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NOW conference – Participation, Storytelling & Experiences

Tuesday, August 17th, 2010

We want to explore what cross media is and how to link content producers and brands with their audiences in new and valuable ways. Also, we want to give the participants a glimpse of new business models and ways to make money in this (wild) digital reality.

The other speakers are:

- Monique de Haas from Holland who has been consulting large companies on cross media productions and strategies for a long time (http://www.dondersteen.net/blog/)

- Asta Wellejus who has been working with cross media and digital storytelling for many years. She started out with a consultancy at the Zentropa film studio (you might know the famous director Lars von Trier, who owns it) and now has her own company at Die Asta Experience (dieastaexperience.dk/).

- Martin Buck, who is the cofounder and CEO of Bandbase.com – one of the largest communities in Scandinavia for upcoming musicians. A lot of famous artists have broken through via that site, and he will share some of his thoughts on how to make products (and money) by utilizing your users knowledge and creativity.

- Jacob Møller, the CEO of one of Denmark’s oldest mobile app development companies (10 yrs anniversary). They have bought a lot of IP rights from Hollywood productions and toy brands like Megablocks, on which they build mobile apps. He knows a lot about the mobile development and how to make it happen in this chaotic business field.

In a couple of weeks time we’ll be in Denmark for NOW, a conference about cross media and how content producers and brands can collaborate with their audiences in new and valuable ways.

I will be speaking of co-creation, crowdsourcing and open models for the media industry. If you are around come and say hello!

more info at http://seismonaut.dk/konference-now-is-digital/

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Identity Crisis on the Web

Wednesday, August 4th, 2010

In my last rant/blog about social presence, I recalled, with a bit of nostalgia, the old times when the social web was a list of IRC channels. The good old days where every freak and geek built their whole identity around a mysterious pseudonym and could create a whole virtual life (or a Second Life…).

In the “Facebook era”, where the whole point of social is (as described by one of our consumers in a recent focus group) “filling in a profile with details to build up a network of real friends”, real life and online life are merging.

Lately, more info networking rmed Facebook users have started to be aware of the privacy issues surrounding their lives on the social web.

This awareness resulted in a mass-reaction and rebellion (I’m not listing all the blogs, tweets here they are too numerous!) against the almighty Facebook. The social networking King has made rapid changes in its basic privacy settings to allow more and more data to be public/shared/used/analysed.

The Evolution of Privacy on Facebook by Matt McKeon – To see the full moving infographic click the image.

The point is that if early adopters and other geeks find out that Facebook privacy settings have changed, the slower majority, which probably accounts for 90% of social network users, won’t understand/know about these changes. The consequence of this is that hundreds of thousands of people are unknowingly giving away all their information.

It’s kind of like a bad dream, you suddenly realise that you’re bare naked in the middle of packed room. But this is not a dream, it has, somehow, turned into reality and it’s happening on the web right now.

In a similar story one of the biggest online communities, Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, revealed an interesting change in their interface: now users’ real name are revealed on the official forums. This change goes along with a new statement in their T&Cs where all conversations (messages, public and private chat) will now on be recorded and potentially monitored. Why is that? As per Blizzard, this change aims at fighting against bullying and bad behaviours online.

Users reacted violently to Blizzard’s move, slamming them for what they saw as a pointless move.

One tech savvy user wisely commented “The virtues of protecting your privacy online are some of the most sensible tenets of the internet that the non-techie crowd is slowly learning through painful experience.”

An interesting consequence of displaying real identity is the increased risk of account hi-jacking and other identity-stealing agents. Remember when the internet audience painfully learned about “phishing”? As a result social media has become democratised and people care less. This article from Boston.com helps to explain:

Facebook accounts are attractive because of the higher level of trust on the site than exists in the broader Internet.

As a result, people are more likely to believe a fraudulent message or click on a dubious link on a friend’s wall or an e-mail message. Moreover, [fake] accounts allow criminals to mine profiles of victims and their friends for personal information like birthdates, addresses, pets’ names, and other tidbits that can be used in identity theft.

Another fair issue that has been raised is that revealing ID opens the door to racial discrimination and sexual harassment (loads of girls play WoW but there’s still a long way to go until equality and respect rule there). This is something already more or less present in the game as well as most other social networks, with the YouTube comments section being a prime example.

With all this in mind, I’m not quite sure this is the good move for Blizzard.

If the lovely WoW geeks are not happy with the whole Real ID revolution, what about other more “mainstream” users?

