A few reminders to brands:
- In the long run, you are nothing if you don't produce something of value.
- People other than yourselves have to think what you provide is of value. Just because they consume it doesn't mean that it is valued.
- This isn't just applicable to your products, but to the rest of that which you produce: Content, Marketing, Interactions and Responses as well.
- If you want to know if something is valued, listen and/or ask.
Thanks to Tim Brunelle, via Gavin Heaton, via Drew McLellan via Todd Andrik for digging up this Malcolm Gladwell talk from the 2004 TED conference. He's talking about Howard Moskowitz's learnings on consumer preferences.
The thing I really find interesting about all of this is the idea that segmenting potential consumers into multiple groups and working to please each group separately. When applied to experience design, product design, engagement planning, or design & strategy of just about any type, this thinking throws quite a twist into how planning currently proceeds within so much of the business. For example, when planning the IA for a corporate website we tend to strive towards a single sitemap, when we should probably be striving either towards 3 - 5 OR providing for dynamic self-segmentation. The problem with the standard solution set of "section 1 is for purchasing", "section two is for browsing" etc...is that purchasers and browsers exist within each segment and segments are likely to have different requirements for each task. Separating sections by product doesn't do much better, as flavors of products (even colors) are likely to have specific types of people that are most attracted to them.
The more I think about it, the more I think that distributed media is perhaps the real solution to the application of this thinking to the communications space. Just as it doesn't make sense to try and make one coffee for all consumers, it doesn't make sense to make one website or ad campaign or one "integrated" campaign for all consumers. You'll likely end up making people "60% happy".
Why not make many different pieces and aim at making people "78% happy"?
The thing I really find interesting about all of this is the idea that segmenting potential consumers into multiple groups and working to please each group separately. When applied to experience design, product design, engagement planning, or design & strategy of just about any type, this thinking throws quite a twist into how planning currently proceeds within so much of the business. For example, when planning the IA for a corporate website we tend to strive towards a single sitemap, when we should probably be striving either towards 3 - 5 OR providing for dynamic self-segmentation. The problem with the standard solution set of "section 1 is for purchasing", "section two is for browsing" etc...is that purchasers and browsers exist within each segment and segments are likely to have different requirements for each task. Separating sections by product doesn't do much better, as flavors of products (even colors) are likely to have specific types of people that are most attracted to them.
The more I think about it, the more I think that distributed media is perhaps the real solution to the application of this thinking to the communications space. Just as it doesn't make sense to try and make one coffee for all consumers, it doesn't make sense to make one website or ad campaign or one "integrated" campaign for all consumers. You'll likely end up making people "60% happy".
Why not make many different pieces and aim at making people "78% happy"?
Thanks to aaron for passing along this presentation by Leah Hall of Adaptive Path.
Good stuff here, lots of things that you might already know, but a great consolidation and reminder about how to focus your UX/Experience Design chops.
Good stuff here, lots of things that you might already know, but a great consolidation and reminder about how to focus your UX/Experience Design chops.
There's been a bit of an uptick in chatter lately around Customer Service and Product Value:
It seems that there are two options for them in a case like this:
Unfortunately, I don't think Delta can afford to do the second one under their current structure, as they failed to factor that level of investment into their restructuring plans. But, by failing to make that investment, they have sabotaged their chance to "premiumize" their product and retain the likes of Jaffe as customers. Given that their current product price structure relies upon the Jaffe's of the world to stay in business, this continued policy will likely lead to their eventual demise.
My conclusion from all of this is that fair value and restitution means nothing unless it is representative of the brand, company and product as a whole. Simultaneously, the offered restitution in the case of a grievance can fail to restore a consumer's brand faith even if the restitution is over-compensatory. If the product and/or brand experience continues to fall below the promised standards, the brand faith will evaporate. And in the "Age of Conversation" evaporation of brand faith leads to vocal brand opponents, and a negative conversation.
Joseph Jaffe has been tweeting & posting about his experience (miserable) with Delta—aka Delta SkelterIt was Jon's set of tweets and related blog entry that got me thinking about how the value of the product as perceived by the customer is related intricately to the end-to-end brand/product/customer experience. The worse the experience, the lower the value of the product. In some ways, this almost justifies the way that Delta treated Jaffe -- they were merely confirming that their product no longer has any value, even though they may pretend that portions of the product do by charging thru the nose for them.
Jon Burg recently wrote about Defining Fair Restitution as it relates to unhappy customers and companies.
