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Author: crayg

  • Gimmick or revolution – what does VR really bring?

    Gimmick or revolution – what does VR really bring?

    In the winter of 1982, my father brought home our first computer, a BBC Model B microcomputer. The BBC Micro was a basic 8 bit machine running a 2 MHz 6502 processor with 4 channel sound and the ability to output 8 colour graphics at a dismal resolution. By today’s standards, it’s awful. But in 1982 it was mind-blowing. As the name suggests, the BBC micro was commissioned by the BBC as a learning tool and it even got its own TV show. More importantly, it was rolled-out across most schools in the UK as part of a digital education programme. The BBC Micro pioneered a lot of things, both technical and cultural.

    Inevitably, its popularity waned. One of the big reasons? It failed to meet the expectations of the working world. While it was great for learning and understanding computers, it had very little to offer in the way of spreadsheets and word processors. When the PC/Mac came along with all of these wonderful things, adoption rates shot up, and soon there was a PC in almost every office and household. New technology is driven by adoption, adoption is driven by big business. Until that journey from rags to riches is undertaken, tech will often sit in a world of obscurity, becoming yet another artifact of failed innovation.

    That brings me to the subject of VR, a technology that’s been around for almost a quarter of a century. Why has it taken so long to gain traction? Where is the rags to riches story? Is it just a gimmick? Things are starting to change from a sales POV. Sony’s answer, the PSVR, has enjoyed some popularity. Facebook’s Oculus range has also seen a significant rise in sales (especially with the release of the Oculus Quest 2). Unfortunately, both these headsets are still sitting firmly in the realm of the ‘experience’ (read: gamer), so how useful are they as an office productivity tool. The answer is, they’re not. Not yet.

    What has stood in the way? Portability for one thing. VR headsets plug into big, powerful computers so that video games can have a very deep sense of realism. Because there’s been such a heavy focus on gaming, there has been very little thought given to standalone units. That has changed and there are several options available for those of us that don’t have the big, expensive consoles and PCs. But it also means that an office environment won’t need a ton of extra gear lying around to unlock the power of VR.

    I think the biggest issue right now is imagination. There are many updates and peripherals that seek to replicate the office experience in the VR space. Physical keyboards that magically appear on virtual desks are one such product. Virtual offices are a great idea. You can have as many screens as you like, you can set up your office in any virtual location, from the beaches of Rio to the Swiss Alps. But what is the point? How is that innovation? On the job training has been pushed as another ‘killer feature’. Once again, not particularly interesting and would unlikely be the big driver adoption.

    True innovation

    An example of true innovation would be creating virtual workspaces where team members can collaborate on products in a single, interactive ‘playroom’. Need to build an activation stand for a product? Workshop it with your team in a collab space. Create the experience virtually, add ideas, sketch out collateral, and experience it as the consumer would before it even goes into production. We could be creating massive, fully interactive ideation spaces that shift from idea to prototype to production in one space, with one team. Everything from building code to planning logistics to creating better experiences would go from being an endless stream of emails and powerpoint documents to a single, virtual space. The days of endless emails would disappear.

    The same principle could work for the consumer. Imagine purchasing furniture by bringing virtual couches into a virtual representation of your lounge. Imagine trying out your next big screen TV in the comfort of your home before ordering. Imagine following along while a virtual chef shows you how to make an amazing dish before you’ve even ordered the ingredients.

    Will this happen? What does it mean for you? If history is anything to go by (and it always is), as soon as VR gets adopted by big business, it’s going to be a big thing. The way the new headsets are going and the updates that are currently being rolled out, we’re going to see that kind of adoption in the next three to five years. Right now, keep an eye out, because mass consumer adoption will mean a fundamental change in how people shop for things. You might want to be prepared for that.