Actually, even with Facebook, Twitter (and maybe even Linkedin?) users are not keen in using their real ID: as shown in this study, only 51% of users are using their real name on social networks.

Overall, I think we’re not that far away from a merge between real and virtual identification, with people slowly being “tamed”. Luckily enough, legal monikers are not the norm on the web… yet?

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Building a Model for Customer Co-creation

Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

The team over at mycustomer.com recently asked Saul to give them a lowdown on co-creation and how it works in practice. He duly obliged and his efforts can be seen on the My Customer website here. His article covers the basics of co-creation, explores its value, as well as understanding how and why it works. Below are a few extracts:

Co-creation is about collaboration. It’s about working together to solve problems, uniting a range of perspectives and approaches to an issue. Very often this collaboration involves consumers working directly with professionals from inside and outside a client organisation, to define and create a range of outputs, from strategy to communications, from products to experiences.

Co-creation can help break the yo-yo effect of research and development, where clients go back and forward between creative agencies, research agencies and their audience. By working with your consumers, rather than directing stuff at them in the hope that it will stick, clients get a real sense of what works and what doesn’t as the ideation takes place. Ideas emerge, develop, are refined and validated in collaboration with your audience, in real time. No need to wait around for endless tests.

Why co-create?
Much of the growth of interest in co-creation as an approach and philosophy comes against a backdrop of dramatic changes in the communications landscape in recent years. The evolution of the internet has had an enormous impact on the way that businesses interact with their audiences, and vice versa. It is near-impossible to underestimate the extent to which social media has empowered consumers to voice their opinions, create and distribute their own content, and, as active stakeholders in the brands they consume, to set a new agenda for producer-consumer relationships, and in many ways the advent of co-creation is a corollary of these developments.

How?
There are, of course, different approaches to co-creation. The heart of the co-creation process we have adopted is typically a face-to-face workshop, but the ideal model involves a multi-staged approach to insight generation/opportunity shaping, ideation, validation and refinement. We often talk about reversing the research funnel, starting by consulting the crowd, moving on to work with defined online communities, then collaborating with an intimate group of co-creators.

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The Face Guide To Getting –Safely- Beaten up on the Internet

Monday, July 19th, 2010

A month ago, I was reading this excellent guide to getting beaten up on the Vice Magazine website. I am not a massive fan of violence, but the article gives an interesting insight on how real men, as opposed to Steven Seagal, should act when engaged in a duel: it’s all about cutting down the risks of damage rather than pretending to own a black belt in karate.

To a certain extent, I think this is applicable to the way brands (or institutions) should handle their online reputation. Think about it this way: whatever your marketing department plans to do, the team is outnumbered by the opponent: a crowd of angry and opinionated internet users. From the moment you publicly expose your point of view (it can be a blog, a video or a whole campaign), you must be ready to engage in conversation with your audience, including debate, non-agreement, parody and a bit of fighting…

So with all this in mind, I introduce to you…

The Face Guide To Getting –Safely- Beaten up
on the Internet:

1. Get ready for a worldwide blast: everything spreads on the internet

The internet is the perfect medium for spreading good, funny or tragic multimedia content. So be aware that whatever is on the internet, has the potential to spread everywhere.

For example the case of Pepsi’s “Suicidal Calories” campaign: Pepsi launched a very targeted campaign for a niche anti-establishment German audience (ads for one magazine only), involving a poor Calorie character feeling lonely in a Pepsi Max can and attempting to commit suicide.

Obviously, the content spread very fast (especially the design of the campaign, which was pretty nice) and led to a massive reaction from offended audience members worldwide. Pepsi, are you really making fun of suicide?

2. It’s okay to make a mistake. Just make sure you apologise.

In the case of the Pepsi Suicide controversy, the other very good lesson learned is that it is okay to make a mistake as long as you publicly acknowledge it. B. Bonin Bough, PepsiCo’s Director of Social and Emerging Media and Huw Gilbert, Senior Manager for Communications at Pepsico immediately responded to the buzz and presented their apologies on Twitter directly to users.

The great lesson is that “With social media, this is all it takes – show your users and critics that you’re human and can make mistakes, but you’re listening to feedback” – Cheryl Gledhill, moltn.com

3. Faster faster faster: working on your reactivity is key.

I think the previous two points lead us nicely into speed: to effectively deal with online uppercuts, you better be very fast – it’s a matter of a day or two.

The Web is the fastest form of any media, you have to be reactive: catch any buzz on the internet and respond to it. Things can become massive instantly. If you’re not reactive you may find yourself added to the “case studies” of social media failures. For instance, Nestle’s well-documented struggles on their Facebook page are now referred to as the “Nestle controversy” and are probably going to be studied by business school students for years to come.

