Posts Tagged audit email and web content
Governance – where to draw the line?
Posted by Lab rat in digital governance, online communication on January 12, 2012
Back in the days of the wild, wild, west, gun fighters and bank robbers ran amok. Gentle folk were afraid for the lives and street brawls were commonplace. Okay, it was exciting, but reputable companies – I mean folks – stayed in the big cities and left the frontier towns to the lawless.
Aw shucks, it’s another metaphor.
The good thing about all those gunslingers and rot gut whiskey drinkers was they opened up opportunities. It was their all round recklessness that pushed the boundaries. But before these new opportunities could be truly capitalised on, somebody had to impose order.
Enter the sheriff…
The sheriff slung the drunks in jail and ran the gunslingers out of town. Sheriffs were also pretty handy with guns themselves. Not a few gunslingers were hired by towns to police their streets and gun down the ‘bad guys’. In fact, apart from the presence of the sheriff’s 5-pointed star, very little differentiated the law man from the lawless.
So, when you’re policing the streets, where do you draw the line? Okay, we’re ditching the metaphor now.
In terms of rolling out the concept of digital governance to wider audiences, I’ve chosen legislation and regulation as my entry point*. This is because, in lawful societies, the risk of legal penalty is a sufficient deterrent (particularly if you’re a big company with a lot to lose). It’s also something that attracts the attention of the board room, which, sorry, content per se does not
*I started to group together some of the more pertanent rules and regs in my previous post
But when you seriously consider what could impact on the correct governance and risk mitigation of digital content, you begin widening your scope – quite considerably.
For example, culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, plans to publish a Green Paper setting out the scope of a new communications act by the end of this year. If you think this is just about hacking and tabloids, think again – and read the below…
Hunt gave a few clues as to areas on which he may focus, but appeared to indicate that one may be regulation of programming content on the internet.
Under the current EU Audiovisual Media Services Directive, “TV like” services, such as the BBC iPlayer, are subject to regulation. However, the level of regulation is less than that imposed upon traditional TV channels.
“Whether we are watching a broadcast live or through catchup TV services, via a TV or a computer, it is the content that matters, rather than the delivery mechanism,” said Hunt. “So should it be the case that the method of delivery has a significant impact on the method of regulation? Or should we be looking at a more platform-neutral approach?”
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jan/19/jeremy-hunt-communications-act
There’s data protection and eprivacy and the implications of the European Data Protection Framework (EDPF) Review (don’t ask me, I’m new here) and the Digital Economies Act; some might say the latter was rushed legislation aimed at pirate downloaders and which now seems to be languishing somewhere in Brussels. PRS for Music, which brings together the two royalty collection societies MCPS and PRS, is also looking at the whole area internet piracy and controlling copyright online.
Plus:
- The EUs general concerns and overall remit around data protection and how personal data is used.
- The ongoing digital implications for copyright and its infringement including ideas floated by the Hargreaves Review.
- The impact of changes to internet protocols.
Then there’s the whole area of cyber security , the Government’s plans for a cyber security strategy, the implications of the Home Affairs Committee inquiry following last year’s riots, a warning from head of GCHQ’s about a ‘disturbing’ level of cyber attacks, as well as high-profile security breaches involving big names such as PlayStation and Google.
It’s not that organisations and governments are not increasingly on their toes when it comes to critical issues such as hacking and data protection. As early as its 2008-2009 report, the UK’s Intelligence and Security Committee raised concerns about the potential threat posed by cuber crime, not only to the UK government, but also ‘critical national infrastructure and commercial companies’.
We therefore welcome the fact that this threat has been recognised and that cyber security is now listed as a Tier One national security risk. The new funding that has been made available, as part of the SDSR (Strategic Defence and Security Review), to fund cyber security work is a significant step forward.
Source: 2010–2011 Annual Report, Intelligence and Security Committee
All fine and dandy. But its the next bit of their latest report which attracts my interest…
Whilst the priority and funding are to be welcomed, structural issues continue to cause us concern. We have noted 18 units with particular responsibilities in this field across the three Agencies, two law enforcement bodies and five government departments. Between them they cover policy, management, intelligence operations, protective advice, detection and analysis, with some focused on crime, some on hostile activity from overseas, some on Counter-Terrorism and others covering all three. This risks duplication and confusion and cannot be cost-effective. We therefore recommend that work be done to rationalise the existing structures.
