Category Archives: Content

Jun 10 2015
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Brand, Business Transformation, Commerce, Consumer Experience, Consumer First, Content, Digital

It’s Hard to be a Diamond in a Rhinestone World

Meet ‘The Millennial’; a sophisticated and digitally savvy shopper, looking to be excited as much by the product as by the experience of researching it and flaunting it.

For today’s time poor, money flirtatious audience this is no longer just about Tiffany earrings Dahling; it’s also about the ‘to die for’ set of champagne flutes, the ‘totes in’ beach bag and even the simply ‘must have’ centre piece for the dining table.

The make up of luxury is getting a make over, and if it’s not pixel perfect then brands will need to prepare to be considered mainstream. 

Not only do consumers want to be enveloped in a beautiful, seamlessly immersive experience, they expect it, so when working with premium brands, I have these three key points as my guide:

  1. Are we sparkling: To be a cut above the rest, we must have the edge when it comes to going from design diamond in the rough, to top quality grade. If we can’t cut through and achieve stand out, we’ll quickly become mediocre. 
  2. Size matters, but not in the traditional way where whoever shouts loudest wins. Today consumers can access content wherever they are and will do so with whatever they have to hand, so our diamond needs to make the most of every screen size out there. I aim to be creating for 5 screen optimization at least, and an extra little tip; think mobile first, and mobile last. 
  3. Less is more. If we haven’t got something interesting to say, then I encourage not to say anything. With the rise of social continuing to grow it doesn’t mean copy and paste everywhere, we don’t have to be ‘always on’. We should be authentic, inspiring, but most of all we must be relevant, be always there, when our consumers want us to be. 

Getting it right takes research, time, dedication and constant evaluation. We must know and understand our audience in order to take our brand to their space in a meaningful way. 

No pressure, no diamonds.

pixie dust

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May 21 2015
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Beyond Broadcast, Brand, Consumer Experience, Consumer First, Content, Digital

Technology enables, trust endures

I’ve been handed an influx of briefs recently from brands wanting to adopt copycat approaches, spending their budgets on stepping into their competitive space with ambitions to shout louder and ‘become the authoritative voice’, it’s sadly reminiscent of the work I was doing ten years ago.

Every brief looks the same; ‘we want to drive traffic to our website’, ‘we want to increase our share of voice’, we want consumers to buy our products and love us for it.

Technology has given us access to anything we want, whenever and wherever we want it, which should be exciting. Yet in this increasingly cluttered space, brands have reverted to vanity exercises based on the assumption that their consumers have the time to seek out their content and care enough to do so.

Technology needs to be respected as a powerful enabler, it means so much more to consumers to have a personalised and useful experience in our immersive Internet of Things, so the focus for brands has to go beyond content.

Leading brands to understand that content and functionality must work together to reflect what consumers are trying to achieve is a key part of my everyday, yet convincing key stakeholders to put the needs of their audiences first in order to serve them is hard.

I truly believe that the brands who don’t make consumers the focus of their decisions will continue to drown amongst those who do. Those that succeed will command attention through engaging and value adding experiences.

In today’s omni-channel world great consumer experience is both necessary and advantageous, the bar is set high, it’s no longer about developing loyalty schemes, today an engaged consumer is worth more than a loyal one.

An engaged customer is one that has had an expectation met, which for a brand means, being relevant and adding value.

Less noise and more cut through is called for.

image courtesy of http://zeteo.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/silence-conserve.jpg

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Nov 11 2014
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Beyond Broadcast, Brand, Client questions answered, Consumer First, Content, Conversation

Does your Ad Add?

Because if it doesn’t, then it’s just pollution.

Brands broadcasting their message online; from TV ads whacked on YouTube to tiny irritating banner messages (that are frankly a bit like an annoying buzzy mosquito), have been the advertising stance for too long.

Before you ask, yes, I hate banners. (Oh c’mon, when did you last click on one??).

Give me a brand genuinely willing to listen to their consumer, rather than trying to out shout their competition in a vanity exercise, any day of the year.

It’s refreshing when you finally get to ‘engage’ with someone in their moment of need online and help address that ‘Oh Crap, I just need to cook something quick, scrummy, yet healthy for the kids’ moment, or the ‘Bugger, my skin is rivalling a prune this morning’ moment… or the ‘What the hell is twerking??’ moment (yep, I’m in Google’s annual report for this one).

Taking that first step to move beyond an arbitrary KPI that doesn’t prove a thing, to owning a moment that lasts beyond the search result is the single bravest decision any brand can make.

So as a brand, are you ready? Not sure? Then simply ask yourself; as an individual, if you were a brand, what would you want people to say about you if you weren’t around to broadcast yourself?

The power of impression influences the conversation. Conversation is a two way thing. Oh, and it often happens ‘offline’.

Add, don’t Ad.

Think consumer first.