If you catch and tame the buzz quickly the effects will be a lot less painful than if you are slow… or do nothing at all.

4. No shortcuts and no cheating in the exchange (even if it hurts)

It is such a simple piece of advice but brands still don’t seem to get it. Do not remove comments. Unless it’s useless trolling or spamming, every comment must remain on the public space as you are engaging in a conversation with your audience.

As Kris Colvin explains in this article: “The spotlight is on YOU when someone is calling you (or your company) out, and you are being watched to see how you will respond. “

The fact is that if you cheat in the conversation, fatally a few users will spot it and pass the word on (rule number 1!) and the brand will be even more damaged. Transparency is key.

5. Blood spatters can’t be cleaned up without getting your hands dirty

It is not possible to delete your online reputation and start again; you can only rebuild it. Many companies with bad e-reputations panic and buy “instant cleaning packages” that contain a smart mix of SEO, backlinking, content production and lawyer fees, as good as this sounds it doesn’t delete users memories or create miracles.

Your brand cannot have a good reputation without dirty hands: you have to be present, relevant and engage with your users routinely. It’s also important to build one-to-one relationships with your audience: as we’ve seen with our communities Headbox and Mindbubble if users are interacting with brands within the social space (facebook, twitter or website…) it’s because they want a direct relationship with their favourite brands.

To conclude, if a few battles are lost, keep on fighting the war. Most companies are now aware of the impact of social media on their business. For the record, in the Nestle case, and as Dennis Howlett shows in his analysis, the Facebook disaster didn’t produce any direct effect on the company’s results. However it has been a great example of social media leverage and a great illustration of user power, influence and sovereignty in the social space.

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Co-creating With Oxford’s Finest.

Friday, July 9th, 2010

Stumbling into Paddington station at 6.30am is not usually something to get excited about. However, on this particular Friday morning there was a tinge of anticipation in the air. As I navigated myself around the station and checked the boards for the next train to Oxford I bumped into Francesco and Sharmila who would be accompanying me on this latest Face adventure.

After we all got heads in gear and boarded our train, it was laptops out time. We knew we had a expectant and well informed audience awaiting us so there was minimal room for error.

On the eventful 1 hour train journey we managed to make all required tweaks, run through our presentation, eat breakfast, listen to a new mix on Francesco’s iPhone and get told off for making too much noise in the carriage… nice.

Before we knew it though, we were there, Oxford, the home of academia, Morse, Radiohead and Martin Keown. After taking one step out of the train station we saw our final destination, the unmissable pale brick hub of future commerce that is Saïd Business School.

A couple of months earlier, Francesco had been approached by Professor Catherine Dolan, a lecturer at Saïd, and asked to take one of her MBA Customer Insights classes, focussing on co-creation and research communities. Within a flash Francesco accepted and plans were put into to place to adopt a quite experiential approach.

Since the topic was basically how to generate insights in a collaborative way, we decided the students should be experiencing first hand what it means to run, and be part of a research community and get a taste of face-to-face co-creation.

With this in mind, prior to the class we opened a 2-week research community for all the students to participate in. The class would be split into 8 groups with each group focussing on a different type of drink and being assigned their very own task.

The groups and tasks breakdown looked like this:

Group 1: Tea – Mobile Status Updates
Group 2: Ready-to-Drink cocktails – Idea Generation
Group 3: Wine – Video Diary
Group 4: Craft Beer – Poll
Group 5: Cider – Visual Lead Task
Group 6: Champagne – Discussion
Group 7: Energy Drinks – Debate
Group 8: Lager Beer – Diary

All of the students completed all of the tasks; they then took the results from their specific drink task and analyzed the results. Following this, they were asked to create a presentation that contained their drink analysis and also, their opinion on the pros and cons of online research communities. They would then present their findings during the Face lead lecture.

At the point of entering the beautifully spaced, Dixon & Jones designed building the online research community was already finished and the students had done a sterling job. We were greeted by Catherine and taken through to our lecture theatre. As a humble 2007 graduate of the University of East Anglia this was a little surreal to say the least. I joined Face in the same year I graduated, and when I walked into the lecture theatre about to present to Oxford students it really hit home both, how far Face and I had come over the last 3 years.

As the students entered it was time to present, Francesco was up first. He took the students on a journey through the world of empowered consumers, netnography, the evolution of the internet and the ways businesses and brands are looking to take advantage of the technological advances available to them. Following this we talked with the class about real-time research and how brands need to try stay in front of their consumers rather than chasing them.