Source: 2010–2011 Annual Report, Intelligence and Security Committee
Some 18 different agencies all getting their head around cyber security. Cooks? Broth? Anybody?
I think there is a real danger that as the digital wild west becomes the tamed west that we could end up in a situation where the streets are populated by too many sherif’s, firing off their six guns for offences no more horrendous than jaywalking. I’ve read the phrase ‘governing the internet’ more than once and frankly it worries me. Didn’t Canute try something similar?
But it’s not all bad news…
After the gun and the guns for hire, and the early day sheriffs who relied on their quick draw, there came judiciary and laws than formalised the processes for identifying bad from good and exacting appropriate penalties. That’s where I think we now need to go with digital governance.
Those of us involved in content, its creation and implementation are ideally placed to step into and exert our influence in this area. I used the word ‘influence’ rather than, say, ‘control’, after careful thought. Think traffic police rather than Big Brother. It’s all about enabling the flow of communication while mitigating the risk of pile ups.
We already act as the linchpin for a whole range of disciplines. The image below was created by Richard Ingram and is one of many of his stunning visualisations that go towards explaining our turnkey positioning.
• We already have, and continuing to improve, a range of tools and methodologies that allow us to guide clients in project choice, rationale, implications and implementation.
• This is alongside the deploying of the actual content itself across an increasing array of channels and delivery mechanisms.
• To this array of tools and services we ‘simply’ need to add governance tools and methodologies, such as a suitable content risk matrix that will allow us to identify the more important issues that clients need to address – and mitigate.
I’m going to show you what that content risk matrix might look like in my next blog.
Why things aren’t black and white any more
Posted by Lab rat in audience engagement, content strategy, cost effective marketing, web content on August 2, 2011
Hellebore plant - all will become clear later in this blog post...
I have a friend who recently had her garden renovated and decided to treat herself to some new garden furniture.
She started by ordering two big parasols off the internet in ‘black’. The only problem was that when they arrived they weren’t black at all, they were a dark grey.
“Ah yes,” said customer services when she rang to complain, “they’re a really, dark grey. Almost black.” “But not black,” said my friend. She sent them back.
Next she ordered some handmade metal furniture. It was expensive but looked beautiful on the website. She wanted black and while the furniture looked black in the photos, the colour was described on the website as “Hellebore”. My friend sent for a sample – just to be sure.
A small metal sample duly arrived. It was certainly very dark but the sample size and the matt paint finish made it difficult to be 100% sure. “Is it black?” she rang and asked the manufacturer. “Yes,” they said. When the furniture duly arrived it was… dark grey. “It’s our version of black,” said the manufacturer.
So, what’s the moral of this tale?
"Our particular shade of Hellebore black is quite unusual"
I’m not going to bore you with what happened next in this particular saga of retail ineptitude and arrogance, but from a content perspective, whether grey is the new black and whether you should call it Hellebore speaks to the heart of the content strategy conundrum for me.
“Conundrum,” I hear you say (okay, you’re not saying it but I’m fond of the odd rhetorical device), “Surely the case for content strategy is unequivocal.” Hmmmm.
Don’t get me wrong. Content strategy is the glue that allows its experienced practitioners, and organisations that listen to them, to make sound, cost effective decisions about content as an integral facet of any business or activity. Content is business. Business is content.
Without content in all its forms – from tweet to transaction process, article to image, video to brochure, app to pack shot – you cannot engage with your audience. Without content it’s like juggling with no hands. Without good content it’s like juggling with skipping ropes. It may draw the attention for a few minutes. But who wants to watch someone drop something repeatedly? Put the ropes down. It’s time to get balls.
Content strategy isn’t an easy option. Sometimes it means you have to unpick stuff that you’re been doing a certain way (and successfully) before you can ‘do’ your content properly. It can be like breaking a leg in order to reset it. But many organisations are happy to limp along rather than go through the pain. Personally, I find it very frustrating. Content strategy is black and white. But most companies still want Hellebore.
Bringing the metaphor back into the room…
From a marketing perspective, having a very, very dark shade of grey that’s not just described in your content as “Very, dark grey” or “Slate grey” or even “Almost black” makes a kind of sense. It’s a point of differentiation. It’s adding an extra layer of glamour. It is not particularly helpful, or useful, but if there are other more helpful and factual texts, perhaps some customer reviews and some good photography, this indulgent sub-routine of hyperbole is tolerable.
