Tag Archives: marketing

Good Businesses DO Good Business

I am thrilled to be embarking on a new chapter that builds on my last 15 years of collective experience to start defining what a new era of ‘Experience’ looks like. If like me, you’ve been trying to design for the world of connected everything, in and around audiences of ‘I want everything now’, then you too will know how hard it is to actually deliver something impactful.

And impactful is a big word. To distill that I don’t mean worthy, but put simply I do think we have a responsibility as marketers to enable good businesses to do good business.

I’m excited to be joining a team of brilliant minds who want to help design and deliver the next series of experiences for brands who are built around business ideals that have stood the test of time. If you instantly scathe this thought it’s probably because you’ve been spammed by crappy ads for too long and that’s what you think marketing is now. Sadly a lot of brands/ businesses are still just worried about selling stuff first then listening second.

Let’s pause here… pick a brand you’ve worked with or for, then go right back to the beginning of their existence and you will likely see that their success grew from standing for something, and dig further you’ll find that ‘something’ had the intent to impact positively.

What I have seen over the last few years is that the pressures of technology on a brand, whether in the shape of; Google as a search engine or as a competitor, Amazon as delivery partner or a competitor or trail blazing brands breaking the expectation barrier – is that sh*t got really fast and they struggled to keep up with the pace of life it delivered.

So, as most emerging technologies slide into the Gartner trough and we have a little breathing space to pull our brand pants up a bit, I personally find the millions of connections that need to be woven together properly are a brilliantly complex challenge. It’s a bit like smashing a Rubik’s Cube into Connect4, throwing in Twister and trying to nail the game.

Now we’re talking.

My aim is to spend the next chapter working out and proving the scales of impact for individual businesses. Impact that is built on their original true values, shifting them into modern thinking behaviours and realigning them against the moving needs of their audiences. By doing this I believe ‘Experience’ will become an understood term that not just couples, but instead intricately weaves ‘Digital’ and ‘Traditional’ marketing together.

Creating value for the first shared connection to the last and back again. Designing for the consumer first, not just wrapping a brand around them. Building business thinking principles not just design thinking ones.

This is good business practice which will hopefully return good business whatever the measure of impact.

 

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How many screens do you have at your fingertips?

We’re all used to watching TV with our laptops out and smart phone to hand yes? We’ve all seen the ads that prompt you to befriend a brand on Facebook. Classic multi-screen marketing; one to grab your attention, one to do the thing it’s asking you to and a third to share the fact you’re doing it.

It’s an advertising tactic that’s steadily grown over the last few years and with consumer figures doubling across Europe in the last year to reach 19 million it’s a theory that’s proving to work.

But the really clever stuff is achieved when brands recognise how people really want to interact with them.

When multiscreen marketing is executed to coherently synchronise across screens simultaneously, you’re closer to achieving what the user wants.

Brands need to design content that actively shifts from one screen to another in line with user engagement. More and more people are interacting now with what is known as an ‘ecosystem of screens’. It’s no longer clever to design digital platforms that only offer the desired service on one, they need to connect, and so we need to design systems that service multiple devices, seamlessly.

Because consumers now increasingly engage with media at different touch points, in different places and on different platforms, multi-screen advertising provides brands with a solution that will allow you to reach your audience wherever they are.

With traditional broadcast being challenged and often neglected by consumers with the power of choice at their fingertips, it’s essential that brands realise this is a strategy for improving reach, frequency and effectiveness.

Go forth and multiply cross screen brands…

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