Sharmila then took the students through how Face make sense of all the information Francesco had given them and what exactly we do to contain it within a process that is robust, manageable and keeps people at the core. She explained the pros & cons of crowdsourcing, online communities, Peer-2-Peer research and co-creation before revealing our approach and what makes it work so well for us.After a short break it was then the students themselves who took the floor and feedback what they had learned in the online research community.

Francesco (slides 1-38) and Sharmila’s (slides 39-end) presentation…

All the presentations we saw were fantastic, as expected, and the analysis very in-depth (bearing in mind they only had one task to work with each!). The students understanding of research communities was outstanding considering the small amount of time they had been exposed to the technique. Both the Face team and Catherine were very impressed with the outputs we received and we have taken a lot of them onboard as we continue to tweak and improve our research communities.

As the students settled back into their seats it was time for yours truly to step up. My presentation was a brief introduction into the world of online communities, with a more in-depth look at research communities and community management. I had to whizz through it due to time purposes but it was an excellent experience letting the great business minds of tomorrow know all about what I do. Hopefully they learnt something!

My Presentation to the class…

The final activity we did with the class was a practical exercise to show, on a very small scale, how co-creation works. Borrowing an exercise from Stanford University (that we edited a lil bit) we asked the students to work with their partners and design the perfect wallet.

Using co-creation techniques the teams of two worked together generating ideas, sharing insights, building on thoughts and ultimately designing a wallet that they would be proud to own. After all the groups had designed their wallets, it was voting time.

We asked all the students to vote for their 3 favourite wallet designs. Due to quality of the output this took quite a long time but by the end of the voting phase we were left with three clear winners. The designers of the most voted for wallets were than asked to take centre stage and pitch their idea to the rest of the class. All three groups performed admirably, detailing every aspect of their design and thought process. As the students took their peers through each wallet it really hit home how far co-creation can take you in such a small space of time.

With the wallet exercise at its conclusion and everyone exhausted after 3 hours of Face fun it was time to call it a day. We thanked the students for their hard work, both prior to and during the class, packed up our things and made our way back to London.

Living inside the Face bubble sometimes it becomes easy to forget that what we do is unique and cutting edge. Getting out of Midford Place and sharing our thoughts and methods with young people eager learn is always a brilliant experience, but presenting your passion at Oxford University really is next level.

On behalf of myself, Francesco, Sharmila and the whole of Face I would like to say a massive thanks to Catherine Dolan for giving us the opportunity, Marie Johnstone-Louis for her help and the whole class for letting us come and talk to you, I’m sure we’ll be meeting you again very soon… in the world of work!

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Cello Associate Conference: The Research Industry’s Ticking Timebomb

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010

I was invited to speak to the Cello Associate Conference last week at Somerset House – the first of what will be an annual gathering of Cello’s potential future stars. The main focus of my presentation was that as an industry we are sitting on a time bomb. I brought some drama to my session by asking 3 volunteers to diffuse three dummy time bombs (by cutting one of three wires) that were boxed and wrapped while the remaining audience counted them down in just ten seconds. Of course people realised they were not real but that the message behind them very much was.

Part of the reason we are sitting on a time bomb is the consumer landscape we operate in on behalf of our clients is changing very fast. We all know that Web 2.0 has given consumers the confidence and the ability to take more control of the relationship they have with brands. Or put another way, Simon Clift the ex CMO of Unilever said recently in an FT article “we (Unilever) are behind our customer and that is a very uncomfortable place for us to be”

Many of today’s brands and companies are struggling to keep up with their consumers. One of the main reasons for this is because of fast changing technology and what this allows consumers to do in terms of their interactions with each other, the brands, products, services they consume and the speed with which they are able to do so. A good example is the launch of the recent Xbox Kinect where the screen becomes the interface and the impact this has on TV participation is limitless. Similarly the introduction of flexible screen displays that are so supple, so thin and light you can carry them where ever you go while consuming almost zero power could only be a few years away. So, the big question from all of this, and the one we are constantly asking ourselves at Face, is what does this mean for the research industry, and what do we have to do to help our clients get and stay ahead of their consumers.

The answer to this question in its broadest sense is “Plus ca change c’est plus la meme chose” – or “the more things change the more they stay the same”. Change is the only constant and these are the five things we need to do in order to deliver on this mantra:-

1. Must be fast, agile and deliver insight in a continuous way
For the first time there are huge amounts of qualitative data about our customers that we can access in real time, on the web for free. Using our proprietary tool Pulsar we are able to observe and to listen to what consumers and customers are saying on the web about a particular brand/product/service. It is not just being able to see what is being said where, when and by whom but also being able to measure which conversations (and so who of your consumers) are having the most influence. This also helps us to identify your 1%ers.

