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BILLY LOIZOU

LEND ME YOUR EYES

It's Always Been About The Customer

1/29/2016

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Today’s marketer and every brand I come in contact with are focusing on putting the customer at the centre of their world. This is great news…but hasn’t this always been the case? Well in short the answer is yes, the difference now is we have technology that allows us to interact with our customers wherever they are, whenever they want. This technology like Salesforce Marketing Cloud gives marketers real time reporting and allows you to map your strategies across multiple channels and digital touch points. Prepare yourselves to hear this phrase a lot in the next 12 months; but this is the year of the customer journey.

Most designers would agree with me that the customer has always been the main focus. However for years companies have focused on trying to stay relevant by using the latest technology, creating a social identity and chasing the customer around the Internet using display advertising. Issue being that the ROI was never measurable, it was expensive and they never understood why they were doing any of these things in the first place. Steve Jobs was well known for how he pioneered the personal computer revolution and disrupted the music industry, but at the core was his design-driven customer approach. “You have got to start with the customer experience and work back to the technology – not the other way around” Jobs said. Design is not just about how something looks and feels but its about how it works, and the most successful designers like Tim Brown (CEO of IDEO) will tell you that most of their time is spent in the inspiration and ideation stages of their projects, where it is heavily focused on customer research and user experience.

As marketers, we need to harness the power of these tools available to us, we now have access to more data then ever before and the technical tools to engage with our customers in sophisticated 1:1 journeys. The customer journey has now become even more complex so in order to do this successfully we must stay true to the customer and our brand; here are some key things to think about when mapping out your customer journeys:
  • Use research: Deep qualitative research is the secret to discovering unmet customer needs. Start by understanding your customer, the market and even your direct competitors. Use the data you have available to you to make some clear actionable decisions, for example your online browse behaviour, purchase data, social data, in store transactional data and call centre data. Knowing how to tap into technology to uncover how individuals and groups really think and act is an essential part of innovation. Involve a broader team in the research phase also as everyone can provide different insights throughout the company like Sales, I.T, Customer Service and Marketing. It's also a good idea to send out surveys, conduct customer interviews and ethnographies to create powerful experiences.

  • Focus on the emotions: Every customer interaction is driven by an emotional decision. Understanding what the customer is going through at every stage of the buying or selling cycle with your brand will help you tailor content to make them feel comfortable and reassured. For example while shopping for property the customer is extremely happy, confident and optimistic. The moment they make a formal offer a sense of doubt, fear and anxiety comes over them as the decision they are making comes hammering down on them. Emotions are critical to any experience, whether B2B or B2C, and a great customer journey needs to communicate them.

  • Understand the lifecycle stages: Customer journeys and lifecycle marketing are not that dissimilar. It is still important to understand the different stages that a customer can go through with your brand. If I use my property example like before then here are six stages a homebuyer will go through when looking for a house:
    1. Identify: We have out grown our home or looking to downsize
    2. Discover: What suburb and what sort of home are we after
    3. Select: Narrowing down the selection and visiting open for inspections
    4. Transact: Making the offer or visiting the auction, succeed or keep looking
    5. Move: Between the transaction and the big move
    6. Post-Move: After you have settled into your new home
    By understanding these stages, multiple journeys can be a mapped to help the customer through making their tough decisions and content strategies can be put in place to provide relevant information before they seek it.

  • Think about the different touch points: A customer that is engaging with your brand online compared to a customer that is engaging with your bricks and mortar store have similar needs, yet both require different attention. With access to email, social, web and now mobile a brand can provide assistance and experiences in many different ways. We want our online presence to have a 1:1 approach with a high level of service that most customers only get in store, and we want our in store presence to be as exciting and interactive as our online store. I call this blurring the lines between the physical and digital worlds…PHY-GITAL. Every customer has a preferred channel, however with technology like iBeacons, Geo location based messages and real-time data the power is in the hands of the brand to do some smart cross channel marketing that creates life changing customer experiences. Check this awesome mobile marketing concept from Meat Pack a shoe store in Guatemala.