  • What we can learn from Japan’s map to loyalty

    What we can learn from Japan’s map to loyalty

    I’m a big nerd and I’m a big fan of anime. I was watching a show the other day where the main character had a mall loyalty map. As he visited certain stores, he would get his loyalty map stamped. Once he hit five stamps, he could enter a lucky draw for the day. This piqued my interest, so I did some research into Japanese consumer loyalty card systems.

    The first thing to understand is that Japan’s loyalty cards run independently of chains and financial institutions. This gives them the freedom to partner with just about anyone to the benefit of the consumer. Typically, a Japanese consumer can manage their entire cashback scheme with just one card without having to carry around retail specific cards. Here in South Africa, some major chains have more than one card – dependent on which branch you visit (not pointing fingers, but they’re friendly, wherever you are). One loyalty card for everything sounds like a distant dream. Up until a few years ago, the Tstutaya card was the biggest loyalty programme in Japan. With 68 million members, 900,000 locations and 179 retail chains, the card was a savings powerhouse. For every 100 yen spent, you’d get 1 yen back, and since you could use it for almost everything you purchased, the savings could be astronomical. Recently, competitors have arisen and the T-card is not as popular as it used to be. Competition is always a good thing, so the cards available today offer even greater benefits.

    With more complex points systems leading to better rewards, a new sub-culture has arisen, the poikatsu influencer. Poikatsu is the art of hacking loyalty cards, looking for retailer loopholes, and maximising savings. Influencers put together hacks and tips to help consumers get the most out of their cards, although most of the practices are a little on the dodgy side. With COVID-19, poikatsu went from being a hobby to being a viable source of income for many. The reason that loyalty programmes are so ubiquitous in Japan is that despite being the pioneer of cashless payment systems, 80% of Japanese consumers say they prefer using cash. Loyalty cards are an attempt to change consumer behaviour, but they’re fighting a losing battle it seems. Physical currency is part legal tender, part cultural artifact. There is a ceremonial role that cash plays in Japanese society.

    Back to the loyalty map. How it works is simple. A mall will issue a loyalty map upon entering. You’re shown which stores are currently having specials and you can get a stamp at each participating store. Once you’ve hit a prerequisite number of stamps, you can turn your map in for a spin of a wheel, raffle, or daily giveaway. It’s such a simple system, but it means that you plan a consumer’s day by category. You can push them to stores that are under-performing or areas of the mall with less foot traffic all with something as simple as a paper map and a few rubber stamps.

    There are several property groups that are trying to move away from the siloed nature of the retailer’s tenant experience. They’re putting together forums and committees and generally getting retailers more involved in what happens in the shopping space. When these plans come to fruition, the consumer will only benefit. Removing these obstacles could lead to new shopping experiences and loyalty programmes, and who knows, maybe one day you’ll be enthusiastically asking a shopkeeper to stamp your mall map so you can win a vacuum cleaner.

  • Being critical about criticism

    Being critical about criticism

    For around four years in my career, I worked with the most hypercritical executive creative director I had ever met. She would make her team members cry in an effort to get the best work possible out of them. At first, I was appalled. What an awful, awful human being, I thought. She stalked around, checking work, tweaking, changing, updating. How nit-picky and over the top. How horrible, how awful. I would avoid her, fearing that she would criticise my very existence.

    Then one day, the office was rearranged. For my sins, I was forced to share a desk with her. So, I did what any sane person would do, I tried to make friends. I was surprised to find that she was an incredibly warm and open human being. After several weeks of sitting opposite her, I realised that her criticisms were not self-indulgent displays of power. She was sitting on a wealth of knowledge, of experience and the best way to transfer this knowledge was through pointing out the issues in the work of her team and giving them direction. Her criticisms were valid. She gave genuinely good reasons for why she wanted changes. She pushed because she understood that most people don’t reach their full potential without an occasional kick in the you-know-what. Her team was thriving and they respected her (other than the one or two). They sought out her criticism, knowing that it made them better at their jobs. My perception changed and I began to learn.

