. We have the ability to envision how the technology might be repurposed to solve those needs. We have the unique blend of brand, business, technology, and consumer understanding to translate opportunities to brands in ways that are compelling and pragmatic.
The history of creative services is glistening with examples of how the industry has defied logic, make sense of the nonsensical and used paradoxical thinking to conjure incredible feats of invention and intervention. I am so excited to fight fire with fire and solve these paradoxical times with paradoxical thinking.
Benefit Cosmetics is the #1 prestige makeup brand in the United Kingdom and #1 brow brand worldwide. It boasts some of the most loved and iconic beauty staples — such as Hoola Bronzer, BADGal Bang Mascara, Precisely My Brow Pencil, Gimme Brow+, and Porefessional Primer — that dominate makeup bags up and down the country. Founded in 1976 by twin sisters Jean and Jane, the beauty brand is one of the fastest-growing prestige beauty brands in the business, with locations in 59 countries across five continents.
So when the company decided to discontinue its previous range of blushes and launch an entirely new range of products, it needed a marketing campaign worthy of the quality products it was releasing to its loyal customers. And there was only one solution that would suit Benefit perfectly — Bloomreach Engagement.
Bloomreach Engagement offers companies the ability to orchestrate omnichannel campaigns that foster customer loyalty. Benefit used Bloomreach Engagement to successfully deploy its “Blush Launch” omnichannel campaign, which combined email marketing, lead generation, and weblayers.
Benefit heavily segmented its customer audiences, splitting them up into previous buyers, VIPs, and customers who opted in for the waitlist (in exchange for an exclusive promotional gift with purchase offer). Emails sent to those waitlist customers had an incredible 10.10% average click-through rate overall — a direct result of Benefit’s efforts and the real-time segmentation capabilities of Bloomreach Engagement.
When the campaign launched, Benefit’s creative marketing mindset and incredible products, combined with Bloomreach Engagement’s customer journey orchestration, proved to be the backbone of the campaign.
Benefit’s marketers were able to understand their customers’ journeys through Bloomreach Engagement and use those insights to inform and execute the next action of their campaign. They also reported on the end-to-end success of their launch across channels using the custom reporting and analytics tools within the platform rather than relying on outside business analytics tools.
Ultimately, Benefit was able to attribute leads and orders to the right channels thanks to an all-in-one platform, and could make an educated decision on where to invest to optimize future campaigns.
“We are always looking to support our D2C site through our CRM capabilities, and the campaign has definitely been a great success for Benefit,” said Amy Del Pizzo, CRM Coordinator for Benefit Cosmetics. “Bloomreach has helped us see the products that are performing best so we can optimize accordingly. Because of that, we’ve seen all of our blush sales skyrocketing versus what we saw a few months prior.”
The campaign’s top metric was Benefit’s clickthrough rate on Blush Launch emails, which was 63% higher than the global retail average and 50% higher than an average Benefit campaign. Additionally, Blush Launch emails generated 40% more revenue than similar emails sent by Benefit.
If you’re interested in learning how your company can create similar omnichannel campaigns that turn your customers into brand loyalists, schedule a personalized demo with Bloomreach today.
Bloomreach has helped us see the products that are performing best so we can optimize accordingly.
Because of that, we’ve seen all of our blush sales skyrocketing versus what we saw a few months prior. ”
– Amy Del Pizzo, CRM Coordinator for Benefit Cosmetics
Bloomreach Commerce Experience Cloud offers a suite of products that drive true personalization and digital commerce growth, including: Content, Discovery, and Engagement. Together, these solutions combine the power of unified customer and product data with the speed and scale of AI-optimization, enabling revenue-driving digital commerce experiences that convert on any channel and every journey.
Our API-first, headless CMS offers the flexibility to power any front end while retaining the personalization and authoring capabilities commerce professionals know and love.
Our product and content search, merchandising, SEO, and recommendations capabilities are backed by an AI engine built with more than a decade of data, enabling commerce professionals to drive improved conversion rates through powerful discovery tools.
Welcome to real personalization —finally. Our realtime Customer Data Platform (CDP) combined with intelligent marketing automation provides the synergy required to guide your customers through an ultratailored, always consistent, cross-channel journey.
RAJESH MIDHA, CEO, BOTTLE ROCKET AND PRESIDENT, OGILVY EXPERIENCE
Meetings. Some days, there just seem to be so many. And now with the added disconnection of Zoom/Microsoft Teams for many of them, sometimes I find it hard to stay focused. For each meeting, I strive to show up with presence and purpose, to make the most of my time with whoever is on the other side of the table or the other end of the call. Once I have my calendar set to actually have the meetings that matter (lots has been written on this subject and I am personally still working on this myself), here are 5 steps that help me stay present and connected to my colleagues and help ensure I have succeeded, regardless of the outcome.
Arrive in the moment and be present to the moment. Interrupt my automatic nature.
What is the purpose of the work? How would I like to show up? Who am I serving? Let go and be flexible and surrender attachment to specific outcomes. See everything as a stepping stone and opportunity for growth.
See what I can add to the meeting. Be guided by purpose, presence, and intention. Activate curiosity. Notice what is going on inside of me as the meeting progresses. Am I feeling excited, stressed, or triggered by something, and how is that changing the way I show up? Game film and make real-time adjustments to serve more effectively.
Turn the lights back on when they go out. I will get a text on my phone or inevitably feel compelled to check my email and lose consciousness to being present. When that happens, breathe, close the text or email, and come back to the meeting and the present moment.
Recognize the interconnectedness of everything and appreciate the connection point with others. Feel the wonder and awe of how it ALL links together in a grander and larger arc of life. Open myself to the always emerging future and allow myself to be shaped and changed by each present moment.
Gaming has become one of the primary ways millions of people globally spend their time. We spoke to Kaare Wesnaes, Head of Innovation at Ogilvy in New York, to explore where and how the industry will use this form of media to reach more consumers.
With so many forms of digital media, and new ones always on the horizon, how do you determine which way of pushing content is the most viable?
You have to know your audience. Gamers, for example, are generally quite skeptical and can be fickle when reacting to advertising content being pushed on them. We look for angles to insert brands in authentic and unexpected ways that have meaningful context. By creating experiences worth talking about, the approach is naturally earned-first. There is also a question of reach, inclusion, and accessibility, where some media like VR is still relatively exclusive, but AR and other areas less so. There is no one-size-fits-all answer, but the most viable ways of pushing content are those that identify compelling solutions which address the business challenges and brand purpose while respecting the community. The best solutions are highly creative and highly usable.
How does the boundless framework of the metaverse make it appealing for brands and marketers to get involved in this new form of media?
The introduction of the metaverse allows for completely new ways of engaging and interacting with consumers. Many brands find it daunting as it incorporates a spectrum of new ways of thinking and use often unfamiliar tech, yet there’s ample room for experimentation. We are deeply ingrained in what is happening, what brands and consumers are doing, while anticipating how the space is likely to develop and what’s to come next. It is important to understand the different opportunities the various virtual worlds and experiences offer, and what the communities are doing in the different spaces. New audiences, engagement models, and the beginning of a brand-new digital economy make this particularly intriguing.
What plans does Ogilvy have to expand its reach into the metaverse?
Ogilvy has a specialist global practice that focuses on exploring the metaverse and its associated technologies. We are multi-disciplinary and ingrained with our creative teams, making sure that creativity and insights are strongly woven together. We have helped create and drop new NFT series, are building in virtual real estate, developed groundbreaking AR and VR experiences, and found ways to extend brands into a variety of gaming platforms. We view the metaverse as a natural extension of services into new media spaces with new opportunities and evolving consumer behaviors. The metaverse, and all that it has to offer, is a hyper-growth space that is quite necessary to plan for in collaboration with our brand partners. It is paramount to our role as client counselors to help them navigate this space which is still quite nascent. It means seeing around corners in a rapidly growing space full of new audiences and a wealth of opportunities to engage.
How do you anticipate the metaverse shaping new forms of brand storytelling?
As technologies advance and hardware becomes less of a barrier, the metaverse allows for fuller and more immersive experiences. We can virtually insert our audiences into the stories with immersive storytelling. Virtual influencers, digital humans, and AI avatars can become new characters within a communications medium, and we can choreograph their performances, making them emotionally and situationally aware. Storytelling can come to life in unobtrusive ways where people can engage and ask questions without fear of embarrassment or guilt, no matter what the topic may be. As you truly are a character in the interactive story, storytelling can become even more emotionally engaging, and brands can position themselves as a positive influence in the space.
Given the interactive nature of these virtual spaces, how do you see this affecting the way consumers consume and engage with advertisements?
In what ways can the increase in virtual presence lead to more successful campaigns and what would a virtual space allow you to do that traditional media hasn’t?
The virtual spaces blend the physical and digital worlds, merging real and digital life. The metaverse allows for social interactions and connections on a deeper level. It is a shared experience that can take place anytime, anywhere, and in real-time. Crossing from IRL to virtual worlds allows us to have assets and utility converge into experiences that are exciting, entertaining, and offer real value. A successful virtual presence will plan for an always-on approach that evolves over time and brings people together across geographic locations and time zones.
Advertising will have to be a lot more seamless and authentic in these spaces. While display media is absolutely possible in virtual worlds, using old paradigms for advertisements are unlikely to be very successful. They don’t align well with how people engage with virtual media; on the contrary, it could receive very negative feedback from the skeptical audiences found in the crypto and gaming worlds. We advise our clients to not advertise in the metaverse but spend their budget on creating services and experiences instead, which show a far better understanding of the culture and values of the users in this space. Advertisers should look to create engaging interactive experiences that allow users to participate in the world, and not simply create static content on virtual real-estate.
In last year’s magazine, I wrote about MSCHF, a group of rebellious, tech literate, entrepreneurial minded troublemakers out of Brooklyn, NY. They’ve continued to impress me with their innovative products and promotions in 2022. So naturally, I’m back again this year to offer up my favorite key takeaways from this interesting group.
For those who aren’t familiar, MSCHF is a product development company that launches a new “product” every two weeks. Their products have a wide range of interests and antics and have ranged from introducing a font that looks exactly like Times New Roman but is 13% wider to selling 1,000 keys that all unlock the same hidden car (if you buy a key and are able to find the car, you can use the car). Brilliant.
With a curiosity and interest in anything technically literate and somewhat counterculture, I set out to learn more and understand the key to their success. As with all great things, it ultimately boils down to first principals. MSCHF has repeatable processes and clear notions of what they are and aren’t and a built-in mechanism that allows for (and somewhat almost encourages) failure.
Gabriel Whaley. He started his career at BuzzFeed focusing on creating new experiences. He believes MSCHF has the means to help solve “first world problems” and make money along the way. He focuses on building a strong internal culture where all creative ideas are considered. To demonstrate this in action, MSCHF has a physical whiteboard in the office that anyone can add ideas to – each Friday the board is reviewed for ideas and then erased. The ideas that make it to the board are unhinged and unedited (for example: CBD communion wafers). Some of these ideas become products, some go into the backlog, and some are just discarded.
There has to be some level of organization to produce viable products on two-week timelines. MSCHF has two structured brainstorms that occur every other week: FPP and RPP. FPP stands for Fame Producing Products – these generate press and attention but don’t link to monetization. In other words, these products strictly produce earned media. RPP stands for Revenue Producing Products. These products need to embody a brand and will be used to build out sustainable growth channels.
MSCF’s approach is purely insight driven rather than data backed. This may seem quite different than most for profit businesses on the planet. Quite a lot of time is spent thinking about what people want and identifying if there is white space to claim. Then when it comes product promotion, MSCHF applies a “no marketing fluff” approach. MSCHF uses elements of brutalist designs with limited frills making for a relatively differentiated experience with much less work. The design style plays with the notion that there is some commoditization of the brand style of the day.
What can businesses learn from MSCHF?
If you are a large established brand who has multiple stakeholders and large, lofty goals, it will be hard to take a lean and scrappy approach to product iteration or creation, especially one that originates wile, unproven ideas. As a large organization, my recommendation is to try applying the same questions that MSCHF asks to your brand and your day-to-day tasks:
How are you ensuring your customers advocate for your brand? Better yet, what parts of your service delivery model are driving your customers to speak publicly about their negative experience with you?
a. Is your 2023 capital budget prior itizing fixing customer journey break points?
b. Whose responsibility is it to iden tify and fix those breakpoints?
c. Who is waking up every day and thinking about how to get your customers to evangelize your brand? Not buy, evangelize…
Think about how you are generating ideas and roadmaps today. In my experience, a roadmap is generally the responsibility of a person or team. Do you have easily identifiable goals for what a product improvement should do? MSCHF has two… reminder of the FPP and RPP acronyms from earlier.
a. What are your easily indefinable goals?
b. As a leader, how are you ensur ing requisite voices are involved in the road mapping process?
c. If your challenges have more to do with service design (product-toproduct interactions or product-tosupport interactions) who is building that roadmap and prioritizing what to fix?
It might seem like a company that is famous for “Ketchup or Makeup” doesn’t have much to teach corporate America, but even chaotic startups have methodologies we can all learn from and apply to our daily lives.
In the process of getting more precise at CX, UX and UI personalization, is it possible we have been overlooking one of the most important aspects...we are dealing with humans. And humans come pre-wired to every choice and experience in ways traditional CX approaches cannot decode.
Sure, we capture individual demographics and behaviors and draw inferences from them. But that is the “what” and not the “why.” To more effectively and more empathetically mirror and adapt to individuals, we need to first understand that individual’s Hidden Who™ before we attempt to personalize their experience.
With the advent of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI), progress has been made in inferring this Sensemaking Genome™. Here are a few ways this is developing now that you should consider- but be aware that technology often outruns regulation and everything you implement related to decoding an individual customer should be transparent and with the permission of each customer. In short, make sure you are acting in your customer’s best interests.
First, when we say the Sensemaking Genome we mean a whole set of cognitive styles, personality traits, and identitytied worldviews that filter, focus, or distort information coming into our brains. Let’s look at just a few.
When we say Sensemaking Genome , what do we mean?
Just as every individual has a genome made up of a complete set of their DNA (23 pairs of chromosomes) that determines every aspect of their growth, development and health, each individual also has a kind of hidden hard-wiring that governs their preferences, choices, and behaviors. Scientists believe about half your personality is inherited, for example.
Personality traits are innate aspects that guide an individual’s sensemaking and behavior. While there has been some debate over whether they change over time, most studies claim that our personality is fairly fixed from our mid-twenties. Companies that understand the power of matching the experience to the individual’s personality have already filed for patents to do this (Google, Spotify, Apple). Apple’s patent says it wants to match the user’s personality with a wellness coaching app. Meanwhile, the company Mattersight has filed for a patent to match a customer with a customer service or call center representative by decoding their respective personalities.
Behavioral scientists and psychologists have come to a consensus that our personalities can be deconstructed into five factors with a handy acronym of OCEAN: Openness to experience; Conscientiousness; Extraversion; Agreeableness; Neuroticism (or its converse called “Emotional stability”). Many facets make up each of the five factors. For example Conscientiousness is composed of: achievement striving; cautiousness; dutifulness; orderliness; self-discipline; selfefficacy. We can be measured on a sliding scale from low to high on each factor.
If you can decode someone’s personality trait profile, you can be far better at creating an experience and interface that works for them, that puts them at ease and makes more sense.
Let’s imagine two different customers who appear identical in demographics but who have very different personalities.
• Bill scores high in Openness and craves variety and new experiences.
• George scores low in Openness. He is comforted by what he knows and routines.
• Bill scores low on Conscientiousness. He likes to improvise and “wing it,” and is not big on structure or deadlines.
• George scores very high in Conscientiousness and lack of discipline and structure make him uncomfortable.
• Bill scores high in Extraversion. He seeks out the company of others whenever possible and likes to take the limelight.
• George scores very low on this factor and is an Introvert. He’d prefer quiet time alone reading, gaming or listening to music.
• Bill is high on Agreeableness. He is trusting, warm and makes friends quickly. He can be easily influenced by likeable others.
• George is a skeptic. You need to convince him and he does not go along with the crowd.
• Bill is low on Neuroticism. He’s usually confident, calm, relaxed and not unnerved by stress.
• George scores high on Neuroticism. He replays conversions after the fact, wondering if he said something wrong. He finds others can be irritating.
Now you can see how Bill and George will likely need very different user experiences.
Humans also show up pre-wired to your experience with innate thinking (cognitive) and decision-making styles. There are many, but here are a few key cognitive styles that can affect the user experience.
Regulatory Focus refers to how we humans go about achieving goals and making decisions. We may be wired to be more of a Promotion focus, which means we strive to attain new goals, and are concerned about missed opportunities, or we can be wired with a more Prevention focus, which means we are motivated by safety, security and what we ought to be doing. Prevention-focused individuals are more motivated by avoiding harm and loss than achieving new goals. Think of it in terms of sports. A Promotion-focused tennis player hits shots close to the lines while a Prevention-focused player pushes the ball safely back into play, over-and-over again until their opponent makes an error. Your Prevention-focused customer will need to feel safe, secure and reassured they can avoid failure and even reverse course if need be. Your Promotion-focused customer wants to experience new things and has less fear of the unknown. They worry more about a missed opportunity.
So again, imagine two customers who are identical by traditional measures, but who come to your ecommerce experience each wired with a very different Regulatory Focus.
How will your CX adapt for each?
• Susan (Promotion) wants to level up and not miss the next great opportunity.
• But Natalie (Prevention) wants to be sure she will not make a mistake.
Some people are pre-wired to crave emotional experiences. They have a high Need for Affect (emotion). And while they are not mutually exclusive, it is likely that those high in a Need for Affect may not also be high in a Need for Cognition. Those high in a Need for Cognition like thinking about thinking! They enjoy digging into the data and the evidence. The high Need for Affect person, meanwhile, will be more persuaded by an emotional narrative.
How will your CX cater to each differently?
Those wired with a more Hedonic personality crave sensory experiences. They shop for entertainment, often with friends. Meanwhile the more Utilitarian person is not concerned with the brand experience so much as the price, convenience and time spent. It is a functional chore.
How will your CX adapt to each?
Identity pulls individuals together into tight ingroups, and identity repulses us from those in outgroups who do not see the world the way we do. In person, we take clues from others as to whether they might be in our ingroup. Clearly politics is one way we figure out who is in which tribe, or our stance on issues such as climate change or gun control. But so can clues such as our taste in comedy or music.
One framework used to map individuals (and now brands) is called “Cultural Cognition.”
As you can see below, the key forces on the vertical axis are Hierarchical versus Egalitarian. Those who identify more with a
RESPECT
Hierarchical worldview believe we need a clear leader or boss and a clear ranking order below that boss. But their opposites who subscribe to more of an Egalitarian worldview feel more comfortable when there is no ranking and we are all just equals. Then, on the horizontal axis you see those who are more Individualistic at one end with their Communitarian opposites at the other. Sometimes the individualists are called independent while the communitarians are called interdependent. Those Individualists believe in self-reliance, accountability and meritocracy. They like free markets and no government regulation or intervention. They are fine with a world that sorts the winners from the losers. But the Communitarians find that abhorrent and selfish. They believe we must care for the greater good above all, and especially for those more vulnerable or discriminated against. When these forces come together in each quadrant below, they flesh out a kind of worldview persona for each.
Just looking at the divide between the Individualists (Independent) and the Communitarians (Interdependent) we can already see from studies how very differently they view brands and experiences.
• Focuses more on own desires
• Lower coupon usage
• Less motivated by discounts
• Interacts more with content
• Prefers partitioned pricing
• Motivated by gains
• Motivated by nostalgia
• More utilitarian
• Spending oriented
• More abstract
• Need for uniqueness
• Likes underdog brand
•
• Moved by present
• More hedonic
• Higher coupon usage
• More motivated by discounts
• Prefers bundled pricing
• Motivated by avoiding losses
• Saving oriented
• More concrete
• OK with fitting into norm
• Likes leader brand
The behavioral science team at Ogilvy have developed over many years an award-winning research methodology to decode individuals at scale. But it is not always possible, of course, to give prospects a series of lengthy, rigorous tests in order to better understand them. That’s where the new developments in ML and AI come in; recent experiments show great promise in inferring personality trait profiles and cognitive styles from what individuals already do. Here are six areas that will create such opportunities. But one big caveat: just as with many breakthrough discoveries, they can be used for good or for evil. We must ensure that when decoding people we never use that intelligence against the best interests of those individuals.
If done ethically, we can improve the individual’s experience and outcome though a deeper and more empathetic understanding of what makes them tick.
Many studies have shown that an individual’s personality can be inferred from aspects of their social media digital crumbs.
One such study demonstrated the power of matching imagery to their personality traits. When the image matched the trait, it triggered a substantial lift in click through rates.
Using ML and AI to mine and parse text usage can be another valuable tool in decoding a user’s personality. Beyond the obvious sentiment measures, methods such as Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) evaluate syntax and order of words along with ratios of pronoun usage. By feeding the LIWC engine the text, you can infer the person’s personality.
Using artificial neural networks (ANN), a recent study found it could predict the personality of individuals by merely using their portraits.
Music may be the most powerful “tell” of all. It is deeply implicit, personal, and few would use it for impression management. This study found a predictive power of linking music choices with personality traits.
SOURCE: “Psychological targeting as an effective approach to digital mass persuasion,” Matz, et al
How do we decode the Sensemaking Genome in people, especially as experiences are digital and physical?
SOURCE: “Personality, Gender, and Age in the Language of Social Media: The Open-Vocabulary Approach,” Schwartz, et al
SOURCE: “Assessing the Big Five personality traits using real-life static facial images,” Kachur, et al.
SOURCE: “Just the Way You Are: Linking Music Listening on Spotify and Personality,” Anderson et al.
We know that humans can be very complex and seemingly irrational. While using rules-based behavioral clues to craft your CX can be very helpful, it still does not reveal that Hidden Who that allows for real empathy in creating effective experience design. Now, at the nexus of behavioral science, machine learning and experience design, we will begin to unlock a whole new world of empathy journeys.
STEP 1: Learn the science of decoding the human Sensemaking Genome™
Ogilvy has developed easy-to-digest workshops that introduce these concepts.
This can be done either via a customer opt-in to a personality test, or via an established inference method (see above) so long as the data capture is legal and ethical.
Working with Ogilvy, you can develop psychographically-crafted personas that inform the tone, language, style and framing of the UI and total CX so each can be matched to the appropriate customer type.
STEP 4: Ensure you always have your human customer’s best interests at heart, and never exploit their inner wirings against those best interests.
SOURCE: All images/icons included were sourced from Pexels, Unsplash & Flaticon
As growth-oriented practitioners, how do we operate at the intersection of behavioral science, machine learning and experience design to unlock a whole new world of empathy-oriented journeys that engage, delight and drive outcome?
Better e iciency, more engagement, and best-in-class experiences. See how at radar.com
The past few years have been a rollercoaster ride for brick-and-mortar businesses and with the current economic forecast it seems as though the ride isn’t over yet. In the face of this uncertainty, it’s even more important for retailers and restaurant brands to doubledown on the customer experience across both physical and digital channels. For this reason, investing in location is essential for businesses that want to improve customer experience and remain successful in competitive industries. Yet, despite the impact of location on business outcomes, many teams either don’t know where to get started, or they struggle to fully capitalize on their existing location solution. Here are three common challenges that brick-and-mortar businesses are facing today and the ways in which digital leaders are addressing them with location.
Even before pandemic shutdowns, retailers with large brick and mortar footprints were at a disadvantage against digital-only businesses. Despite a return to in-store shopping, consumer habits continue to heavily favor digital interactions. To compete against digital-only brands, retailers with brick and mortar stores must make their physical locations an asset instead of a liability. The best way to do this? By focusing on the consumer experience — both digitally and in-store.
Location is essential for improving customer experiences and it powers the initiatives that are top of mind for digital leaders. According to a new study, “Deliver world-class customer experiences with location infrastructure,” 83% of CX leaders in the US reported that a top priority over the next 12 months includes both creating or improving more personalized customer experiences and 75% reported that a top priority is creating or improving in-store experiences that span both digital and physical channels.
To make retail stores revenue drivers, retailers must invest in creating the retail experiences of the future which span both physical and digital channels.
For retailers looking for concrete ideas on how to do this, one instructive example comes from Home Depot, which has an in-store app mode that augments the customer’s in-store experience with information, recommendations, and wayfinding. JOANN provides another example of how hybrid instore experiences can also be used to drive digital orders. By displaying a free shipping coupon for shoppers who are in-store, JOANN was able to generate 25K incremental orders.
