Communicating Integrated Digital Media: March 2011

I'm now blogging on Tumblr!

Even though I enjoy blogging on blogger I'm a big fan of Tumblr and I've started a blog that focuses more on my consulting services. Blogger will still be the place where I share general musings and ideas, but Tumblr will outline how I can help businesses with their digital strategy.

Please check it out and share your feedback: http://customerexperiencestrategy.tumblr.com/

Defining Brand Experience

Lately, I’ve been researching the concept of ‘brand experience’. First off, what are we talking about when we intellectualise the notion that we can experience a brand?

According to the clever peeps at Wikipedia:

A brand can take many forms, including a name, sign, symbol, color combination or slogan. The word brand has evolved to encompass identity - it affects the personality of a product, company or service.

Brand experience isn't just the design; it's also the usability of a website, the intuitive functionality of a phone app or the approachability of customer service. Our perception as consumers is formed by how we’re able to interact with a brand.

The web is information tapas; a tasting menu for ideas. The function of a brand website is to provide the building blocks for a user to form an opinion about the brand. It is our internalised perception of a brand that motivates us to endorse it. No matter how convincingly an ad tries to persuade us when it comes to online we are in search of convenient information wrapped within an engaging environment.

So how does a brand create an experience? The answer is to get inside the head of the brand's biggest fan. We are defined by our actions. If the majority of your site’s returning visitors are heading to the same page(s) or entering specific terms into the search box the experience needs to reflect this behaviour. The most important expert on consumer behaviour is your site’s regular visitors. Listen to them by studying their actions.

Another element is the experience is the look and feel. Women tend to view the web as a service; while men typically interpret the web as a tool. How does your website represent both the male and female perspectives?

If a website doesn't live up to our expectations than our preception of the brand can become tarnished. As an example, Nike.com is a flash website that is sleek and stylish, but it doesn’t feel like a shopping website. Whereas, Zappos.com is not half as pretty, but it feels like both a service and a tool to use. If the only way to buy Nike shoes was on Nike.com the experience would need to change. But Nike.com doesn't exist to sell; it exists for fans to experience the brand.

Utilitarian shoppers are interested in e-tailing because of four specific attributes: convenience and accessibility, selection, availability of information and lack of sociality (Wolfinbarger and Gilly, 2001).

Most consumers' online purchase decision is based on their motivation and goals. I don’t think Nike.com exists to sell shoes. I believe it exists to promote the brand. The experience on Nike.com is all about exploration and appreciation of design. This is why it has the ability for users to design their own custom shoes, learn about shoe performance, get training tips and fantasise about how their lives might be different with a pair of Nike’s on their feet.

Compared with conventional utilitarian shopping motivations, the merit of hedonic motivation is experiential and emotional. The reason why hedonic consumers do shopping is not for physical objective but for the shopping process instead. (Huang Jen-Hung and Yang Yi-Chun 2010)

The purpose of the website is just as important as observing user behaviour. Many websites intend to be all things to all people and it’s not possible and could damage the brand.

Nike.com is able to remain focused on its goal of creating a unique brand experience because their products are sold through 3^rd party websites and their own bricks and mortar stores. Nike.com is all about the brand experience and not about buying shoes; however, there are a select few who are motivated by exclusivity and design. These consumers will take the risk of paying more because they are hardcore fans of the brand. But most consumers will look for the best price on eBay, Zappos or some other 3^rd party seller. Nike doesn’t care because the brand website is serving its purpose of engaging with its fans.