Back in the days before the interweb, it may not have mattered quite so much. If I went to a shop I could see products with my own eyes. Hellebore be damned, it’s black.
Product brochures and retail catalogues for any halfway decent brand were usually produced with scrupulous attention to colour accuracy. It saved on returns and refunds. It protected the brand from disgruntled consumers.
So, I ask myself, has something changed (or failed to change) now we’re engaging with products and services online? If organisations don’t pay attention to the basics such as product descriptors and colour accuracy, don’t they run the risk of customers ringing up to raise hellebore?
The accuracy (or lack of it) in online colour rendering is one issue. But it speaks to the bigger picture. It means that an organisation or organisations didn’t think about how the colour might render on a computer, laptop, mobile or tablet screen, or how it may vary if a potential customer decides to run off a hard copy on their printer?
Did anybody think?
The very expensive garden furniture on the website my friend ordered from was pictured in shades of red, pale blue, black(ish), green and white, described respectively as carmine, salvia, hellebore, hosta and aconite.
In their original and horticultural terms aconite and hellebore are plants that come in various colours. Personally, I’d say that aconite is more likely to be perceived as a darker colour. There are slight witchcraft connotations and when you look online it does seem to turn up as a colour descriptor for dark grey or dark blue (although it can be a bright yellow). Hellebore, as a plant, is commonly a white or greenish white (but it can also be pink and even a blood red).
Is it possible that the words used to describe the colours shown in the pictures got mixed up? As the colours aren’t described in common sense terms, would anybody have known to correct them?
This is more than just a rant about Marketing speak. It opens up a whole other area of content issues (that keep content strategists and their clients awake at night… maybe) – such as content labelling, defining real estate and its purpose, use of copydecks, meta data matching on text and images, using content systems to ensure the right content is put into the right place both online and offline, understanding context, competitor research, word usage, search implications… And I’m thinking of all of this just because an online retailer of sun umbrellas and a manufacturer of expensive garden furniture can’t lower themselves to use the words: ‘dark’ and ‘grey’.
It could also have been addressed by larger samples, accurate descriptions, meta tagging and a more sympathetic customer service. It could have been addressed by a company simply saying: is Hellebore good enough?
Now, here’s the segue…
I’m speaking at CS Forum London this September. The title of my talk is Content doesn’t just happen. And while the colour of garden tables may not be a nuclear issue, it does speak to the fact that businesses are still not thinking about the basics online or understanding how fundamentally catastrophic this disregard is. And they’re certainly not thinking about their customers (in anything more than cash cow terms).
This thinking has to extend far beyond simply being able to ‘write well for the web’ or the production of ‘web-ready’ content. It means learning how to read audiences and then structuring content that ‘fits’ the context of that audience. It touches everything from technology to what your marketers and product / service developers decide to name your latest offering and the colours it comes in.
Maybe Hellebore is the new black. Maybe juggling with skipping ropes is the next big thing. But I very much doubt it.
» Content Strategy Forum 2011 London Sept 5-7
Online marketing comms – rules tighten. Let the seller beware
Posted by Lab rat in auditing websites and emails, branding, online communication, web content, web copywriting training on January 24, 2011
From March 1, any communication on your website that sets out to tell users about goods, services, opportunities, freebies… but where the primary or ultimate aim is to sell something, will be regulated by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).
The ASA is the UK’s independent advertising watchdog, responsible for controlling marketing communications in all media in the UK. (They work with statutory partners such as Trading Standards, the Office of Fair Trading and the communications regulator Ofcom.)
The March 1 changes cover the marketing communications of all organisations operating from the UK on their own websites and in other non-paid for space online under their control eg Facebook.
The ASA talks about copy a great deal in its guidance but their remit could easily extend to any type of content, for example a home page video or a viral campaign on YouTube.
Ready?
The ASA’s extended remit may come as a surprise to a lot of organisations (the ASA’s own cross-media advertising campaign was only launched at the weekend). As always the big question is who’ll get their knuckles slapped first, for what and how hard?
The ASA’s punitive powers already include obliging broadcasters to comply with ASA rulings but it’s also brought in some new sanctions from March 1 including “an enhanced” name and shame policy. And paid-for search advertising that links to non-compliant marketing communications may be removed with the agreement of the search engines.
