Mobile and emerging technology have historically had more hype than actual adoption or implementation within marketing campaigns; but with the proliferation of mobile devices and digitization, the mobile channel is slowly becoming a necessity rather than a novelty. In this post, I wanted to address key developmental areas of mobile and their impact on customer experience and engagement.
Traditional & Mobile Integration in Marketing
From an integrative marketing standpoint, the mobile device can be seen as an extension of the brand experience; it’s what connects the end user with the brand messaging. Mobile is often an overlooked or undervalued channel of communication but in reality, it’s one of the most personal forms of communication in this digital world. When campaigns are successfully crafted and executed, the channel that connects the end user with the message has the power to change both brand perception and consumer behavior. With that said I believe we will continue to see more brands create mobile campaigns or initiatives that complement traditional marketing channels while allocating a significant amount of their advertising budget towards mobile and emerging technologies.
Advertising
The recent launch of the Apple iAd platform will only further prove my point that there will continue to be a major marketing shift and emphasis on mobile within integrated marketing campaigns. The iAd platform allows developers to create beautiful and rich advertising executions that are less disruptive and reach the consumer at the intersection of emotion and interactivity. In addition to this innovative approach, the developers will retain 60% of revenues which have already shown signs of success. Obviously, these signs of success are due more to novelty rather than active engagement and interest, but the iAd platform is definitely a step in the right direction for advertisers.
Payment
Mobile commerce is another key area of significant growth that is driving adoption and new users. With more brands integrating traditional and mobile campaigns, allowing consumers to easily pay for various products and services on-the-go will benefit both parties. Apples iTunes payment system is a great example of quick, convenient one-click purchasing. During the D8 conference, eBay CEO, John Donahoe, discussed the adoption of the mobile device as a way to pay for goods and services. Donahoe explained that the mobile delivered $600M last year and will deliver $1.5B to $2.0B in revenue to eBay this year.
Consumers have a myriad of choices in today’s rapidly changing digital environment. As a result, digital marketers have to work harder to deliver extraordinary experiences that resonate with customers. Why is this important? Because it’s the extraordinary experiences we create for customers that allow us to build lasting and meaningful relationships with them.
In order to meet this challenge, it can be a worthwhile exercise to take stock of the terrific brand experiences we’ve recently encountered. To gain some outside perspective on capturing customer loyalty in the new digital social age, I asked a few friends to share their recent experiences with brands.
One friend recounted a recent direct mail piece he received from Southwest airlines and how it produced a significant and lasting positive brand effect for him. He explained that after coming home from a long workday, he opened his mailbox to find a birthday card from Southwest. It was personalized with his name and arrived a few days before his actual birthday. It was a simple birthday card that included a discount on an upcoming flight and a drink coupon. The message was also very simple and direct and included a statement to the effect of “Happy Birthday! Have a drink on us!” According to my friend, this simple gesture went a long way towards building a lasting relationship between he and the airline. Now he always checks for flights on Southwest before any other carrier.
Upon asking another friend, she recalled a recent experience with ProFlowers, an online flower delivery company. She received an email reminder about 2-weeks before her mother’s birthday. The subject line of the email was personalized with her mother’s name, saying, “Remember, Evelyn’s birthday is coming up soon!” Again, not a very complicated message, but a valuable one that made an impact with my friend and helped to ensure she’ll always think of ProFlowers each time she orders flowers for her mom’s—or anyone else’s–birthday.
Both of these are examples of simple but great customer experiences. The mere fact that my friends were able to remember the messaging, timing and impact of these interactions suggests they are the kind of brand experiences most marketers strive to achieve with their customers.
What do these two customer experiences have in common?
They delivered VALUE and/or convenience.
They were RELEVANT.
They were PERSONAL.
We could all take these insights as lessons learned and call it a day. However, as digital marketers we are continuously challenged with how to take these kinds of customer experiences from “great” to “extraordinary” in order to build deeper customer relationships and brand loyalty. Forrester Research wholeheartedly supports this notion. Their 2010 Customer Experience Index indicated that favorable customer experience correlates highly to loyalty — especially when it comes to consumers’ plans for making additional purchases.
The good folks at Facebook caused quite a flap last week when they announced a major change to the custom Landing Tabs feature on Facebook Pages. The upshot was that Pages would have required a minimum of 10,000 fans or an existing relationship with a Facebook advertising representative in order to qualify for a custom tab.
