Category: Business

Bridging The Gap Between Data & Creativity

6/7/2016

In the last year or so I have been hearing and reading a lot about the death of advertising, the death of email, the death of creativity...the death of blah blah. I think it's important to understand that just like a healthy diet everything has a purpose and is recommended in moderation. The biggest clash recently has been the battle between 'Creativity VS. Data.' What I don't understand is why does it have to be one or the other....why can't it be both?

Some say when big data and creativity meet you get pure sex? I agree and personally think you need a balance of both....some of us are even lucky enough to be able to do and understand both, they call us unicorns.

The questions we should be asking; Is creative marketing or advertising more effective in inspiring people to buy products? Numerous experiments have found that creative messages get more attention and lead to positive attitudes about the products being marketed, but there’s no firm evidence that shows how those messages influence purchase behaviour. Similarly, there is remarkably little empirical research that ties creative messaging to actual sales revenues. Reason being product and brand managers—and the agencies pitching to them—have lacked a systematic way to assess the effectiveness of their ads or marketing campaigns, it has been a crapshoot.

The Formula:
DATA (Insights + Analytics) * CREATIVE (Design Thinking + Experience) = Business and Marketing Brilliance

Top quality analytics still require a creative mind to interpret, position and act upon the data; these judgments demand more than just technical skills. The tactical know-how must be augmented by a strategic sense that involves intuition, business acumen, excellent communication skills and the courage to try new approaches in search of the game changing insights that create value from data. The best Data Scientists (I prefer the term Data Artists) in the business tend to have a great blend of business, creativity and story telling ability to communicate back their findings.

Companies all across the world have an enormous amount of data, however data doesn't add value unless it is used correctly.

Think about the game of soccer for a second, hundreds of players around the world go through the same level of training and preparation before a game - however most fans idolise Lionel Messi because of the flare he brings to game. Athletes may have similar training, but there are additional layers of creativity and improvisation that go beyond just connecting the dots.

Fundamentals are important, however bringing your own perspective and creativity to life is the only way we can differentiate ourselves and our brand.

These days companies must adapt faster then ever to compete. They need a creative culture to generate new ideas, refine them and then go to market. Business leaders need to understand their companies specific strengths and blind spots when it comes to adapting to an ever changing market. The data will help you identify the pain points/opportunities and the creative culture will drive change and innovate. Both compliment each other and are vital elements to generate success.

Businesses tend to label the agencies they work with and categorise them into buckets. For example:

Creative agency
Data & analytics agency
Technology agency
Marketing agency

How about we create a hybrid agency that pure focus is on solving business problems and improving customer satisfaction? Let's call it a 'Customer Experience Agency'? A company that is focused on understanding your business, understanding your customer and helping you create innovative solutions using technology. That to me is the true art and science of bridging the gap between data and creativity.

Would love to here your thoughts - leave a comment below.

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Voice of the customer

4/21/2016

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Every customer has a voice...yet not every company listens. Successful companies use their customer as their secret weapon. Accessing that secret weapon isn't difficult; create customer focus groups, conduct market research, invest in social listening or merely send out timely customer surveys across the customer journey via digital channels like email, web and sms. Sounds simple doesn't it, but why do most companies take a blind eye? Is it because it's too difficult, too expensive, too confronting? Most of the time it is just easier to keep doing what you have always been doing because it has worked in the past.

It is fair to say that most large Australian companies have a monopoly on the market so their is no real need to change. Until the competition sneaks up behind you and is starring you in the face i.e the taxi industry vs. Uber, hotels vs Airbnb and retailers vs Alibaba. All three companies don't carry any inventory, yet drastically improve customer service and provide new revenue opportunities for those willing to leverage their technology. Companies need to go from being brand centric to becoming customer centric.

Heinz are a perfect example of a brand who listened to their customer and implemented their recommendations. The sauce that they produce is of great quality, however the user experience of trying to get the sauce out of the glass bottle is extremely clumsy. If you make some subtle design changes like flip the bottle upside down and change the material (glass to plastic), the experience changes dramatically.

“People want what’s best for them, and they can switch on a dime, because there’s always a new disruptor disrupting the last disruptor. So companies should just strive to keep changing and adapting to their customers’ needs.”

Hearing the voice of the customer is essential for effective marketing, but also improving service. If companies are to be relevant to the consumer of tomorrow, they will need much more than an email blast engine and a call centre. They must develop a broad contextual understanding of the customer.

Voice Of The Customer Programs:
Many companies have embarked in creating seamless customer journeys across product, marketing, stores, call centres and sales. How do you now capture feedback to see if what you are doing is providing a positive or negative experience? Answer: set up a Voice of the Customer (VoC) program. Effective voice of the customer programs allow you to connect and engage with customers at key points in the customer journey.

The Voice of the Customer is a term used in business to describe the process of capturing customers’ requirements. It is a product development technique that produces a detailed set of customer wants and needs which are organised into a hierarchical structure, and then prioritised in terms of relative importance and satisfaction with current alternatives.