    I’m no creative director, but I can recognise good work when I see it now. I have eyes, whereas before I was blind. I used to look at designs and if the words made sense, I was fine with it. But, just by being in the general vicinity of the ‘hypercritical’ creative director, I learned what to look for in those designs and ideas. It was one of the most important learning experiences I’ve ever had. Here is my point: criticism is absolutely vital. Everything should be approached with a critical eye. Everything. If you’re letting things slide because you feel sorry for the person generating the work, you’re missing out opportunities to help them grow. If you’re letting things slip because you’re tired or you couldn’t be bothered, maybe you shouldn’t be doing what you’re doing.

    Criticism is the bedrock of growth. If you don’t know what’s wrong, how will you ever know how to fix it? There is a caveat. Just as criticism is good, it can also be used for evil. I have seen work being criticised for no real reason other than to appease ego or play a political game. A good criticism is backed by a fundamental understanding of the process, a wealth of experience, and a helpful pointer in the right direction. The egotistical criticisms have none of the above. Dare I say it, ignore where possible.

    Accountability

    What has prompted this article? Well, criticism and accountability go hand-in-hand. As a team lead, CEO, or manager, your ability to provide strong constructive criticism is the same as delegating responsibility and accountability. Criticism is the package in which responsibility and accountability are wrapped. If you do not criticise, or you are unable to articulate your criticisms in a useful and constructive way, the people working under you will lack direction. A lack of criticism means a lack of accountability.

    In news more relevant to digital marketing, Facebook just walked away from the negotiation table during the Australian government’s bid to get them to pay publishers every time an article was shared. Why could Facebook comfortably do that? The criticism of their platform was unfounded and poorly backed. Let’s not talk about how Google capitulated though. I could list off countless other examples, but the lesson is, criticise, and criticise well my friends. Your business may depend upon it.

    Main image credit: Photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash.

  • Relook at marketing strat going forward

    Relook at marketing strat going forward

    If you’re predicting trends, I say good luck to you. I don’t want to play. I wish you well, I hope you enjoy yourself. I’m going to take the financial investors approach to predictions this year… “there’s just not enough data”.

    With trends articles usually, we tend to see the same things repeated over and over again, year in and year out. Things like mobile and user-generated content will continue to rise, and so on. It’s all very predictable, it’s all quite boring. I’m not against looking back though, and after the year we’ve just had, I think it’s important to interrogate and re-evaluate marketing efforts.

    Do you know your audience?

    Honestly, if all you know about your audience is their age, gender, and monthly income, you don’t know your audience. But, if you have some psychographic data generated by some good conversations with them, then good for you, you know your audience a little bit better. No matter where you sit with your audience knowledge, I have some bad news; you may have to go back to the drawing board.

    During 2020, the sale of luxury goods dipped dramatically while consumer electronics shot through the roof. People have become far more focused on simplifying their everyday lives than they are with wearing trendy fashion items. The luxury brands that are weathering this storm are the ones that actually did focus on sustainability as opposed to paying lip-service to it. If your brand doesn’t make everyday life easier or makes some kind of positive and tangible difference to the world, you might be in trouble.

    Community has also become a prioritised topic. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and isolation has definitely highlighted that community is essential to wellbeing. Brands that are focused on the single individual, using terms such as  ‘individuality’ as part of their brand promise will find that they no longer resonate with their audiences like they used to. So, relook at your audience. They might be different people.

    Social channels

    A couple of things have happened here that are noteworthy. Firstly, social has become a very solid sales channel. It’s something that Facebook has been trying to push for a while now and many brands are starting to see very tangible results from Facebook. Tools like Facebook marketplace have come into their own, but another factor is all-round better content and targeting from brands.

    The biggest external contributor to sales across multiple social channels is lockdown. As I mentioned earlier, people have become isolated and they’ve turned to social media to fill those emotional gaps.

    But, and here’s the thing, maybe you don’t need ALL those social channels.