It’s also important to keep in mind that marketing content that falls under the scope of the ASA’s remit may not necessarily include a price or seek an immediate financial transaction. Let the seller beware.
The change falls under the scope of UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising, Sales Promotion and Direct Marketing (the Committee of Advertising Practice / CAP) Code.
CAP decided to extend the digital remit of the ASA in response to formal recommendations from a cross-section of UK industry, including the Internet Advertising Bureau. Nick Stringer, director of regulatory affairs for the IAB stresses that self-regulation must maintain pace with today’s fast-moving digital environment and changing consumer behaviour. “The ASA’s extended digital media remit aims to protect internet users and enhance their trust, as well as industry and political confidence, in the medium.”
What’s covered:
- advertisers’ own marketing messages on their own websites, regardless of sector, type of businesses or size of organisation
- marketing communications in other non-paid-for space under the advertiser’s control, such as social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.
What’s not covered:
- classified private advertisements
- press releases and other public relations material
- editorial content
- political advertisements
- corporate reports and investor relations.
User generated content?
ASA points out that generated content (UGC) that has been adopted and incorporated within an organisation’s own marketing communications could be covered. This will be considered on a case by case basis.
For example: “ASA is likely to take a very different view of a consumer’s positive comment that has been posted, by the website owner, in a prominent way on the front page of its website, than if that same comment appeared within the context of a consumer message board moderated for harmful and offensive language or images only”.
How to make sure you comply
CAP is offering guidance and courses. The IAB has also including some useful FAQs on its website. From a content strategy (CS) perspective the key thing is to make sure that all your content is fit for purpose and doesn’t fall shy of any regulation.
While the March 1 changes are the latest, many websites fall short of what’s required elsewhere – for example Part 3 of the Disability Discrimination Act which covers access and came into force back in 2004. Ringing any bells? It means your website must be accessible to blind and disabled users and this should be influencing everything from colour choices to meta data.
Content audits and the use of copydecks are just two of the CS tools where regulatory or legislative requirements could be captured and verified. Even without the weight of law, large organisations need to be running tight ships – eg who wrote it, when, who signed it off? Clearly defined and maintained internal content creation processes are a must. And let’s not forget content training that not only improves content creation skills but raises general organisational awareness of why all content, on’ and offline is so important.
Apart from anything else, if you can demonstrate you did your best to comply with this law or that regulation, the punitive response maybe be less harsh than in organisations where content is chaos rather than king.
Useful links
» More about the CAP guidance
» IAB Extending the digital media remit of the Advertising Standards Authority FAQs PDF
Mentoring – is it different for women?
Posted by Lab rat in mentoring, online communication on October 11, 2010
I was at a meeting organised by Amanda Davie at Reform, which looked at the need for a mentoring scheme aimed specifically at women working in the digital industry.
It was a great meeting.
I met some great women.
The mentoring potential in the room was awesome.
Ah, if only I was 30 years younger and had just one of those women going into bat for me. I could have invented facebook, or, at the very least, been running Microsoft.
I’ll tell you how the scheme develops over the coming weeks, but, in the meantime, the meeting got me thinking about the whole area of mentoring, whether women need specific schemes and what is it about the nature of digital disciplines that might make women less, or more, enfranchised?
I started to think about my early year’s in the newspaper industry. One thing I remembered was that, when I started out, I was my own worst enemy. I remember attending an interview and saying that I had ambitions to work in the magazine industry. Why? I was asked. Because I thought that it would be easier for a woman to get on in magazines than in newspapers, I replied. I was in a room full of blokes, all with newspaper backgrounds, and you could have heard a pin drop.
The fact is I’ve seen women struggle through glass ceilings only to pull the ladders up behind them to prevent other women getting through. I’ve seen men and women extend the hand of support and give me and others, opportunities that I can only wonder at in retrospect. They had faith. They gave us a chance. They gave us the confidence to give something new (and scary) a go.
And I suppose that’s what we all need – faith, opportunity and confidence. And, I suspect, that’s what good mentoring comes down to.
I distinguish mentoring from other types of ‘help’, such as old boy networks. Old boy networks are predicated on something different entirely. They’re based on giving someone a leg up because they happened to go to the right school (or be the ‘right’ gendre).