Mere days later, the policy has been rescinded due to the overwhelming outcry. Claiming that the change would stack the deck against companies trying to use Facebook to deftly and inexpensively build a social following, marketers, developers and small businesses persuaded the world’s largest social network to reconsider. The furore is dying down, but it remains a sobering reminder to businesses and to the agencies who recommend and maintain Facebook Pages for their clients, that carefully-crafted plans can come tumbling down at the flick of a digital switch.
Would it really have been that bad?
With the potential crisis averted, let’s explore the question of whether this would have been as huge a disaster as predicted.
At no point did Facebook threaten the wholesale removal of brand pages from the network. Brands would have been permitted to maintain their Wall feeds as usual which means that the social activity the Pages feature was designed to host and foster was never under threat. Brands with active and engaged community managers would have been free to continue building their followings by posting links to their Wall pages, generating discussions and hosting contests.
What would have been limited are the static Landing Tabs, which provide good SEO, allow a quick hit of brand messaging, and provide ongoing work for developers. While brands that can afford the investment have engaging and interactive Landing Tabs, smaller businesses tend to use them as a one-stop spam page that users bounce from nearly immediately. This is about engagement, not spam. Read More
Today, if there’s one thing FITC is known for, it’s inspiration. In less than a decade since its first incarnation as a Toronto-based festival celebrating Flash, FITC has spread around the world and broadened its scope. Now, there’s something for everyone: writers, designers, developers, or creative explorers. It’s that spark of inspiration that unifies the speakers and attendees. I’d like to think it’s that same spark that inspired the entrepreneurs to create Flash (FutureSplash Animator, at the time), and possibly the same spark that inspired the first flock of flashy individuals to come together and create this event.
As if the speakers, networking and parties weren’t enough to bring people together, each year the event is centered on a theme. This year’s “Playground” theme was most evident in the speaker introductions. Each introduction was pre-recorded (and edited) by event creator, Shawn Pucknell’s young daughters. And while it would have been funny, I’m glad they didn’t do this introduction for the “Cool Shit Hour”. Alternatively, they could have just called it the “Cool Stuff Hour”. But that doesn’t seem to have the same impact.
The “Cool Shit” presenters included myself, Chris Allen (blog.ff9900.org), Didier Brun (@didierbyte), Joa Ebert (@joa), & Mikko Haapoja (@MikkoH). And in spite of some technical difficulties, great work was shown. Didier got the whole room singing “Hey Jude” with his great audio analysis prototypes, Joa live-coded a music visualizer with his notorious keyless keyboard. Mikko showed his devotion to creative development with a 3D painting app created using the Voxel Engine/Fancy Engine. And Chris demoed an awesome Star Wars Trench Run game for the iPhone. With each of the 5 presenters getting roughly 10 minutes each, I’m glad there wasn’t enough time for any Apple/iPhone remarks.
†Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, author Scott McCloud examines how we receive different types of information and that process relates directly to design, information architecture, copywriting and content strategy.
Image compliments of Scott McCloud.
“Pictures are received information. We need no formal education to ‘get the message.’ The message is instantaneous.
Writing is perceived information. It takes time and specialized knowledge to decode the abstract symbols of language.” (page 49)
Anyone who’s ever sat through a client review will understand this. It’s not that images or art are less important; in fact, it’s the art that usually solicits “ohhs” and “ahhs” from the clients, right?
McCloud is speaking more about our intrinsic speed of understanding. We get a feeling from a picture right away.
But we need to process words – to piece together abstract ideas. With words, it’s incumbent that we create the images ourselves, in our own consciousness; we ponder meaning, ideas and symbols. Anyone who has read Roland Barthes’ Mythologies knows that this process ain’t easy.
What’s This Got To Do With Agency Life?
Comics and literary theory? Why should marketers care?
In the same way that images are understood before words in the human brain, so too has the planning and creative process developed in marketing agencies. The halcyon days of 1997 were critical for information architecture. IAs became a staple of the creative agency, a bridge between the client’s objectives and the designer’s creative vision.
The same thing didn’t happen for words. It was easy to understand why you’d want to plot out images. But it took another decade for us to plot out what was written on the page and why. (True, maybe astute IAs and copywriters filled this role until content strategy bloomed in recent years.)