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Rising labor and raw good costs have put a crunch on restaurant brands and QSRs who typically already have small margins. As a result, restaurants must focus on improving efficiency while also driving customer loyalty. One of the biggest vectors for efficiency gains is in order management since it has direct implications for both on in-store operations as well as the customer’s experience. Yet, 51% of respondents to a study commissioned by Radar and conducted by Forrester Consulting, reported that they face challenges managing orders going out across multiple channels. Additionally, 46% of respondents said that one of their most significant customer experience challenges is standardizing customer experiences across locations.
Inconsistent experiences are costly and erode customer loyalty, and location infrastructure is a key ingredient in creating more seamless operations. Today, leading restaurant brands are using location to deliver flawless order ahead and pickup experiences. Yet, the power of location doesn’t stop at the pickup lane. As restaurant brands, such as Panera, are reimagining the restaurant of the future, forwardthinking teams are using location technology to make data-driven decisions, increase automation, and develop personalized onpremise experiences.
Inconsistent experiences are costly and erode customer loyalty, and location infrastructure is a key ingredient in creating more seamless operations
Consumer expectations have shifted dramatically over the past few years. While the bar for experience and personalization has been set by digital leaders, brick and mortar brands must catch up if they want to stay competitive. Customers expect that messaging
and experiences across their journey will be personalized and contextual. At the same time, one of the most significant CX challenges for respondents in our study is personalizing customer experiences (54%).
Personalization no longer means just including a customer’s first name in marketing emails. Rather, it’s tailoring every step of their customer journey based on their preferences and past interactions. Personalizing experience based on a customer’s location ranges from displaying messaging relevant to a customer’s physical location to displaying content that reflects their history with your brand.
While customers expect personalization, they are more privacy conscious than ever. As a result, businesses need to ensure that customers receive value from sharing personal data, such as their location. In the study “Deliver world-class customer experiences with location infrastructure,”68% of respondents said that customers not opting in to location sharing represents a challenge for their organizations. The same study also found that respondents at companies who develop all or most of their location technology in-house are more likely to report that permission prompting is challenging or very challenging than those who purchase or license it (57% versus 37%). Building locationbased experiences using just foreground signals is one way that businesses can minimize the data they collect, while also delivering seamless, world-class experiences that customers expect.
It is possible for all businesses to build the future of location now. It’s also imperative. Failing to invest in location infrastructure — or failing to maximize their current investment in location — costs businesses both in terms of lost revenue and wasted spend. This is why brands such as AfterPay, American Eagle, and Whataburger partner with Radar to maximize the opportunities presented by location.
Read the Full Report Here:
Challenge 3: Consumers expect personalized experiences, but are more privacy conscious than ever before
Definition: Average revenue per customer allows answers the question of how much money a customer will generate for your business in the long term.
Formula: Divide the total revenue of your business by the total number of customers you have in a given duration.
How to Use It: Average revenue per customer is often used to determine how much you should spend on customer acquisition.
In today’s digitally advanced age, its no secret that every company on the Fortune 500 list (and beyond) leverages their website and/or mobile app as a key means of serving and interacting with customers. Although each digital product is used in a variety of different ways depending on the business, there are common themes to how the performance of different digital experiences, or products, can be measured.
The right metrics and supporting context provide the teams who manage and develop the digital products with answers to the questions they need to make decisions about necessary improvements.
Typically, the nuanced metrics each business measures differs wildly from industry to industry (and business type to business type); however, there are a common set of metrics that are helpful for ANY business to pay attention to.
Below are the top five metrics that we saw used most often by digital teams in 2022.
- Average Revenue Per Customer
- Customer Acquisition Costs
- Monthly Active Users
- Goal Completion Conversion Rates
- Retention
Definition: Customer acquisition cost (CAC) represents the average spend your company incurs to win new customers.
Formula: Take the total cost of marketing and sales and divide it by the number of new users who become customers.
How to Use It: Customer acquisition cost is often compared to average revenue per customer to determine if a target segment is worth investing in from a paid media perspective.
I think it’s safe to assume that every business will be looking for ways to improve their digital customer touchpoints in 2023. Every business can use these five metrics as clues to help solve some of the most difficult challenges every digital team faces. It’s important for every business to have the right context for how to use these metrics for their industry and business type especially for comparison purposes. The retention rate for Apple, for example, will look far different than say Home Depot. Let’s break down these metrics by core definition, formula and how to use it.
TIM DUNCAN, PRINCIPAL PRODUCT MANAGER - GROWTH, BOTTLE ROCKETDefinition: This metric measures the number of active users your product has over a monthly period.
Formula: How a company defines an “active user” can vary, so there is no standard formula for this metric. Based on how your company defines an “active user”, take this total number of people over a 1-year period and divide it by 12.
How to Use It: This metric is typically used as a benchmark to understand the overall momentum of a digital product or website.
Definition: Goal completion is a broad term to represent the various ways the business uses to calculate what their critical path conversion rate is within their digital experience. For example, the number of people who visit a website compared to the number of people who buy something would be a conversion rate with a goal attributed to it.
Formula: Take the total number of people who successfully completed an action and divide it by the total number of people who tried that same action.
How to Use It: Conversion rates are very helpful when determining how efficient your website is, for example, and is commonly used to benchmark against competitors.
Definition: Customer retention refers to the rate at which customers stay with a business over a period of time.
Formula: To calculate your customer retention rate, you can use the following simple formula involving the customers you have at the start (S), at the end (E) and customers acquired during the period you’re measuring (N). It looks like this: CRR = ((E-N)/S) x 100.
How to Use It: Retention should be used to understand if an experience is offering enough value to keep people coming back time and time again.
Sources
https://www.zyxware.com/articles/4344/list-of-fortune-500-companies-and-their-websites https://www.qualtrics.com/experience-management/product/product-metrics/ https://www.salesforce.com/eu/learning-centre/customer-service/customer-retention/
REBECCA FARR, TECHNICAL DELIVERY LEAD, BOTTLE ROCKET
The COVID-19 pandemic has shifted many things about work, including the way we collaborate. Face-to-face interactions have now become endless Teams and Zoom meetings. It’s no secret that building relationships and having a “togetherness” feeling remotely can be challenging. But regardless of what some people will say, it’s not impossible. You don’t need to be in the same room to build a strong working relationship.
Can it be easier to build relationships faceto-face? Sure. But is it necessary? Absolutely not. Building strong virtual bonds requires deliberate action and time but is 100% attainable. Why should you care? You have a remote job, can’t you just do your work alone and in peace?
You might think that in order to build up strong relationships, you’ll have to put in a lot of time outside of your normal working hours. Depending on what your job entails, that may or may not be true. However, I’ve had success in making it a part of my everyday routine so I can also enjoy some work-life balance. If you make it a habit, it starts to become instinctual and less of a chore. Some of the ideas discussed in this article will require you to invest time outside of your regular hours, but many of them don’t.
There are a ton of different ways you can build relationships, but here are some ideas if you need inspiration. This isn’t all inclusive and these aren’t hard and fast rules, but you can use them as a guide.
1. Be deliberate. Do you get wrapped up in your projects and forget to reach out to people? Put 15 minutes on your calendar every day to remind you. The trick is to not make this robotic. Reach out because you care about them or want to say hi or talk about something just like if they were sitting next to you in an office. And because they can respond whenever, you don’t have to worry as much about “bothering” them or “finding the right time.” If they’re busy, they can respond when they get a chance.
2. Be choosy. As much as you might want to bond with everyone at your company, that could prove difficult. While knowing more people is generally better than less, try to focus on quality vs quantity. If the 1,000 people you spoke with once don’t remember you (or you them), that defeats the purpose. But if you have strong relationships with 50 people, that’s more ideal. You can gradually grow your network over time.
3. Be strategic. This may be the only impression you get to make, so put in the effort to make it a good one. Practice your elevator pitch if you need to. If you forget the names of people in the meeting, go through the invite list. Try to pick out someone from each meeting you attend that you want to reach out to. If it’s helpful, keep a (discreet) cheat sheet of the people you’ve met with and one or two things about them that you can discuss later. People notice when you remember things about them.
4. Be persistent. Follow up on Slack about something mentioned previously to help build up the relationship. It doesn’t have to be big. As an example, did they tell you that their kid was playing in a soccer game that evening?
Ask them how it went. Alternatively, if you met them in passing, just let them know it was nice meeting them and see if you can spark up a conversation from there.
5. Be remembered. Add them on LinkedIn. This helps build your network and reminds them who you are. If you didn’t get an opportunity to really introduce yourself or talk about your experience, it gives them a chance to view it on
your profile. This provides the potential for additional interaction (when they post) and helps you keep in touch if one of you leaves your current company.
6.Be consistent . Once you’ve identified who you want to build closer relationships with, see if you can get a recurring meeting on their calendar — even if it’s just 15 minutes every other week. Face time, even on Zoom calls, is important.
7.Be chatty. Find group chats of interests you have. Many companies will have them already set up. If not — suggest it! This is a great way to make connections with people
you normally wouldn’t work with. Examples are channels/chats about indoor gardening, food, etc. Make sure you have a group chat with people on your team as well!
8.Be creative. Have a virtual happy hour or lunch (some companies will sponsor these). My peers in the Solution Management practice here at Bottle Rocket have success playing games like Codenames or Gartic Phone. This reduces awkward conversation and allows team members to bond over fun activities. If you live close enough to some of your co-workers and feel comfortable with it, meet them for lunch or dinner at a restaurant.
9.Be advantageous. If you make use of opportunities that present themselves, you can work relationship building into your everyday routine. Are you waiting for people to show up at a meeting? Get people talking then. Ask about their day or ask them a fun ice breaker.
“Question of the day” was something quick my teams have done during standup that had a lot of success. Someone comes up with a question for the day and then everyone gets a chance to (quickly) respond. Example: What show are you currently watching or would you rather vacation on a beach or in the forest? I’ve also used this time as a sneaky way to learn what kind of adult beverage (or anything else) to reward my team members with.
New to a company? This is the easiest time for you to meet people because you can use the “I’m new” excuse to reach out! Ask your manager or onboarding buddy for a list of people you should introduce yourself to. Set up a short (15–30 minute) 1:1 with them. Ask those people for a couple team members they think you should meet. Repeat.
10.Be embedded. Make it hard for people not to know you. Volunteer to help with events. Many companies have various diversity or extra-curricular groups (like women in tech, gaming groups, etc). Get involved in one or more of these and make sure to use the time in them to build up relationships!
By investing time in your (virtual) relationships, you will not only see stronger bonds within your organization, but also see success as you progress in your career.
“Can it be easier to build relationships face-to-face? Sure. But is it necessary? Absolutely not.”
Brand growth is easy. On paper. You jack up your spending and your conversion rate magically increases, right? Or you just control your costs and limit your spending. But you can’t just “spray and pray”, nor cost-cut your way to growth. So, you’re going tohave to do some saving and some spendingtoinvest efficiently and reach people who aremorelikely to buy.
Personalization is the answer and it’s a growth hack.
Personalization, and more specifically precision personalization, works when marketers use data, intelligence, insights, advanced analytics, and AI to customize messages to individuals based on what we know about their needs at the moments when they’re researching, shopping and especially when they’re ready to buy. One-size-fits-all messaging does not work anymore. We need dynamic messaging driven by data, insights,and intelligence to drive relevance and engagement.
What separates personalization from any other type of data-driven marketing, is the precision that’s possible whendata is collected and cultivated and turned into actionable intelligence that’s used for planning, messaging, content creation, media,and measurement. But the usual zeropartydata (explicit data, intentionally and proactively shared with a brand by a customer)and first partydata (individual clicks and in-depth behavior) are not enough. To activate personalized marketing, we need to understand other dimensions of consumer mindsets and behaviors. That’s where Behavioral Science is invaluable.
Behavioral Science provides a powerful new lens to uncover the hidden drivers and behaviors of your ever-changing audience. Understanding even basic personality dimensions, like how extroverted your audience is, means that messages targeted to extroverts can increase
IMAGE CREDIT: Ogilvy Consulting
likelihood to purchase by 1.54X.Uncovering your customer’s social beliefs and decision drivers can supercharge messaging relating to a wide range ofproductsand make them relevant to each touchpoint.
Investments in creating personalized marketing are essential because personalization outperforms conventional methods, reduces costs,and provides data that can be monetized in the future by a wider group of your company’s marketers.Done right, personalization can reduce acquisition costs by as much as 50%, lift revenues by 5 to 15%, and increase the efficiency of marketing spend by 10 to 30%.1Looking for a way to hack growth? Personalizing with precision using data, behavioral insights, intelligence-informed content and optimized paid media delivers more in-market customers at lower costs.
1. Matz, Sandra & Kosinski, M. & Nave, Gideon & Stillwell, David. (2017). Psychological targeting as an effective approach to digital mass persuasion. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 114. 201710966. 10.1073/pnas.1710966114. Matt Ariker, Jason Heller, Alejandro Diaz, and Jesko Perrey, “How marketers can personalize at scale,”Harvard Business Review, November 23, 2015.
As a daughter of a fully committed environmentalist mother in Spain, I grew up not only with five different recycling bins at home, but also learning the importance of reusing, and reducing packaging. Believe me, it wasn’t easy to explain to my classmates why I had my sandwiches wrapped in used flour paper bags.
Fast forward a few decades, and I found myself living in New York, a city of environmental atrocities where even “environmentally conscious” grocery chains wrap fresh produce in plastic. But there is hope.
There are tons of ways retailers are experimenting with more environmentally friendly packaging and shipping choices, and here is one I have recently discovered.
Meet Precycle, a NYC’s package-free grocery store that takes recycling to the next level by not creating waste in the first place.
When you enter Precycle, there is no trace of plastic to be found: buckets of wrap-free and locally sourced fruits and vegetables,sparse rows of glass jars containing dry foods like pasta, lentils or nuts, refill stations for oil and vinegar, as well as eco-friendly household products. They also deliver groceries locally in electric vans and, to reduce the carbon footprint, they pick up the empty containers at the next delivery.
This shows that sustainability can be a convenient option, instead of a second choice. Enough of delivery services that wrap your burrito in foil and send it to you in a plastic bag with utensils just so that you can eat it with your hands. Brands, retailers, and consumers alike all need to embrace reuse culture and then, hopefully, living waste-free will stop sounding like an impossible feat.
“Brands, retailers, and consumers alike all need to embrace reuse culture.”
Have you ever taken a moment away from scrolling to take in the beauty of the app thumbnails on your phone? If not, pause reading for a moment and look at them. They’re truly amazing miniature pieces of art. Yes, I know they’re mostly just logos, but they’re also tiny pieces of creativity, vision, function, and value all wrapped into 180pixels.
This first occurred to me while being stuck somewhere without a signal. I was absent mindedly staring at my phone when it hit me just how similar the Google photos icon and the iOS photos icon are. But the more I really looked at the icons, the more I was reminded of the sunflower that used to represent “photos” back on my first iPhone.
So, I started looking more. I was surprised to find that even the apps I use every day had hidden beauty. TikTok is a Music note. Lucid is a book with an ‘L.’ Even the little ghost on SnapChat infers that something may disappear! I use some of these apps multiple times a day and I never took a minute to appreciate them.
The more I looked, the more I saw the creativity in each one. There are “collections” or styles of icons that are the same across a product suite, like Google with its distinct color palate. Or Amazon Products and the A-Z arrow/smiles. Apps supporting the great outdoors (from REI to the Hiking Project) all represent a mountain, yet they
all vary. I noticed that apps that move things tend to have a feeling of movement associated with them. The stretched the ‘D’ for Doordash, or the green lines of the Frontier Airlines ‘F’ that look like wings. Even the Postmates icon uses, what looks like a flying bicycle, to get something from point A to point B. Even if that thing is a taco.
I started looking into apps that are more nuanced, standing alone, not falling into a particular category. With many of these thumbnails I experienced what is known as a “Gestalt Switch.” Much like the “Rabbit-duck illusion” made famous by Ludwig Wittgenstein, or the “Eskimo-Face illusion” by Elizabeth Douglass, these kinds of images allow you to see one thing in multiple ways. I first noticed the concept with Instacart. If I were to ask you what the Instacart logo is, odds are you’d say, “it’s a carrot” and you wouldn’t be wrong. However, Instacart’s logo is more than a carrot to me. For me, through the Gestalt Switch, I can see the original carrot, true to its roots (pun intended), but I can also see an arrow pointing to a pin (like that you would see on a map)
The more I looked the more I became aware of my own unique point of view, and the impact it has on my day-to-day creativity. I started to challenge myself to see things differently. Is there the sound coming out of a book representing “Audible” or is that the action of pages turning? The LG logo seems to encompass three things in one: a smiley face, what looks like a sideways PacMan, PLUS the company name. Are those bike pedals that make up the ‘P’ for Peloton? When I tap to stream Formula 1, am I clicking on ‘F1” or on a racetrack with a finish line? Is the Discord logo not in fact a happy Robot but a game controller?
This new outlook has led me down a path of mindfulness. Even as I write this, I realize that Grammarly is both a refresh symbol and the letter ‘G’. I can’t seem to unsee the beauty that has gone into the digital world around me. What’s even better is the realization that seeing these nuances has helped me be intentional in my own creativity and communication. So, the next time you’re in a waiting room stuck without a signal, take a minute and appreciate your phone and the art within. You never know what might inspire you.
“I can’t seem to unsee the beauty that has gone into the digital world around me.“
Business leaders must give up complete ownership to gain the next—and largest—generation of potential new users:
Gen Z is the largest, most diverse and geographically untethered cohort in history, making up 40% of all global consumers and holding earnings of about $7 trillion. By 2031, their income will reach $33 trillion, surpassing that of millennials. And while every generation has sought to mold the world in its spirit, Gen Z is doing so through both individual and collective digital action. Gen Z’s connectivity allows for greater immediacy and intimacy, making it easier for Gen Z individuals— not just the roar of Gen Z itself—to be heard. But within this cohort, people value radically different things, at different times, from different sources.
This means that as Gen Z continues to amass economic and cultural influence, brands must decide which unique interest points and needs to focus on to build trust, community and achieve impact with their target users. Above all, to win with Gen Z, brands must be willing to share— share their brand, share their resources and share their future. We uncovered that more than any previous generation, Gen Z wants to be involved in the curation of culture-led participatory moments with the brands and people they care about. In order to build a lasting bond with Gen Z, you will need to become a brand that shares: one which not only allows for, but has in place, a digital and physical infrastructure that encourages youth to co-create and help shape the direction of the business at all levels.
This requires galvanizing Gen Z to collaborate on shaping your brand and the impact it creates in the world— from brand purpose to community management and user support, and everything in between. Sharing is about co-creating a continuous value exchange for both parties; at its best, sharing engages Gen Zers in shaping what the brand means to them, while the brand itself becomes stronger.
SHARING:
48% of Gen Z answered, “Definitely Not” when asked, “Do brands have Gen Z in mind when creating, designing and marketing products and services?” (Ogilvy Consulting & Thred Media, March 2021)
Sharing and co-creation have long been associated with a narrow definition of sourcing product ideas (e.g., “Vote on the next flavor!”), feedback from existing customers or launching creative campaigns with celebrities or popular influencers. However, becoming a brand that shares requires a much wider scope of the word and a much more integrated investment. Through this new definition, firms can create novel relationships, customer experiences and wholly new product categories, as well as foster loyalty avoid costly market missteps.
SHIFTING TOWARD A SHARING MINDSET:
Gen Zers are hyper-connected individuals, inherently comfortable expressing themselves through digital creative tools. Gen Zers believe they’re more creative than previous generations, and they uniquely describe creative pursuits as essential, meaning they don’t see creativity as a side outlet but rather a core attribute of daily life. In the digital
age, creative expression is seen as vital to successful relationship-building, selfrealization, and, increasingly, the ability to make a living. This creative emphasis fuels Gen Z’s distinct desire to be involved with the brands they interact with at all levels.
As part of the drive to start thinking of Gen Z users as co-creators, you may need to reframe your brand’s own role in the relationship, from sole fixer to collaborative facilitator and creative partner. Sharing your brand at all levels means your brand is less a finished, perfectly defined character and more of a growing co-star, supporting youth in their own ambitions and individual purposes. You’ll need to think of co-creation as an ongoing process for Gen Zers to help shape your brand offerings around their own goals. So, while your own brand purpose will certainly be critical to growth, so too will providing tools and opportunities to Gen Zers that allow them to make their own purposes known to the world.
The long-term success of communitybuilding, the pre-cursor to sharing, will depend on a brand’s willingness to interact with Gen Z in a way that is consistent, transparent, and personal. It’s not about pushing products or asking users to take a poll; it’s about giving them a voice (even when it means silencing your own) and shining a light on their ideas, experiences, and beliefs.
Once you have considered which types of community-building structures are optimal for your user base and ambition, you can next decide which aspects of your brand to begin sharing. Brands can open up all levels of the business—from highlevel aspirations, such as brand purpose, all the way down to daily execution, such as customer service. While meeting with business leaders and Gen Z, we identified 15 key areas where sharing will allow members of your youth community to place themselves at the center of your brand and feel ownership in its growth and. We’ve dubbed our list the “Cocreation Ladder.”
In many ways, this cohort reflects, and often drives, the pluralities of today’s world. Altruistic, yet indulgent. Disruptive, yet nostalgic. Ambitious, yet anxious. Selfmotivated, yet lonely. Everyone seems to have an opinion on Gen Z and so much has already been written about them, making it even more difficult to capture their attention.
We believe you should think of sharing as a force for growing your interest-based community, ideating future offerings, and defining your place in culture, and we wrote a 2-part playbook on how to make it happen based on newly gathered research and analysis.
Check it out here:
Failure for digital transformations seems almost unavoidable. Where defined as “not meeting original objectives,” failed digital transformations happen at a rate that ranges between 70 and 95 percent. (“3 Stages of a Successful Digital Transformation,” Harvard Business Review).
This kind of universal difficulty does not mean businesses will stop attempting digital transformation. Declining to participate is really not an option, as any business caught without a plan for digital transformation in 2020 would tell you. Organizations with digitally-sound operating models leapt ahead of their unprepared competitors during the overnight, global plunge into remote-work, remote-school, online-everything.
Any company left standing does not have the same digital posture it did before the pandemic. So, congratulations! If you’re still a business, you’ve indeed made some kind of digital transformation. But what transformed? Were you able to get ahead of the need? Or did you simply catch up? Like our athletics coaches and music teachers all liked to remind us when we arrived to a practice session, “If you’re on time, you’re late.”
Chances are good you’re still working on getting ahead of your digital transformation needs. And one thing is a near certainty: Regardless of the stated objectives for your digital transformation, the business transformation you’re looking for will not occur without a plan that accounts for your employees.
It’s so easy for digital transformation plans to focus on the technology: the roadmap of software purchases and development, the rollouts and implementations, the user trainings. But so many digital transformations manage to forget the humans. The vision building, the change management, the training for the skillset shifts—all the things that inspire and enable transformations in people are often overlooked. Digital transformation plans must include these, too, if there is to be a technology-enabled transformation of how people work and how new, better things happen for clients, constituents, and customers. Otherwise, it’s just a huge project about an internal buying group deciding to purchase and install new technology, end of story.
Case in point: a global tech and ecommerce company spent millions on new analytics tools, fed by a newly-wrangled, consistent stream of data in all forms. Amazing. Technology was integrated, processes were
Any company left standing does not have the same digital posture it did before the pandemic.”
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Digital transformation in today’s age: (Hint: It’s your employees.)
hammered out, trainings were delivered worldwide. Millions of dollars spent, thousands of hours… and nothing changed. Everything had been built from the point of view that users already held a value for doing things differently than they did them today and would be eager to use these new tools. In truth, no one touched them. All the imagined business outcomes evaporated into thin air.
Project leaders had been asking, “What’s the right technology and data we need for the business outcomes we want?” No one had been asking, “Do our internal teams understand why driving new outcomes is necessary? Do our people believe these new business outcomes are possible? Do they know how to spend their days differently, equipped with these new insights from data?”
Your people are the key ingredient. They plan, they intervene, they escalate, they advocate, they embody the possibility. They sell the transformation to customers, to partners, to other employees. No matter what new customer experience or operational model you’re building with new technology, in the majority of businesses, those experiences don’t fully function without employees who are ready to facilitate transactions and interactions differently. Whether a technology evolution or revolution, treat employees as an afterthought and you will fail to yield desired business results.