2. Must adapt skills
The second is that as researchers we need to adapt our skills to meet the new demands… netnography – our ability to combine ethnographic research with the tools available on the web is a good example. As a business it also means we need to recruit different types of people with the skills that meet these new demands as well as train our current employees with these new skills.

3. Use technology to lead
We need to lead in the use of technology to help us become quicker and more responsive in the ways we gather insight about our clients’ consumers. And this does not mean replacing human analysis – to the contrary, the role of the researcher has become even more important than before because of the need to find real quality from the huge quantities of data that are out there – it is the combination of both on-line and off-line approaches that deliver deeper, richer and more meaningful insight.

4. Introduce new tools and methodologies
This means we have to keep challenging the way things are being done now and look to new and different methodologies that make the most of technology to help meet the challenges of the fast changing consumer landscape. At Face we have inverted the traditional research approach of starting with qualitative research and then going to quant by starting first with large numbers of consumers and then honing things down in a more qualitative way. To do this well it is vital to integrate on-line and off-line methodologies within that process because it produces more ideas of higher quality.

And this means changing the role of the consumer – treating them as active equals in this process; giving them as much responsibility with direct involvement throughout the entire process separates Co-creation apart from more traditional research/marketing methods. As a result it is proving a more robust process than other approaches clients have been using.

5. We must keep innovating
Face’s journey started with the launch of Headbox, a year later we launched Mindbubble, six months after that we launched Pulsar and later this year there is more to come…

If we do all of the above then we will ensure that we continue to help our clients stay ahead of their consumers and we won’t be caught with the proverbial time bomb going off in our hands.

Check out the presentation that I gave at the Cello Annual Conference:

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New Rules of Consumer Engagement: Co-creation

Friday, June 25th, 2010

There was almost unanimous agreement at the FS Forum in St Paul De Vence over the challenges facing the Financial Services Industry. They were described in four words: trust, reputation, transparency and engagement. There was also serious acknowledgement that the consumer has a vital role in helping the major brands from the industry to meet these challenges. There was a sense too amongst some of the delegates that in the words of Simon Clift the recent CMO of Unilever they felt “behind the consumer” and that this is a very uncomfortable place for a brand or organisation to be.

Changing Consumer Landscape

This is to be expected as the consumer landscape is changing fast. It is common knowledge that the advent of Web 2.0 has given consumers the confidence and the ability to take more control of the relationship they have with brands. It has given rise to the term “empowered consumers”, a new breed of customer who have a strong belief not just in their own voice but also in their own creativity, ideas and self-expression. It is no longer about what your brand does to the consumer but what consumers are doing to and with your brand.

Impact on Financial Services Industry

This trend manifests itself in the Financial Services Sector in a number of ways. The first is that the empowered consumer of today sees openness as key to building trust and accountability with the brands they engage with. This is critical for banking brands where events from the last two years have seen trust and fairness eroded. This has been picked up by the FSA’s ‘fairness’ objectives where banks are now being tasked to provide fair products and deal with customers in a fair way. Secondly there is a drive to streamline consumer interactions and make customers lives easier by combining products. The social web will have a big impact on financial services marketing, sales and business communication processes with demand from consumers for new service designs and interfaces. This will enable consumers to draw upon a wider base of advice from places such as twitter, opinion aggregators and financial forums and will lead to real time customer service becoming a top differentiator. And finally customers are moving away from conventional advice channels (IFAs, banks) and moving more towards peer advice because social media has made this possible in ways that were not there before.

New Rules of Consumer Engagement

All of this calls for a new set of rules for consumer engagement and requires the industry to look outside its own category to the world of FMCG and Technology to find better ways of involving consumers in the research and innovation process. And they won’t have to look too far or too hard as the idea of co-creation – doing things with people not at people – has been embraced by the likes of Unilever and Nokia for a while. Co-creation takes consumer involvement to another level by bringing brands and consumers together on the same level and involves consumers at the beginning of the process rather than at midway or at the end. This can take place in on-line communities or offline in workshops or both. It is through our co-creation communities for young people namely Headbox and for women aged 25-50, namely Mindbubble that we have been helping Unilever to co-create a range of new products. The most exciting example has been our co-creation of Axe/Lynx’s 2010 variant in terms of both the product and also the fragrance – something that has never been done before – which was launched globally earlier this year.