  • Highlight the moments of truth and think about the red journeys: There are key moments in a customer’s lifetime where we have the opportunity to provide a service above and beyond. What happens when something goes wrong? A parcel never reaches it’s destination, or if it does it's broken, a flight is delayed or canceled, and your dinner reservation was accidentally double booked. Identify some of these critical stages (I like to call them red journeys) and find a way to make it up to the customer. “There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the Chairman down, simple by spending his money somewhere else!” –Sam Walton, Walmart Founder.

  • Have a clear goal and stay true to your brand promise: Every journey or interaction whether small or large needs to have a clear measurable goal. This is the underlying strategy of why we are sending these communications and mapping out these journeys. Staying true to your brand promise will allow customer journeys to be the focal point for your entire business not just your marketing department. The customer touches every part of an organisation, learn from it and never stop testing or pushing the boundaries. Use tools like A/B testing and reporting to see how you are tracking against the goals you have set.
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In 2015, marketing will mean delighting every customer — and building true brand loyalty across the entire organisation. Sharing a vision that touches every employee from the C-Suite down. 86% of senior-level marketers say that it’s absolutely critical to create a cohesive customer journey (source Salesforce: 2015 State of Marketing Report.) Don’t be scared to try something that has never been done before, learn from your mistakes as the only risk is standing still and doing nothing at all.
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welcome to neverland

1/28/2016

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I never wanted to grow up! As a kid I remember lying face down on my bed, head in the pillow, crying hysterically thinking that one day I will have to leave school and get a job. I was 10 years old and all I wanted to do was have fun, build fortresses, sketch in notebooks, eat pizza and have sleep over parties. The thought of giving up my Ninja Turtle collection would have been harder than letting go of my parents (sorry mum & dad.)

Then it all became reality...I finished university and had literally no idea what I wanted to do. All I knew was that I wanted to keep my creativity, that one piece of still being a kid. A mentor of mine once told me that the dawn of technology will make everybody around us complacent and robotic. He said "our creativity would one day be our only differentiation in business and in life!" I took those words as gospel.

I had a Bachelors degree in Multimedia under my belt, was fascinated by good product design, picked up digital photography and loved interacting with any new gadget I could get my hands on to. I found I was a decent designer, had a good knack for understanding business and could pick up new emerging technologies and software quite well. I was never great at any of them but I was above average at all. That was the complicated part, I was a hybrid of 3 different industries and every role I was applying for needed some sort of specialisation. Finding a company that would give me an opportunity was near impossible. However, every position I took and every company that I  have worked in to date, the one skill that I prided myself in and took with me everywhere was the ability to alwaysthink outside the box. That one simple concept "creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes." 
"Only 2% of people think they are more creative now then when they were a kid!"
Fast forward to today, close to 10 years later and the role I was hoping for actually exists! It's called a Chief Marketing Technologist and it's 1/3 creative, 1/3 marketer and 1/3 technologist. Who would have thought? In essence, my job is to create amazing experiences between companies and their customers all over the world by utilising marketing technology.

The Art of Creativity
Most of the world still thinks of creativity as a mysterious quality that only some of us have. I believe creativity can be taught and anyone can tap into their creative spirit.
  1. Unlock your story telling ability: find the human story in everything you do. The more emotion and feelings you portray in any of your work, the more people can relate to it and make an attachment.
  2. Brainstorming sessions and internal workshops: next business problem you need to solve, hold a brainstorming session with a small group of colleagues. Line the walls with paper, the tables with paper and arm yourselves with pens, pencils and post-it notes.
  3. Meditation: let go mentally by taking up meditation. We concentrate on our physical state but always overlook our mental state. Find 5 minutes in your day to refresh your mind.
  4. Intuition: the unconscious mind is far more suited to creative insight than the conscious mind. During a shower, long walk, day dreaming and that slight moment before I go to sleep is when I feel in my element.
  5. Reading: autobiographies, self help books, fiction novels - read whatever you can get your hands on. Knowledge is king and helps you create all sorts of connections when problem solving.
  6. Humour: while creativity takes a lot of effort, you will enjoy it more if you take it lightly. It's all about having fun, enjoying the process and collaborating with others. Build on the ideas of others and never dismiss an idea without thinking it through.
  7. 80% thinking, 20% execution: the creative process is not just the output. Creative thinking is how businesses like Airbnb and Uber have been able to get to where they are today. They have fused traditional business models with customer needs. Don't confuse creativity with art or fancy pictures.
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In a world where digital transformation is taking businesses by storm, those who are willing to take risks will succeed. All businesses must create a culture of creative freedom, a culture that holds design thinking in extremely high regard...Otherwise prepare to be like everybody else. 
“Creative people are adults 
who never grew up!”
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How Virtual Reality Will Change The World We Live In!