Modern mentoring is all about spotting the potential in someone, or coaxing out that potential, so they can be the best they can be. In that respect, perhaps women are more able to spot potential in other women. And as digital disciplines are relatively young, the women who have experience in them are even more valuable (as younger industries don’t have a large population of veterans to call on). These woman have seen their areas of expertise evolve at a breathtaking pace. In some areas they may well be the minority gendre. They recognise the issues – a lack of confidence, perhaps; lack of technical training, concerns around combining work and family…
I mention the latter but this is not about women needing different mentoring because they also make babies. Some women have families, some women don’t. It may be part of what makes you, you. It certainly isn’t all of what makes you, you. Not by a long chalk. But a mentor could just as easily be dealing with someone who wants to combine a fulfiling professional role with time to volunteer in the charity sector.
The fact is I warm intuitively to the idea of women, such as the ones in the meeting I attended, using their experiences, empathy and objectivity to mentor other women. And, as a woman, I set great store by my intuition.
» Find out more about Mentoring Women in Digital on LinkedIn
10 really good reasons (no, honestly) for postponing what you could do today about your website content
Posted by Lab rat in content strategy, online communication, web content on July 22, 2010
Walk around client offices and marketing seem to have a spring in their step. Even the guys in IT are whistling ’1000 Points of Hate’ by Anthrax (this is a good sign). But… Well, there’s always a but, isn’t there?
Just sometimes I hear those sit on your hands excuses in some quarters. They may get trotted out just before you press the big fat ‘Go’ button, after all the discovery, auditing, interviewing, planning, workshopping etc has gone on. And, of course, they’re always really, really, really good excuses reasons for not doing something. They’re so good, in fact, that I thought I’d list them here.
1. ‘We can’t start the web project until we’ve…”
This is an excellent reason for not doing something. It’s worth making a real effiort to find another piece of work that requires time / budget and which can be positioned in the way of the proposed web project. Particularly if that proposed web project might take your organisation outside of its comfort zone.
2. “All this background and planning work is fantastic. But we need to spend some time considering the next step.”
Okay, if used in moderation this is fine, valuable even. But, to quote Dionne Warwick: “Weeks turn into years – how quick they pass.” Of course, it makes perfect sense to see any web project as a single, HUGE project that can’t be broken down into sections. It’s a much better idea to think about things really slowly and lose all the forward momentum. With a bit of luck all the prep work will be out of date and useless.
3. “We’re currently advertising for a Head of Interactive Experiential Human Interfacing and all projects are on hold until we appoint and they have a chance to review everything.”
Maybe it’s just me but didn’t you know you were planning to get a new Head of IEH before we started working on this project?
4. “We want to carry out your recommendations but we haven’t got sufficient resources.”
Maybe it’s just me but didn’t you know there were resource issues before we started working on this project?
5. “Thank you so much for all the time and effort workshopping taxonomy, Information Architecture and topic headings but we don’t want to change the current site navigation.”
Yup. That makes perfect sense.
6. “Rather than make some changes now we’ve decided to wait until we can afford a totally new website in a year or so.”
We totally agree. Your site users will be quite willing to wait and it shouldn’t impact on sales or your brand one jot.
7. “You seem to be suggesting that there should be collective responsibility for content creation and maintenance and we can’t just leave the job to… Our people just don’t have the skills or the time.”
Of course you can give people skills, processes and methodologies that help create the time (efficiencies) and also impart a collective shared enthusiasm for the power and benefits of web-based communication. But heck, I’m just messing with your head.
8. “The chairman’s wife does a little creative writing and we’ve asked her to look at the website.”
Okay, I only heard this one used once and that was several year’s back. But it’s still a corker.
9. “We haven’t got the money to do everything we want so we’re not going to do anything”.
Do you want me to pop the toys back in your pram now?
10. “This is David. He’s working as an intern with us over the next six weeks and will handle most of the implementation.”
Hi David. How many pairs of hands have you got?
Highly effective email tactics
Posted by Lab rat in audience engagement, auditing websites and emails, email communication on June 10, 2010
I lurve MarketingSherpa and have been a fan for years. I particularly wanted to share this chart from them on various email tactics, such as delivering content relevant to segment, email to house lists, email to rented lists… were rated as 2highly effective” by B2B and B2C marketers.
( I know the copyright says 2009 but it’s just landed in my email inbox from them.)
Both B2B and B2C rate delivery of relevant content to segment as highly effective. The percentage of B2B marketings saying this is slightly higher. In their analysis of this difference MarketingSherpa point out that the business-buying process is usually longer and more complex than that for consumer purchases. “Delivering content that is not only relevant to the recipient’s business segment but relevant to their current stage in the buying process is critical.”