Online testing, targeting, and personalization best practices

Follow this link to watch a fantastic video about using metrics to understand your customers:

Confirmation | Online testing, targeting, and personalization best practices | Mary Bannon | The Washington Post

Storytelling Sells

According to Seth Godin, there are eleven criteria of a great story:

Great stories succeed because they are able to capture the imagination of large or important audiences.
A great story is true. Not necessarily because it’s factual, but because it’s consistent and authentic. Consumers are too good at sniffing out inconsistencies for a marketer to get away with a story that’s just slapped on.
Great stories make a promise. They promise fun, safety or a shortcut. The promise needs to be bold and audacious. It’s either exceptional or it’s not worth listening to.
Great stories are trusted. Trust is the scarcest resource we’ve got left. No one trusts anyone. People don’t trust the beautiful women ordering vodka at the corner bar (they’re getting paid by the liquor company). People don’t trust the spokespeople on commercials (who exactly is Rula Lenska?). And they certainly don’t trust the companies that make pharmaceuticals (Vioxx, apparently, can kill you). As a result, no marketer succeeds in telling a story unless he has earned the credibility to tell that story.
Great stories are subtle. Surprisingly, the fewer details a marketer spells out, the more powerful the story becomes. Talented marketers understand that allowing people to draw their own conclusions is far more effective than announcing the punch line.
Great stories happen fast. First impressions are far more powerful than we give them credit for.
Great stories don’t always need eight-page color brochures or a face-to-face meeting. Either you are ready to listen or you aren’t.
Great stories don’t appeal to logic, but they often appeal to our senses. Pheromones aren’t a myth. People decide if they like someone after just a sniff.
Great stories are rarely aimed at everyone. Average people are good at ignoring you. Average people have too many different points of view about life and average people are by and large satisfied. If you need to water down your story to appeal to everyone, it will appeal to no one. The most effective stories match the world view of a tiny audience—and then that tiny audience spreads the story.
Great stories don’t contradict themselves. If your restaurant is in the right location but had the wrong menu, you lose. If your art gallery carries the right artists but your staff is made up of rejects from a used car lot, you lose. Consumers are clever and they’ll see through your deceit at once.
Most of all, great stories agree with our world view. The best stories don’t teach people anything new. Instead, the best stories agree with what the audience already believes and makes the members of the audience feel smart and secure when reminded how right they were in the first place.

As more and more companies jump into the social media pool they need to ask themselves what story they want to tell. I think the best story is a chose your own adventure.

Image by Idris Mootee

Cartoon: Crowdsourced Homework

Online Community ROI

Occasionally I’m asked to explain what the purpose of social media is for individuals and businesses. Too often I’m greeted by sceptical views and a strong belief that social media encourages people to waste time. First of all, TV wastes time. Social media enables participation.

As Clay Skirky points out in Cognitive Surplus, “Someone born in 1960 has watched something like 50,000 hours of TV already, and may watch another 30,000 hours before she dies.”

Clearly, we have an excess of time. We are idle when taking the train to work. We are idle after dinner and once the kids are in bed. Despite our good intentions of maximizing our twilight years we tend to find other things to do rather than build that boat or write a novel. As much as we’d like to believe that we are all making the most of all of the hours in the day we do have some form of down time and it’s within this time that people chose to participate online.

The return on investment is the part that many businesses struggle to define. In meetings online community advocates are shouted at by finance to, “show me the money!” Top dogs want proof before business as usual gets derailed.

Here are a few quick facts to throw into your next presentation:

Community users remain customers 50% longer than non-community users. (AT&T, 2002)
43% of support forums visits are in lieu of opening up a support case. (Cisco, 2004).
Community users spend 54% more than non-community users (EBay, 2006)
In customer support, live interaction costs 87% more per transaction on average than forums and other web self-service options. (ASP, 2002)
Cost per interaction in customers support averages $12 via the contact center versus $0.25 via self-service options. (Forrester, 2006)
Community users visit nine times more often than non-community users (McKInsey, 2000).
Community users have four times as many page views as non-community users (McKInsey, 2000).
56% percent of online community members log in once a day or more (Annenberg, 2007)
Customers report good experiences in forums more than twice as often as they do via calls or mail. (Jupiter, 2006)

Statistics provided by Bill Johnston

The simple truth is that consumers don’t want to be passive. We don’t buy something these days without doing a little research. We ask our friends and family what they recommend. We ask our co-workers and post on Facebook or forums. We have access to our own “experts” who know us better than any marketer. In a world overwrought with too many products and services competing for our attention we need more information as consumers to make informed decisions.