To enhance customer experience and increase business growth, many firms are developing voice of the customer programs. Successful VoC programs should support a cycle of five activities that make up a closed-loop process:

Identify: What is it that you want to learn?
Devise: What is the best way to collect the data?
Collect: Capture the data through the right channels
Analyse: Gather insights in real-time
Draw: Monitor results and take action

The most successful VoC programs help companies connect multiple types of feedback across data channels, provide collaboration across functional departments, incorporate voice of the employee and leverage dashboards and reports that allow you to visualise the information regardless of the source. The key objective is to help deliver clear ROI, business results and prioritise issues.

There are plenty of platforms now that allow you to implement VoC programs. Here is a quick snapshot of market leader Qualtrics' platform; capturing the customers voice & realtime reporting dashboard:

"Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning."

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Blockbuster VS. NETFLIX

3/22/2016

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Blockbuster in 2004 ended negotiations in buying 49% share of Netflix for $50 million. One of these businesses is now bankrupt...the other one has a market valuation of over $30 billion. Companies need to not lose sight of the bottom line, however innovation and a change in customer behaviour can have you scratching your head only ten years later.

Former Blockbuster workers all over the world must cringe every time they hear the words “online streaming” and “on-demand.”

That’s because back in 2000, Reed Hastings approached former Blockbuster CEO John Antioco and asked for $US50 million to give away the company he founded — Netflix.

Antioco, thinking that it was a “very small niche business,” ended the negotiations and didn’t buy Netflix, which at the time was a DVD mailing service, according to Variety.

Now Netflix — just short of being worth the same as CBS last year — soared past the television network owner with a $US32.9 billion market valuation. Netflix also reached the 50 million mark in subscribers of its paid service and became available in 40 countries, CNN Money reported last year.

“Management and vision are two separate things. [Netflix was] losing money,” a former Blockbuster exec told Variety back in 2013, explaining Antioco’s decision.
This isn’t the first time that a company missed out on an opportunity that could have shifted continents of the business world. There have been other bitter “what ifs” including: Verizon shunning Apple for the first model of the iPhone, Comcast foregoing Disney, Friendster refusing Google, and AOL merging with Time Warner instead of AT&T.

Perhaps the company that made the biggest blunder in tech history is Yahoo, which had chances to buy both Google and Facebook.

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com.au/

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2016 Digital Trends (Part 1 of 2)

2/26/2016

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"If I had asked the people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse - Henry Ford"

Henry Ford in the late 1800’s was a pioneer in the automobile industry. Consider this: By the end of 2017 driverless cars will no longer just be an idea, they could very likely become reality. How does that change our lives and how much more potential time does that unlock between our day-to-day activities. These big ideas and innovations are why I go to work everyday - growth, sustainability, evolution and pushing the boundaries of customer experience.

Creativity is thinking up new things, innovation is doing new things. To simplify, businesses today have two key areas they need to accelerate in, and that's marketing and innovation. Innovation is change that unlocks new value and marketing is demonstrating and selling that value. Amidst the rapid pace of innovation, changing consumer expectations, and the plummeting cost of advanced technology, there is immense opportunity for organisations, governments and society.

Digital is disrupting traditional business models and changing consumer behaviours. The mobile phone is no longer a device to make a phone call, it is an omni-channel computer in our pockets that allows us to control our finances, track our health, make purchases and communicate with the world. Here’s a closer look at the first 5 digital trends expected to influence the next generation of experiences:

1. Virtual Reality
Virtual Reality will become mainstream and debut in 2016 with the first consumer versions of Sony, Oculus, and the HTC Vive hitting the market. Companies and designers will now start thinking about how they can go beyond the gaming experience and bring VR into everyday lives for things like tourism or watching live sports. For example it’s the 2016 AFL Grand Final and you can buy a virtual ticket, sit amongst the cheer squad behind the goals, hear the crowd roar and at any stage - change your perspective and angle.

Google have created a great cheap alternative to educate and get consumers familiar with Virtual Reality, they call it Google Cardboard. For $20 you can buy a cardboard headset and use your smartphone as the screen. See the example below:

Here is a great example on how Virtual Reality will change the real-estate world: http://www.billyloizou.com/thoughts/how-virtual-reality-will-change-the-world-we-live-in

2. Augmented Reality
Augmented Reality is the integration of digital information with the user's environment in real time. Unlike virtual reality, which creates a totally artificial environment, augmented reality uses the existing environment and overlays new information on top of it.

Some amazing apps have been released which can enhance your experience and give an almost real life perspective. Companies like IKEA, L’Oreal and Glasses.com allow you to interact with their products without having to visit their physical store. For example, L’Oreal have released an app that allows you to try on make up from the comfort of your own home. The app is called ‘Make Up Genius’ and the concept and execution is remarkable.

The investment in this line of work is becoming larger every year and industry leaders Magic Leap have just raised $793.5 million dollars in funding from the Alibaba Group. Their mission is creating a new world where digital and physical realities seamlessly blend together to enable amazing new experiences. Here is an example of some their work:

3. Virtual Assistant. Help me.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to have assistants that can take care of some of their day-to-day tasks. In today’s fast paced world, increasing productivity is up there as one of the top 5 requirements for most CEO’s. Welcome Facebook M, a personal digital assistant inside of Messenger that completes tasks and finds information on your behalf. It’s powered by artificial intelligence that’s trained and supervised by actual people. Thanks to Facebook, everyday people will be able to get simple tasks done for them like making a restaurant reservation, ordering takeaway, buying flowers for loved ones, finding local dog friendly beaches and much more.