A Cool Add

This is a cool Add

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Oct 28 2014
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Brand, Client, Commerce, Content, strategy

Content meets Commerce

I was presenting to the CEO of a leading global brand a couple of weeks ago, and was once again starkly reminded of just how divided so many businesses are from the advances in today’s (and tomorrow’s) technology.

One moment we were talking about the fact they still don’t have a cross platform infrastructure allowing them to take content to wherever their consumers are, and the next we were talking about closing the gap and speeding ahead with a technology solution based around Artificial Intelligence. A conversation which leaped around the room; rest assured the irony was not lost on me.

Sat at the table were two generations in ages, yet about six in technological terms.

The fact still remains though, that beyond theory and strategy, businesses across the world are still divided by their operational set up; one half mainly serving commerce and the other, marketing to consumers, and it is in this divide that nearly every client I speak to, struggles to truly step ahead. With one team tracking sales and demand, the other tracking website visits and consumer comments, it’s not surprising really.

To succeed as a brand and truly deliver a holistic experience touching every point of the digital journey a consumer goes on, can no longer be about great content on one side, and a commerce platform on the other… brands must provide the glue in the middle.

I believe this ‘glue’ lies within three key initiatives:

  1. Board members steering the middle management teams
  2. The commerce and marketing sides of the business coming together to provide a service that meets in the middle
  3. Content that differentiates and adds value

I also believe the biggest failure of brands being able to do this, stems from a lack of collaborative belief and belief in collaboration.

In other news, these guys produce super cool content… and this is a cool picture.

Cool Content

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Mar 27 2012
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Content, Digital, strategy

Beware the fold

Belief: The page fold is an impenetrable force that blocks the user from moving down the page.

Truth: Less than 3% of users have been unable to reach the content they want easily because of the fold.*

 

The ‘fold’, for those of you wondering what on earth I’m mildly ranting about, is a term that we digital marketers refer to as the bit of the webpage that sits on your screen before you have to scroll.

I have spent years selling solutions to clients that emphasise how critical it is to make sure your key CTA is above the fold, don’t go below the fold NO! Danger zone, make sure you clearly explain to the user that they have to click if they want to move or scroll down… don’t leave it to them to work it out!

Well, you’ll be glad to hear, technology has moved on considerably in the last few years. Phew. Now though, it would seem that we aforementioned digital marketers have done such a good job of explaining the fold to our clients, that we now have the huge task to explain that the fold no longer really matters.

 

Why?

Because; we have stacks of user testing that tells us that they don’t mind scrolling. JGI, you’ll see.

Because; long pages often give us the info we want without clicking through to seven different areas of the site.

Because; eye tracking software tells us that the eye runs in an ‘F’ formation quickly first and then guess what? Yep, down the page.

Because; users are used to keeping a mouse over the scroll bar and, wait for it, they know the size of the scroll bar is indicative to how long the page will be.

Because; actually users want to be encouraged by the fact that content is clustered in ways relevant to them and, finally…

Because; we have so many beautiful and rich ways of displaying content now, that it’s less about getting them straight to the CTA that the business cares about, and more about giving them the information they want in an easily digestible way to enable them to make the right decision.

It’s not about the linear journey anymore; click homepage, see CTA for more info, click through to product overview page, click for more info, click through to product detail page… (you get the idea).

And if you still don’t believe me, look at these guys bold enough to laugh in the face of the fold:

VW: http://beetle.com/ (love this site)

Nike: http://www.nikebetterworld.com/

Amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/

NY Times Magazine: http://www.nytimes.com

Now go and be scroll free and happy…

This image is from a book by Scott McCloud, I recommend his stuff, check it out here.

*Source: Independent eye tracker survey across a sample of 800 people of varied skill sets. 

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Mar 29 2011
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Content, Google, social media, social networking

Google Moderator

What

Google Moderator is a service launched in 2008 that uses crowdsourcing to rank comments and questions from users to allow high volume management. Anyone can participate, that’s the main rule of thumb.

Why

Knowing and understanding what your audience are thinking and what they want is critical. By opening up the communication with your site visitors you’ll get to know and understand your audience, plus everyone gets their say, so, you get a rounded opinion.

How

Create a Google account, enter your question or topic, decide whether you want to allow both text and video responses, and decide how long your poll will run for.

And if you want to get clever you can play around with embedding it on a Google sites page, an iFrame or use the API…

You can read more about that here if you like

Who

Barack Obama used it quite early on in a public series called ‘Open for Questions’ which attracted 1m votes during the election in 48 hours.

But the guys attracting a lot of attention at the moment are Victors and Spoils. Founded in 2010 on the premise of crowdsourcing the agency enlists a database of 5,200 freelancers from around the globe. Their most recent project (and the reason I decided to write this blog post) is Virgin America Toronto Provocateur, which was designed and written using Google Moderator to launch the new service to Toronto. You can read more here (you’ll need to scroll down).