So what’s changed? Well, SEO (based on keyWORDS) has blossomed into the main way we find content online. Search engines are ever more refining the way they surface the most relevant content. Our tastes have matured: the internet is no longer the shiny new object – it helps us complete tasks in everyday life. We now use many, many channels to access information and communicate with brands. Findable, useful, contextual, and consistent across channels…online content is more important to our lives than ever before!
It then makes sense that content strategy – a plan for the creation, delivery, and governance of useful, usable, relevant content – would guide many important choices we make as digital marketers.
We all debate the true value of industry awards. We consider the cost. We lament the politics. We ponder the return. One consistent benefit that everyone seems to understand is the effect on employee morale. Winning an award is the ultimate satisfaction–justifying the greatness of your ideas, your abilities and your effort. That boost can solidify the bonds of a team and motivate them in their future work. But most importantly, that designation acts as a public celebration.
At Critical Mass, we love to celebrate. We celebrate our appreciation of one another through peer-nominated spot bonuses every month. We celebrate our appreciation of Fridays with bagels in the morning and beers in the afternoon. We celebrate our appreciation of our clients through crazy breakdancing videos sent as Christmas cards. Hell, we even celebrate our appreciation of bacon. But more than any of those, we know how important it is to celebrate our work. We even have our own award competition. We call them the CMMYs and we’re giving you a peek into the CMMY events of the past two weeks.
Here’s how it works:
Throughout the year, our executives are constantly evaluating our work. We hold ourselves to a standard of “extraordinary” and we don’t let ourselves slack. Then in March, our execs: Di, Chris, Neil, Lee, Darren, Scott, Antonio, Cam and John regroup and consider those pieces of work from the past year in accordance with our CMMY categories and select the winners–secretly. Each office proceeds to plan a kick-ass party, each aligned with the unique cultures of their location. All remote CMers far and wide are shipped into their “home” offices; this is not an optional event and no one is left out.
These parties are always epic and–with the help of the open bar–the anticipation rises to a fever pitch before our winners are announced. Each office has their own special way of delivering the news and celebrating, but there are a few common threads:
Beer
Shenanigans
Excitement
Pride
Team Bonding
…and, oh yes, more beer.
That excitement, pride and bonding is what makes it all so worthwhile. We boost each other up, celebrating the time we’ve spent and goals we’ve accomplished together. We’re so proud, we’d actually like to share our winning work with you too. So without further ado, here they are.
And very importantly, there are also two honors awarded to people.
The Rich Wilkins Award honors the late Rich Wilkins who truly embodies the spirit of Critical Mass. As the award outlines, “Richard had just the right combination of professionalism and lunacy to be a highly respected and greatly cherished leader, team member and friend.” For 2009, the CMer selected to receive this award was our universally liked, respected and appreciated…
Rebecca Bloom Geddes, Human Resources Director.
Secondly, the CMVP of the Year (we select one of these rock stars each month) was…
Shaina Boone, Group Marketing Science Director.
We have a whole post to share about how amazing Shaina is next week.
For now, we hope you enjoy the work we’ve shared as much as we’ve enjoyed creating it. There are some incredible products, services and even movements behind each and every one of these pieces of work and we are all humbled by the opportunity our clients give us everyday. With that, we’ll close because we are already off and running in 2010, motivated by the celebrations of last week to continue creating Extraordinary Experiences that make us all proud to be a part of Critical Mass.
Here are a few pictures we can share from these celebrations in Calgary, Chicago, Toronto and London. More will be coming soon!
There’s a lot being written about the iPad – reviews, new applications, the ongoing debate on Flash, what the device does and what it doesn’t do.
Beyond the device, however, there are some implications and the longer-term impact it will have as we create digital experiences. New devices and interfaces have a profound impact on consumer expectations, competitive moves, and the evolution of digital interfaces. The Wii ushered in new interface concepts and ideas. Same with xBox and xBox Live. The iPad will do the same in its influence on the conventions and expectations of our industry.
We have several of the Wifi iPads in our offices and have had a number of discussions with our team about its implications. Some see immediate opportunities for the iPad to ‘fit in’ to their lifestyles. Others are still debating if it replaces something or is a supplemental access and consumption device. It’s bigger than a phone with no ability to do more than SKYPE calls. But it’s not quite a notebook with all the file access and productivity tools – so the iPad makes compromises in both directions. The limitations will change in time as new applications, new peripherals, an updated OS, and improved connectivity come.