One of M’s most popular requests from its Facebook employee testers, was that the service can call your telco company and endure the endless hold times and automated messages to help you set up home wifi or cancel your Foxtel. The main differentiator between Facebook M and Siri is that their is an actual person on hold for you called a Facebook M trainer. Facebook’s M trainers have customer service backgrounds. They make the trickier judgment calls, and perform other tasks that software can’t. If you ask M to plan a birthday dinner for your friend, the software might book the Uber and the restaurant, but a person might surprise your friend at the end of the night by sending over birthday cupcakes from her favourite bakery. Over time Facebook will use complex AI with their history of data to predict these outcomes to reduce the burden on their trainers.

4. Voice Activation. Listen to me.
In the latest release of Wi-Fi gadgets, Amazon have launched a speaker that listens. The Amazon Echo is a cylindrical bluetooth speaker that listens when you talk to it. For those who enjoy making noise or bossing around inanimate objects then this a great device for you.

The most obvious use case for Echo is to play music or podcasts. However the future use would be to connect it to your other smart devices. Right now Echo works with SmartThings, Insteon, WeMo, Hue and Wink devices, which covers most of your bases. Commands are mostly limited to turning things on or off, or brightening or dimming lights. These might be basic triggers but the future is quite exciting if all you have to do is yell out from bed for a coffee or to turn on the air-conditioning.

5. Machine Learning
Machine learning is a type of artificial intelligence that provides computers with the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed. Machine learning focuses on the development of computer programs that can teach themselves to grow and change when exposed to new data. The process of machine learning is similar to that of data mining. Both systems search through data to look for patterns.

Marketers can leverage this technology in multiple ways when creating customer journeys. The journeys themselves will adapt, restructure and remodel themselves to become more successful overtime by understanding the moments when customers are most likely to engage. Machine learning will allow you to optimise in real-time based on the history of data available. Companies like Salesforce are leading the race by acquiring PredicitionIO, a start up based out of Palo Alto that have developed an open source-based machine learning server.

2016 Digital Trends part two will be available shortly. Subscribe to stay tuned!

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WHat is the iceberg principle?

1/31/2016

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Imagine you're floating on the Titanic and about to hit an iceberg. It doesn't seem that big - actually it's only half the size of the boat. No big deal, our boat is much larger so it shouldn't be an issue.....actually what you forget to realise is that you can only see what's on the surface. The other 85% of the iceberg is below the surface and that will determine the size of the impact.

Anyways....enough about the Titanic - the underlying message here is called the Iceberg Principle or as Hemingway called it, the Iceberg Theory. The observation is that in many cases only a very small amount (the tip) of information is available about a situation, where as the 'real' information or bulk of operations and data are hidden. When Ernest Hemingway would introduce a character in one of his novels he would spend years crafting their persona, yet only introduce the bare minimum leaving the mysteries to unfold through his writing and the imagination.

How does this relate to marketing?
At its simplest form, most marketing teams spend majority of their time executing campaigns. The customer gets bombarded with marketing communications that have no brand consistency (due to the different departments sending the campaign) and more importantly, the content isn't particularly relevant. Marketing departments all around the globe are spending more than 8hrs a day executing tasks that require human interaction 9 to 5, 5 days a week. That sort of work ethic is not scalable and will only stunt your innovation and business growth. As a consultant, typically when you intervene with a framework or solution that will help, the response is quite alarming:

The thought of slowing them down and taking two steps back just doesn't sound like the right solution. However under the surface you can see there is no alignment, disconnected systems, broken processes and personal agendas.

The duck's legs move a million miles an hour underneath the water, yet on the surface they seem so calm and collected.

The Framework
The tip of the iceberg for marketing departments is the customer. The customer receives the communications and believe it or not can identify quite quickly whether you are actually listening to their needs and have all your ducks in a row.

The framework has four key areas of focus:

Customer: Explore the customer lifecycle by mapping out the current and future state customer experiences. Strategically define what’s working and what’s next?
Operations: Define current process for building, sending and measuring emails and workflow in other key channels.
Technology: Determine what data and systems you use that may require an integration. This will help drive automation.
Strategy: Understand your company's quantifiable goals, digital marketing vision and the value you bring to your clients. More importantly your priorities for this year and beyond.

Your customer only sees the output - yet what happens underneath the surface plays a big factor in whether it is considered successful or not!

If you create this sort of thinking internally it will give you a framework to work with, that will not only free up time but also align team thinking and collaboration. The end goal for every marketing department should be - connected technology, clear marketing strategies, loyal customers and more importantly being able to do more with less!

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Forward>>

LEND ME YOUR EYES

Bridging The Gap Between Data & Creativity

Voice of the customer

Blockbuster VS. NETFLIX

2016 Digital Trends (Part 1 of 2)

WHat is the iceberg principle?

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