Some important guiding principles

As with all new approaches though there are some significant lessons that we have learned along the way. The first is that when you are bringing leading edge consumers together with brands it is vital to have a coherent and well structured process that gets the best out of your combined creativity so that it delivers better outputs. The second is that within this structure it is important to have a mix of online and offline methodologies because they produce more ideas of better quality and are able to involve consumers more quickly in what you do. It is why we have inverted the traditional research approach, starting the process by gathering quality insight from thousands of consumers rather than just a few. Our proprietary tool Pulsar has allowed us to listen and to observe to what consumers are saying in real time on the web as well as measure the influence these conversations are having. Being able to combine qualitative and quantitative research in this way means we are able to help brands respond much more quickly to the speed, volume and quality of consumer interactions that are taking place with their brand, product or service. And finally the role of the consumer is critical; treating them as active participants in this process and giving them as much responsibility with direct involvement throughout the entire process. If the Finance Industry wants to stay ahead of their consumers and the fast changing landscape they occupy then they would be wise to adopt the principles and philosophy of co-creation.

Face @ Financial Services Forum 2010

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Taking Responsibility for our Online Traces

Thursday, June 3rd, 2010

Are the days of online anonymity over?

Last week, the new paid for site for The Times and The Sunday Times have been launched. Many many lines have already written about whether this is a good idea or not. However, one of the things that has been most interesting about the new sites, are that they will not allow anonymous or pseudonymous names to be used when comments or messages are posted.

The Independent is now following in a similar vein, stating:

So we have changed our logins to encourage comments from individuals or even official bodies using their Facebook or Twitter accounts – with other options for Yahoo or Open ID log-ins. There is also a Disqus option, where your account must be validated through your e-mail.
Independent, 24th May 2010

The rationale behind them is to encourage community dialogue, and limit the level of cruelty that is readily in evidence on many sites where anonymous and pseudonymous names are allowed (anyone who has trundled through the various commented on posts on The Guardian would probably agree).

On a wider level, does this force online commentators to become responsible for the words they broadcast? For a long time, online discourses focused on the freeing nature of anonymity that could be afforded to people online. In the early online days, this presented a landscape where people could play at being someone else, and put out whatever they wanted to online. At the end of the day, this wasn’t you, it was just an online construct.

However, this argument has begun to feel increasingly dated over the past few years. As the internet has become a normalised channel for communication and conversation, the idea of this existing as an “unreal” or false articulation of who you are appears to run in counterpoint to how many people engage with the online world. It can’t be argued with that anonymity can often lead to heightened levels of cruelty and vitriol, providing a platform for people to say things they would never say in a face-to-face situation. This can’t be a good thing for the cause of meaningful, open and honest debates and conversations happening online.

Time will tell as to whether these steps by News International and The Independent mark a turning point in the ways in which we engage online. However, they at least stake a claim for the fact that the words we put online are as powerful (and potentially damaging) as those we would choose to say to people face-to-face.

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Who is Leading Who in the Breakthrough to Find a New Marketing Model?

Friday, May 28th, 2010

When Face set out on its journey to change the world of research and innovation 4 years ago we did so on the belief that the rise of the empowered consumer was going to change the media landscape forever. And we have been proved right.

We recognised that brands needed to find new ways to deal with the same old research and innovation problems. We pioneered the co-creation approach based on a new philosophy of doing things with consumers rather than at them.

This required a fundamental shift in clients research approach, moving them away from thinking of consumers as passive respondents and seeing them more as active participants in the research and innovation process. In this sense we would like to think that we lead our industry to a place where the approach of co-creation has now become widely accepted. But we would not have got there if it were not for the perspicacity of a brave client – a certain Ana Medeiros who was the Global Research Manager of Lynx/Axe at the time. It is fair to say that we both lead each other to a new horizon where the consumer was placed firmly at the centre of a new marketing model.

As I predicted last September in my blog – Co-Creation Will Create a New Breed of Agency, the debate around new industry approaches has moved beyond research and innovation into brand planning and communications. The world of advertising has been slow to react. It is why we were one of the founding members of the London Co-Creation Hub.

It is a debate that has been picked up by the outgoing Marketing Chief of Unilever, Simon Clift. In April he warned of a “lost generation” of brand managers who do not understand the web and social networks. In his final interview before retiring he said he believed public relations agencies were best placed to profit from the rise of Facebook and Twitter, as traditional advertising agencies struggle to adapt to the digital world.