One thing the smartphone and iPad do is to force a focus on ‘what’s important’ versus ‘what’s possible.’ As sites or applications evolve, they become more bloated, more confusing, and lose the punch they can have. Redesigns of a site or an application can be liberating, in removing the old conventions. But invariably we worry about ‘moving the cheese’ of the habituated consumer and thus add rather than subtract in making experience design tradeoffs. This is where Apple and the developers of iPad apps demonstrated tremendous courage in leaving behind the conventional interfaces and tools. We need more courage to advance the customer experience.
What’s the take away after a week of using the iPad from an experience standpoint?
Here are the 7 Areas of Implications for digital marketers:
#1 – Fragmentation.
Josh Bernoff (Forrester) wrote about the Splinternet earlier this year. That theme is in full force on the iPad. Media and content fragmentation continue as new devices enable content consumption in new and different formats. Information ubiquity that started with the smartphone is further exacerbated with a new form factor. iPhone apps that are played on the iPad look OK, but you’re much more engaged by an iPad native app. The need for liquid experiences that adapt to the screen become even more important as we look at alternative form factors.
#2 – Development Challenges.
We have to think differently about how content and experiences are created, disseminated and maintained. Monolithic frameworks start to break down when there are hundreds of thousands of developers creating new experiences. And with Apple changing their developer terms and conditions, it looks like Apple will expect you to use their tools and frameworks, rather than many of the cross-platform frameworks. We have several clients working with Android, iPhone, Blackberry and other instances for applications. The iPad and follow-on products from other vendors based on Windows 7, Chrome, or Android tablets will further exacerbate the challenge of consistency and maintainability.
#3 – Personalization.
We’re at the early stages of more personal (and relevant) consumption of media – that means the customer is even more in control of the experience. Most will seek out an application rather than a web browser to consume their content where possible. Android, the iPhone OS, Windows Phone 7, Blackberry are all targeting what Mary Meeker with Morgan Stanley says will be a bigger market than the desktop PC market by 2014. The browser lives on at the desktop, but many of these new devices will take a very different approach to content and experience access. Remixing content from feeds, apps, alerts, and personalized experiences will become even more important. Add in the intersection of social to these experiences and you quickly see that use cases with these new devices will become even more personal.
I recently started following the White House on Twitter, @WhiteHouse for those of you who want to check it out. A closer look at the content in the twitter stream sped me on a path towards applying some of Critical Mass’s Community Management best practices to the White House’s social media presence.
Best practice one: Research and understand the community before engaging.Moderating a community of President Obama’s supporters alone, the over 13 million citizens who opted into the campaign’s e-mail list, presents itself as a gut wrenching challenge for a single moderator. Thinking big picture: moderating President Obama’s social media community would never just be those 13 million opt-ins. The community would potentially consist of every U.S. internet user, 163.3 million people according to comScore.
The buzz in the Critical Mass offices is reaching a feverish pitch. No it’s not about Duke v. Butler in the NCAA Championship game, the start of the Masters in Augusta, or the first day of MLB’s 2010 season. It’s bigger than that…much bigger (at least in our world: the digital world).
Today each of our offices around the globe is scheduled to receive a very special package: 2 Apple iPads—additions to our “hives,” digital playgrounds where we’re not only allowed, but encouraged, to play with new gadgets in order to learn, be inspired, and to use the new tech breakthroughs to create extraordinary experiences for our clients.
I know, the jury’s still out as to whether the iPad will live up to its hype. The deck’s stacked against them with the bar set by the current gold standard: the iPhone. In any event, we’ll be putting our own usability, tech and creative experts to work testing out the latest and greatest from the almighty Apple. (Watch for a full report later this week.)
The incessant buzz about the iPad—and pretty much all of Apple’s previous product launches before that—got me thinking: how could a brand be so powerful, so talked about, so admired, (and for competitors) so copied?
Sure their products are the quintessential fusion of function and form: beautiful, simple and easy to use. But beyond that, there’s a reason why Apple is Fortune’s “Most Admired Company” for the third year running. The ethos of the brand takes it far beyond the products themselves. Apple is about freedom, innovation, imagination, “thinking different.” To quote a Wired article on the “Cult of Mac,” Apple is “the archetypal emotional brand. It’s not just intimate with its customers; it is loved.”