But how should we plan digital transformation projects differently so that we know we’re designing for our employees, our most critical component of success? We help our clients and partners plan against four critical components for employee success: vision, enablement, ability and culture and results (Fig. 1).
• Vision – the “why now” story behind the need and decision to deploy new technologies and experiences.
• Enablement – the communication and leadership activation that creates the critical link between company vision and employees’ dayto-day work.
• Ability – the skill building that allows people to adopt new ways of working or living up to the new expectations that drive a transformation.
• Culture and Results – the goals in behavior and measurable outcomes—the evidence— that will reflect actual business transformation.
Let’s look at each component in greater detail, including who should be accountable for it:
Successful digital transformations are not owned by IT – or marketing, or customer experience teams, or any department that may have initiated them. More often than not, when they are successful, digital transformations are led and owned by the organization’s leadership team as a whole. And when leadership does not advocate for the transformation consistently across its leaders, the work is suboptimized.
Leaders hold the accountability for vision, defined outcomes and the plan for realizing the vision. It is essential that leaders can express the transformation’s value story consistently from leader to leader. If your leadership is misaligned, they simply must do the work; agreement is not required but alignment is.
Alignment is knowing the value of the transformation and prioritizing accordingly. The value story should include what prompted a change to be made—and why that change is essential now. That nod to urgency will help employees understand the prioritization and why some will feel the changes before others, and some may not feel much real change at all. People will avoid change if they can. Too often we see all levels of employees do the wait and see approach—awaiting new leadership or for the business to change its mind. So, if the transformation requires the organization to move with purpose, set that expectation and why urgency is needed.
FIG 1:Prosci Change Management research shows that when a change happens in an organization, though employees want to hear the business need from leadership, it’s their direct or line managers that they prefer to deliver news about personal ramifications. The manager is the link between company vision and employees’ day-to-day work. The manager knows the employee’s role and work best—and can translate the intent and expectations of the transformation to how it impacts the employee. And most importantly, when given the resources, managers can connect their teams with the enablement that will help them most.
That’s a critical, unforced error we often see in transformations: assuming the manager knows enough about the transformation (From an email? From a single all-hands meeting?) to make the right connections between vision and enabling their teams to do the new work and thinking afforded by their new digital capabilities. But it’s important that an activation plan acknowledges that managers are employees, too. They need to understand the initiative and feel confident to represent it to their teams—well before they are asked to do so competently.
Building that ability and confidence requires leaders to engage with managers. This is a two-step process: leaders activating the vision with managers, so managers can engage employees. Provide managers the messages and tools to realize the benefits of the change—equipping them to live the transformation with their teams day after day.
We’re defining key users as those who are directly impacted by the transformation, that is, they have a new workflow or technology. And yes, it’s okay to say they’re accountable for making the required changes to their workflows. But only when you’ve taken the time to be clear about those expectations. When identifying key users, it’s important to map what the transformation is asking them to do differently – and if they currently have the skills to do it.
The ability gap often appears when employees are being asked to do something that they don’t know how to do—and training either isn’t available or is deployed in a one-and-done fashion. Admittedly “user” is a bit of a limiting term and inherent to what we see as the shortcoming of transformation training. Employees are trained as a “user,” not as a key facilitator of a new way of doing business that will bring about transformation for the organization.
Employees who are impacted by the transformation need to understand their new technology or workflow in the context of the initiative’s vision. Skill-building that is connected to the broader value story, the bigger promise of the transformation, is far more effective than user training.
Value stories should be considered and treated as iterative, updated as the narrative is refined by new insights and experiences. Transformations that are built to receive feedback, especially from your key users, will provide those lived experiences that will empower you to refine and optimize thus making the transformation more potent.
it
It’s not revolutionary to say that an organization’s leadership team is accountable for its culture and its business results. The market holds leadership accountable. Investors and customers do not blame employees for poor performance, they blame CEOs and their teams. Additionally, leaders are accountable to their teams for providing the ongoing support needed to sustain the culture and drive the results inherent in the vision. This can feel like the big squeeze for leaders, but success comes to those who see this relationship clearly.
If you’re a leader who feels overwhelmed by this, there’s good news about the true nature of culture. It’s not the monolithic thing we often think of, a sort of puppet that a handful of leaders must keep animated at all times, tugging and pulling its strings to appear full of life. In fact, culture is lived uniquely, intuitively at smaller team levels.
When leaders share a clear vision with managers and employees, when teams have the support to make it real for themselves—even if they do it in vastly different (but not harmful) ways from other teams—and when the desired results and innovations are recognized, the intended effects of a digital transformation can be seen and felt through the entire organization. Improved customer acquisition, increased customer and employee satisfaction, operational efficiencies—all will result in competitive advantage. Even if all employees aren’t being asked to change how they work, they should know about the transformation and why it’s happening. Teams can be fueled by a clear vision in ways you couldn’t imagine and should be encouraged to create their own context.
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Your employees directly interact with your customers. They facilitate the operations for how the company works. They also have a front row seat to whether changes are working. Seek to understand their experiences and don’t shy away from their feedback. Few transformations are perfect out of the gate. Plan for iteration and encourage the data collection and dialogue to guide those actions.
A digital transformation (or any kind of transformation) is a test of an organization’s endurance. That’s why it’s important to build in ways to generate and draw energy from the process itself. Plan how you’ll take opportunities to celebrate successes as you go. Don’t fall into the trap of waiting for perfection to talk about how it’s going and reinforce why it’s all worth it.
Reinforcing why a change was necessary is part of the change adoption process. Track your improvements, capture your success stories and share them with the company. Demonstrating proof will encourage employees and support them in sustaining new behaviors. And who doesn’t like to celebrate?
As we’ve seen over the last few years, digital transformations aren’t a “nice to have.” For most companies, they represent the difference between survival and failure for a business. But true business success, true ROI, cannot be achieved by one visionary or owner, or even a few dedicated, passionate teams. It must be nurtured from top to bottom, made possible largely by the employees who have made you successful thus far.
As we’ve seen over the last few years, digital transformations aren’t a ‘nice to have.’ For most companies, they represent the difference between survival and failure for a business.”
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Luggage company, Béis, has caught my attention. Not only with their products— which are sleek, stylish, and functional—but with their cross-channel marketing strategy. By taking advantage of multiple marketing channels, they’ve really covered all of their bases when it comes to creating a seamless customer experience. They’re a luggage brand with the total package.
What’s a marketing strategy without a robust email program? Don’t worry, Béis delivers. Literally. Béis uses email for transactional and promotional messaging.
They set themselves apart with their transactional emails. Béis provides updates at each step of the process. After an order, they send a confirmation, shipping updates, and a final email when the product has been delivered. Then, lastly, they follow up with a “Touching Beis” email to get customer feedback on the order.
While their email program is robust, email isn’t the only marketing channel needed for a cohesive, cross-channel strategy.
BROOKE GRIEF, CONTENT MARKETING MANAGER, ITERABLE
IMAGE CREDIT:
super receptive to their marketing text messages—of which they send many. Béis uses their SMS marketing program to send promotional messages, product launches, and even information about their loyalty program.
I was drawn to Béis not because of their standalone email program or SMS program, but because of how these channels complement one another. While I get a smattering of texts and emails from Béis, I’m never overwhelmed by the messages I receive. They’ve managed to strike a balance between their channels that not many brands have. Because of my positive experience with their marketing messages, I’ve purchased from Béis in the past and will undoubtedly again in the future.
What really impresses me about Béis’ cross-channel strategy is their mobile program. When first shopping with Béis, they asked me to sign up to receive marketing text messages. I was prompted to send an auto filled message to opt-in.
Once sent, I received a verified contact card. This contact card makes it extremely easy to identify the text messages as they come in, making it less likely that I assume it’s spam or block the number.
“BY TAKING ADVANTAGE OF MULTIPLE MARKETING CHANNELS, THEY’VE REALLY COVERED ALL OF THEIR BASES WHEN IT COMES TO CREATING A SEAMLESS CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE.”
When people think of company culture, they often go straight to their social activities. “We have cake once a month to celebrate birthdays! The singing is awkward, but people love it!” That’s not really culture. Nor is your end-ofyear party, and not even your All Hands meeting or the ping pong tournament you host once a month. Company culture is how you work, and it permeates every meeting, event, email, and slack message within your organization.
Culture can be better described as how employees treat each other, and what level of some core attributes they provide. Respect, Communication, and Transparency are important to everyone, and you can quickly imagine situations or companies where you’ve seen greater or lesser amounts of each. Maybe your first manager gave you almost no respect, and you hated your job, but when you got a new boss that respected your abilities, you were much more satisfied. The culture was better, not because you had more cake, but because you received more respect.
In a remote culture (we call ours “Work from Wherever”), one aspect of culture that is hard to maintain is transparency.
It is easy to ask a company leader how things are going when you are next to them in the elevator, or getting coffee at the same time, but with a remote environment, those casual interactions almost never happen. Most communication is official communication, and it’s hard to observe people’s attitudes throughout the day. You don’t notice that all the leaders are meeting and being positive, and seem optimistic. You just get the communication: “You only have $20 to spend on lunch, and don’t go over!” In the absence of all the context, the situation could seem dire, when really they were just tracking the budget and want to make sure there’s plenty left for the company party next month.
What’s the solution? In short, more transparency! But that leads to a bigger discussion, because not everyone sees transparency the same way. A monthly newsletter might appeal to an older crowd, but younger employees may want to chat over drinks at a bar. A handwritten note about completing a big project might mean a lot, or maybe it’s a shoutout at the company meeting. Beyond simply paying more, you have to find what is appreciated by the individual, and lean into as many of those as possible throughout the year. No one solution will work for everyone, so don’t expect everyone to engage with every idea you try. Some people do like cake though.
In the end, your leadership team has to find ways to share more information, more often, and be present in more places so more people can understand the context of the decisions being made. Those casual watercooler meetings must be set up as town halls, or dropping into different department meetings, or maybe casual lunches (yes, sometimes over Zoom). Without transparency, it’s hard to build trust, and without trust, your culture will deteriorate quickly.
Culture is not the cake that appears in the breakroom, it’s the transparency into the company that your employees get while they’re eating cake with each other.
With every year it becomes more evident that drive-thrus are the future of QSRs. This year’s QSR Drive-Thru Report revealed that customers expect speed of service and convenience over anything else, and drive-thru has become the undisputed champion of seamless and speedy customer service. Fast food chains are competing to become bestin-breed for drive-thru experiences and great customer service. Accordingly, businesses that invest in digital innovations – be it digital app orders, mobile point of sale or even artificial intelligence – will revolutionize the drive-thru experience, and rise to the top.
MATT PACYGA, DIRECTOR OF PRODUCT MANAGEMENT, BOTTLE ROCKET
One factor driving QSR success is their ability to create a personalized digital experience in the drive-thru process. Artificial intelligence is becoming less of a gimmick and more of a central business tool to create client-focused customer experiences. Some drive-thrus are implementing AI-powered digital menu boards, with voice assistants to suggest foods that are popular according to the area and weather.
AI rarely requires human intervention: it can deal with unusual menu items, and understand different accents. Where customers from all walks of life feel they are being heard and attended to, a brand begins to generate uniquely personal experiences that ultimately result in customer satisfaction and long term loyalty. Digital innovations allow QSRs to make the most of data insights and provide the most personalized experiences possible, for example with loyalty programs that leverage AI to identify specific customers and suggest menu items based on previous orders. The customer is left feeling like the brand truly knows them, and the brand can use this data to spot upsell opportunities.
Greater demand for speed of service comes with a greater demand for staff, and this is another area where innovation is redefining the drive-thru experience. Every year, customers expect an even higher quality experience. Businesses are struggling to keep up with expectations for improved speed and convenience because of staff shortages. However, conversational AI technology is being implemented in restaurants to plug this gap and make drive-thrus as frictionless as possible. Using AI boosts order accuracy and significantly decreases the likelihood of multiple car lanes and congestion, which would otherwise lead to long and tiresome wait times. 85% of consumers will consider leaving a perceived long line, and those businesses that utilize new innovations to increase efficiency will not have to suffer the cost of unsatisfied customers.
Artificial intelligence is now capable of greeting customers, taking orders, and transferring orders to point of sale (POS) systems, amongst other beneficial functions. This will cut out employees from the order-taking process while maintaining near-perfect order accuracy, allowing them to focus on other tasks. Hospitality technology is allowing businesses to optimize efficiency and productivity while giving more stimulating and relationship-focused tasks to staff - improving the experience for both employees and customers. In this way, customers are surprised and delighted by their data-led digital interactions with a brand, and staff are freed up to concentrate on the ways that they can surprise and delight with a human touch.
Delivery and drive-thrus became customers’ main source of restaurant dining during the Covid-19 pandemic. Yet, despite the emergence of a mostly vaccinated population, drive-thru popularity has not declined to pre-pandemic levels. 74% of people have visited drive-thrus the same amount or more often than usual since the start of the pandemic. That’s a 43 percent rise from the peak of the pandemic in April, 2020.
Initially, the pandemic forced people to prioritize contactless service when accessing restaurant food. Since then, customer habits have changed and people are embracing a digitized new way of life. In a world where consumers can have almost anything they want at the touch of a button on their phones, why would they settle for anything less? In our current age of digital transformation, consumers have become used to instant results and they therefore expect an effective and speedy service as an absolute minimum.
Ultimately, businesses risk losing revenue and customer loyalty if they fail to center their business strategy around a digital experience that caters to their customers’ need for efficiency and convenience. In the drive-thru space, the battle to do this is fierce. Those who embrace a digital transformation journey in this brave new world will rapidly climb the QSR ladder. And those who don’t will wish they did.
“ACCORDINGLY, BUSINESSES THAT INVEST IN DIGITAL INNOVATIONS WILL REVOLUTIONIZE THE DRIVE-THRU EXPERIENCE, AND RISE TO THE TOP.”
According to prevailing sentiment, customer service is dead. While baby boomers lament the loss of the personalized attention they once enjoyed, Gen Zers demand apps that deliver instantaneous results and eliminate the need to speak to human beings. Meanwhile, everyone is frustrated with long wait times, out-of-stock notices, ineffective automated prompts, and many undertrained employees who aren’t empowered to solve even the simplest issues. But is the customer-service crisis the result of overblown expectations or underwhelming execution?
Whatever the root of the problem, customer service is shifting. Lingering supply-chain delays, persistent worker shortages, and customer demands for immediate service across multiple channels means it’s more challenging than ever— and more important than ever—to provide topnotch customer service. In a recent Forbes survey, a whopping 96% of customers said they’ll leave a company if they receive bad service.
That’s an intimidating prospect, but the flip side is that bad service elsewhere opens opportunities for brands to distinguish themselves from the competition. In fact, while poor service drives customers away, exceptional customer service is rewarded. In the same survey, 62% of respondents said they’ll pay more for good customer service. Brands that successfully navigate the current challenges to meet customers’ shifting expectations, and continue to do so, could earn lasting loyalty.
Supply-chain delays began early in the pandemic, and they continue to impact the delivery of goods and services in almost every industry. Among the most visible are cars, baby formula, toilet paper, and building materials—an array that illustrates how widespread the supply-chain issues are. Half-empty store shelves, delayed or canceled shipping on online purchases, and long lead times on services, such as car repairs or home improvements, all contribute to an increase in customer complaints and concerns.
Simultaneously, the worker shortage means fewer well-trained, experienced customer service representatives are available to handle increased customer issues.
More than half of executives predict the supply chain won’t normalize until the first half of 2024, and experts say the labor shortage could last years. This double whammy means the outlook for customer service could be challenging for the foreseeable future.
New technology and pandemic-driven behavior shifts prompted changes in customer service. Many consumers embraced online service platforms during the pandemic, trying out new technologies—such as artificial intelligence (AI) interfaces and chatbots—to handle issues that may have previously required a phone call to a service representative. Patrons visiting physical storefronts now routinely use automated kiosks or apps rather than engaging a sales associate for help. Many users now prefer the ease of the automated options for handling simple issues.
While businesses make internal distinctions among their service channels, customers don’t. They expect the customer service experience to be fast, efficient, and seamless across all platforms at all times. They want technology to do more for them—faster and easier than ever before—but they also expect immediate access to a real person who can help them when they need it, whether that be in person, on the phone, or by online chat. Successful customer service
requires omnichannel solutions delivering the same high-quality experience, regardless of the platform.
It may feel impossible to meet these increased demands for efficient service across all customer touch points. Just remember, no matter how customer service platforms evolve, the core tenets of good service remain the same: Customers expect brands to be transparent and ethical, treat them fairly and with empathy, and make the process easy and efficient.
TO DELIVER HIGH-QUALITY, EFFECTIVE CUSTOMER SERVICE, LEAN INTO THESE BEST PRACTICES:
Offer simple solutions to simple problems.
Identify the common issues, questions, and needs your customers experience and give them a simple way to resolve them on their own whenever possible. To reduce customer-service inquiries, make sure websites are up to date with FAQs, order information, shipping updates, and account information. And offer hassle-free shipping and return policies to head off a lot of complaints. As the saying goes, the best defense is a good offense.
Communicate frequently and openly.
Order confirmations, shipping updates, and information about possible delays can reduce customer service inquiries too. If you need to deliver news about a delay or cancellation, do it as early as possible. Be honest and transparent. Offer customers an upgraded product, a discount on a future purchase, or reward points as a show of appreciation for their business.
Use technology wisely.
New options like chatbots, automated voice technology, and social media interfaces can improve response times, reduce strain on call center representatives, and increase customer satisfaction. Unfortunately, when implemented poorly, these technologies can have the opposite effect, frustrating consumers and driving them to the call center. Chatbots, once seen as an ineffective nuisance by many consumers, increased in use by 43% in 2021; and 56% of customers now prefer to message rather than call customer service. The turnaround is largely attributed to improved sentiment-analysis capabilities that allow the chatbot to decode a customer’s mood and guide the interaction accordingly, thereby increasing efficiency and effectiveness.
For those customers who want or need to call, make sure they can easily find a customer-service phone number. On some websites, information is buried under a frustrating number of clicks. Don’t let automated voice technology be a rabbit hole of menus leading nowhere. Always give callers an option to reach a representative by dialing zero from any menu and consider adding new features like automated callback, which alleviates the need for customers to wait on hold, initiating a return call when the next representative becomes available.
Consider using social media platforms as an extension of customer service. Already more than 1 billion messages are exchanged monthly between businesses and users on Facebook Messenger. Handle interactions with consumers on social media with the same level of responsiveness and care as any other channel.
“BRANDS
Empower your people.
Once a customer has reached out to your service team, make sure your employees are trained to solve the issue—and have the decision-making capacity to do so. An overwhelming 90% of customers say issue resolution is the most important customer service issue. And every engagement is an opportunity to connect with and delight customers. Give your customer service teams the resources, support, and power they need to efficiently resolve customer concerns.
Personalize and humanize across platforms.
According to The Lacek Group’s global research study, today’s consumers look at a brand as one entity across all channels, and they expect to be recognized across all of them. More than 70% of consumers believe companies should collaborate across departments so they don’t have to repeat their information to multiple representatives. Consider the customer experience across all channels, and then streamline and personalize it whenever possible. Humanize your AI interfaces and encourage representatives to use customer names and include personal signatures in written communication.
Level up to earn loyalty.
Efficiently dealing with customer complaints and issues is only the baseline of effective customer service. Consider how enhancing customer service may incite true loyalty from your customers. Get creative with ways to make your customers feel valued and appreciated. Send special discounts or gifts on their birthdays or other milestones, provide access to a personal shopper or concierge-level service, offer valet parking, or give complimentary refreshments; all of these are ways to level up your customer service experience.
The bar for keeping customers satisfied is higher than ever, and your brand’s efforts to provide stellar service will pay off. Remember, customer retention is still less expensive than acquisition. So make the most of every interaction with your customers, impressing them with your brand’s exceptional service.
“AN OVERWHELMING 90% OF CUSTOMERS SAY ISSUE RESOLUTION IS THE MOST IMPORTANT CUSTOMER SERVICE ISSUE. AND EVERY ENGAGEMENT IS AN OPPORTUNITY TO CONNECT WITH AND DELIGHT CUSTOMERS.”
The future of loyalty is bigger than a program. It’s actions over transactions. Emotions over redemptions. And a community of devoted fans who are invited, involved and inspired. Want in? For 30 years, we’ve innovated to deliver world-class, data-driven loyalty, experience and engagement strategies that connect customers to the brands they love.
In my professional career, I have had the privilege of working on hundreds of mobile apps, websites, and digital products for some of the world’s most loved brands. Although the projects have varied radically, one common thing that I would consistently love to see more of is more use of movement to bring a brand to life. Animation can be a wonderful tool to help companies connect with customers in an interesting and efficient manner. Most of the time, brand identities live in a static or stagnant state of existence. Rarely is the movement and motion given much consideration; it’s often an after-thought that gets wedged into the build cycle late in the game. To help you think about ways to introduce more movement in a somewhat static digital world, here are my top 10 recommendations for the use of animation in digital products. And people like lists almost as much as they like movement, so here we go.
A brand is represented by colors, marks, art, photos, mission statements and the like. But what if you were to build motion guidelines into your brand book? How is motion defining or paralleling what your product or brand represents? Is your company about speed? Efficiency? Simplicity? If your brand or product moved, what would it move like? Or what does it move like? A robot? A cheetah? A balloon? Taking the time to associate your brand’s defining movement characteristics into the product interaction can be a huge benefit to the awareness a brand can create for its customers.
When it comes to our choices as humans and as customers,there are many reasons we may or may not interact with something or someone. Some of those choices may involve an attraction or a curiosity that gets us to engage or be involved. A way to tap into that behavior is by having some motion or an animation to drive more engagement with your customers. The appeal of something in motion triggers that core instinct to explore, learn, and grow which is typically what we are trying to achieve with digital products and software.
We are very busy people these days with a multitude of things that are struggling for our attention. The noise around us sedates us,and with all the attention grabbing that goes on daily, sometimes even the simplest things can be a chore. A way to break through and command attention is through the animation. You can have movement be that special way of having your product say “just pay attention for one more second and you’ll be finished” (but in a much more elegant and creative way of course).
Something that many products and services do is rely heavily on our ability to handle large amounts of cogni tive load on our brains. That load often increases when a screen appears to us like a flashcard or a mind puzzle. We immediately start to try and make sense of what we are seeing and what we are expected to do. By using motion to set the stage for your UI and content, you can tell a person how they should interact with it. They immediately will know how things work thus greatly reducing the time spent on areas that shouldn’t be a major focus of brain power.
Personally, I’ve never been a fan of onboarding screens. I’ve always felt you should strive to design so that it doesn’t require this initial pop quiz on how you interact with something before you even start. However, there are those times where it is necessary to help someone quickly,and that can be done through an animation that serves as a tip or onboarding guide. You can show a customer how something works right before you require them to take that action. This is much more effective than the easily forgotten and loathed onboarding screens on an initial launch.
What kind of a designer would I be if I didn’t make the joke or acknowledge what every designer has heard and definitely experienced which is the ask from brand teams to “make the logo bigger.” Another idea would be to use movement to make the logo scream, wave or bounce, thus subtly calling your attention to it without scaling the logo 150% and calling it a day. Besides solving a designer’s task of drawing more attention to the logo, you could animate the logo to give a more highly designed and conceptualized mark that represents the pure essence of your brand.
There are not too many things within a digital experience that almost demand, or at least imply,they deserve some animation magic like a toast or confirmation modal. I mean what else is worthy of a celebratory success animation after all those form fields, payment screens and whatever other hoops you jumped through to complete something? Animate these please –this is almost a mandatory.
Ever since its creation in pizza-making history,the tracker has had a special place in a customer’s journey well beyond pizzas. From applications to a myriad of multi-tasked processes, the ones that do it the best animate those little tracking buddies and find ways to make the satisfaction of having Step 1 completed so awesome that we’re actually looking forward to completing Step 2.
Points earning in the Dunkin’ app can be so rewarding with animation added.
Animation by Mika Banks, Senior Visual Designer at Bottle Rocket
In my opinion, the standard pinwheel spinner and progress bar are the most evil and vile animations to ever be created (and that’s not an overstatement). We as designers can do better, and your product should do better. If we all ban together, we can better serve our users and take waiting or the unknown and make it at least entertaining, engaging or yes, even delightful. There are more engaging and even entertaining ways to use this time while a page is loading.