    I know, I know, you’ve been told you need a presence… but really? Do you? Is it a solid strategy to just exist on a platform without getting tangible results? The trend is moving towards optimisation, culling the under-performing channels and focusing on creating better content for the platforms that remain. It’s a big step to take and it requires a shift from a reach/engagement mindset to a conversion mindset. As I said, I don’t want to be the trends guy, but it’s worth considering.

    Mindset

    While looking at trend reports does have some uses, and can sometimes be quite inspiring and insightful, remember that each brand ecosystem is different. The thing is, you need to keep your ear close to the ground and an eye on the value your marketing efforts generate. This is a rule of thumb. If you only remember one thing from this article, let it be this: throw away your checklists because you’re not in Kansas anymore. I am certain that 2021 will be a harsh master and if you’re not paying attention, it will decimate you.

  • Working from home’s impact on innovation

    Working from home’s impact on innovation

    In Greek Mythology, Hercules had 12 trials to overcome. These included slaying lions, nine-headed monsters, and cleaning the stables of immortal livestock. If the ancient statues are accurate at all, Hercules completed all of these trials without wearing pants. Imagine what he could have done in a pair of jeans? Moving on to some recent (and perhaps more relevant) events, COVID-19’s adverse effects should never be underplayed or ignored.

    Having said that, there is one positive thing that shines out in the gloom: societal change. In the last few years, negative events have sparked the adoption of new behaviours. During the SARS pandemic, ecommerce thrived. The 2008 financial crisis sparked the Uber and Airbnb revolution. Can you guess what COVID-19 has sparked?

    A dream come true?

    Working from home is now a thing. Before COVID-19, how many grouchy conversations did you have about working from home? If you’re anything like me, quite a lot. What stood in the way? The ship doesn’t sail until everyone’s on board. So here we are, we’re all on board. And guess what? It isn’t the cruise we all thought it would be. Working from home comes with a price. That price is a detrimental loss of innovation. Team cohesion, constant contact and communication, all drive inspiration. Without inspiration, there’s no innovation.

    It seems that the only way to get innovation is to stop working remotely. That has one obvious ramification, we’re still in the midst of a pandemic, and people’s health is at stake. There’s another, less obvious ramification – working from home has increased productivity. Without the constant distraction of chatty colleagues, frequent coffee breaks, and adhoc tasks, productivity has shot through the roof. The dilemma is, do you kill productivity to drive innovation, or do you kill innovation to keep increased productivity? Increased productivity is a short-term win. It improves your bottomline in the here and now. Innovation is a long-term game. It gives you an edge when it comes to penetrating new markets, optimising processes, and building better products. You can’t pick one; you need both.

    The making of innovation

    There are many hypotheses as to what drives innovation within a business. Some will tell you that it’s a combination of smart people, process and policy. Others will tell you that innovation is about need, funding, and research. Clearly, it has something to do with being around people; else, our isolation from one another wouldn’t have made such an impact. In its simplest form, innovation is born when your perception of an external situation is altered by an internal shift in perspective. The shift will help you see the situation from a different angle, which opens you up to other solutions.

    Think of it like a Rubik’s cube. You’re not going to solve a Rubik’s cube if you just look at it from one side. What causes these shifts? Empathy. What causes empathy? A leading cause is listening to and understanding other human beings. There are outliers who seem to generate innovative ideas out of nothing, but it is very likely that they’re just really good at understanding people’s needs and shifting their own perspectives accordingly.

    More talk, less meetings

    So, where does that leave us? What’s the solution? Is there some sort of killer app? The answer is no. But perhaps, now that you’re aware of the innovation issue, you can make more of an effort to keep in touch with your colleagues and do some active listening. Video chats don’t need to be restricted to meetings.

    The year 2020 has been an absolutely devastating trial for everyone. There have been a record amount of retrenchments, economies have crashed, and things seem bleak. Like Hercules, we will overcome these trials. Most of us still have our pants, and that puts us a step ahead of him.