1/26/2016

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I have just boarded a 13hr flight from Sydney to Los Angeles, excited by the fact that I'm heading to San Francisco to attend Dreamforce 15' for the biggest technology conference on the globe. As I'm trying to pass time on the plane by watching movies, listening to music and reading a book (George Orwell, 1984) - my mind starts racing thinking about the future. This is a common occurrence for me, "live in the moment" I keep telling myself. I start thinking:
"I have a lot of time to kill on this trip, imagine if I had a virtual reality headset that would allow me to do anything I wanted whilst in mid air - like visit open home inspections, go car shopping, go camping, spy on my dog?" That would be cool and practical!"

How It Will Change The Real-Estate Industry

Meet Lucy Thomas, a mid 30's and newly married Accountant who is expecting her first child. Up until now husband David and her have been renting in the inner suburbs of St Kilda however are keen to buy a larger home now that they are starting a family. Work is getting busier, the days are getting shorter and energy levels aren't quite as high as they use to be now that she is 6 months pregnant. 

Lucy gets home from a long day at work, makes a cup of tea and sits by the fire place ready to look at some new open planned apartments being built within a 10km radius of her current location. She puts on her full HD Virtual Reality headset and starts scrolling through the menu using a swiping down hand gesture. She selects the real estate app exactly the same way you select an app using your iPhone - difference is this is highly animated and has an in built Bose sound system to enhance the experience. The light sounds of John Mayer come on in the background as the headset is synced to her Apple music account and also connected to the family wifi. 

The first thing Lucy sees is a helicopter view of Melbourne city. She has access to both a street view or standard map but can also filter her preferences for available homes and new developments. Lucy is seeing relevant information on previously sold houses, the average price of sale and also getting highlighted key pieces of data that are specifically targeted to her - for example dog parks, closest yoga centre, schools, cafes, hot spots and distance to work via car or public transport. The below picture is purely a mock up.
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Lucy zones in on East Malvern a beautiful green leafy area 10km from the CBD and finds a brand new development that sits comfortably within their price range, not too far from work and big enough to start a family in. She decides to take a virtual tour of the yet to be developed luxury apartments. The below picture is purely a mock up.
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Now this is where the magic happens...
Standing out the front of the brand new development in East Malvern, Lucy gets her first glimpse of the building. The sun is shinning down and she can hear the sounds of birds chirping and cheerful families close by. The smell of freshly mowed grass can also be part of the amazing customer experience. Lucy is now guided through the lobby, up to the 3 bedroom luxury apartment that she showed interest in. As the door slowly opens she can hear her favourite Saturday morning song being played from the living room: "What a wonderful world" by Iz Kamakawiwoʻole.

Slowly she is taken through the apartment - living room to bedrooms. Everything along the way has been personalised for Lucy's world. Her Facebook account has been synced so all the photo frames in the house show pictures from her beautiful wedding day with David, to photos of her French Bulldog Oscar. Lucy can also interact with the virtual world by opening cupboard doors for insight into storage space. While guiding herself around the house Lucy decides to start customising certain aspects - like the apartments colour theme, finishings, decor and furniture making her feel like a conductor. The creativity and flexibility of such a tool puts the power in the customers hands and the data into the marketers hands.

Once Lucy is finished she takes a stand back and admires her work. She receives a tap on her shoulder from her David who has arrived home slightly early. She takes the headset off and passes it over to David, then whispers "I think I have just found our new home!
As the internet of things advances, the very notion of a clear dividing line between reality and virtual reality becomes blurred, sometimes in creative ways!
The example above is how I envision one industry being disrupted. Everything from buying a car, booking a wedding venue to renting holiday accommodation can be enhanced through virtual reality. Nothing will ever take away from pure human to human interactions - but the idea of having the ability to do all the above from within your home makes me excited and nervous.
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