One of the most fun ways to create interest and keep a user enthralled with your designs is through the subtle, or even not so subtle, screen transitions and interactions. Transitioning from one screen to the next can make something that could be a jarring flow so seamless that it’s almost as if you didn’t go anywhere at all. These transitions make your product feel like it’s coming to you on your terms and anticipating your moves. Making a user’s interaction unlock a motion or movement literally can give your product a magical and delightful experience that will make a person continue to be looking for the next thing to excite them. Sometimes these interactions are so delightful that they will actually give a customer the craving to use your product more.
I hope you enjoyed my list and that maybe you can use this in some way to help further your product team or client’s understanding of the importance of motion in their product. It’s time that animation takes a seat at the big table for the impact it creates in our products and services. So much of our lives is in motion and our digital lives should be too.
Animation
Trust in healthcare is getting harder and harder to come by. A quick search will point to many reasons for this: shrinking time for provider/patient interaction, confusing or contradictory recommendations, expenses vs. outcomes, botched transitions between fragmented services, and more. There’s no one reason for the erosion of trust in healthcare. It was a team effort. It will be a team effort to turn things around, but looking at all these issues through a single lens can help us regain that trust. That lens is patient experience.
Patient experience is not just CAHPS/HCAHPS scores. They ask patients about a particular entity or how a particular visit was. They can tell us how patients feel about a system, plan, or hospital. They focus in on the care giving entity. Important data to have for sure, but focusing on the care giving entity only gives us snippets of a patient’s overall experience. It’s long past time we look at the totality. We lose trust at every friction point in a patient’s lifelong journey.
Let’s review some of the traps we fell into that led to the erosion of trust in healthcare from a patient experience point of view.
• Shrinking time for patient/provider interaction. This may be the most obvious on the list. Few feel their maladies, much less their core beings, can be understood in 5.3 minutes. Trust is built with understanding.
• Confusing or contradictory recommendations. Don’t drink. A glass of wine a day is okay. Take these pills “as needed” for pain. Read this 12-page packet while your child is having trouble breathing. All these recommendations are born from the best of intentions but put together they are overwhelming and frustrating. Trust is built with satisfaction.
• Expenses vs. outcomes. That knee replacement will cost somewhere between $15,000 and $70,000 dollars. We can’t tell you how much until it’s all done. The $70,000 version won’t make your nightly walk any easier than the $15,000 version though. Trust is built with reliability.
• Fragmented Services. The pharmacy says my insurance doesn’t cover the antibiotics the doctor prescribed on discharge – how can that be? My cardiologist wants me to take blood thinners, but my PCP has had me on antidepressants for years – are they okay to take together?
I broke my leg skiing – does the tiny hospital in Vail have access to my medical records in Dallas? Trust is built with consistency.
Pointing out what we did wrong is easy. Friction points are easy to find. But how do we make it better?
New competitors in the space are already working on this. CVS recently declared they want to be in charge of the “entire spectrum of someone’s health journey.” Along with Walgreens and Amazon, they are gobbling up companies that, when put together, could do just that. Traditional healthcare systems have had these overarching capabilities for years. So, what do these new entrants know (or think they know) that will allow them to compete?
Nowadays, patients ARE consumers. They have options and are willing to switch for a better experience. 78% of patients are willing, to be exact, if recent studies are to be believed. These new challengers are well versed in consumerism. Their business models rely on selling people things that are readily available elsewhere. They’ve figured out how to make these purchases
faster, easier, more reliable, more beneficial, etc. They build trust with the consumer with every interaction and get them to come back for more. They can do this because they have always thought about things from the consumer’s point of view. They’re confident that making healthcare faster, easier, more reliable, and more beneficial will attract patients. They’ll do it by starting with a focus on the patient’s point of view.
Retailers may have a jump on healthcare systems when it comes to consumerization, but they don’t have experience actually providing healthcare. They have a learning curve. It’ll take time. Healthcare systems must spend that time working on their own learning curve.
The key to making this transition is the same key to making any transition: working at it. Resources (people and money) have to be set aside and given time to understand and map out patient journeys. The most forward-thinking systems will map out a patient’s lifetime journey. Healthcare is one of those rare services needed from the cradle to the grave after all. These maps can only be made by talking to patients (both existing and potential), as well as those providing the care along those journeys. If possible, going out and living the experience of a patient personally can be incredibly enlightening.
Once the patient’s perspective is well understood, the real work begins. Next, consistent and reliable experiences have to be designed to the patient’s satisfaction. From these, trust will rise. This will require a great deal of transformation with various groups having to work together like never before. It may be a tall order, but it can be done so long as everyone agrees that the patient experience is the North Star.
“ Nowadays, patients are consumers. They have options and are willing to switch for a better experience. 78% of patients are willing, to be exact, if recent studies are to be believed.
DUSTIN HASSETT, PRINCIPAL PRODUCT MANAGER, BOTTLE ROCKET
Now more than ever, restaurateurs are operating in an experience economy. Customers are interacting with competitor brands over multiple channels every hour of every day, and they expect every digital experience to measure up to the Amazons and Ubers of this world.
Just like the behemoth tech brands, foodservice businesses need to deliver personalized, intuitive, and seamless digital experiences for their guests – without forgetting added in-person ingredients like warm decor and friendly interactions with staff. With restaurants under more pressure than ever to retain customers, the brands who can make their IRL experiences memorable while also leveraging digital technology to make ordering, paying, and engaging with the brand quicker and easier will ultimately win the day.
A QSR’s tech stack might have all the bells and whistles, but if it isn’t finely tuned to the customer’s needs it’s basically redundant. A thoughtfully designed digital experience should meet a customer wherever they are and make their journey easier without stealing the spotlight from in-person experiences – and that takes planning. So, before they set about developing a new digital experience, foodservice CTOs and CIOs need to strategize.
If the end goal is to build engagement and ultimately conversion, foodservice businesses will need to build a relationship with their customer wherever they’re spending their time. Every touchpoint in an omnichannel customer experience needs to communicate the brand values and add to the physical experience of picking up or dining in at a brick-and-mortar establishment. And, because customers’
preferences for interacting with a brand differ widely depending on demographics or even time of day, digital experience will have to be holistic, allowing customers to drop off one channel and pick up another while still being able to see their closest pick-up point or customized offers.
In this landscape, convenience trumps technical virtuosity because it is frictionless. Case in point: app clips, small parts of a larger app experience that launch in seconds without download, breach the boundary between physical and digital experience because the barriers to jumping in and out of the digital ecosystem are so low. A customer can scan a QR code at the door or on their table and immediately begin designing their order, booking a table, or paying for their meal. After experiencing the benefits of the app clip, customers are more inclined to download the full app to make the most of personalized offers and location information.
Once a customer’s buying habits are digitized on an app, valuable data can be collected for use down the line. If this information is surfaced effectively, employees can surprise and delight their customer at their table by showing how well they’re known and valued, all but guaranteeing a memorable interaction.
Employees straddle the border between digital and physical, so their buy-in is vital when introducing new digital experiences. Happily, there’s no reason for conflict between physical and digital dimensions of experience. According to the National Restaurant Association’s 2022 State of the Industry report, 78 percent of leaders in the restaurant sector see digital solutions like mobile point of sale as a way to remove manual processes and support staff through labour shortages. Rather than threatening jobs, they’re boosting retention.
And, at the same time, 68 percent of consumers still prefer traditional service when dining, suggesting that all stakeholders benefit when the digital and the in-person coalesce.
For example, Chick-fil-A and Bottle Rocket’s cutting-edge mobile ordering system cuts down on queues on arrival. The GPSenabled application notifies restaurants of orders while customers are still en route, meaning more customers can be served, sales can be increased, and staff can concentrate on delivering a memorable experience for their guests.
Ultimately, brands walk a tightrope between getting left behind in the race for digital efficiency and losing focus on the customer by bringing in too much tech too quickly. We’re never going to see the death of the full-service restaurant, but the brands that stray too far from this delicate equilibrium risk falling by the wayside.
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Burning questions for brands are always: How do we excite our existing customers and acquire new ones? How can we grow market share? How can we improve our customer experience? How can we create a brand purpose that matters and resonates? How do we create a brand that is truly differentiated?
To answer these questions, companies go through three types of evolution, or change, one or multiple times, during their lifecycle.
• Developmental change is when you realize you need to make improvements to an existing strategy or approach.
• Transitional change occurs when you realize a new course of action needs to introduce to achieve results.
• Transformational change is radical shift in organizational-wide strategy from top to bottom.
These pivotal moments in time, coupled with the ever-present, burning brand questions, are top of mind with work we do at Ogilvy Consulting, as well as evident in my ongoing doctoral research. These instances of change are the natural and expected progression of brands that stay at the forefront of existing and emerging markets, while maintaining a steadfast and long-lasting relevancy to their customers. This becomes more apparent as leadership faces macro-economic moments spanning increased competition and mergers & acquisition to smaller transactional iterations for brands that touch new services and product launches.
Brand is the beacon that drives these organizational journeys. The notable nuance that we are seeing today is the prioritization of employees in the overarching brand strategy. Employer brands are rising to the occasion to ensure longer-term success for businesses of all size, shapes, and sectors.
At the core, employer brands are the complete depiction of the employee experience, encompassing the brand’s reputation as an employer and its unique value proposition to showcase a truly differentiated, best-in-class workplace. It is becoming clear to deliver on any and all of the questions that are top of mind for companies today, the C-suite, and marketers alike, must prioritize employees as a key stakeholder in the brand process. Why? Because without motivated teams that see themselves as part of the journey, small to notably large strategic decisions lack foundational and executional components. Let’s take a closer look.
What happens inside the walls of any organization has a direct effect on what happens outside those walls. Product development, customer service, fresh ideas and more; are all dependent on the talent delivering on their performance and a job well done. Individual performance has influence on every facet and corner of a company, and most importantly its brand. It is a chain reaction, as employee experience is linked to customer experience. When an individual preforms well, it can be felt by the team, then the business unit and so forth. Individualized performance is the catalyst that bubbles up to the organizational level, and that collective employee performance powers the overall performance metrics of a company and its brand. Starting with talent and continuing
to nurture their growth and development has a reverb affect that is felt far beyond the career growth of one person. Every time a brand makes a customer facing decision or change, leadership needs to look inside the company, as well as consider the impact on the employer brand.
Everyone on a team has an important role to play as a contributor to a greater vison and goal. The key to a job well done, as mentioned above, is motivating and inspiring employees to deliver on their crucial piece of that bigger picture. Purposeful work is a driving mechanism for talent today, and therefore, ensuring that brand purpose is directly tied to the employer value position is critical. This leads to the success of not only brand purpose, but also creating deep employee connections to deliver on that purpose. The most effective purpose statements are equally matched in partnership with strong employer value propositions that drive a differentiated and meaningful employer brand.
Often, leadership teams are focused on job satisfaction or commitment to power and measure employee enthusiasm and engagement. While these notions are important, employee branding can push the boundaries
of what has been table-stakes and acceptable and strive for an even deeper relationship with talent that is far more effective. Truly having employees live the brand and adopt more of a membership mentality to drive deeper, more meaningful connections with people across teams leads to standout performance. Creating that greater sense of belonging among talent is more steadfast and empowering.
Traditionally, verticals with talent who are customer facing, like global hotel chains and multi-national retailers, keep employees as a primary brand audience. An organizational objective is to make sure they are very closely aligned with the customer-centric brand to ensure engagement and longevity across all audiences internal and external. There is little evidence of this truly permeating other industries in form employer branding until recently. Whether an organization is B2B or B2C focused, customer-centric branding is synonymous with employee-centric branding. For example, as of late, manufacturing is having all-time lows in terms of employee recruitment and retention. These companies cannot deliver on products and services, grow market share or live up to a purpose without great talent who are embedded in the company. Creating a differentiated employer branding is key to helping these large sectors of commerce that need growth and recovery.
Shared accountability and partnership: Employer branding is owned by everyone on the executive team, as well as equal parts marketing and human resources. Collaborate at the beginning and work together to create and deliver.
Make it real: Employer brands and EVPs are far beyond words and communication. It’s strategy, experiences, activations, actions, tools, systems, processes, design and more.
Build branding cohesion: Customer-facing branding and employer branding are equally important for success. They are synergistic and more powerful as partners versus operating in silos.
Make your people part of the process: Involve employees at every level and ongoing growth of the employer brand. Talk to talent about what’s working and what needs improvement. Measure these changes over time.
The goal is for customers to not just like a brand but join that brand. That same psyche is true of employees, and it is becoming more critical to ensure long-term enterprise success and progress. This adoption and shift will be a gamechanger as we look to the future and how to effectively build brand membership from the inside-out, creating lasting impacting.
In addition to being a Global Partner at Ogilvy Consulting, Yasmeen is completing her doctorate in business at Pepperdine. Her research is at the forefront of the intersection between employee-value and brand performance.
Lean into synergies: Employer brands are purpose statements biggest ally. They are powerful combination, ensuring that purpose becomes tangible and relatable to talent at all levels.
Employer brands are external: Allow the EVP and assets to be seen outside the walls of the company. Encourage employees to own the branding and share it publicly. Use it boldly in recruiting campaigns and more.
“Every time a brand makes a customerfacing decision or change, leadership needs to look inside the company, as well as consider the impact on the employer brand.”
Do you remember where you were the first time you heard the term “DE&I?” For many, it was 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic and various forms of injustice and civil unrest ignited more interest in social change. People engaged in conversations that seemed nearly impossible a decade ago. It inspired some to be honest about their own experiences and privilege in a way that most had not. But there are still pockets of people who feel that DE&I is a corporate buzzword. The truth is, it can be a buzzword if there is only “talk” and no action or sustainable change. So, how do we start moving beyond words into action? Let’s look back at five lessons I’ve learned working in DE&I that can help each of us advance more equitable and just communities.
We have more in common with one another compared to what we do not. Revealing those commonalities and building relationships with people with different life experiences is key to inclusion.
It happens – most well-intentioned people say the wrong thing, sometimes, but that does not mean it isn’t impactful. Hold yourself accountable and listen to others. When you’re having tough conversations, learn to sit with yourself in the discomfort.
Promote a culture that believes in belonging. Think about how you can create open spaces and allow people to be their authentic selves.
Feel like you’re equipped and ready with new knowledge? Do something. It’s essential to recognize that “doing something” looks different for everyone. Consider how you can contribute to making the world a better, more inclusive place. Join a discussion group, download some new podcasts, or engage in activism.
Addressing systemic issues can feel overwhelming but building inclusive spaces takes work and patience. If you feel burnt out, take time for yourself, and return when you’re ready and recharged. I always remind myself, “you cannot pour from an empty cup.”
In 2023, continue to push for action, and remember that you can make an impact. The information is endless; this year, lean in. Everyone wants to belong, so why not be a part of it?
When I graduated with a bachelor’s in Psychology, I did not anticipate I’d find myself in the tech world. Yet here I am helping clients build the digital products, mobile apps, and roadmaps of their dreams. And I do believe, my psych degree enlightened me to do this work.
A client seeking a technical consultancy is much like a person seeking personal help. However, instead of entering a psychologist’s office and sitting on their couch to share their problems, they work with a technology company day in and day out on Zoom calls.
As Product Managers, we’re here to listen to a client’s business requirements in the same way a licensed psychologist may listen to a patient’s personal feelings. We both empathize, listen to understand, document notes – you might even say we, as Product Managers, are therapists. Digital Analysis Therapists perhaps?
Requirements Whisperers? You decide. Either way – we as product experience leaders listen, advise, and influence our client’s to better their products – and even themselves. That’s where my psych degree has unexpectedly come in handy.
I’m proof that you can become a successful Product Manager with a major in Psychology because you understand the thought processes of humans and their behaviors scientifically. Scientifically understanding behaviors as a psychologist involves data discovery, testing hypotheses, and interpreting results. Sound familiar? These are the steps product leaders use every day when troubleshooting client issues, working on roadmaps, and defining solutions.
If our friends on our User Experience teams have taught us anything, it’s that “people ignore design that ignores people.” No matter
how much of the world we automate, it all started with a human being. Therefore, user psychology is an inherent part of the product creation process – which is why it is often a priority for Product Managers. And perhaps my Psychology degree can be just as significant in the product industry as any other accreditation. As a product enthusiast myself, you can find me at the intersection of psychology and tech. With perhaps a bit of true crime mixed in.
“My three favorite things are the Oxford comma, irony, and missed opportunities” -Unknown
Investing in customer data is a top priority for marketing leaders. Research has found that marketers who reported using customer data to heavily influence business decisions are 1.6 times more likely to see greater organizational revenue growth. But not all organizations have been able to use customer data to improve business results. Many marketing departments are still trying to make sense of the customer data they’re collecting, often struggling to manage data quality, assemble 360 customer profiles, and activate data in real time. To prevent your customer data set from becoming a data swamp, it’s important to lay a solid, scalable customer data infrastructure at the heart of your martech stack.
Several characteristics separate organizations with high customer data maturity from their less data-mature counterparts.
These include:
Speed: How quickly can you move data through the data lifecycle? How easily can non-technical stakeholders access the data they need and activate it in a timely manner?
Adaptability: How easily can you adjust to changes, both inside the company and in the market ecosystem?
Trust: How confident are data consumers in the accuracy, consistency, completeness, and privacy compliance of your data?
Collaboration: Do you have cross-functional processes in place to ensure the infrastructure supports the needs of all data stakeholders?
By establishing data processes and tooling that optimize for these characteristics throughout the data lifecycle, you’ll be better situated to increase your data maturity and use customer data to improve business results.
At Level 1: Reactive, organizations utilize numerous tools for activation, but are unable to scale their data strategy due to lack of a comprehensive process for data management, ownership and data integration.
As teams begin to leverage customer data to support better marketing, analytics and customer service, they often start by implementing tools to support each of these functions independently. This is a huge step forward from not being able to use customer data at all. But this reactive workflow leads to several challenges. Vendor implementation requests increase in direct proportion to marketing and product programs, making it difficult to scale. When tools need to be replaced, or when fundamental platform shifts occur, manual development is required to keep the tech stack up to date
To progress beyond the reactive level of data maturity, teams need to centralize their customer data infrastructure in a way that relieves engineering workload and facilitates cross-departmental collaboration around customer data.
Successful personalization at scale requires intentional planning around customer data management.
Teams progress in customer data maturity when they move from a series of disparate data pipelines to a centralized customer data infrastructure. At Level 2: Centralized, teams implement an infrastructure that allows them to collect customer data through a single point of collection and forward it out to downstream tools via server-side integrations, akin to a huband-spoke model. Marketing and product are able to access the data they need in their tools without having to depend on engineering for data requests and SDK implementations, executing tool-level use cases such as advertising, email and product analytics with greater independence.
The functions of the centralized customer data infrastructure at this stage, however, are limited to data collection and connection. Teams are still forced to perform tasks related to data governance manually, and there is no packaged solution for rule-based segmentation or filtering. To continue to improve speed and trust, teams need to find a way to automate cross-channel identity resolution, data privacy management, and data quality management.
At Level 3: Advanced, teams continue to collect customer data into a central customer data infrastructure, but they do more within their central infrastructure than simply route customer data. Specifically, teams automate how channel-level identities are resolved to 360 customer profiles, identify data quality errors and block them from polluting downstream systems and control data flows based on customer consent state in accordance with data privacy regulations. Automating these processes saves engineering from having to support these functions manually, and also helps data consuming teams have more trust in the validity of the data they are working with.
Organizationally, teams progress from operating with a cross-functional group collaborating on customer data processes to having a clear owner of the customer data infrastructure. This individual is responsible for liaising between data implementing teams and data consuming teams. They are also responsible for ensuring that the tools and processes in place allow data consuming teams to use data to accomplish business goals while also optimizing engineering efficiency.
By building audience segments in a central system and connecting them to multiple engagement tools, marketing is now able to deliver personalized experiences that are consistent across channels without support from engineering, improving customer lifetime value (CLTV) and time-to-value. And with a full view of customer engagement, teams can connect a conversion in one channel to a campaign delivered in another, increasing return on ad spend (ROAS).
Level 3: Advanced is by no means the end of the road. Advanced teams have the foundation and process in place to use customer data to deliver more sophisticated customer experiences.
Customer data maturity is the differentiator that separates the organizations that will win the market challenges of tomorrow from the organizations that will be stuck in the past. Whether you’re an early stage, high-growth company looking to set yourselves up for continued success, or an established company undergoing a digital transformation, it’s critical to implement a customer data infrastructure that facilitates speed, adaptability, trust, and collaboration.
To understand your organization’s level of customer data maturity and identify the things you can do to take your data strategy to the next level, you can take our customer data maturity assessment with the QR code below.
A longer version of this article originally appeared on mparticle.com
Wellness is fast becoming the business of companies that have never operated in this space at all. No longer confined to the realm of nutrition, exercise, sleep and perhaps a highend spa vacation, almost every brand can grow in the wellness economy with a relevant value proposition and the right brand experience. There’s nothing quite like a pandemic to make us all aware that its smarter to stay well than wait for illness to strike, hence consumers not only welcome this change but clearly expect brands to develop their wellness strategy merely to survive in the future.
The global wellness economy is now worth US $4.5 trillion, growing twice as fast as the rest of the economy. In the award-winning 2020 Ogilvy Wellness Gap Study we quantified for the first time the gap between consumer’s wellness expectations and how they feel brands deliver, studying seven industry sectors across 14 countries. Consumer dissatisfaction was
palpable - 75% felt brands could do more for their wellness and just 46% felt that brands consider their wellness as a priority (Qgjlvy Wellness Gap Study).
Consumers increasingly ask whether a brand enhances or detracts from their wellbeing. And for the first time we see that three quarters of global consumers feel brands need a wellness strategy as part of their core mission. Perhaps with brands failing to close the wellness gap, we spotted the emergence of a new consumer behaviour we termed “Social Wellness”. Global consumers are seeking like-minded communities for social connection and moral support on the wellness journey. We all need connection with other human beings to feel well. For most of us social media became our primary medium to connect during the pandemic, so these communities are primarily on line.
In response, wellness influencers radically adapted. The perfect visage of old style wellness influencers received a reboot - better aligning with the more gritty, inventive; sometimes lonely experience of Covid. Gone were the flawless wellness lifestyles, the always healthy diets and ‘sunshine and rainbows’ motivational quotes.
Micro influencers emerged or rebrandedactively building more inclusive and authentic wellness communities based on everyday reality, transparency, balanced advice and honest depictions, even confessions, of the ups and downs along the wellness journey.
So how do brands re-align now? Our objective at Ogilvy Health is to help brands close the “wellness gap” with their audiences. While our Wellness Gap study quantified the gap in food, snacks, travel, skincare, autos and financial wellness, this new research uncovers insights on how brands can close the gap and grow by leveraging inclusive social wellness practices. We interviewed wellness influencers in these same industry sectors to understand how they build more authentic and engaged brand communities and what brands can learn from them to ‘get real’ in wellness.
“Storyselling is designed for brands looking for impact in the presenttense.”
As an Ogilvy specialty agency focused on performance, driving consumer action is kind of our thing.
Over the years, we’ve seen what has worked and what has not. Yes, we’ve had some fails. And while there is no formula—nor should there ever be—for creative development, our wins and losses collectively have built a roadmap for success. It’s something we call Storyselling.
Storyselling unites the principles of telling a great story with (you guessed it) selling. Here’s a rundown on how this creative approach to performance advertising works:
Any good story should engage its audience early on. Drawing them in and enticing their heads and hearts to want to hear more. Think of your favorite movie. What happens in the first scene? How did it reel you in? With Storyselling, our aim is exactly this. Of course, on a smaller scale. And instead of entertaining the audience, we engage them through selfidentification. We want viewers quickly to identify with the opening and say to themselves, “Hey, this ad is for me.” We aren’t concerned with influencing everyone in the universe. We’d rather connect with those who will relate to and benefit from your product or service. That’s our opening hook. It’s how we attract the right audience to sell your story.