  • The pitfalls of targeting digital audiences

    The pitfalls of targeting digital audiences

    I was looking at some data from a client’s ecommerce platform, and I noticed something rather shocking. The segment that all of their budget and creative was aimed at (the millennial) was only responsible for 50% of sales. The other 50% came from a range of age groups who seemed to be returning to the platform simply because they liked the product. A sample of one is hardly compelling, but it did take me on a journey of seriously considering how we set up our target audiences, especially when it comes to using these broad labels like ‘millennial’ or ‘Gen Z’.

    I’ve sat in countless agency presentations where the word millennial is taken out and paraded around like it has some kind of meaning. As I delved deeper into the topic, I realised that any sort of generational classification is actually quite meaningless. My starting point was looking at how people’s attitudes shift as they move through different stages of their lives. While most of my research centred around the physiology of the human brain and how it ages, I will spare you the science and get to the point. As we age, our brain changes. As our brain changes, our priorities change, our abilities change, and how we make decisions changes.

    Younger people will be more open-minded. Older people will be more set in their ways. It has nothing to do with your generational label and more to do with how old your brain is. As you get older, you’ll move from being like a millennial to being like a Gen X’er to being more like a baby boomer. The labels and descriptions should change as you do, but they don’t. If you’ve been labelled a millennial, you’ll be one until the day you die. All the descriptions that go with it will be yours forever. And I think it’s plain wrong.

    The labels are wrong, but what has that got to do with my ecommerce example? It goes beyond labels. Not only is your generational label irrelevant, so is the year you were born. Looking at adoption rates for new technology, it takes older people as little as four years to catch up and use the technology adopted by younger people. While you could say that younger people are technology-centric, we’re almost on a level playing field, all things considered. If you are using age-based targeting, you need to very carefully examine whether you’re not losing out on a much broader audience. If your sales are coming from other age groups despite your marketing efforts to a single group, you might be sitting on a goldmine. A shift to more inclusive audience targeting should be on the cards.

    In the ideal world, you’d want to leave all this third-party audience nonsense behind you. Third-party data (like Facebook and Google) should only really be used to generate first-party data (stuff that you own). Constantly using other platforms to drive your sales means that you’ll always be at the mercy of the tech giants. Once you have your dataset, you can break free of their rules, regulations, and generally poor quality of the data provided to you. You can move into a world where you can grow and segment your data where and when you please.

    Back to the ecommerce data I first mentioned, 15% of the sales came from owned data. That dataset is not a priority, and yet it is generating sales for a far smaller budget than the social budget. Social generated just 1% of the sales. Leave generational and age targeting behind. Build your own audience database. Get rich.

  • Planned AI Parenthood

    Planned AI Parenthood

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    I’m about to take you through a scenario. While the person I’m describing here might not be exactly who you are, I want you to bear with me.

    It’s 7.30 AM, and your phone wakes you up by playing one of your favourite songs. You roll over and turn it off.

    “Good morning, the temperature today is a balmy 30 degrees Celsius. You have three meetings today, the first begins at 9 AM. Judging from past traffic trends, you will need to leave home by 8.30 AM to make it to your first meeting.”

    Your phone is very cheerful today.

    You ponder your schedule for a moment, realising that if you get out of bed right now, you’ll have time for a jog. Being the kind of person that enjoys a good run, you’re up and on the road in no time flat.

    Your phone, detecting that you are now jogging by using its accelerometer and GPS, asks you, “Hey, enjoying your jog? I’ve created a running playlist based on your taste in music. Would you like me to play it?”

    You agree, some music would be a great accompaniment to the exercise. Your phone kicks-off a fairly good exercise playlist. Twenty minutes later, your phone pipes up again.

    “At your current pace, you will not make it home in time to prepare for your meeting.”

    Your phone is right. You are not jogging at a fast enough pace and turning around might be a really good idea. You turn back and pick up your pace a little. You get home, shower, and make it to your meeting in the nick of time.

    Knowing that you’re in a meeting, your phone immediately silences itself. It will only allow calls from certain numbers through. You wait patiently while your colleagues fiddle with switches and phone UI to silence their devices.