Clift - Brands Need To Catch Up With Consumers

It is not just PR agencies that are moving into the space traditionally occupied by advertising agencies it is everyone, from research to experiential companies; they are all in on the act. And the reason for this is we have all recognized that the consumer is at the heart of the new marketing model not the brand. As Clift remarked “We are all learning. Unilever is ahead of much of the competition but behind consumers, which for marketers is not a comfortable place to be.”

He is absolutely right. A lot of us are behind consumers and it makes for a very bumpy ride – they are the ones leading the media industry to a new approach, one that is based on doing things WITH not AT. We have a duty both as clients and agencies to the consumer who are, after all, our ultimate customers to develop a new marketing approach that meets their needs more appropriately.

This is not going to be easy but we have to start now. As Clift says it “requires a cultural change for companies like Unilever. We have to listen to genuine customer concerns. Companies aren’t set up for that”.

The worry is they need to be and fast.

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UX London – How To Take Care Of Your Users

Monday, May 24th, 2010

We may joke about users being lazy, inpatient and never happy. But we do love them and really want to take care of them!

I spent 3 amazing days at the UX London 2010 conference & workshop; it was a very interesting insight into the not-so-new field of User Experience oriented design.

What is UX?

The first thing that is important to note is that UX is not just a geeky thing. By users, we mean people, as every object does pass a design test. Objects around us are not a material or a tool but a medium to an experience – their design must reflect their use as a medium.

An experience is an ethereal, subjective and intangible thing that is created through the actual existence of users.

Therefore, as a combination of users and their experiences, UX design is centered around the engagement of users with the object, across all senses.

As defined by Jesse James Garrett , UX works on 4 levels:

Perception – using the senses
Action – using the body (i.e. Nintendo Wii)
Cognition – interacting with objects
Emotion – engaging with objects

These 4 characteristics must be comprehended within an environment: capabilities of the users, constraints from the users, and context of the experience.

As you may have guessed, UX is an incredibly interesting field, but it’s also an inexact and empirical, as it revolves around unpredictable characteristics. It’s also a new field and the major challenge for UX people is to make the business understand this shift from the object to the medium and the importance of taking care of the experience of the users.

Josua Porter and Jesse James Garrett

2 ways to do UX

As explained by Joshua Porter in his lecture about Metrics-driven Design, there are 2 types of approach to UX design.

The first approach is the intuitive approach, which Porter qualifies as a daring instinctive vision.

The second approach is the “Google” approach, based on evidences, where design solves a logic problem, and where the possible solutions are tested and the winner implemented.

The evidence approach involves a “political environment” where the main goal is to get things done and where there is a hierarchy-based decision making process.

This approach creates concepts.

The intuitive approach is based on a “prayer environment” where the results can’t be tested or foreseen and the work is based on wisdom and experience. This approach creates new possibilities.

What to avoid when creating UX.

How to do you do metrics-driven UX?

Across these 2 approaches, Porter suggested the following steps for the designers in order to structure a metrics-driven UX:

1. Identify the design objectives
It’s important to think about what the site is actually meant to achieve. The tricky bit is to make sure that designers and execs are aligning their answers.

2. Map out the UX lifecycle
For this step, you have to question what actions users must do to meet business expectations.

For example, designers can break down the stages for the users to engage with the site. Once this lifecycle is defined, it’s important to focus on what is actually happening between these stages; i.e. what is happening between a sign up and a 2nd visit to the site.

3. Identify the core metrics
Once you have your steps described, designers must prioritise.

Google analytics provides some valuable data for whoever want to feel reassured about the site visits – what Porter calls “Vanity matrix”, however it isn’t enough to actually make decisions for the UX design.

When you look at the figures per steps, you can realize when you are actually losing users (disengagement). UX designers must focus on these drop offs in the funnel of actions.

Cohort analysis also help to understand the needs for a better design: you can compare across the time the engagement of the users: for example, in June, check if the users registered in May, April, Mars are still on the site and what is their level of engagement.

4. Continuous improvement of the lifecycle
This analysis of steps-focused metrics must be carried on all the time: UX redesign happens at each iteration of the site.

It’s important to bear in mind that you can always revert the site to a design that worked better!

To conclude, there are different approaches to UX design, which can both be successful. However, it’s important to focus on the right metrics that are relevant for what user actions the site is aiming at and designed for.

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Research Communities 101 #2: Online Communities, Chaos and Creativity.

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

In Chaotics (Caslione and Kotler, 2009), the authors explain how the butterfly effect has accelerated: “a butterflies wings flapping in South America now have global reverberations in a matter of seconds.”