With brand advertising, the content is typically the story itself. And the objective of that content is getting consumers to feel something. Storyselling, on the other hand, is more focused on making the product the storyline – serving up impactful benefits, features and reasons to believe. Emotion will play a role, as it should, but being informative is critical. As we’ve learned from the aforementioned wins and fails, in order to inspire someone to act, a certain level of understanding has to take place. Storyselling’s content holds the audience’s interest by appealing to their wants and needs. It looks to break down any known barriers to purchase—every brand has them. And it strives to highlight the product’s differentiating qualities. Distinction is a wonderful thing. It’s ultimately all about delivering the right information, the right way, to move consumers from thinking to acting. Informative, valuable content presented to an interested audience goes a long way.
Just because we're working with information rather than entertainment, doesn’t mean structure isn’t important. How you walk your audience through the message, how you deliver the brand proposition, how you support the proposition with benefits and tangible facts in a logical fashion, it all matters. The kitchen sink approach, which we’ve all seen, can overwhelm a consumer. Scattered or vague messaging can create confusion. The right flow and structure will make sure the message resonates with your audience instead of flying by them, or worse, steering them away. Every great story needs a great structure.
The wonderful thing about advertising is there’s no one way to grow a brand. Storyselling is designed for brands looking for impact in the present tense. It’s about generating response today while also building brand equity for the future. It’s an approach that can be the leading tactic for a brand or one that complements other strategies in the marketing plan. Afterall, every brand should have many stories to tell… or sell.
Eicoff is a performance advertising agency—focused on TV, digital and audio. Our creative inspires action. Our flexible media approach delivers greater reach, response and ROI. And our data methodology brings unparalleled clarity and insight to media measurement. Everything we do has one goal: sparking growth for our clients.
To learn more about our approach to performance advertising, visit eicoff.com
I am a budgeter. Ever since I was sixteen, I have tracked almost all of the money I spent in Quicken and compared it to a budget I create annually. I guess it makes sense that I ended up in a data-related field!
One of the reasons I have always tracked my spending in a budget is that I found that those who don’t track it, tend to spend more. I find that the same mentality applies to business. Having spent many years as a consultant, I witnessed organizations acting differently based on how the economy was performing. When the economy was good, they might hire more people than they should or take on projects that have questionable returns on investment.
When it comes to digital analytics, I find that organizations can get lazy about
maximizing digital performance. When the economy is humming along, some organizations don’t pay that much attention to the data they are collecting in their digital analytics platforms. If the lead form competition rate is 15% vs. 17% does it really matter? Is it a big deal if the order conversion rate is 2.5% vs. 2.8%?
I also see organizations “over-implementing” when the economy is good. They sometimes spend weeks or months tracking their digital properties to excruciating detail. Developers may set hundreds of data events or track every single link or button on a website.
As we enter into what could be a prolonged economic downturn, I am hearing and seeing a lot of fear out there. Some companies may not make it through the downtown and others may be forced to
cut back on people and projects. However, those in the digital analytics field are often in a better position than others during troubled economic times because they can use data to quantify how they are contributing to growth. When growth slows, one of the best ways to accelerate it is to leverage data to optimize digital properties. Oftentimes data is the key to identifying ways to improve conversion rates or increase revenues. While many things can be cut during a downturn, I have rarely seen an organization throw out its digital analytics team or platform during these times. In fact, economic downturns are when digital analytics platforms are often most valuable.
So as we enter these uncertain times, I would advise you to consider the following:
Consider doing things differently when it comes to digital analytics during economic downturns.
Despite how much data you collect at your organization, there are likely a handful of metrics that really matter when it comes to saving or making money. Take a step back from your digital properties and consider what data is most critical to the organization. If you are a retailer, that might mean focusing on cart conversion rates. If you are a technology company, that might mean focusing on lead conversion rates. Pick the customer journey flows that matter the most to the organization and optimize the heck out of them.
Another benefit of an economic downturn is that you have an excuse to skip the vanity metrics! When times are tough, it is interesting how few people care about the number of visits or unique visitors your digital properties are getting each week.
Many organizations incorrectly treat digital analytics as a cost center within the organization. They view digital analytics software and teams as something that you just have to have – like desks, computers, and phones. It is part of the cost of doing business. But digital analytics should be viewed as a profit center and an economic downturn is a great time to shift this mentality. Your organization should be investing in digital analytics so that it can either cut costs or increase revenue. The digital analytics team should be able to show specific examples of how data was used to improve the organization’s bottom line. If your organization isn’t already tracking how digital analytics data and the resulting
analyses are contributing to the bottom line, use this downturn as the reason to start doing this right away. Using a profit center mindset will also help your digital analytics team avoid low-impact projects and requests over time.
While your organization should always be experimenting to find ways to improve customer journeys and experiences, instead of pulling back on this, double down on it! It is very easy to abandon experimentation efforts during tough times, but experimentation is often one of the biggest unlocks to new growth. Challenge your team to identify new ideas for optimizing conversion and test as many of them as you can. The beauty of experimentation is that you can use control groups to prove how valuable the tests are when you find winners.
If you need to cut costs, one of the best areas to do this is digital advertising. It is easy to scale back your digital advertising and view the impact of this on your conversion. While there can be negative branding impacts of reducing advertising, many organizations have not taken the time to find where they have diminishing returns. Try reducing your digital advertising by 10% and see if your conversions have gone down by 10% over the next few weeks. Don’t be freaked out by the decrease in visits. Focus on the longer-term impact on conversion. If your conversion metrics don’t fall, try reducing digital advertising by another 10%. Eventually, you will see conversions go down, but it may have been the case that you were over-indexing on last-touch attribution and overpaying for digital advertising. The economic downturn provides some cover for testing the efficiency of your digital advertising efforts.
Every dollar invested is not equal. If you spend money on advertising, you may get a one-time lift, but you have to keep investing there to see repeat lift. Money spent improving digital products has the potential to create exponential growth. For example, if your organization spends $20,000 making a new feature that improves the product experience, that could lead to increased product adoption. This increase in product adoption could lead to increased referrals and revenue retention. During economic downturns, it is important to recognize that all investments are not equal and that investments in product growth can have a compounding effect. While the natural reaction may be to slow down product development when times are tough, it can often be the time to double down on product development projects that will increase adoption, engagement, and retention.
Some of you reading this might be saying to yourself – why wouldn’t we do these things all of the time? Why only during an economic downturn? Of course you should probably do these things all of the time. But as I mentioned at the start of this post, when times are good, we tend to lose our focus. We implement more than we need. We focus on vanity metrics. We analyze data that may be nice to have instead of critical. We don’t consider if the analyses we are doing are providing ROI. We experiment, but maybe not as aggressively as we should. We buy ads to get traffic but may not do it efficiently.
Economic downturns can be horrible, but if there is a silver lining it is that they force you to refocus on what is most important. I advise you to take advantage of this time to focus on what matters most to your organization and maybe when the downturn is over, you can try and avoid some of the bloat that happens when times are good again. And hopefully times will be good again soon!
Everyone in the organization now knows the need to make digital the core of all business operations. From top to bottom, all are invested in using the best technologies. Innovation is surging, and no one wants to be left behind. Digital transformation made it as a strategic vision to keep the company relevant, marketable, and competitive. Every department is doing its part—be data-driven. Marketing is using email optimization and measured communications. Production has systemized workflows, reviews, and approvals. Sales has a point of service (POS) system to understand what sells and what doesn’t. Service has automated chatbots and is collecting tons of data on what customers like and don’t like. Going down the checklist, the organization is on its way to plow through the future, or is it?
It takes a little bit more than putting systems in place to expect progress. It takes much more. Companies across industries are racing to jump on the transformation wagon. They realize that success is dependent on the adoption and use of a slew of platforms. In his book Digital Transformation, Thomas Seibel warns of extinction if companies don’t invest in platforms across cloud computing, internet of things, and artificial intelligence. This is not false. And it is not blindly true. It is easy to be taken out of context giving all the credit for sustaining a business to the technical platform. The speed at which information is needed today requires systems. The volume at which information is created today requires systems. The scale at which information is shared today requires systems. The decision on how these systems can be used to solve a particular problem requires a human touch.
The customer is at the center of the business. The business appeals to the customer through its brand promises and product utility.
The customer has many options to spend her time. She can be streaming TV, watching YouTube, browsing a website, shopping on mobile, scrolling through twitter feed, responding to a Facebook post, checking her email, setting her iWatch alarm, or navigating GPS. Every customer is unique the business says—now more than ever. The business wants to find the customer and communicate with her wherever she is. It spreads its wings across all these channels in hope for having a complete picture about its customer.
There is no shortage of companies supplying technical tools for different needs. The natural path for the business is to acquire the necessary application that promises to put the business at the customer’s touchpoint. The problem is that it is unlikely to find one platform for most purposes. When looking back, companies are tracking hundreds, maybe more, distinct systems and platforms in their environment. This number can be bigger for larger organizations. It is bound to create duplication or unseen gaps. Keeping track of what is being used and what is idle is not an easy task. Orchestrating this web of technologies is a human task. If it feels complex, that’s because it is. Without it, money can be wasted, and efforts can be lost.
David Rogers presents a guide to digital transformation built around rethinking the approach, strategies, and methods an organization takes and makes in a digital age (The Digital Transformation Playbook). And this is more like it. His subtitle is: rethink your business for the digital age. The key word here is “rethink”—a human function.
Yes, we have data. Yes, we have automation.automation. But how can a business use them? The answer to that question is a well-rounded rational decision around business value proposition and less about emulation of trendy tech obsessions. Data and technology are enablers for a solution, and not necessarily the solution itself.
Take personalization for example. A term I first heard a decade ago. It was cutting edge then. Today it is more common. But it is as misunderstood as it was then. Why? Because of the association it has with big data and complex signal analysis. Having data—big or small— allowed businesses to learn that customers do different things, like different things, and act in different ways, even if they belong to the same demographics. The urge is to find more data. We do get more, and we do learn more. But it dilutes the focus on how to personalize.
Personalization at its core is presenting a customer with options and communications that she prefers and values, based on what we know about her. That can be the time of the day she shops, or the events she enjoys outdoors, or the level of love and hate she has for the brand. But it can’t be all of them at once. We do have algorithms that can crunch through all this data and predict behavior. But Nassim Taleb tells us how bad we are at predicting (The Black Swan). Acting on one set of data can generate better results than an insight generated by forcing a match between unmatchable data.
Going back to the company above with email activities, sales data from the POS system, production data, and trends from customer service, a talented analyst can generate very rich insights. The tendency is to find that data fragmented within the company—each dataset belonging to a department. Or some companies overdo it by buying 3rd party data and jamming it with their data. Too much data without proper purpose generates noise. Whether deciding to use selected datasets or digging through mountains of data, an analyst or scientist is at the core of creating actionable insight. Insight is not automatic.
Enabling technical platforms must be in every business’ toolbox. Every tool in the toolbox must have a clear purpose. And it must be placed where it fits with easy retrieval and use. It is also clear that a business needs data to make sound and timely decisions. But data cannot turn into clutter. Technical solution architecture and data architecture require pure human orchestration to organize a platform capable of servicing a business as it competes in the undeniable digital age.
Technology continues to change at lightning speed. Subsequently, the way in which we both build and consume websites has also changed over the years. Gone are the days of creating websites using basic HTML, CSS and javascript, and long gone are the days of outdated monolithic CMS’s.
In today’s competitive markets, companies need to rapidly deploy new and updated content frequently and easily. This content also needs to be quickly discoverable and accessible by consumers. The time it takes to deliver the content to your end user can also greatly impact your SEO rankings. The answer: you need a website that is fast and scalable. And you need a CMS that can handle the job.
When considering a website rebuild or CMS replatform, there are many factors to take into account. And, as you may guess, they are all important. I’ve been fortunate to work with some of the world’s most loved brands to bring amazing website experiences to the market and I’ve learned a thing or two in the process. Here are my top five biggest challenges we’ve helped clients overcome and tips for what you should pay special attention to during your next website rebuild, specifically when you are considering a new CMS platform.
We’ve seen each of these top five recommendations become an issue when using a traditional CMS platform where backend content authoring and your front-end presentation exist on the same server infrastructure.
Let’s dive in.
One of the major issues most marketing departments face is being able to manage and author content easily. Most traditional CMS’s have become outdated and use complex interfaces. Because these systems were created to build websites, they packaged every available feature into one software platform and use WYSIWYG tools to layout pages. By using this design first approach, you limit your team to creating content only for a website and are confined to the components within the system. This kind of tooling can be counter-intuitive and make pages look inconsistent or cookie-cutter.
Another major issue companies face is scalability. Because traditional CMS’s are contained within a single server infrastructure, you are limited to the resources of that environment. As your website and audience grows, that dual core processer server with eight gigabytes of memory is still going to be the same five years from now. That server isn’t going to be able to handle the amount of new traffic in the future.
Our clients have mentioned that as years have gone by, their SEO rankings have taken a hit. This is partially because their existing CMS server infrastructure is outdated and slow and crashes from time to time. Your rankings depend on your website being up and running and delivering content as fast as possible.
Security has become a hot topic with our clients. Phishing and hacking are happening at record levels. Your website is your face to the internet world and if someone gains access to your CMS, they could take it all down or change your content with malicious intent. Protecting your brand is a high-priority.
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When considering a website rebuild or CMS replatform, there are many factors to take into account. And, as you may guess, they are all important.
With a traditional CMS, you normally pay for a license fee for a specific version or two of the software. Because technology is constantly changing and getting better, what may have been great today, may not work well tomorrow. By locking into a single version of software, you may not be getting the latest technology and upgrading may not be an option in the future.
So how can we solve for these challenges?
It’s quite simple actually and that is to take advantage of composable or M.A.C.H. architecture. What is M.A.C.H. architecture?
• Microservices: Individual pieces of business functionality that are independently developed, deployed and managed.
• API-first: Functionality is exposed through an API, making it possible to tie together two or more applications or services.
• Cloud-Native SaaS: Software-asa-Service that leverages the full capabilities of the cloud, beyond storage and hosting, including elastic scaling of highly available resources. Functionality is updated automatically, eliminating the need for upgrade management.
• Headless: The front-end user experience is completely decoupled from the back-end logic, allowing for complete design freedom in creating the user interface and for connecting to other channels and devices (i.e. websites, mobile apps, email, IoT, etc...).
This approach decouples the backend content authoring from the frontend presentation so that each component of the website stack is not wholly-dependent on one another. Content that was previously only useable by a website can now be used on any channel or device (website, native app, etc….).
This content is defined and maintained within a headless CMS. The content can then be consumed by any front-end technology like ReactJS which allows for complete freedom of design. The frontend can be pre-rendered into static assets which then can be hosted on a CDN for scalability and faster delivery to the client device (web browser).
This approach allows the content to be reused to create endless amounts of new pages, as well as used on multiple websites from a single maintainable source. It also future-proofs the ecosystem by allowing your team to reuse the content with the latest technology trend.
How does M.A.C.H architecture help eliminate each of our challenges above?
Let’s look at them one by one.
By using a headless CMS, you are focusing on just the content. Your marketing team can create content quickly and easily while your front-end structures the content into a pre-developed design. You still have the freedom to layout and create pages as you see fit but you no longer have to worry about making it look right.
By separating your front-end presentation from your back-end authoring, you can build your website into static HTML, CSS and javascript files and store them in a content delivery network (CDN). A CDN is a network of file storage servers strategically placed all around the world. With the recent advancements in technology, these CDN servers can host your static website and deliver it to your end-users at the closest location to them. CDN servers automatically scale to handle bursts of traffic and because it’s file based, you don’t need a server to render your
website each time it’s viewed creating a faster, more reliable experience. This increases your SEO rankings because the time to first byte (TTFB) is incredibly fast.
Because a traditional CMS and website share the same resources, if a hacker were to gain access to your system, they gain access to all your resources. By separating your back-end from your front-end, you never have to expose your back-end system to the public which in turn keeps hackers from knowing about it. Because your front-end lives in the cloud on a CDN, there isn’t any back-end system to hack. If they were to gain access to the cloud, which would be extremely hard to do, you could easily redeploy your website quickly back to its original state.
The above items solve the most common requested issues but there is so much more to this composable ecosystem. By separating out each piece of the technology pie, you can choose a bestin-class product or service that works best for you and integrate it into your overall solution. This prevents vendor or technology lock-in. If technology changes, you can change individual components as needed. If you are no longer satisfied with your current vendors’ solution, you can choose another.
CREDIT:
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY OGILVY, THIS IS AN EXCERPT FROM THE FUTURES 6 REPORT. VIEW THE REST OF THE REPORT HERE:
Passionate celebrity obsession has been around for decades, but where this sort of behaviour was once regarded as a little deranged, The New York Times says it’s now a mainstream phenomenon. Psychologists even have a name for it – celebrity worship syndrome. Where fans once had a distant sense of awe in proximity to their idols, social media has broken down those barriers and created a false sense of personal connection. Flaming and gushing that was once restricted to online worlds is creeping into real life.
The increasingly transactional nature of relationships between stars and their audiences has also created a sense among these fans that they own a piece of these celebrities. Stars earn lucrative contracts from the attention they receive and fans are demanding a piece of the action. Celebrities may be the influencers, but fans increasingly want this to be a two-way street where they influence those they worship. At its most extreme, it has the feeling of political activism, even though our expectations of elected officials are built on much more solid foundations of accountability.
McDonald’s tapped into fandom with its ‘Famous Orders’. Based on the insight that the brand had become cultural wallpaper –everyone knew it but there was a lack of emotional connection – this campaign set out to understand behavioural quirks and trigger nostalgic feelings among customers.
Local research unearthed personal stories and brand connections that could be amplified nationally and internationally. It showed that everyone has things they like to add or remove when ordering McDonald’s, and became a platform to engage celebrity fans around their personal preferences. This was extended across markets to tap into different demographics and audience groups.
The Chainsmokers used non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to give one percent of royalties from their latest album – So Far So Good – to fans. The DJ duo minted 5,000 limited digital assets, with the VIP fans who get them also gaining access to exclusive content and other benefits through a private Discord channel. While the primary motivation was to drive deeper connections with their biggest fans, the team of 14 songwriters who worked on the album also stand to benefit, with secondary fees from any resale of these NFTs going to them.
Bella Hadid has also ventured into the virtual world of NFTs to engage with her fans, launching a range of more than 11,000 tokens made by 10 different creatives from 3D scans of her body. Half a million people joined the waitlist to get one. There are also loose plans for the super fans buying one of these NFTs to be given access to online and in-person meet and greets.
Even animated characters are generating Extreme Fandom. When the latest instalment of the Despicable Me franchise – Minions: Rise of Gru – hit the cinemas, TikTok went wild with armies of boys getting suited and booted before heading to their local theatre. Nobody is sure what sparked this #GentleMinions trend, but it’s most interesting as an example of social media encouraging people to go out into the real world and have fun.
When beer brands were banned from sponsoring Brazilian soccer teams, it broke a connection between Brahma and fans that goes back to 1958. So it partnered with Sao Paolo FC’s Reinaldo – a player with 2.3 million Twitter followers – to create ‘The Foamy Haircut’. This represented the creaminess of its beer, white on the top with gold underneath.
This started a trend with other players, commentators and fans that took the brand to places it could never have reached through shirt sponsorship deals. When Chelsea defeated Villareal to win the European Super Cup, soccer and beer fans around the world saw Brazilian midfielder Jorginho score a penalty while sporting his own foamy haircut.
When TikToker Carly Joy gave her fans a tutorial on how to ‘Bless Your F#@%ing Cooch’ using EOS shave cream, the internet pretty much lost its collective mind. EOS was inundated with requests asking where to get this product and responded quickly by repackaging the range as ‘Cooch Blessings Cream’, with instructions directly quoting her viral video. This created a conversation about shaving and insatiable demand for EOS, with CMO Soyoung Kang saying its business doubled in a year.
Extreme fans are also quick to let a brand know when it gets something wrong. Oh, and they hold grudges for a very long time. Skittles found this out when changing the flavour of green sweets in its packets from lime to green apple, receiving more than 130,000 online complaints over nine long years that eventually convinced it to ‘Apologise the Rainbow’.
The campaign started with a 35-minute apology streamed live on Twitch, with 136,000 fans tuning in to watch. The brand’s apologies kept coming on Twitter, on a billboard in New York’s Times Square, and in a post that covered every single complaint and would take more than 10 hours to read. Then it sent everyone free Skittles, with lime reinstated as the green flavour. This left a sour taste in mouths around the world, but in a good way and sales jumped more than 20 per cent.
Fandom can also be subconscious as demonstrated by a Heinz campaign. When it anonymously asked consumers in markets around the world to ‘Draw Ketchup’, they overwhelmingly drew pictures of its signature sauce bottle. Except one guy who drew mustard. Awkward.
This trend shows how social media has broken down the walls between brands and their most dedicated fans, and the positive results that come from listening and letting them in.IMAGE CREDIT: Rethink Canada
Montanna Cervenka, of The Lacek Group’s Strategic Services team explores the attitudes and behaviors of Gen Z and how they’re beginning to impact the future of brands as we know it. A Gen Z consumer and marketer herself, Montanna keeps authenticity, inclusivity, and sustainability at the forefront of her purchasing decisions. Her favorite brands include Nike, Sephora, and Delta.
A digitally native generation with the world available at its fingertips, Gen Z presents new challenges for marketers. Gen Zers’ unique sense of self and motivations are redefining consumerism. They’re consciously setting higher expectations for brands with theirvalues-first mindset, leading and rewriting culture as we know it, and using technology as an extension of their identities and lifestyle habits.
In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic—which spurred rapid and relentless consumer innovation—hit just as Gen Z began making their first major life and financial decisions.These factors created a generation with high expectations for on-demand, seamless brand interactions. Gen Z is calling for brands to deliver an engaging, rewarding, and exciting customer experience personalized to their unique needs.
Generation Z are the young, tech-savvy U.S. consumers born between 1996 and 2011. They’re the most diverse generation yet in terms of race, ethnicity, and gender identity. They’ve officially overtaken millennials as the largest cohort of the population (32%), and they now account for 40% of global consumers.1
A group that includes a large proportion of second-generation immigrants, just 52% of Gen Z identifies as white (the least of all generations), 25% as Hispanic, 14% as Black, 6% as Asian, and 5% as another cultural background. 2 They’re 22% more likely to have at least one immigrant parent, which illustrates a shift in the broader dynamics of the U.S. population.3 They’re maturing in an environment in which representations of traditionally marginalized people are expanding. And they’re consciously working to change cultural norms and eradicate stigmas as they prioritize and celebrate individuality and diversity.
Traditional personal identifiers (e.g., gender, sexuality, personal brand) are also viewed more fluidly by Gen Z; for example, according to a Vice Media Group survey, 48% identify as something other than heterosexual, and 41% identify as neutral on a femininity and masculinity scale. The prevalence of LGBTQ+ identities and attitudes in this group appears to signal a greater acceptance of difference
IMAGE CREDIT: The Lacek Groupamong them. Almost all (96%) say people should be able to love whomever they want, and 35% report they know someone who prefers gender-neutral pronouns.4 That’s compared to 25% of millennials, 16% of Gen Xers, and 12% of baby boomers. 5
Additionally, Gen Z is on track to be the most educated generation, with the highest post-secondary enrollment rate of all generations. Pew Research Center data indicates they have greater high school graduation rates and are achieving a 5% increase in college enrollment rates over millennials in 2003 and a 14% increase over Gen Xers in 1987. This reflects an overall trend toward pursuing higher education; between 2000 and 2018, high school dropout rates declined from 11% to 4%, and the share of 18- to 24-year-olds who were college students or graduates increased from 36% to 49%. 6
At the same time, 90% of Gen Zers believe real-world experiences are the best education, and many are creating alternative career paths. More than two-thirds (68%) say “work is something I have to do and is not the most important thing in my life,” and 71% say they’re willing to take a more meaningful, lower-paying job.7 They’re reimagining the structure of education and work, with 65% of high schoolers saying they want to follow their own educational path. Most young people (72%) value “side hustles,” or ways to make money outside of a nine-to-five job. Buying and reselling goods, freelancing, crafting and artistry, investing, and driving for Uber or Lyft are the top Gen Z side hustles. 8
Higher education rates among a more diverse, creative generation lay the foundation for a group of powerful consumers who redefine societal norms with their unique identities.
Read the entire report on Gen Z. ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON THINKING.LACEK.COM
SANDEEPA VEMIREDDY VICE PRESIDENT OF PEOPLE, BOTTLE ROCKET
In our “new normal” way of working since the pandemic forced us all home, are we losing one of the most amazing parts of work? Specifically, I’m talking about the friendships and working relationships that we make during our 9-5 hours.