Case in point: the recent headlines about unassuming consumers receiving emails from Steve Jobs have been astounding. Contrary to the advice we give most of our clients about embracing social media, Apple is a brand that doesn’t. There is nary a trace of “official” Apple speak on Facebook and Twitter. We hang on every word from Jobs in the most old school of media: the press conference. Leave it to him to top even that. Hallowed messages being delivered from above…via email (albeit from his iPad)!
The typical exchange goes something like this:
Joe Shmoe: ”Dear Mr. Jobs, will I be able to [insert question about a bug, software or service problem]?”
Steve Jobs: “No.”
Joe Shmoe: “Oh my God, I am never cleaning my in-box again.” (an actual quote from an Apple fan who got a little taste of divine intervention courtesy of Steve Jobs# )
People from all over the world are gaga, certainly with good news (for instance a “Yep” in response to a question about a software update), but they’re also swooning when they get the slap down (a terse, unequivocal “No.” to their requests).
The fact that Jobs is simply communicating at all, gracing them with his presence, is a heaven-sent to most Mac buffs. A strange, even bizarre phenomenon (and certainly not a sound strategy for most of us slogging it out far beneath the Apple ether) but, like them or hate them, there is no denying the power of a brand like Apple and a visionary like Steve Jobs.
If I had my chance to actually speak to Jobs Almighty, I wouldn’t talk about bug fixes, my constant iTunes/multiple device issues, or Entourage email problems, or even the dreaded name choice for the iPad. Sure, they’re all very real annoyances, yet they pale in comparison to the true joy I feel when I use my iPhone or MacBook Pro. For me, it’s undeniable: life is easier, my friendships are stronger, my experiences are richer, because of these devices.
So based on the articles I read, the email guidelines for writing to Steve Jobs with the best chance of a response are: keep it short, sweet, and to the point. Mine would go something like this:
[Subject:] “Are you there, Jobs? It’s me, Celia“
[Body:]
Dear Mr. Jobs,
Believe it or not, I don’t want anything from you. I just wanted to say thanks for expanding our minds, constantly reinventing the game, and always “thinking different.”
I’ve been a fan of college basketball since I was in sixth grade. And yes, it may have started because I thought Christian Laettner was cute, but it’s stuck with me. And thankfully, I’ve evolved into loving the game and not just the cute college boys.
College basketball (the tournament in particular) has been a way to bring people together. A connector. It gives my Dad and I something to bond over (he adopted my love for Duke back in sixth grade, although his reasoning was far more intelligent than mine), something for my office-mates to talk about and fodder for constant Facebook and Twitter updates. While the sport hasn’t changed all that much– it’s still as exciting as it was back in 1992 for that infamous Duke/Kentucky game the way we experience it certainly has. For me, it’s become extraordinary.
Take for example the office pool. Back in the day, the brackets would be set on a Sunday night, and printed in the newspaper on Monday. You’d cut out the bracket, and hand-write (yep- HAND-WRITE) your choices. You’d take it to the office, make a photocopy, and turn it in to the pool manager, keeping the original for yourself. That poor person would spend his/her weekends tallying (BY HAND) the scores and providing an update on Monday. Talk about a horrible way to spend the weekend. I promise- I would not have been the bracket manager if it involved doing math. Read the rest of this entry »
Upon asking another friend, she recalled a recent experience with ProFlowers, an online flower delivery company. She received an email reminder about 2-weeks before her mother’s birthday. The subject line of the email was personalized with her mother’s name, saying, “Remember, Evelyn’s birthday is coming up soon!” Again, not a very complicated message, but a valuable one that made an impact with my friend and helped to ensure she’ll always think of ProFlowers each time she orders flowers for her mom’s—or anyone else’s–birthday.
the true value of industry awards. We consider the cost. We lament the politics. We ponder the return. One consistent benefit that everyone seems to understand is the effect on employee morale. Winning an award is the ultimate satisfaction–justifying the greatness of your ideas, your abilities and your effort. That boost can solidify the bonds of a team and motivate them in their future work. But most importantly, that designation acts as a public celebration.
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