    Later that day, on your way home, your phone asks you, “what are you doing tonight?”

    “I have no plans.”

    “Well, while I was connected to Wi-Fi, I downloaded some more episodes of that series you like. I also took the liberty of downloading the first episode of a series I highly recommend.”

    “Sounds good.”

    “What are you having for dinner? There is a new restaurant near your home that matches your dietary requirements. Would you like me to book a table for you?”

    “Hmm, good idea.”

    The above scenario (admittedly, a bit briskly written), would not be out of place in some kind of fantasy, near-future, sci-fi novel. In reality, this tech is mere months away (a little longer if you’re an Apple fan). AI will be fully integrated into the Huawei P11. Granted, it may not be as slick as the experience I’ve described above, but as with most consumer-driven products, it won’t take long to iron the bugs out.

    Artificial Intelligence has arrived. It’s more artificial than intelligent at the moment, but we’re getting there. How does it work? How does it get better?

    There is a new app, currently in beta, which explains it all quite well. Replika.ai allows you to download an AI bot to your phone, and through a WhatsApp-style interface, you get to talk to an AI entity. The idea is that as you talk to it, it learns from you. It learns about who you are, it learns about the kind of language you like to use. It learns about what your experiences are like and how it can relate to you. Your first few conversations will be weird and stilted. But as the bot learns, it becomes more ‘human’.

    That’s right, artificial intelligence is less programmed and more trained. It is nurtured, it is schooled.

    What does that mean for people in marketing? In the future, your brand will be more than just a name on a box, some postits on a whiteboard, a building, or a group of people. Your brand will be an AI entity, a virtual person that a consumer will be able to interact with. It will be a virtual person that will have learned all it knows from you and your team. This makes you a digital parent. As with human children, being a good parent means commitment. It means learning about your AI baby’s needs, what makes it grow, what will make it a better person.

    My suggestion is that you start learning about your future child right now. Unless you really want to be a bad parent.

  • Ideas and data

    Ideas and data

    I’m taking a brief break from writing semi-amusing stories to talk about creativity.

    There is a kind of creative idea that needs to be carefully moderated. The WIBCI idea. Wouldn’t it be cool if…

    WIBCI’s are great during brainstorms. They’re great to get the ball rolling, to stir, to inspire, to get the room talking. WIBCI’s should never make it to production unless they can stand up to the test of ‘why’?

    All great ideas share one thing in common. They have purpose. Their purpose may be to explore a theme (like a well-written novel or a movie), their purpose may be to solve a problem (like a new product or an application). The bottom-line is that purpose is important. To be cool is not a purpose.

    An idea’s strength can be tested by how many people would potentially care about its purpose. If an idea’s purpose is to strengthen a brand position, you can be assured that not many people are going to care about the idea. If an idea is going to fundamentally disrupt an industry, then you’ll find the number of people that care will shoot up dramatically. People care about things that make them think, that inspire them, that change their lives, both functionally and intellectually. How do you determine if your idea is going to do that?

    Simon Sinek tells us that we should ask why. We should interrogate. We should seek the reason for existence. We can apply this principle to just about anything, but it works quite nicely with ideas. Asking why an idea needs to exist is fundamental to its success. Having the data to back up the existence of an idea is crucial. To say that we need an application to allow people to see aggregated local community news might sound like a good idea, but where’s the data? Have I identified a need? Has their been an overwhelmingly positive response to a survey? Did I create a rapid prototype that received a ton of praise? No? Then I am sitting with a WIBCI, and sorry to say, WIBCI’s are nothing.

    Creativity is only as good as its foundation. If the foundation is data, research, insight, empathy, and communication, then your output is going to be great. But if your foundation is weak, you’re going to have weak ideas. Once in a while you’ll luck out, but mostly you’re going to be shooting in the dark, wasting a lot of time.

    Agree? Disagree? Let me know in the comments.