Since the pandemic, working from home has offered a lot of perks for many. A chance to not deal with rush hour traffic, working from a favorite location or while traveling, better comfort in our own homes, staying close to family – these are just a few perks that come to mind for me. While all of these perks are great, this new way of working did change what once was valued by many as the most important reason for employee engagement and retention: friendships and the bond that existed among colleagues. Have we become too comfortable being by ourselves and making work just work and nothing more? If so, what does this mean for our future relationships and how does it impact employee engagement and retention in years to come? Will work just be about work going forward?
Humans are built to be with other humans. It’s just a fact of life. And it’s proven that workplace friendships are associated with heightened creativity, innovation, and cohesiveness (from PsychologyToday.com).
Many times, when I hear stories about someone loving their job, very rarely is the why behind it about the work. More often it’s about the people. I personally feel the exact same way. While I do love the company and work that I get to do each and every day, I think it’s safe to say that I love the people that I get to work with as much if not more.
Recently at Bottle Rocket, we hosted our annual hackathon we call Rocket Science. This is a tried-and-true tradition for us, dating back over 10 years. Rocket Science is about working together on something that brings you joy, something that fulfills a passion, something that is inspiring or a new skill that you want to learn. This year was especially sweet because for the first time in a long time, many of us were able to come together and see each other in person. The hugs, the high-fives, the smiles, the conversations…it was the best two days.
The projects that people engage in during our two days together range from testing and learning new technologies to brainstorming ways to tackle a challenge. This year, the team I was a part of took on the challenge of work culture in a work from wherever world. As a part of our project, we asked dozens of Rocketeers (this is what we call our employees) when the last time was that they felt most connected to our company. And, as you can imagine, many (if not all) of the people surveyed responded with an heartfelt “TODAY!” response. And when we dug a little deeper and asked what about today, again, as you can imagine, the result was similar across the board: being with people. Many new friendships were formed these two days for me, and I am confident for many of my fellow Rocketeers as well.
This is simply one proof point that supports my hypothesis –humans are built to be with other humans. But the challenge now becomes solving how we can keep the important perks of working remote while also still building and deepening the friendships and bonds that are equally as important to most. How can we continue to make work about more than just the work? Here are a few simple suggestions and tips that I think can help keep us connected when we can’t always be together in person.
Encourage “camera on” time during Zoom meetings as much as makes sense for your business. While I recognize it’s a balance, it’s also an important way to keep us feeling more connected and engaged with the people we work with and whatever type of work we are doing together. Of course, it’s never a good idea to insist that people are on camera 100% of the time and take away the flexibility from your people.
Leave 5 minutes at the beginning and/or end of every meeting for casual conversations. This simple tip allows for team members to share their weekend fun, talk about a concert or, even at times, how they are feeling at that moment. This goes a long way to create space to learn about each other and not always just talk about work.
While it feels like an effort to do all this, I’m confident it will pay off in the long run. When work gets too hectic, wouldn’t it be nice to gather up (even virtually) with couple of friends at work and chat? Think about it. Making work about more than just work is an opportunity at our fingertips. Once you start, you can inspire many other to carry on the torch. It can even start with a simple “Hi.”
Create intentional “check-ins”. Make a conscious effort to check in on someone. A casual “How was your weekend?” or “How is your garden doing given the recent rain?” or “Are you feeling better today?” can go a long way in building connections. Even a quick Slack or email to say “Happy Friday” could brighten someone’s otherwise dreary day and deepen a connection that you may already have.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, retail companies were forced to rethink how they do business. Customers across all demographics, especially those over 50-years-old, shifted toward purchasing online and using curbside pick-up or home delivery options. It became imperative for retail businesses to re-invent themselves to stay relevant and continue serving their customers. As a result, many companies turned to Bottle Rocket for our unique approach to innovation and proven ability to tackle complex business problems.
One such company, a nationwide retail chain, approached Bottle Rocket to create an employee-facing app to expedite the fulfillment of their online orders. This project was challenging, yet rewarding, and there are many key takeaways that others can apply to the creation of any digital experience. Here are our top 10 learnings from the project:
1. Don’t be afraid to break something. This seems counterintuitive, but sometimes breaking something is what it takes to navigate through the challenges of testing extreme scenarios. You may have to try a few different things to get to the correct solution, and your experiment may cause the app flow to freeze, or a user account to get stuck, but without trying, you would never have known. Failure is the mother of success.
4. Commit 110%. Dedication, consistency, and the desire to build world-class products are essential. The QA squad on this project exemplified these traits from day one. The ability to dig into information, embrace new tools, and teach others directly resulted in the success of this project.
2. Small gestures of appreciation go a long way. Design and development take passion, heart, and soul. Every piece of work deserves positive affirmation behind the effort that went into creating it. Using emojis to send praises to team members adds fuel for good team morale. At every release, be sure to give public shoutouts to various team members for acknowledgement of a job well done, no matter how busy you are. This is a small gesture, but with a big impact.
3. Don’t give up. You might be working tirelessly to figure out the reproduction steps of some of the weirdest glitches, and everything you and your quality assurance squad tries doesn’t work. You are exhausted. However, don’t give up. Take a break, step away, even sleep on it. You may find yourself so invested in the project that your brain continues to try to solve the puzzle in your dreams. To your astonishment, you wake up with the answer or at least another option to try to troubleshoot. Keep trying new solutions and never give up on yourself.
Another undeniable factor is the exceptional project management on this team. We had strong, committed leadership from the beginning, and they have been able to keep us motivated. It takes a big heart, an open mind, and strong skills to coordinate the changing priorities and keep the project on the rails.
5. Protect the integrity of product design. Deep into feature development and testing, we established a defect triage process to prioritize work to fix edge case issues. It unknowingly opened a backdoor for new features to sneak in subtly. The team got together and decided to close that door, and set a rule to distinguish between existing versus new requirements. Protecting the integrity of the product and the design decisions are important for quality control.
AMBER6.Be aware of hidden players. For the few production defects, we struggled to determine the cause or reproduce the steps since the production and testing environments sometimes behave differently. It often turned out some hidden culprits were at play that would result in front end app issues: invalid data, network instability, API issues, or an unexpected barcode format. We were able to put a new process into place to help the frontline collect information at the time of reporting, and thus direct the issues to the right channel.
7.Automate, automate, automate. At times, developers and QAs want to test orders without having to go through the manual preparation steps every time. Thankfully, one of our QA squad members is obsessed with automation and put in scripts to replace the manual flow. He pulled off these kinds of tasks again and again, no matter how many times he had to fine tune the scripts to adapt to the new app changes. His diligence was a key factor for improved development speed without sacrificing quality.
8.Don’t be afraid to contribute. The open team culture made it feel safe to contribute. There are no set limitations for contribution if you have the knowledge and skills. Team members were encouraged to work with each other to solve problems, including those from different disciplines. We worked with product owners, product managers, strategy, design, front end developers, backend engineers, and quality assurance to share knowledge and information, collaborate, and support each other. Building complex software is like constructing a tall building –when you see a potential risk, or a missing piece, you raise your hand and put your skills to work either directly or by collaborating with the subject matter experts. In the process, you learn new skills or sharpen your existing ones.
9.Balance speed and quality. Our project team experimented with many things to speed up development and rollouts, as demanded by today’s competitive market. You can speed it up to a certain degree by adding developers, streamlining processes, and massaging sub team structures, but there is a limitation. You can’t have multiple people changing code on the same screen at the same time. Well, you can, but you won’t like the result - a confusing experience for the end user. Additionally, when creating innovative products, you have to allow time for feature refinement. First build the minimum viable product, collect feedback, and then enhance. Rushing this process will only compromise quality and create a frustrating user experience.
10.Take a moment to reflect. There were many magical moments on this project. One special moment was at the end of a big release, when we had a celebration for those who were rolling off the engagement. We received public praise throughout the project from both the client and internal leadership; however, at this meeting, some of our co-workers read pre-written shout-outs in front of everyone. The messages were full of comments like “I will carry the knowledge I gained and the examples provided of what it takes to be a legend at our position throughout the entirety of my career.” How could someone not be humbled, honored, and touched by this?! It makes all the effort worthwhile.
Although each project is different, the principles of quality for the final deliverable are the same. In a snapshot, a high-quality experience does not start with a release, or even development and testing–it is woven into the fabric of the experience by every team member throughout the project in their everyday tasks. It is a mindset of meaningful and meticulous work. As our founder Calvin often says, at Bottle Rocket, you are empowered to “do the best work of your life” and this project team provided a platform to achieve just that. We feel very lucky to have worked with such a high caliber team to produce an amazing experience that is moving the needle for our client every day.
At the core of any mobile business are the developers who build apps and the marketers who drive adoption and usage. The relationship between these two groups is critical to the success of mobile apps.
To better understand that relationship, Airship commissioned a study —the Mobile App Experience Gap Survey — that identified how technical people (developers) and non-technical people (marketers and mobile product owners) work together on processes and priorities to drive more value from mobile apps.
The report spotlights key internal challenges companies of all sizes face in deploying and improving mobile app experiences for their customers. Not surprisingly, app teams at larger organizations (1000+ employees) underperform in optimizing customer experiences across the entire app lifecycle — primarily due to internal processes and priorities.
This joint understanding unifies these diverse teams. Half of developers (51%) said they work very well with marketing and mobile products owners, and another 37% of developers said marketers are “decent partners.” Marketers were even more positive about relationships with developers: 62% said they work very well together, and 29% said they are decent partners. Not a single respondent chose the two most negative characterizations — “difficult” and “uncooperative.”
When it comes to getting work done, however, things unravel a bit.
More than 95% of marketers rely on developers to improve app user experiences, and nearly three-quarters of them think about onboarding, feature adoption, opt-in and data collection enhancements weekly.
Meanwhile, developers say “major new features” and “bug fixes” drive their app release cadence most, and “QA testing” and “internal approvals” most impact release predictability. “Marketing or product team requests” are a distant third priority.
Twice as many marketers as developers at enterprise and mid-market companies believe their onboarding, adoption, opt-in and data collection enhancement requests are handled “immediately, with the next app update.” In contrast, twice as many developers at enterprise and mid-market companies say these requests take “a month” or “multiple months.”
The good news is this: Regardless of company size, almost everyone involved in app development and app marketing understands that waiting to get enhancements into the market significantly impacts their business.
This means that marketers are at the mercy of developers to deliver their enhancements, and developers are inundated with marketing requests that distract from their core focus on the next market-differentiating app features. The size of the problem is not small. Worse, it’s not fully perceived.
Once an app is downloaded, marketers and mobile product owners are under increasing pressure to make new relationships blossom. And like any successful long-term relationship, that requires understanding their needs and mutually beneficial exchanges in their moments of attention. In other words, when they are in the app. Onboarding experiences are the single greatest lever marketing and mobile product teams have to turn new downloads into engaged users and ultimately loyal customers.
While most developers say it takes “multiple weeks” to build and deploy a preference center (53%) or a multi-screen feature tutorial or opt-in flow (52%), a third of enterprise developers estimated “a month” or “multiple months” or admitted they don’t have these experiences.
Once these mobile app experiences are deployed, there’s a stark gap between assessment and optimization. Nearly twothirds of respondents assess and adapt multi-screen feature tutorials and opt-in flows at least monthly. However, more than a third of companies say they improve these critical onboarding experiences quarterly or less often, jumping to nearly half of enterprise companies. Likewise, almost one-quarter of enterprise marketers and developers were either not sure when they had last updated their app’s preference center or said it had been 1-2 years or longer.
There’s a ton of research showing how mobile apps can maximize value for everyone involved. We see it reinforced every quarter in earnings reports, and in studies that find app customers produce multiples in terms of revenue and frequency compared to non-app customers. But achieving that value takes more than developing an app and driving downloads. The real challenge is the long game.
For an app to be successful, a customer must find it, download it, and value it enough to keep using it. It takes a village to make that happen, and currently there are gaps
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For an app to be successful, a customer must find it, download it, and value it enough to keep using it. It takes a village to make that happen...”
between technical and non-technical teams across seven operational areas that span the entire mobile app customer lifecycle.
These gaps, of which we’ve covered only a few, result in The Chasm of No Return — where a new app user abandons ship never to return. As global app downloads continue to grow, retention rates have barely budged for the last few years. Many app teams remain siloed, stuck in a web-era limbo of dependency and promotional approaches that fail to rise to the new customer experience expectation.
What’s needed is greater agility to create and optimize valuable app experiences and grow customer understanding and reward them in moments they are engaged with the app. Messaging outside of the app experience, or even inside with pop-ups, will only go far.
To that end, we expect no-code native app experiences that empower non-technical teams to create and optimize experiences like onboarding, opt-in flows and surveys, to
become a much bigger part of the toolkit in maximizing the value mobile apps provide to brands and their customers.
Companies must find a way to improve the customer’s app experience with greater speed and agility. With this in mind, Airship has developed no-code methods to empower the entire team to easily create, automate and adapt native app experiences on the fly in order to capture and sustain more value. Empowering these teams with tools to make their work more productive is what Airship is all about – and it’s essential for delivering better results. You can download the 2022 Mobile App Experience Gap Survey here:
*Insights from Airship’s Mobile App Experience Survey, 2022.
To improve performance, companies need to create better app experiences faster. That’s why Airship created AXP – a set of elegant no-code solutions that marketers can use to drive app enhancements and engagement in real time.
Learn how to create powerful app experiences — for your customers and your brand.
Vivino hoped to transform its digital experience, but the scale of its data made this a daunting project. Vivino needs a strategic partner who could give leverage of its massive data to power and optimize user engagement across email, push, and paid media channels. This was critical for Vivino, in particular because it struggled with: Simon
With 45 million users, Vivino houses the most complete wine-rating system in the world, covering more than 10 million user-rated wines and over 500,000 ratings per day. As a marketplace business, Vivino maintains a large, rotating inventory of over 20 million vintages sold by over 20,000 merchants in 12 different countries. “Simon
Vivino wanted to send only enough personalized recommendations to a minimum of the highest-propensity customers for each vintage to clear inventory without over-stimulating demand.
Vivino’s promotion-heavy business model necessitate a high send frequency, but not all customers have the same appetite for Vivino deals.
- Director of CRM at Vivino
Historically, the MarTech ecosystem has consisted of a set of disjointed tools, each of which manages a limited part of the marketing pipeline, and each of which works throughout the broader customer lifecycle within their data silo, and none of which works together well. Cloud Data Warehouses (CDWs) have a massive opportunity to shift this fragmented ecosystem over the next year and beyond. Here are a few ways how we predict this will happen.
For many MarTech vendors, realizing that their data and analytical capabilities are severely limiting will amount to a reckoning across the broader category.
Many MarTech platforms are built on data backends that cannot scale to the breadth and complexity of this new world of data. The platforms that can scale to this new world of data will be those architected around cloud-native warehousing systems like Snowflake.
Cloud data platform utilization increased by 54% last year. Projecting this out three years, we’re in a world with 3.5 times more data. In five years, we’re looking at almost nine times more data.
Without the right data foundations in place, the end application and workflows don’t work. Go back in time to before you had Google Maps and Driving Directions -remember what it was once like to have to rely on a passenger to chart out your
location and navigate your course. Yes, “the data” is there (ostensibly in some map in the glovebox), but the workflows and efficiencies around using it are painful, unacceptable, and antiquated.
For many marketers today, these data advancements represent a new world of capabilities and data-driven workflows.
Yet, we’re going to see a big scramble from so many MarTech vendors who find themselves in the “we didn’t architect our platform to account for this” bucket.
A few predicted the disruption the Cloud Data Warehouse is now bringing. They took the right moves to better accommodate the scale and complexity of emerging data. However, many of
today’s most popular marketing platforms are still built on 20+-year-old database technologies that unfortunately do not play well with a CDW-centric foundation.
Reverse ETL came on the scene a little over a year ago as an attempt to address this, and has garnered some attention. It allows technical end users to write SQL and transfer this output to end MarTech tools via their pre-existing APIs. But while this certainly makes integration more manageable, it doesn’t address the problem around the data architecture limitations of the reverse ETL destination.
As the gravity around the cloud data platform continues to increase, MarTech providers will eventually feel threatened by this category. They’ll want a more direct “connection” to these cloud data systems, and they’ll build their own reverse ETL capabilities.
But once this is over, the dust will settle, and the existential infrastructure problems that plague so many in the category will become apparent. New data-driven use cases and best practices around customer lifecycle optimization will emerge.
The platforms that are fundamentally architected to work with this new world of data will emerge as winners. The losers will have several forms.
There will be those who attempted to re-platform their core data infrastructure only to realize halfway in that the undertaking is more than they can handle. Some will burn themselves fighting a marketing battle to the death, proclaiming the age-old MarTech misnomer, “you don’t need any IT resources to solve these problems.” And others will adopt a losing strategy that I’ll call, “the ultimate hedge,” both embracing CDWs as a source of truth while simultaneously building their own data ecosystem.
For many marketers, this topic may feel foreign and “an issue that IT can just deal with.” But this sentiment will be shortlived. Here are three core governance aspects and a brief overview of the Cloud Data Warehouse’s role:
• Data quality. To state the obvious: you really shouldn’t have more than one source of truth for any data in your business. While this feels obvious, fragmented data architectures are a reality and for many a byproduct of the siloed nature of their disjointed MarTech tools. With the cloud data platform as the single source of truth, these
problems go away. Fix a problem once, and it’s fixed everywhere. The numbers that your analysts use to identify ad spend efficacy actually roll up properly to top-line revenue and traffic.
• Data compliance. With your data managed centrally, dealing with rapidly emerging regulatory requirements such as GDPR and CCPA becomes much more streamlined. This is a game-changer. Data will be managed centrally in a fully compliant manner - and the only data sent out to end channels will be that which is required to execute those channels.
• Data security. Centralized data management also brings some obvious security benefits. The more places your customer data lives the more risk exposure you have. Reducing your data’s footprint mitigates this risk.
Putting this all together, this new world should seamlessly integrate a massive new expanse of customer data with a tightly coupled and purpose-built application tier. Success will feel like using Google Driving Directions - the full power of digitized maps and an efficient workflow that gets you from A to B.
However, without aligning around a CDW, many providers will look back at where they are and realize they’ve put together an assortment of functionalities that more closely resembles Mapquest - enter a destination into your computer at home, print out your directions (and hope your printer doesn’t run out of ink), and end up 30 minutes off course after taking the wrong exit.
Without the right data foundations in place, the end application and workflows don’t work”
On September 15 2022, the Federal Trade Commission released a report documenting the rise of dark patterns in digital media. A dark pattern is a manipulative design technique used to harm consumers by collecting personal data, making it difficult to cancel a subscription or unsubscribe from an email, or forcing users to sign up for unwanted paid services. These patterns prey on users’ cognitive biases to influence their behavior, which makes them quite effective in practice.
Dark patterns aren’t new. We see them every day in grocery stores, casinos, restaurant menus, and social media. However, they are becoming more pervasive, and, some would argue, more dangerous, in this new digital world, where they can now leverage user data to force consumers into undesired and unintended decisions.
The FTC identified four types of dark patterns that it will take action on in the future, patterns that violate its statutes and regulations.1 These are: 1. Design elements that induce false beliefs;
Design elements that hide or delay disclosure of material information;
Design elements that lead to unauthorized charges; and 4. Design elements that obscure or subvert privacy choices
As business leaders, it’s important to understand these patterns and ensure that your digital experiences are not using any of them, as they may cause harm to your customers, breed mistrust, and potentially go against FTC regulations.
1 Bringing Dark Patterns to Light, FTC Staff Report, September 2022
We’ve all seen them, ads on social media that make speculative claims about vaccines, drugs, political candidates, and the like. These ads represent a dark pattern that leads people to make decisions about their health an d their belief systems that they may not have made had they had accurate information.
Take the case of Truvada, a well-studied and potentially life-saving medication that helps both prevent and treat HIV. A class-action lawsuit was filed against Gilead Sciences, the makers of Truvada, claiming that the drug causes serious side effects including bone loss and kidney disease. The class-action law firm placed ads all over social media, claiming that patients taking Truvada may be entitled to cash compensation if they experienced these side effects.
The problem here, and the reason this is a dark pattern, is that these side effects are quite rare. In fact, the benefits of Truvada greatly outweigh the risks. By homing in on these rare side effects, these ads caused some customers to resist taking the drug, and effectively created a public health issue in many communities. 2
Figure 1: The “impulse buy” section at grocery checkout is a dark pattern designed to get consumers to purchase additional un-needed products
2 https://www.thebody.com/article/thosetruvada-lawsuit-ads-you-see-everywhere-mayhinder-public-health
DEB GELMAN, EVP, EXPERIENCE DESIGN, BOTTLE ROCKET
The digital equivalent of “the fine print,” ads that conceal important information, or mislead users about ad content, use dark patterns to trick customers. These ads get lots of clicks, and are compelling due to the promises they make, but can land businesses in a heap of trouble and expensive fines.
An example of this type of pattern is ads designed to look like news articles. These ads are required to include the word “ad” or “sponsored” in the content area so customers are not misled into thinking these are actual news stories; however, even when ads have this notice, the text is frequently so small that users overlook it when they see what looks like a headline.
Figure 4: Tap Pet Hotel let users purchase currency to outfit their “pets”
monetary cost. For example, Apple was ordered by the FTC to return $32.5 million to customers whose kids made unauthorized in-app purchases on several apps, including “Tap Pet Hotel” (which is no longer available in the app store.)
Users of Tap Pet Hotel could earn “stars” to exchange for clothing, room decorations, and food to care for their pets. Stars could also be purchased via a user’s Apple account. In the case of Tap Pet Hotel, kids who thought they were using stars were actually running up their parents’ Apple bills; in one case, a child charged $2600 in stars.
The FTC report lists the following ways user interfaces can trick customers into providing more data than they intended:
1. do not allow consumers to definitively reject data collection or use;
2. repeatedly prompt consumers to select settings they wish to avoid;
3. present confusing toggle settings leading consumers to make unintended privacy choices;
4. purposely obscure consumers’ privacy choices and make them difficult to access;
5. highlight a choice that results in more information collection, while greying out the option that enables consumers to limit such practices; and
6. include default settings that maximize data collection and sharing. 3
Figure 3: An ad designed to look like a news article
This is not to say that in-app charges are a poor business practice; on the contrary, they can be great revenue sources and provide value to customers who want to pick-andchoose the services they need. However, if businesses are going to use this technique, they need to ensure that the design clearly shows what the charges are and what users will get for their money.
This is an area that the FTC is particularly focused on because there are so many different ways user data can be gathered and manipulated. Several states, including California and Colorado, have instituted their own regulations around how data is collected, and list strict provisions that need to be made to ensure customers know how their data will be used.
Over the past several years, several class-action lawsuits have been filed against Apple, Google, and Amazon for misleading customers about in-app purchases, more specifically, for allowing minors to make unauthorized charges to their parents’ accounts. There are several factors that led to these lawsuits, one of which is the usage of a dark pattern that presents upcharges in the form of a game or app “currency” instead of the actual
Privacy is one of the most important aspects of the dark-pattern conversation, especially now that personal-data-gathering tools are so sophisticated.
The techniques outlined here violate consumers’ trust in brands. While, in the short term, they may result in additional clicks, orders, and revenue, dark patterns are harmful to customers and reduce the credibility of businesses over time. Rely on the strength of your product and the value you provide to gain new customers instead of manipulative design practices.
3
2022
Bringing Dark Patterns to Light, FTC Staff Report, SeptemberDesign elements that obscure or subvert privacy choices
During the last two decades, there has been constant talk of the Experience Economy. The product’s value from the consumer’s point of view is set not only by the product itself but by the experience surrounding it. Hence the famous unboxing of iPhones, or the high bills for dinners in luxury bistros. It’s not just the food you pay for. It’s the experience of having a French waiter narrate the dishes to you, with live jazz music and scented candles, while you savor your duck breast on a bed of tender endive.
But what if you had to work at the Apple Store and you had to take thirty iPhones out of their cases in a single morning? Or if you had to have lunch and dinner every day of the year at the same Bistro? Consumer experiences add value, and lots of it. But they are also ephemeral and lose luster quickly.
That’s why, now that what’s known as customer experience is so fashionable, I keep thinking about what will become of it in a few years. Continuous change is the only permanent thing, especially in this day and age. So the question is clear: where is Customer Experience heading, and what is its next evolution?