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Oct 14 2010
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Apple, Content, Google, new technology, www

Google TV – better than Apple?

With the recent announcement of Google TV, closely followed by Sony announcing their new series of HDTV sets with Google TV built-in, the buzz around the agency is not surprisingly, all about internet TV.

This isn’t the first time a TV-connected computer has been attempted; Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony’s PlayStation both dominate this front room experience (albeit more reputedly in the gaming world). There are more attempts in the archives that never made it to mainstream too but most notably was the recent Apple TV (basically a simple media streamer with access to on-demand television and movie rentals) and superseding all of that of course was the Microsoft Media Center.

So what does everyone think of Google’s attempt? There seem to be a few opinions:

On one side of the fence are the group that feel Google TV really isn’t much more elaborate than plugging your computer into a TV, which they deem neither  ‘clever nor desirable’.

“I can’t think of anything more boring or anti-social than having to watch somebody else browse the web. And if you need to use a keyboard to find content then I think you’ve failed.”

Anon: Technical Architect

Fair enough I suppose this concept doesn’t particularly take me by storm either.

On the other side are those that feel Google TV will outshine Apple because of their attitude towards what they deliver…

“It will all be about the content offered to viewers. Whichever service/device provides the best content will win out and since Apple probably won’t put porn on their offering my money is on Google.”

Anon: (Another) Technical Architect

By using that quote I’m possibly opening this post up to a digression however, a valid point; Content is still King.

Generally overall I think there is a resistance (as always) to the latest technology trend, people want a cinematic HD widescreen experience at home and don’t necessarily relate that to surfing the web. In this generation though I think that’s naive, you only have to look at the number of people who have their laptop out or are tweeting from their phone and so on, all whilst watching the box…

I’m sitting on the fence (for now), it could make multi-tasking simpler but then, it could reduce my in-home cinematic experience. I like the idea of being able to combine the web and TV experience, but only if I’ve got control of the remote… I’d be most annoyed if the other half decided to load The Gadget Show halfway through my Monday date with my TV boyfriend from Spooks!

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Aug 09 2010
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Client questions answered, Content, Debates and Discussion points, strategy

What makes a good launch strategy?

Products flop all the time, fact.

Ok, maybe a negative start to a blog post but mulling over the recent failure that was Google Wave and deciding the over demonstrated, under communicated approach to launch it didn’t help, I decided to consider what makes a product launch successful.

One of the most common mal-practices is not targeting the right consumers. By not focusing on who you’re trying to engage specifically and aiming at a generic platform you weaken your strategy. So rule number one is (hopefully not surprisingly) understand your core market.

I’m assuming at this stage your product is tailored specifically to your core market and that you have based it upon insights and research from the start (if you haven’t, maybe consider this more before going any further).

So next up, what is the USP for your product? How will buying this product improve your consumers’ life? How can you emotionally connect with your consumer to inspire them to buy this product?

The answers to these questions will form your message; it’s likely you’ve thought of this as you develop the product but, tip number three is really about keeping the message consistent.

Every ad you serve, page you create, email you send, needs to deliver this message. Keep it clear, concise and constant.

So you’ve got that bit nailed, next you need to think about when, where and how you’re going to wow your audience with this amazing unique message. Where are your audience and how can you get the message to them (note I haven’t said how you can get them to the message). Map out your landscape and look at the best touch points to deliver your message.

And remember, once you have launched the product into market, there is no turning back so make sure you get it right or you’ll join the Coors bottled water, Cocaine energy drink and Bic underwear failures pile.

Who? What? I hear you say… my point exactly.

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Jul 09 2010
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Content, Search

content is king

The internet serves billions of users across the globe and is composed of millions of networks linked to deliver a vast array of content.

But there is a lot of bad content. I’m sure you’ve all come across something that looks dull, irrelevant or confusing.

So what makes good content?

You make good content. Or at least if you want your site to be interesting you should be creating good content. So where do you start to ensure that your target audience will stay on your site once they find it?

  • First things first, ask yourself, what’s the purpose of your website? Define your purpose at the beginning, before you even write the first piece of content. Otherwise you’ll waste time and money going round in circles trying to find a reason for writing content.
  • Who are you talking to? What is the best way to communicate with these people? Do you actually need a website or is it a blog that you need?
  • Content is king to both your visitors and to search engines. Don’t just fill the white space, research and plan what you have to say then clearly structure your delivery.
  • Don’t overcomplicate your language, use straight forward words that your users will understand. It’s also worth noting that the passive voice gets a better response…
  • Hone your humour, informal language doesn’t always result in popularity. Again consider who will be reading what you write and run a sarcasm check before you publish it.
  • Most importantly proof your copy and check for spelling mistakes. There’s nothing worse than having your audience send a smug note informing you of an error!

And finally but very importantly, if you can pretty up your site with some visual imagery that’s great, users react to well laid out and considered sites, but don’t get distracted, content is still king.

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