Sharon Jaffe @sharonjaffe recently tweeted:Had 3 positive customer service experiences this week and am blown away. The problem is now I'm worried about next time, CONSISTENCY is key.
It seems that there are two options for them in a case like this:
- they can do what they did and confirm that throughout their organization there is little value given to the brand and product
- they can provide extensive restitution and recompense to Jaffe, and do several things to ensure that such an event is less likely to occur again (public apologies, employee training, and new formal policies.)
Unfortunately, I don't think Delta can afford to do the second one under their current structure, as they failed to factor that level of investment into their restructuring plans. But, by failing to make that investment, they have sabotaged their chance to "premiumize" their product and retain the likes of Jaffe as customers. Given that their current product price structure relies upon the Jaffe's of the world to stay in business, this continued policy will likely lead to their eventual demise.
My conclusion from all of this is that fair value and restitution means nothing unless it is representative of the brand, company and product as a whole. Simultaneously, the offered restitution in the case of a grievance can fail to restore a consumer's brand faith even if the restitution is over-compensatory. If the product and/or brand experience continues to fall below the promised standards, the brand faith will evaporate. And in the "Age of Conversation" evaporation of brand faith leads to vocal brand opponents, and a negative conversation.
After seeing a recent group on Facebook looking to develop a community funding movement for Twitter: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=21624136569 I was inspired to create a similar group calling for the Open Sourcing of the Twitter platform (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=18865061654). The idea being that Twitter will become stabler much faster if the base platform is open sourced rather than built with a limited paid group (no matter how much money is raised.)
What does Twitter stand to gain? A stable platform, continued dominance in the space, and the ability to focus on $$ making aspects much faster -- for example corporate implementation and closed networks.
This is a similar concept to a recent open source distributed microblogging platform movement that Joe Cascio (@joec0914) has been leading the charge on. Again, the idea is that a community supported and built open source project focussed on the platform level would be more adaptable and scaleable.
It would be great to see either of these projects take off, because the twitter concept is great, and because I'd love to see twitter succeed and don't think that they need a proprietary base platform to do so.
What does Twitter stand to gain? A stable platform, continued dominance in the space, and the ability to focus on $$ making aspects much faster -- for example corporate implementation and closed networks.
This is a similar concept to a recent open source distributed microblogging platform movement that Joe Cascio (@joec0914) has been leading the charge on. Again, the idea is that a community supported and built open source project focussed on the platform level would be more adaptable and scaleable.
It would be great to see either of these projects take off, because the twitter concept is great, and because I'd love to see twitter succeed and don't think that they need a proprietary base platform to do so.
This one's been languishing, so I'm just going to post it in phases.
I've had it with the obsession in the advertising and marketing world with the "Integrated Big Idea". This barely worked when all that agencies produced was TV and/or Radio and a bit of Print. It is completely irrelevant in the land of fragmented media, prosumers and multiplatform browsing. The idea that a single idea will work in all platforms for all consumers not only demeans the user/consumer's intelligence but assumes that the agency is capable of omniscience.
Any decent idea idea may be great for one platform. It may even be great for several -- an idea based around entertaining the potential consumer can work in TV, online, long form, etc... but it will likely require a diverse group of creative people for creation -- I've met very very very few writers that are good at multiple lengths of storytelling. Most of the ones out there are very busy.
Why does the industry insist on forcing ideas to cover multiple platforms? To paraphrase Benjamin Palmer's quote in an Adweek article "you have a different brand when talking to your grandma than when with your girlfriend, why shouldn't a company?" Different people consume different media and have different expectations from their consumption, so why do agencies insist on trying to come up with ideas that cover many types of media? Oh yeah, because we've made a big deal out of the idea of "Integrated".
Let's get over it. Integrated should be about opening lines of communication across all platforms, and being consistent with your offering in those platforms. I would expect a company to talk to me differently than they talk to a 15 year old or a 50 year old. BUT I would expect them to be true to the consistency of their offering and the discussion there of. Don't tell me one thing and someone else something contradictory, because we'll find out and likely both be pissed off. But if you produce a piece of entertainment that doesn't appeal to me, that doesn't mean it will necessarily turn me off, I'll just ignore it. So don't try and make the idea that works for the 15 year old work for me, invite more creatives and come up with something else. Then do them both.
I've had it with the obsession in the advertising and marketing world with the "Integrated Big Idea". This barely worked when all that agencies produced was TV and/or Radio and a bit of Print. It is completely irrelevant in the land of fragmented media, prosumers and multiplatform browsing. The idea that a single idea will work in all platforms for all consumers not only demeans the user/consumer's intelligence but assumes that the agency is capable of omniscience.