In my participation as a speaker at the NextMarketing event, organized by the UPF Barcelona School of Management, I was asked about the future of Customer Experience. This question is not easy to answer; therefore, I will wait until the end of the article to give my opinion. It’s time to read or scroll.
Let’s start at the beginning: how did we get here?
The customer experience, understood as the total of the consumer’s interactions with a brand in the channels where they happen and how these respond -or not- to the expectations and needs that the consumer had in mind, shines at the specific moment when it occurs. And, ephemeral or
not, it helps companies stand out from others and reinforce both market share and brand perception.
But let’s take it one step at a time. How did we get here? Today, to leave a mark on the consumer, companies have to provide distinction and added value not only in what they say, but also in what they do. This implies going beyond communication and the main product of each brand, and betting on all the services surrounding it.
Nowadays, users can compare, change and switch off at any time and with any brand. We no longer believe everything they tell us, nor are we obliged to listen to their messages. In fact, we pay not to (if you have a Spotify Premium account, or an ad blocker in your browser, you know this). So brands have no choice but to try to create the difference through facts, not just words.
All this is happening in an explosive context of infinite change. If we had already come from a decade where technological complexity and possibilities -as well as competitiveness and user expectations- had increased exponentially; this last pandemic year has only accelerated the importance of brand experiences (mainly digital and hybrid) in every aspect of our lives. We are immersed in a thrilling evolution. Unstoppable. In my opinion, fantastic!
I believe that we have to start looking for experiences that not only fulfill promises and are coherent, but also help users in their personal evolution.”
But here’s the catch... Companies that have not joined the change and have not implemented their transformation are falling behind. Or to put it more clearly: they are constantly being eroded by other companies that have the user (and not the business) as the epicenter of their activity. Examples? Plenty... From the video stores on the corner (Netflix) to the big box stores (Amazon).
In this context, if we focus on the customer experience, we observe that the most traditional companies are not prepared or organized to offer coherent and complex multichannel experiences. Their structure and way of working still reflect modalities inherited from previous decades, where communication was unidirectional and the offer limited, both in channels and in products and alternatives. And that is a problem— a big one. Working in silos and with a short-sighted mentality in terms of obtaining financial benefits is causing the risk of vanishing from the user’s imagination.
Given this situation, the challenge is evident, both for those entities that need to make a total change in their way of proceeding and for those that have already understood the importance of betting on the Customer Experience: creating a unifying vision, processes and culture that materialize it, as well as a communication that promises what is offered, and offers what is promised, is a good start. And for that, you have to know how to deal with the day-to-day complexity while executing long-term strategies.
What’s the worst that could happen?
The challenges I mention arise from the expectations of consumers and their power of comparison and decision, which is increasingly higher every day and, in many cases, does not find an answer in the experiences that brands promise them. This difference between the brand’s promise and the reality of the experience they offer is what we know as the expectation gap.
If the gap is positive, great. Brands will have exceeded the user’s expectations. And if this happens repeatedly, it will generate trust and, consequently, loyalty, recommendations, and all the good things that companies need.
But what happens if the experience gap is negative? Which, it must be said, is usually the most common. Well, nothing serious (for the consumer, of course). There are still annoyances and disappointments. But in most cases, a couple of clicks and they find an alternative offer. And while they’re at it, they shake off their annoyance by venting their anger on social networks. For the company that created the gap, however, it’s a very different story. And the seriousness of the consequences in the medium and long term is much greater.
To avoid this expectation gap, marketing must become the spearhead of any organization and work in an integrated way with other departments to ultimately create experiences that do what they promise and promise what they do. This department should be the one in charge of ensuring the fulfillment of those experiences that the brand promises. Hence the importance of recovering the weight it once had in organizations. But with a change of focus: the consumer comes first. And the game is a team game. Everyone shares the responsibility: from the production department to customer service and human resources.
And when it works, it’s wonderful. Everyone wins: the companies, their employees and the consumers (plus society in general and the planet in particular). And ROI can begin to be measured in more dimensions than just financial. A formula that guarantees the future of the company. And then... Is everybody happy ever after? Yes, they are. But not forever.
As I said at the beginning, when the Customer Experience is viewed in terms of the future (here comes the longedfor answer to the initial question),
I believe that we have to start looking for experiences that not only fulfill promises and are coherent, but also help users in their personal evolution.
The acclaimed American author, speaker and management consultant Joe Pine spoke about the Transformation Economy several years ago. An economy based on experiences whose effects accumulate in people and help them to evolve. These are not simply isolated moments, but generate a much more profound progressive change. Hence the explosion of yoga courses, cooking classes, meditation apps, fitbits to measure your pulse or education masters. They are not just an isolated experience, but help us to become a better version of ourselves: healthier, wiser or with a better career. In short, experiences that go beyond the moment. Experiences that are lifechanging.
WRITTEN BY: SOCIAL.LAB
Many years ago, around the time when the word “programmatic” had just entered digital advertising and we were all losing our minds trying to explain what “realtime bidding” meant to our clients, I was asked to give a talk at a pharmaceutical client regarding the importance of search.
Now, being young, enthusiastic, and facing a room of 200 + highly specialized health care professionals busy saving the world, I thought it best if I opened with a joke. I delivered my wisdom to a large and very silent room:
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that anyone Googling their symptoms is convinced they are about to die” (10 points if you get the Jane Austen reference).
And 7 years later I can say without a doubt, it is less a truth universally acknowledged and very much a universal behavior.
We all search for information all the time, not only when we are sick. To put it into perspective: Google processes over 8.5 billion searches a day. Back in 1998, Google was processing just over 10,000 search queries per day. So yes, things certainly have escalated.
Seeking out answers is not new to people’s behavior, what has changed is the landscape of search itself and where people are going to seek out information relating to products, services, and entertainment. There is also a tendency by marketers to view search from a highly functional and mid-to-lower funnel perspective despite being a highly emotive data-filled landscape.
The very phrase or syntax that a person uses to search for an answer tells us a lot about where they are in their journey.
There is a brilliant TED talk by Seth Stephen-Davidowitz, The Secrets in our Google Searches, where he talks about how Google is essentially Truth Serum –how we tell it all our fears, our worries, our secrets and our hopes and dreams, and we then expect it to answer us. Google’s Year in Search is a brilliant summary of this thinking.
When people seek out various sources of information online, search behavior cannot be underestimated as it relates to social media. And as far as emotional and functional resolution goes there is a strong need for emotional resolution when it comes to decision making. Emotions often shape decisions. You can therefore argue that having a discovery mindset on social media is as much
search driven as on Google or YouTube. The rise of social search has been one of of the searches Google processes every day are brand new. The fastest-growing and evolving behaviors over the last few years with younger audiences have only accelerated this change even further. This paper will look to offer a perspective on what is considered the shift from a traditional understanding of what search is, to how it has expanded beyond the first page of Google into a much richer platform landscape across social; some filled with an infinite number of dancing teenagers and all of it filled with a treasure trove of customer and audience insights.
Not only is search a major source of data for marketers, planners, and creatives alike, but it is also super easy to get to grips with.
And I will share some nifty free tools at the end of each of the paper to help get you started.
Read the entire report here:
Those who know me know my passion for music. Last year, during one of my concerts, I shared the stage with another artist whose profession fascinated me. His company Sound Branding Boutique is dedicated exclusively to the creation of music and sound for brands; they even customize the design of a store’s doorbell so that it sounds according to the brand’s personality! This is a simple anecdote that shows that linking my passion for music and advertising has never been as easy as it is today.
Thanks to what we know as marketing of voice, the world of communication and advertising is preparing to live a revolution similar to the one caused by the appearance of the iPhone in 2007. At that time, seeing the impact that this could have, at Ogilvy Barcelona we created a mobile division to focus on the consequences that could be generated in our sector. The years reconfirmed that idea and we became a European reference. It is a commitment that we have repeated recently with the creation of an area dedicated to voice
Currently, we have a well-prepared team with specialists dedicated to imagining experience and development through voice. We are recruiting talent and we have the radar activated to continue expanding. Why? Because brands and agencies must position themselves as soon as possible in the marketing of voice. The voice linked to Artificial Intelligence is a unique opportunity, not only
from a technological point of view, but also from the user’s point of view. We are talking about a new way of interacting with a device that will mark a before and after. It is already doing so.
Nowadays, in Spain and in most European countries, the use of voice is reduced to leisure and home automation, and brands have not yet oriented their budgets in that direction, as is the case in the United States. According to IAB studies, 62% of companies worldwide have no strategies in place to adapt to voice searching. Fortunately, the trend will soon change.
A paradigm shift that is supported by data: one out of every three Google searches is done through voice commands; it is estimated that 2020 will close with 400 million smart speakers distributed in homes around the world; 52% of users are open to receive promotions through these and in 2024 the global market for voice-based smart speakers could be worth 30,000 million dollars. These are just a few figures that confirm the trend.
At Ogilvy Barcelona our DNA is creativity, which we now combine with technology and data to be able to offer consumers memorable experiences. I see a very interesting challenge for brands and agencies in voice marketing in creativity.
We are used to working with images, but now we will have experiences that will be voice-only. When we hear a voice, we unconsciously assign it a personality. We need 390 milliseconds of voice to get an idea of the personality of our interlocutor. How will we design the voices of the brands? And the music that will accompany and identify that brand? And the tone? Not forgetting that all this will have to be customized to the identity of each country. Exciting!
Last Christmas, despite their complexity, smart speakers have once again become one of the star gifts. Brands and agencies would do well to ask themselves what their brand sounds like. The answer will be key to the future strategy: let the music play and let the brands play!
DANIEL RODRÍGUEZ-ARIAS, CHIEF DELIVERY OFFICER, OGILVY SPAINThrough an unmatched understanding of digital consumers while harnessing the power of innovation, design, data, and technology.
Incredible experiences generate exceptional results
Increasing a customer’s perceived experience correlates positively to increased financial results. Metrics such as conversion rate, revenue, profit margins and CLV all trend upwards when you reward the customer with a better experience over time.
What unforeseen events may arise in your project due to the changes provided by the largest internet search engine and how to make this into opportunities.
Nobody likes to be out of date. We like to stay up to date with the latest news from the influencers we follow, the latest releases in music, film, literature or simply stay tuned for the latest news.
The job market presents us with obstacles all the time, especially when we are inside of it. In order to progress and evolve professionally, it is of ultimate importance to find ways to update yourself and keep up with the pace of changes taking place at a global level, after all, professional updating it is the least that is expected for those who wish to grow in their careers.
When talking about a career, it is impossible not to be reminded of investments in colleges and specialization courses to earn diplomas and certificates to validate our new knowledge and, of course, to participate in events to validate the newly acquired knowledge to expand the network, the ideal time to consolidate our effort to update.
The academic environment is always evolving itself. Some institutions formerly based upon models that have existed for decades, nowadays provide classes in formats that were not even imagined a short time ago. The own way of learning has changed, now completely detached from the institutions themselves, through new channels of knowledge on innovative platforms.
Google is one of the three most valuable companies in the world, alongside Apple and Amazon. In addition, the company now has a large repertoire of products that go far beyond Search on the web, which is still its flagship. The “web search” is one of Google’s products, it uses an algorithm composed of Googlebots (also known as crawler or spider), which goes from link to link identifying pages on the internet, classifying and indexing them on their servers to then organize the data in the search results. These Google bots perform billions of queries daily on websites around the world in an average of 150 languages.
It’s Big Data for no one to fault! The algorithm identifies the most relevant and reliable
answers, from the hundreds of billions of pages that are present in its results, and offers us the ones that give the best answers for our questions. As new sites begin to appear and the web itself changes, algorithm updates are essential to ensure its smooth operation. It is part of an SEO analyst’s job to know this algorithm well and be aware of its updates. Yes, Google is constantly updated (and not just visually) and this is one of the main secrets for those who want to place themselves at the top of the search results: keeping up with Google.
Since it’s understood that updating ourselves is important and Google as a company follows this motto, therefore, updating your product is essential for your business. For this, obviously, there is a team of developers
that make several improvements to the algorithm, these improvements represent several basic updates that have been notified on the official Google Search Center Blog since 2005, it is an information open to the public and can be checked here: developers.google.com/search/updates
Basic updates are almost daily and SEO professionals usually are monitoring them to evolve along with Google, but there is another type of update that draws a lot of attention due to its importance, as it generates deeper changes in the ranking of search results, they are known as core updates.
What makes core updates more different from basic updates is that they involve a wide range of improvements in Google’s organic search results, delivering better and more relevant results to the searcher.
When a basic update is released, minor changes are noticed in the search results. However, core updates aim for deeper improvements that go much further than updating an algorithm, core updates change the rules of indexing, crawling and ranking processes of Google results; it’s like a musical chairs where everyone changes places when the music of the moment ends, SEO analysts call this dance “SERP volatility” which is when (many) sites go up in rankings and others go down.
The more important the core update, the greater the impact for those who prepared themselves for the update and also for those who left everything to the last minute, as the changes are more volatile. Whenever a site keeps up with the changes with the correct practices indicated by the search engine, it increases positions in the search results ranking, and when a site does not follow the changes, leaving aside the correct practices, it drops positions.
“Core updates draw a lot of attention due to their importance in generating deeper changes in ranking search results.”
RAJAT KANODIA, GLOBAL HEAD OF CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE, VERTICURL
A Content Management System (CMS) is the backbone of your websites or mobile sites and enables your business to drive better customer experience (CX) and engagement with your brands. A wrong decision in choosing the CMS can derail your plans to achieve your long-term business goals. Also, once you choose a CMS it is never going to be easy to change it overnight. This makes it even more important that you select the “RIGHT” CMS, so that you do not regret the decision later. Let’s discuss the key aspects you should consider when choosing a CMS.
Needless to say, you expect your CMS to solve most of your existing business challenges. It could be about limited capabilities of your current system such as lack of multi-channel content delivery, non-responsive web design, content personalization and intelligence challenges to name a few. You should consolidate your current business challenges, prioritize them, and then evaluate how well does the solution meet the business needs. Avoid getting tempted with a platform that has tons of capabilities which you may not be using
In most cases, cost is one of the most important factors in any business decision. You would not need a Ferrari to go and buy grocery from the local store. If possible, do a cost benefit analysis keeping in mind your total cost of ownership – license, hardware, implementation etc. and ongoing operating costs – staffing, training, maintenance, upgrades etc. – for next few years to gain a better sense of
This one as well is an important criterion in your decision making. Do you need an on-premise solution or a cloud hosted solution? There are few factors you need to be aware of before deciding.
Typical benefits of an on-premise solution include – better security, full ownership and control and flexibility in customizations. However there are few drawbacks as well – high upfront acquisition and set up cost, longer time to market as you’d need to set up the complete infrastructure before it is made available to developers, staff to manage the ongoing infrastructure maintenance etc.
For cloud solution the benefits include – no upfront hardware procurement cost, only usage-based cost, faster availability for development, better support for scalability requirements or auto-scaling, better up-time and platform availability SLA commitments, reduced IT staff. A few drawbacks include – reduced security and flexibility as compared to an on-premise solution.
Additionally, there are a few vendors who provide pure SaaS based CMS solutions. This has most of the benefits of a cloud solution plus you do not need to worry about regular product upgrades, need to pay per use basis etc. One of the main drawbacks though is you cannot make a lot of customizations but use what is available out-of-the-box. You need to check out the different cloud platforms that the product vendor supports e.g. AWS and MS Azure to name a few
There are two key aspects when you look at ‘ease of use’ of the CMS solution.
a. The solution should meet the needs of both the Marketing/Content and the IT teams – From marketing viewpoint the solution needs to have simple interface for making content updates, does not need them to know programming, has lesser dependency on IT teams, different teams can use it at the same time, etc. Whereas IT folks would want to have a solution that is scalable, secured, reduces their implementation effort and lower maintenance over a period of time.
b.It needs to fit in your current technology ecosystem thereby making it easy for people to start using it without major change management – Have you understood the product architecture , what is the technology stack it is using and what programming and other scripting languages your team would need to know to implement/maintain the site. Do you need to hire people with those skills or need to retrain your existing staff or you already have people with those skills?
Find out whether the solution has the required out-of-the-box features e.g. ready to use components, templates, automated workflows that help speed up your implementation, reduce your overall cost and reduce time to value.
The solution should have capability to integrate with other 3rd party applications easily. Some of the main integration capabilities that you can consider based on your business needs may include marketing automation platforms, analytics and personalization solutions, commerce platforms, CRM systems. This would help you leverage integration efficiencies and help realize full value with certain use cases.
Customer support is an important parameter in buying any product or service. Review the kind of support the CMS vendor provides. What are the typical SLAs associated with the support? Do they have the right strategy and roadmap for the future? Does the vendor provide trainings to enable your CMS users?
CX maturity is one of the competitive differentiators for brands and is the #1 factor driving digital transformation. The customer is in the driver’s seat to decide when it comes to the WHY, HOW and WHERE they engage with your brand. The CMS solution should help drive this decision making by providing consistent and personalized brand experiences. It is the main cog in the CX wheel and should assist you move upwards in your overall CX maturity and help you increase revenue, reduce costs, and improve customer loyalty and advocacy.
It is imperative for brands to understand their current ‘CX Maturity’ and choosing the right CMS solution is definitely a key step in that direction. There are other factors that drive the overall CX Maturity though. Take a look at my article business.adobe.com/blog/basics/the-7key-pillars-of-cx-maturity to gain more insights into the key pillars of CX Maturity. Our CX Consulting team at Verticurl (A WPP Company) can help you with the CMS tool selection. Also, our CX Maturity Assessment (CXMA) tool can help you understand where you currently stand and what are the key steps your need to take to move ahead on the maturity curve. Before I conclude, I want to bring up the ever-growing need of experience driven commerce. The right CMS platform coupled with ‘Context’ and Intelligence” gathered would eventually lead to better ‘Commerce’ outcomes as well.
TALENT ACQUISITION LEAD, BOTTLE ROCKET
INDIA SPENCERTALENT ACQUISITION LEAD, BOTTLE ROCKET
First impressions are important. Whether we want to admit it or not, the way you first interact with a person can leave an impact that will shape how they react to you for years to come. With that said, it’s completely understandable that life happens sometimes. Whether you’re counting down the minutes until lunch, you didn’t get a good night’s sleep, or your dog won’t stop barking at the door— it is important for Talent Acquisition professionals to leave every person they speak to with a positive impression of the company and feeling encouraged and excited.
Working in Talent Acquisition gives us access to firsthand insights, knowledge, and understanding of the current hiring markets and trends. We speak with a diverse group of candidates on a day-today basis. But Talent Acquisition is more than resume reviews and phone calls—we are the bridge between what a candidate wants, what the department needs and what is best for the company overall.
What makes Talent Acquisition unique is that there are a variety of ways to successfully fill the needs of the business. Each recruiter has their own style that they bring to the table. To discuss this in true Recruiter form, we sat down with our Director of Talent Acquisition at Bottle Rocket, Madison Luzarraga, for an interview:
Q: How do you formulate relationships with Hiring Teams?
“We begin every role here with a kickoff; during that call we set expectations, find out what skillsets the team is currently looking for, and learn what we can do to help fill their specific needs. We know that every team has distinct preferences, and we try to establish those early in the process. Communication and consistency are two words that are always at the forefront of our minds. We aim to always keep an open line of communication with the team, keeping everyone in the loop about candidates we are speaking to, pipelines, and any other challenges the team may be facing.”
Q: How do you learn about a role you know nothing about?
“After the kickoff call and understanding the job description, it is important to conduct supplemental research.
Your network and Google are your best friends here. The more informed a recruiter is, the easier time they will have filling the role. Speaking to current employees and asking questions are keys to success. Here at Bottle Rocket, our culture is extremely collaborative, anyone is willing to sit with you and discuss their role.”
Q: What is the most difficult part of the job?
“Declining candidates is usually the most challenging part for us. Candidate experience means so much to us. During the process, we form true relationships with each individual, so it is hard to deliver the news that candidates don’t want to hear.”
Q: What does candidate experience mean to you?
“Approaching every conversation from a place of empathy is key. We know that looking for a new career is scary, candidates are exceptionally vulnerable, and they are putting an incredible amount of trust in you. Building respect for them by being transparent is very important to us, and our intentions are always to clearly communicate during every step of the process.“
Q: How can you form true relationships in a difficult market?
“Right now, we aim to find what is most important to each individual candidate. Is it working from home? Is it PTO? Compensation? Culture? Their manager? We aim to be honest from the beginning about what working at Bottle Rocket is like for potential candidates. Honesty has led our team to secure the best-fit candidates for the positions involved. We always
want candidates to make the best choice for themselves, no matter if it is here or elsewhere. We are on their side whether their needs align with Bottle Rocket, or if they decide they would be a better fit somewhere else.”
Q: What is the most important thing as a Talent Acquisition Leader?
“Part of having a small team is having great team unity and communication. We all need to be able to give each other the grace to make mistakes, the encouragement to try new things, and the trust to be able to help each other when we are busy. It’s important to have a great team dynamic to be high-functioning and successful.”
Taking the next step in your career can be an intimidating process full of uncertainties. Our team aims to make it as fun and stress-free as possible. We don’t only want to be the candidates’ first impression, but also the team who welcomes them to their future home. Nothing makes us happier than seeing candidates evolve into new hires and thrive at Bottle Rocket.
“TALENT ACQUISITION IS MORE THAN RESUME REVIEWS AND PHONE CALLS—WE ARE THE BRIDGE BETWEEN WHAT A CANDIDATE WANTS, WHAT THE DEPARTMENT NEEDS AND WHAT IS BEST FOR THE COMPANY OVERALL”
Over the last few years, we have seen the proliferation of cryptocurrencies, NFT’s, and blockchain propel into the forefront of the cultural zeitgeist. While these topics have been popularized through the likes of Elon Musk’s Dogecoin, internet meme culture, or the mysterious tale of Bitcoin’s inventor Satoshi Nakamoto, one thing’s for certain – they’re here to stay.
With one in five Americans having invested in, traded, or otherwise used Crypto, there comes a very common problem many of these investor’s face: where and how do I make a purchase? While this article is not intended to offer financial advice, it will certainly investigate some of the various ways in which one may engage with these markets.
To the early adopters out there who have experience across both centralized and decentralized exchanges, have an intimate knowledge of what multi-layer protocols offer, and have experienced more than a handful of the rollercoaster-esque bull/bear runs the markets have faced over the last few years – this article may not be for you.
However, if you have dabbled in the crypto markets or are interested in how one may approach them to begin with, hopefully, this expose sets out to highlight from an experiential standpoint the pros and cons that some of the more popular exchanges offer and what might be done to improve the experience in the long-term.
As some of you may already be scratching your heads as to what a Centralized Cryptocurrency Exchange (CEX) is, for simplicity’s sake, they can be viewed as the Crypto equivalent of a traditional brokerage service such as E-Trade, TD, or Fidelity.
While those companies allow you to purchase singular stocks, these Crypto Exchanges allow investors the ability to buy and sell digital assets through similar methods: Limit, Market, or Stop Limit orders. These exchanges also offer users the ability to deposit fiat currency or cryptocurrency to perform transactions inside their platforms.
Now let’s take a look at some of these CEX’s and dive into the pros and cons each exchange faces from an experiential standpoint. The four exchanges I’ve decided to look at here are Coinbase, Binance, Gemini, and Robinhood.
TO READ THE FULL ANALYSIS OF THESE FOUR CENTRALIZED CRYPTOCURRENCY EXCHANGES, GO HERE:
All in all, these four exchanges have certainly done a lot to help revolutionize the arena of retail Crypto investing. Through the implementation of sleek and easy-to-use UI seen throughout, innovative retention plays such as Coinbase’s “Learn” feature & Gemini’s “Earn” feature, and creative marketing tactics like Coinbase’s Super Bowl QR code ad leading to a 279% increase in app downloads, these exchanges have disrupted an industry through impactful experiences.
Although there are certainly many brands in this space who are doing a good job with their experience, there are still unfortunately few who have done a great job. As this industry continues to mature, the expectations of their user bases will continue to grow too. What was once cutting edge is now being seen as table stakes and CEX’s will have to continue to enhance their brand’s experiences by not only addressing their pitfalls but also by investing in new and innovative feature sets. A few table stakes features most exchanges need to look at implementing are; brokerage-like performance tracking, increased levels of transparency between users and brands, and easy-to-access support channels.