Thanks to the Internet, information travels a lot faster than it used to. The speed and format of our communication has lead to a new generation of online ramblers, constant status updaters and amateur experts. The fluid and instantaneous way we interact online has been easily adopted by internet users everywhere, but has it made things better?

Hyper-fast communication doesn’t necessarily go hand-in-hand with reliable information – The case of Twitter and it’s reaction to the Swine Flu crisis shows how the real time media can create unjustified panic effects. On the other hand, the reactivity of real time media helped to save lives in the Haiti earthquake aftermath.

But does real time really produce quality content production? I was actually thinking earlier about how people have this erratic way of managing their internet footprint with fast-paced, superficial use of the social web. People are willing to express their opinions and share information online but a lot of what they are producing is… well… not relevant or interesting, in fact it would be fascinating to find out how many status updates have never been read.

All the web junk that gets produced everyday online leaves us with a difficult balance that we have to get right here at Face. How can we nurture our users online creativity and secure the production of high quality content in our online communities?

It’s not easy but here are a few ways you can guide people into producing the quality of content you’re looking for:

1. As seen previously, the interface must be straightforward (and avoid bugs) so people are not put off participating and do not waste time: both these elements will have detrimental effects on your users creativity.

2. The type of content & the type of feedback you are asking your users for should match: for instance, each type of content has a specific lifespan, i.e. a tweet has a very short lifespan (re-tweet in the second or it’s too late) while a movie in the imdb.com has a pretty long lifespan (it can be reviewed for a very long period of time)

3. Users should be able to communicate with each other. The interactions between individuals is essential for production of interesting content, but also essential to avoid mass confusion: As explained in this paper Internet & Face-to-Face Communication: Not Functional Alternatives about mass customization and co-design. User’s support, feedback and guidance is essential to avoid this crippling confusion syndrome that may happen within a creativity community offering a wide choice of different options/actions.

4. You must leave space for creativity. This is probably a great lesson learnt from the success of Twitter: let your users make their own rules on your site and they will adopt it. As Wired magazine put it in their article How Will Twitter Grow Up.

“Essentially, Twitter left a ball and a stick in a field and lurked on the sidelines as its users invented baseball.”

In this excellent blog Complexity. The New World Between Chance and Choice Esko Kilpi gives an interesting overview of the Chaos Theory and compares the dynamics of the elements with users behaviour. He highlights two major rules:

1. Novelty emerges in an unpredictable way
2. What happens is by interaction – not by chance or by choice

To enhance users’ creativity, the interface & tasks must provide enough flexibility for novelty: users should be able to make trial-and-error experiments. The members of the community should be able to try, experiment and create prototypes – Like Blizzard allows WoW players to test their add-ons in real time.

The conclusion is that you can’t really control what the users will do with your tasks and your online community. You can give them the best place to express themselves, help them to find their way through it, and maybe predict on a short term what results will come out. But, no matter how hard you try; you can’t guess what’s going to happen in the long term!

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Digital Innovation for the Arts

Monday, April 26th, 2010

This morning we took part in the latest Digital Salon and Surgery at Farringdon’s Free Word Centre to talk about digital innovation for arts brands and organizations, discussing how they are innovating to meet contemporary digital challenges.

It was a very interesting session with a packed panel of six speakers discussing the topic from various angles and presenting some great case studies like the upcoming Chromaroma Oyster Card game (below) and the recent RSC Twitter production “Such Tweet Sorrow” supported by the 4iP fund or ‘NT Live’, a new initiative from the National Theatre which enables live performances to be broadcast onto cinema screens across the UK and worldwide, as well as the NMC Music Map and the cutting-edge ‘PureDyne’ project, an Open Source Linux operating system and multimedia toolbox maintained by the Goto10 Collective.

We talked about our open innovation approach and adaptive brand planning model, how Arts organizations could benefit from real-time research, crowd-sourcing and co-creation and what this all means from a broader cultural perspective. I guess one of the most fascinating implications of taking this approach to the arts space is that it makes the progressive switch from creation to emergence models quite blatant. Understanding the radical change in the role of experts/curators and artists into the cultural ecosystem and understanding what open processes mean in terms of cultural innovation (leading/reacting, educating the audience/learning from the audience, creating new markets/feeding into existing ones) are key questions for the Arts but are totally relevant for the FMCG brands and the technology innovation ecosystem too. So I guess a Creation vs Emergence post is on its way!

For now, thanks again to Arts Council England, IT4Arts, Open Mute and Digital Salon for having us today, it was fun!