Image by Creating Passionate Users

The psychology of the consumer can no longer be assumed. How a product is used is not always how it’s advertised and the ROI of opening up a dialogue is discovering the true potential and reach of a commodity. Brand longevity is a result of faster processes to address customer service issues and quicker innovation. Customer loyalty is possible when brands are transparent and stop taking their customers for granted. By inviting consumers into the production space fewer advertising costs are incurred.

Think about how an online community could improve your business:

How many customers do you lose because your current processes don’t allow you to respond fast enough?
How much do you spend on advertising to new customers?
What would change if you focused on empowering existing customers to spread the word instead of expensive TV or print campaigns?
Can your community members answer customer’s questions for you?

Three Little Pigs: A Transmedia Case Study

If the Three Little Pigs were told as a transmedia story it might be designed like this:

The basic story would be told in an anchoring medium, such as a novel, TV show, or film. View the entire idea under construction at athinklab.com
The hypothetical transmedia version of the Three Little Pigs is not the repurposing of story across different platforms. It is the creation of a holistic narrative that unfolds in different and unique manners across different media. It allows for a dialogue between creator and participant. Developers could decide if participant interaction, such as solving the sustainable materials problem, finding the wolf through clues and maps, or creating another character for the story, could move the story in different directions than the original version. Participants might urge the first little piggy to trust his instincts about the dark figure or create a hunter who steps up the stakes for the wolf and alters the time dimension of the wolf’s schemes.

Additional options might be a Three Little Pigs Kei Tai novel distributed in chapter segments to mobile devices; a geo-based iPhone app; Wolf Attack, an educational video game based on the physics concepts of construction and destruction; and development of an MMORPG.

Content by http://athinklab.com

18 Days In Egypt: A Crowd-Sourced Documentary

18 Days in Egypt aims to be a crowd-sourced documentary about what happened there. Launched just a week ago by former New York Times video journalist and current Knight fellow at Stanford University, Jigar Mehta, the site wants to tackle the difficult task of providing the right context for the raw videos and news that others have posted and collected.

Thinking about becoming an online moderator? Are you ready for parenthood?

There are all kinds of excellent resources out there about community moderation, but the absolute best practice is effective parenting. Both kids and community members need to know where their limits are in terms of their behaviour. Rules make us feel safe. As much as we like to think all we want is freedom the limitless unknown doesn’t bring out the best in most people.

The role of a moderator is not to spend their time hunting down every instance of bad behaviour. Just like the role of a good parent isn’t to monitor their children 24/7. The best way to teach is to lead by example. When a person is micro-managed they learn that they aren’t perceived to be capable of making good decisions. Consequently a person who is suppressed from forming their own better judgement hasn’t any.

Modelling is by far the best way to lead a community. Instead of focusing all the moderation time on tracking down rule-breakers look for the best examples of community participation. Spend your time reinforcing these members and rewarding their contributions. The more you push forward good behaviour the less reward there is for members to abuse the community. Just like teaching a toddler not to throw a fit community members need to learn the right way to voice their frustrations.

Time-outs are effective. The time to intervene is when negative behaviour affects you personally. Only when a child’s problem becomes a parent’s problem should they get involved. Members need to learn how to manage issues on their own and shouldn’t be encouraged to report abuse instead of speaking up for themselves. If a child hits another child it’s important for a parent not to take on the anger or emotion of the victim. Instead hitting should be discussed and use leading questions to allow the child to reach their own decisions about how to react. By reacting on behalf of the child a parent is taking the child’s ability to think for themselves away from them. No one learns from lectures or emotional reactions. We all learn best when able to form our own opinions through supportive guidance.

We guide and lead as moderators. We’re not a Gestapo or private police force. Raising responsible kids who are considerate and thoughtful isn’t hard when parents get out of the way and let kids learn from their mistakes. Swooping in to rescue members doesn’t teach them how to take care of themselves and moderators waste too much time solving other people’s problems. Managing an online community is extremely rewarding – just like being a parent, but the value isn’t from how strictly you enforce the rules. The value is from enabling empowered individuals with common values to work together to solve problems for themselves.

Communicating Integrated Digital Media