As we look to the future of this industry, some of the innovative features users may come to expect are tools that enable personalized investment decisions, an increased ability to access vetted and validated projects, and tailored educational tools which go beyond the basic offerings of today.
The contents of this article are for informational purposes only. You should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. There are risks associated with investing in Crypto, loss of principal is possible, and users should proceed at their own risk.
At Bottle Rocket, we pride ourselves on knowing the latest and greatest technologies and creating technology-based solutions that help our clients stay connected to their customers. Although there are a wide variety of development platform options to consider when building a mobile experience for your employees and customers, we decided to focus on the three top platforms and provide an expert review of each.
Let’s look at iOS, Android and Flutter.
Native iOS
Building a delightful present and a scalable future Will McGinty, iOS Developer, Bottle Rocket
On March 6th, 2008, a year since the original iPhone announcement, Apple was back with another major event. The first iteration of the iPhone was revolutionary; combining an iPod and a mobile phone with internet communications and a multi-touch user interface that radically shifted the world of technology. Apple offered a web-based strategy for creating iPhone apps, but businesses were hesitant.
Everything changed with the introduction of the iPhone SDK, giving developers the freedom to create apps just like Apple’s, and to distribute them from a centralized marketplace. Over the years, the success of the iPhone has attracted many other ways to build apps, including single code-base solutions like Flutter, React Native and Xamarin. So, how does native development hold up?
Building an application “natively” means using Apple’s own frameworks and programming languages. Swift, the primary language used to build apps for Apple’s platforms, is built with a modern approach to safety and performance. It is optimized to extract the most out of modern hardware and designed to eliminate substantial amounts of common programming errors. Every nuance is designed with the end goal
of making it easier to produce high-quality, maintainable, impactful applications across Apple’s ecosystem of devices.
Apple’s frameworks have seen years of scrutiny, maintenance, and improvement. Because Apple uses these frameworks themselves, there are continuous stability advances being made, and new features being added that all feel innate to the user’s device.
User interfaces are core to every application. Apple has accordingly spent an extraordinary amount of time cultivating two incredibly capable, complementary UI frameworks –UIKit and SwiftUI. UIKit has been present on the iPhone since its inception. Over the years it has gained thousands of new capabilities and is suited to building finely tuned, customized interfaces. Introduced in 2019, SwiftUI’s declarative style is perfectly suited to building more standard interfaces quickly, and its built-in animation engine allows for opportunities to surprise and delight users.
Between UIKit, SwiftUI, and numerous other system frameworks that power experiences like the device’s camera, augmented reality and computer vision, there exists a tool for every job.
Web-based apps never gained massive popularity because they did not feel completely natural on the iPhone. Nobody has time to accommodate for a poor user experience. Everyone expects a reliable, intuitive, and delightful user experience that feels like it belongs. A user may not be able to point out what is wrong, but they will know something is. A user can feel when scrolling isn’t perfect... when navigation doesn’t match their instinct... when an animation doesn’t feel right. The functionality of an app is the bare minimum, but the experience can set an app apart from its peers.
It is more important now than ever before that iOS apps follow Apple’s human interface guidelines and adhere to common system patterns. Users should not have to spend time learning how to use your app, they should just intuitively know how. When deviations from these system norms occur, it only increases the likelihood that a user won’t be your user for long.
In recent years, both iOS and Android have begun to diverge. In order to keep users inside their ecosystem, both have put an added emphasis on the entire experience – the application itself is no longer enough. The revamped lock screen in iOS 16 saw an adoption rate over 40% in just 8 weeks. App Clips offer an introductory period to an application, circumventing the clumsy process of finding apps on the store. Integrations with Siri allow users immediate access to their favorite features. While early adopters of these technologies may have used them as a differentiating factor, they have now become table stakes.
These technologies often require a deeper level of integration with the device. Widgets, for example, need consistently up-to-date
information, but without taxing the device’s battery. This higher level of integration brings with it a more rigorous set of technical requirements. For example, the recent additions to the lock and home screens, widgets and live activities, require the usage of SwiftUI.
So, why is native the best way to build a first-class mobile iOS experience? The programming language itself is tailor-made for the platform and was designed for the creation of rich, delightful apps. The UI frameworks complement each other and are equally capable of building a to-do list as they are a complex, custom experience; all the while maintaining standard platform paradigms and making users feel comfortable.
Lastly, building natively does not require any large dependencies that inevitably come with a technical cost. This cost can come in the form of bugs, or even restrictions on the platforms, devices or features you can build upon. If you are looking to build the best possible experience for now, while still setting yourself up for the future, the choice is clear.
It starts with a mission. Google’s mission since 2001 has been “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. As a part of this mission, Google knew they needed a flexible, near universal solution that allowed them to be present wherever their users were in a way that felt natural and normal. In 2005, Google strategically invested in the future of information engagement by purchasing the Android operating system, enabling them to know and serve their users better by being a part of their daily lives.
Founded in 2003, Android was focused on creating an operating system for digital cameras and had recently made the transition to smart phones. Two years later, they announced the Open Handset Alliance, a mix of mobile hardware, software, and carrier companies whose goal was to create a the “first truly open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices.” The first ever Android OS device was released in 2008 and the platform has been gaining in popularity ever since.
Today, the Android platform is the most popular in the world, with 2.5 billion active users spanning 190 countries. Users can choose from over 3 million apps available on the store, which have been downloaded 108 billion times.
Harish Patel, Android Developer, Bottle Rocket
Android achieved its goal of universality, and this is what truly sets it apart from other platforms.
The Android Platform from Google has a unique navigation pattern that can be run on a wide range of form factors made by different device vendors. Android’s open system provides multiple device manufacturers the flexibility to use as-is or add their own enhancements. UI development is abstracted to work for devices of various screen sizes, resolutions, and aspect ratios.
The platforms targeted by Android cover everything from top-tier flagship phones to commodity tablets and even small wearable devices. Google’s Pixel flagship line of phones, watches, and tablets are built using their custom Tensor chip with machine learning (ML) capabilities. Samsung devices make up about two thirds of the share of global Android market and have recently forayed into foldable devices.
Android’s Material Design system makes creating user interfaces for these various devices in a cohesive way possible. The Kotlin language makes developing applications straightforward. And Google’s Jetpack libraries make programming much, much more efficient.
Incredibly flexible and adaptable, the Android OS allows device manufacturers to explore new hardware offerings and makes developing bespoke, but familiar user experiences possible. Native Android development includes Google’s Jetpack libraries. Jetpack Compose makes UI development 40% faster, supporting various screen sizes, pagination, navigation, animations and more.
There is also an ecosystem of proven thirdparty native only libraries (healthcare, hospitality, etc.) that speed up development.
Android OS provides easy integration with hardware (NFC, Bluetooth, Location services, geo fences, sensors) and optimization for memory, performance, and battery life.
Google Play store provides pre-launch reports, accessibility reviews and flags security vulnerabilities in native code prior to release. Every year there are new features (Instant Apps, Home Widgets), as well as new hardware (foldable devices, Pixel Watch, Wear OS, tablets), and integrations with Samsung and Fitbit devices. It also offers integration with voice commands to communicate with Google’s ecosystem of devices, as well as IOT devices.
Native development is a breeze with Google’s Android Studio. It provides enterprise-grade debugging tools which improves developer efficiency and delights. Platform specific adjustments become easy while maintaining code quality. Accessibility support has increasingly been a requirement for client experiences and native development provides easier access to keyboard and swipe events to achieve it.
Google has introduced many new platform concepts that native development can use. Here are some new features announced in recent Google IO and developer summit events:
• Ambient Computing (seamless user session transition from any of the Google Ecosystem of devices)
• Google Wallet (boarding passes, digital membership or ID cards, and venue passes)
• Material Design / Material You (individualized styling of experiences)
These well tested native support mechanisms help achieve a smoother experience for developers and users. Google has created a platform for continual innovation, and they deliver tools for developers to take advantage of it.
From the HTC Dream device back in 2008 to the Google flagship Pixel devices, the Android world has flourished in terms of devices and excellent libraries, tools, integrations to build rich experiences for our clients. We look forward to working on natively developed experiences such as speech recognition, AR based Google Maps offerings and much more.
On December 4, 2018, three years after it was announced at a Dart development summit, Flutter 1.0 was released. By this time, it had caught the curiosity of developers chasing the elusive multi-platform, true single code-case solution.
Instead of relying on web-based technologies or a translation layer to native components, Flutter compiled to native and rendered direct to the screen. This provided the native performance previous solutions lacked – and most importantly, true single code base.
But the biggest factor in its popularity growth with developers was the focus placed on developer experience. Solid tooling consistent with native development flows, high quality up to date documentation, a Flutter Favorites third-party packaging ecosystem scored for quality and popularity, and infrastructure tools for performance, memory, quality, and accessibility analysis.
For the first time, developers had a cross-
Jason Brewer, Engineeringplatform solution that worked with them and not against them. They could develop with Flutter as efficiently as they developed natively, target multiple platforms, and not compromise on performance.
Cross-platform does not necessarily mean single code base. Solutions that use a translation layer to native components are hybrid stacks – part cross-platform, part native. While this can work for an initial release, maintenance can be a nightmare, as all these different pieces evolve and there are multiple dependencies that may be out of a developer’s control.
Behaviors of such solutions also vary across platforms. Even though the application code may be common per platform, the system solution is not. Thus, the cost savings of cross-platform is diminished. Flutter is not hindered by these translation layers, so can be considered true single code base from application to display.
Flutter is developed with the Dart programming language. Dart is easy to learn for mobile developers since it has much in common with Swift and Kotlin. Its specific advantages for Flutter are support for ahead of time compilation (AOT) to native code, including Javascript, and just in time compilation (JIT) for fast development cycles with hot reload. Flutter adds widgets on top of Dart. It uses a declarative UI approach.
The same approach taken up by SwiftUI and Jetpack Compose.
While single code base is possible in Flutter, it is not limited to that. Flutter offers different flavors of UI widgets to allow tailoring to the specific underlying platform – Cupertino widgets for iOS and Mac, Material for Android and Web, and Fluent UI provided by Microsoft for Windows. This allows product development teams to prioritize features, efficiency, cost, or platform specific UIs as their current business needs require.
Flutter is open source with over 1,000 contributors, ensuring regular updates and improvements. Unlike native platforms, Flutter developers can debug into the very platform code to root cause and solve the various issues faced. There is no black box.
• Innovative hardware and software integration
• Established platform-specific design patterns
• Manufacturer supported SDKs
• Decade-plus history of development
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• Single team per project
By focusing on the product vs. the platform, developers could invest all of their effort on product features, instead of multiple teams developing the same feature set on individual platforms. Every developer is working on advancing the product feature roadmap.
The most effective Flutter teams are built with Flutter developers that have a native background in the targeted platforms. They can advise when a UX decision might alienate certain platform users and when necessary to tweak the code base per platform. This is similar to how websites layout differently based on screen size and ratio or how mobile screens behave one way on mobile and another on tablet.
The user experience should never distract from the value of product features. Flutter does not prevent achieving beautiful native experiences. The Flutter app, Reflectly, was even featured in the Apple App Store as App of the Day.
While platform providers continue to innovate with new features, the Flutter third-party ecosystem continues to provide solutions that wrap these in Flutter APIs. Sign In, wallet, payments, Bluetooth, ML vision—all have Flutter solutions. Flutter also provides the ability to implement hybrid flows – a native
flow implemented in native iOS or Android code that is integrated into Flutter.
Native apps looking to leverage the efficiency of Flutter begin to add hybrid Flutter flows into a native app experience to reignite the velocity in their product roadmap.
So, what sets Flutter apart from other product development options?
• Performance of native binary
• Efficiency of fast development cycles with hot reload, packages
• Flexibility to target your product to any screen in front of your users
The biggest differentiator is the true value of a single code base—simultaneous feature parity releases. Flutter provides a single team focused on value-added features specific to your business and independent of your target platform.
The early days of e-commerce ushered in a debate that continues today: Is the future of retail brick-and-mortar stores or digital storefronts? Retailers still wonder if they should lean into one strategy over another, or if they should seek a best-of-bothworlds balance between them? At present, signs favor a blend of physical and digital experiences designed to seamlessly meet consumer needs and preferences.
At The Lacek Group, we believe the future of customer and brand loyalty is Total Loyalty—an approach that prizes every brand interaction as an opportunity to build a bond with consumers. Total Loyalty builds from a place that’s more human and more creative than ever. It evolves standard marketing strategies into experiences that invite engagement and bring a brand’s essence to life in emotional, fun and spontaneous ways. Today’s customers increasingly desire, even demand, these types of brand interactions throughout their journeys.
“Phygital” retail experiences—in which elements of technology and reality coexist— offer opportunities to fold your customers closer to your brand. For example, digitally enhanced shopping journeys provide frictionless transitions across channels, allowing customers to interact with and purchase from your brand when, where, and how they prefer.
Despite the Pandemic Effect, Brick-andMortar Stores are Tenacious
Pandemic lockdowns accelerated the creation of new e-commerce platforms and services. In fact, experts predict e-commerce sales will top $7 trillion by 2025. Many shoppers turned to digital purchasing out of temporary necessity during the pandemic.
A large proportion continues using services like contactless payment and buying online/ pick up in-store (BOPIS) for convenience.
But if shoppers can purchase almost anything with a click, easily pick it up at the curb, or have it delivered the next day, why would they bother going into a store? In short: consumers are back in stores for the experience—not just to see and touch items before purchasing, but for the immersive, multisensory, technology-driven experiences stores now provide.
The future of brick-and-mortar isn’t a place to warehouse and display merchandise, but rather a place to create and curate enveloping interactions that cement shoppers’ emotional connections to your brand. Let’s look at some of the phygital experiences that brands are creating and how they influence customer loyalty.
Consumers no longer differentiate between a brand’s physical store and digital presence. They want to interact with brands in store, online, and in app based on their own preferences and convenience, and they expect a consistent experience and uninterrupted service at every touch point.
Robust apps that allow customers to check inventory and prices, access program rewards and gift cards, read product reviews, and make contactless payments have further blurred the lines between shopping in store and online.
In fact, 61% of consumers consider their smartphones to be “very important” to in-store shopping. The best phygital experiences allow patrons to smoothly transition between digital and physical storefronts.
Target excels in this area. The Target app lets shoppers check inventory and merchandise location in store, access discounts and rewards, and make contactless payments. But it’s the app’s BOPIS functionality that really shines. Shoppers can use the app or website to select delivery, in-store pickup, or driveup service—and then easily change that method whenever they wish. The app also alerts the store when a shopper arrives for a pickup, reducing wait time. Target Circle, the retailer’s loyalty program, is fully integrated in the app, allowing on-the-spot access to benefits and offers in store and at home.
7-Eleven’s loyalty program, 7REWARDS, is also heavily app based. Contactless payments can be made in store and at the pump, where members can also access fuel savings. In store, members can use the app for mobile checkout by simply scanning items to a digital cart, paying online, and scanning a QR code confirmation before leaving. Loyalty members can also scan the app when purchasing select products to enter weekly sweepstakes with prizes, such as cars and festival tickets.
Thinking about these in-store and in-app shopping behaviors, where can a loyalty program really heighten the experience? Inthe-shopping-moment surprises delivered through the app can delight customers with any number of rewarding opportunities. Consider:
• Exclusive, member-only flash sale discounts
• Thank you for shopping with us today free gift – we appreciate you
• In-store anniversary recognition and reward when a member enters the store near their loyalty program enrollment milestone
• In-store, members-only events “happening now”, e.g., wine tasting, 15-minute in-store “Ask a Stylist” session, curate ahead and reveal in-store opportunities.
Brands like Amazon, DSW, and Netflix have designed physical stores reflecting popular elements of the online experience.
Amazon’s physical clothing stores recreate the efficiency of online shopping. As a shopper browses the store—where only one sample of each item is displayed—an app algorithm recommends other items they may like.
A customer can scan a QR code in the app to send selected items to a pickup counter or a fitting room. Fitting rooms are equipped with touchscreens for shoppers to request different sizes and colors.
Footwear retailer DSW discovered that nearly 90% of shoppers visit its website—most often searching for national brands rather than DSW—before entering one of its stores. In response to this insight, DSW introduced “Warehouse Reimagined”—a store layout that groups national brands in curated shops at the front of each store.
This month, Netflix opened a 10,000-squarefoot pop-up store at The Grove shopping complex in Los Angeles. The store features merchandise from the streaming giant’s catalog of original programming—e.g., Bridgerton, Stranger Things, and Squid Game—and offers immersive, interactive experiences for shoppers.
Experiential retail is a differentiator that helps bring customers into physical stores. In addition to lighting, music, visual merchandising, and other physical elements, brands are deploying technology to create immersive experiences.
Sportswear giant Nike, for example, is a trendsetter in integrating technology into its retail locations. The brand’s Nike Rise stores offer shoppers full-sensory experiences with LED and interactive displays, integrated app features, and personalized services like Nike Fit technology that scans shoppers’ feet to help them identify ideal styles and sizes. Its flagship store in Manhattan has a floor that’s only accessible to loyalty program members.
TOMS recently used virtual reality (VR) technology to take in-store shoppers on virtual giving trips. The shoe brand, known for donating a pair of shoes to a child in need for each pair sold, offered VR headsets to enable shoppers to join TOMS employees and partners as they traveled to communities around the world, measuring and outfitting children with new shoes.
In-store social media opportunities, increasing availability of in-app purchases on social media platforms, and the expansion of the metaverse further blend digital and physical brand interactions. The growing number of brands that create content, partner with influencers, and offer in-app purchases on Instagram and TikTok mean the lines between social media engagement and purchasing are blurrier than ever.
The casual-dining chain Chipotle, for example, found success on TikTok with the #GuacDance challenge and entered the metaverse with a 2021 Boorito Halloween event—a partnership with TikTok star Addison Rae that awarded free Chipotle meals for a year to best costume entries. Chipotle followed it up this year with a simpler Boorito offer: one discounted entrée per fully costumed member after 3:00 p.m. on October 31.
Earlier this year, H&M, the Swedish clothing and home goods retailer, launched a virtual showroom in which customers can interact with new collections, conduct digital try-on sessions, and explore virtual fashion. In September, department store chain Bloomingdale’s celebrated its 150th anniversary with the launch of a metaverse store.
The continued convergence of digital and physical shopping creates openings for brands to differentiate their loyalty offerings and create member-exclusive experiences. As brands continue to leverage data to better understand their audiences, they position themselves to innovate immersive, technology-driven, phygital interactions that are truly personalized and memorable. Technology that recognizes loyal customers and harmonizes their interactions across channels helps brands acknowledge, reward, surprise, and delight customers in every interaction—in store, in app, and in meta spaces in between.
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON THINKING.LACEK.COM
Knowing and protecting your user is key to providing personalized services, but building your own authentication framework can be a maintenance and security headache – How should I store passwords? Should I even use passwords? Do I need both authentication (who I am) and authorization (what can I do)? Fortunately, multiple vendors come to the rescue allowing you to offload this responsibility. But which should you choose? First, let’s review the current state of authentication.
The industry is currently amid a paradigm shifting transition away from passwords. Forrester’s The State Of Consumer Authentication In 2020 gives us insights as to why – passwords are inherently insecure. Even as password complexity grows, user password habits aren’t keeping up. 49% of respondents said they reused passwords across multiple websites and most choose to keep them in their head or write them down somewhere instead of using a password manager. While these users do show an increased interest in improving their password habits, why not take it out of their hands?
Adding multi-factor authentication (MFA) is another layer of protection, but the ultimate goal is to remove the attack vector entirely and go passwordless. This is still an uphill battle as most users prefer to use their own passwords or think their passwords are strong enough. Not to mention the business and regulatory changes needed to fully support such a system (GDPR, HIPAA, etc.). Full migration to a passwordless system is an important topic, but outside the scope of this article.
With an idea of where the industry is going, let’s look at which partners can get us there. While there is a plethora of identity providers, we’ll be going over a well-rounded set of them in this article –Azure AD B2C, Cognito from AWS, Okta, Auth0, and Firebase Authentication. For each partner we will look at feature set, extensibility, availability of web and API flows, interface customization, and overall experience of the team implementing it. Bear in mind, these partners were evaluated in July 2022, so these features and limitations could vary in the future.
By investing in an identity management partner, you are setting a firm foundation to build the rest of your services on.RYAN GANT, SOLUTIONS ARCHITECT, BOTTLE ROCKET
Airship – Airship is a platform for customer engagement, lifecycle marketing, and analytics and data solutions. Airship helps brands master mobile app experiences to accelerate onboarding, user understanding and monetization. www.airship.com
Amplitude – Amplitude is the best-in-class product analytics solution, ranked #1 by G2. The Amplitude Digital Optimization System makes critical data accessible and actionable to every team — unifying product, marketing, developers, and executive teams around a new depth of customer understanding and common visibility into what drives business outcomes. www.amplitude.com
Bloomreach – Bloomreach is the world’s #1 Commerce Experience Cloud, empowering brands to deliver customer journeys so personalized, they feel like magic. It offers a suite of products that drive true personalization and digital commerce growth. www.bloomreach.com
Bottle Rocket* – Bottle Rocket is a Dallas-based experience consultancy that provides business strategy, digital product, experience design, and technology services that drive business results and exceed customer expectations. www.bottlerocketstudios.com
Eicoff* – Based in Chicago, Eicoff is a full-service advertising agency that specializes in fusing the power of television and the precision of digital to drive conversion and grow sales. www.eicoff.com
IBM – IBM is a leading cloud platform and cognitive solutions company. Restlessly reinventing since 1911, IBM is the largest technology and consulting employer in the world, with more than 350,000 employees serving clients in 170 countries. www.ibm.com
Iterable – Iterable is a cross-channel platform that powers unified customer experiences and empowers marketers to create, optimize and measure every interaction throughout the customer journey. www.iterable.com
Jüssi* – Headquartered in São Paulo, Jüssi is a performance-based marketing and advertising company that offers world-class customer activation, digital product intelligence, and marketing technology and data services. www.jussi.com.br
mParticle – makes it easy to holistically manage customer data along the entire product and customer lifecycle. Teams across companies like NBCUniversal, JetBlue, Venmo, and Airbnb use mParticle to deliver great customer experiences and accelerate growth by solving the foundational challenges that impede success at scale. Founded in 2013, mParticle is headquartered in New York City with employees around the globe. www.mparticle.com
Ogilvy* – Ogilvy has been producing iconic, culture-changing marketing campaigns since the day its founder David Ogilvy opened up shop in 1948. Today, Ogilvy is an award-winning integrated creative network with 132 offices in 83 countries and five core businesses that span Growth & Innovation; Advertising, Brand, & Content; Public Relations & Influence; Experience; and Health. Ogilvy is part of the WPP global network. www.ogilvy.com
Ogilvy Experience* – The experience division of the global Ogilvy network, Ogilvy Experience fuses creativity, brand, and experience to help companies drive sustainable growth and customer value. Bottle Rocket, Eicoff, Jüssi, The Lacek Group, and Verticurl are all part of the Ogilvy Experience network. www.ogilvyexperience.com
Radar – Radar is developer-friendly, privacy-first location data infrastructure powering location-based experiences for enterprises and high-growth startups. With powerful SDKs, APIs, dashboards and integrations, its full-stack toolkit is trusted in a space historically filled with ad tech and data monetization companies. www.radar.com
Simon Data – Simon seamlessly blends the science of understanding your customers with the act of connecting to them. A 2020 Gartner Cool Vendor in Multichannel Marketing, Simon works with leading brands to improve customer experiences and all of the growth metrics that follow. www.simondata.com
Social Lab* – Social Lab helps build, engage and amplify the Social Media presence of brands. Our experts cover the entire range of Social Media Marketing services, including content management, real time amplification, performance campaigns and Social CRM. www.social-lab.eu
The Lacek Group* – Headquartered in Minneapolis, The Lacek Group has leveraged the power of customer data to design, build, and maintain loyalty, experience, and CRM programs for industry-leading clients around the globe for over 25 years. www.lacek.com
Verticurl* – With over 1,200 global employees in 15 countries, Verticurl specializes in deployment, integration, and support of leading MarTech platforms, activation of customer experience technologies, and implementation of lead management processes. www.verticurl.com
*PART OF WPP AND THE OGILVY GLOBAL NETWORK.