Any decent idea idea may be great for one platform. It may even be great for several -- an idea based around entertaining the potential consumer can work in TV, online, long form, etc... but it will likely require a diverse group of creative people for creation -- I've met very very very few writers that are good at multiple lengths of storytelling. Most of the ones out there are very busy.
Why does the industry insist on forcing ideas to cover multiple platforms? To paraphrase Benjamin Palmer's quote in an Adweek article "you have a different brand when talking to your grandma than when with your girlfriend, why shouldn't a company?" Different people consume different media and have different expectations from their consumption, so why do agencies insist on trying to come up with ideas that cover many types of media? Oh yeah, because we've made a big deal out of the idea of "Integrated".
Let's get over it. Integrated should be about opening lines of communication across all platforms, and being consistent with your offering in those platforms. I would expect a company to talk to me differently than they talk to a 15 year old or a 50 year old. BUT I would expect them to be true to the consistency of their offering and the discussion there of. Don't tell me one thing and someone else something contradictory, because we'll find out and likely both be pissed off. But if you produce a piece of entertainment that doesn't appeal to me, that doesn't mean it will necessarily turn me off, I'll just ignore it. So don't try and make the idea that works for the 15 year old work for me, invite more creatives and come up with something else. Then do them both.
This is one of the best uses of the native feature set in a social media application I've seen from a campaign yet. John McCain is leveraging the questions feature in LinkedIn to invite participation, ostensibly from an "expert" set of individuals. Given the LinkedIn usage stats, his campaign is onto something. I'm curious to see if they incorporate the comments here into the McCain platform or campaing planning. I also wonder if either of the Democrat candidates will reach out in the same way, or if the demographics of LinkedIn seem too upper income business user for them to spend their money that way... which would be their loss I think.
The Q/A Page: http://tinyurl.com/5hvb6q
McCain's Profile: http://tinyurl.com/5ny3p7
UPDATE: John McCain does also accept LinkedIn connections (at least when politely worded) and wisely keeps his connections private.
UPDATE 2: HIllary Clinton is also on LinkedIn: http://tinyurl.com/4pfr7z
An interesting new side to the the Prosumer trend is the development of professional services that allow individuals to design and purchase and/or sell physical goods via the web. In other words, take physical outsourcing and make it available at the individual consumer level. It's pretty straightforward, you design something, put digital working drawings into their templates, upload to the site, they laser cut everything according to your lists and ship you the goods. You can refine and tweak (obviously the more rounds you do of this, the more you pay in cutting and materials) and then keep for yourself or place into their marketplace.The short view of this is the initial reaction I had "hmmm, maybe I'll finally make that table I sketched out" (although not the one w/ steel legs, since they don't yet work in metals.) Then, after thinking for a minute I started thinking about: what if IKEA or Target contracted with these folks or someone like them? Upload a few templates from their designers, allow users to customize, and make selected custom designs available on their website. If something you customized sold, you'd get either some more store credit or perhaps even some cash. Maybe there's a sales level below which you get credit, above which you become a "registered" designer and can start collecting checks.
What's the risk to them? I don't see much of one except perhaps "taste pollution/dillution" due to poor or "off brand" designs. They can always refuse to "publish" designs that don't meet their standards -- while still allowing the creator to purchase said designs for themselves. Additionally, by giving their consumers the ability to become involved in the production & design process, thereby becoming prosumers, they are allowing for brand engagement and growth. It seems a bit like a win/win to me. I get to not only make my own table, but if it's cool enough, I'll make some cash and be able to tell people that I have a product at IKEA/Target/whereever.
Are there downsides I'm missing?
A article in yesterdays NY Times did a great job of illustrating to me the ingrained flaws in the way ad agencies and the people that run them think. Never mind that the article starts out with: "DECADES ago, brewers determined that television commercials were just
about the best way to sell beer..." Decades ago? and that should be relevant still now why? But the thing that really pissed me off was at the end of the article:
The article in full can be read here >>
Even so, Mr. Haven [Jim Haven, co-founder & creative director @ Creature] is demonstrating a fondness for kicking it old school. From all the film shot in Mexico for the online videos, “we cut a couple spots” in 30-second lengths, Mr. Haven said, that could become TV commercials.
“And the music is licensed for air,” he added hopefully.
The article in full can be read here >>