I’m less swayed by this argument. Timely contact in the buying process is important in both markets. With consumers, the buying process can be as complex and involve a journey across multiple channels – a newspaper advertisement, something on television, a poster in a shopping mall as well as email. There’s also a proportion of consumers who will make selection processes online but still go in store to buy. By contrast the business buying process is more focused and may have less distractions (competitors), particularly at the high end (capital purchase).
But the real kicker in my book is the statistically significant percentage of marketers who rated event-triggered autoresponder emails as highly effective – way above third part ads and rented lists, among other things.
When was the last time you reviewed your autoresponder emails? Yeah, yeah… I know – you’re just about to take a look.
» This chart on the MarketingSherpa site (it won’t be available for long)
Is it time to go viral?
Posted by Lab rat in audience engagement, branding, customer engagement, digital marketing, online communication on November 8, 2009
Viral campaigns have been front of mind for me recently. I’ve suddenly been struck by how a great idea isn’t always the right idea. There may be a profound difference between what works as a viral campaign and what works for you as a brand / business / organisation – ie the audience that is most likely to engage with a viral and, most importantly, pass it on, aren’t necessarily the ones who are going buy what you sell. And… under those circumstances, is a viral still worth doing and why?
Take the 2001 ‘Proof’ campaign starring Kylie Minogue and which was considered too raunchy for the cinema audiences for whom it was conceived. It’s had more that 350 million hits on YouTube since then.
While conceived as a cinema ad it has proved itself extraordinarily viral. The question is – how many people who’ve watched this on YouTube (and it has now been named the best celebrity viral ad of the decade by online content distributor GoViral) are now wearing Agent Provocateur undies?
I understand that a lot of chaps may have rushed out and bought undies for the women in their lives (one or two may have bought velvet upholstered bucking broncos as well) but is that good enough, given how much a viral campaign of this type costs to create?
Remember, I’m just asking questions at this stage. I’m hoping you’ll have at least some of the answers. The most I’m going to offer up later in this article is opinions.
Okay, now let’s take a look at one of my personal favourites…
These sheep crack me up. There is no day of chaos in the office that cannot be improved by spending a few moments rewatching this one. But the truth is that no matter how many times I look at it I do not feel moved to go out and buy a Samsung LED TV.
According to its creators, the:viral:factory, it has featured on Sky, ITV, ABC, The Sun newspaper and The New York Times… But while demand for LED TVs is set to grow to around 90 million units by 2013 (39% of the total market), Sharp seem to be taking the high ground – in the UK at least. They’re on track to sell around 2 million LED TVs in 2009 and predict a massive 10 million sales in 2010. » Source
With no electric sheep in sight, Sharp are selling successfully. But that doesn’t mean they’re sitting back with their feet up.
As early as July 2008 Sharp was encouraging younger Hong Kong office workers to send viral messages to their friends through a mini site, ‘Where’s my pixie’, promoting its Aquos TV range. They’d targeted this segment (25-35) because they were predisposed to go online and research prior to making a purchase. The characters in the viral were designed to demonstrate picture quality. And as far back as September 2007 Bob Scaglione, Sharp Consumer Electronics Marketing Group senior VP, announced the launch of its “most aggressive advertising and brand campaign in our history”. Earlier this year Sharp launched (and aggressively advertised) an new generation of Aquos TVs, replacing more expensive models.
Here comes the opinion…
Virals are like diets. Every now and again one comes along that catches the public’s attention and seems to get results. But the fact is that the only true way to lose weight is to burn more calories and consume less calories. A stonking good diet, when it forms part of an overall health and fitness regime (squeezing off that extra 5lbs before Christmas, say), may well make a difference. Used on its own… chances are any benefits will be transitory.
So, what should you ask yourself before getting stuck into a viral campaign?
1. Is it enough to create on simply ‘get the word out’?
2. What succes criteria should you / can you attach to it?
3. Where is the budget coming from (are you paying Peter with Paul’s stash and are other marketing initiatives likely to suffer)?
4. And where does you viral sit both practically and strategically when you look across your entire marketing landscape? (This can include blogging about the viral – so make sure everybody’s out of their silos.)
If the strategic and brand accord is that there’s room in the mix for a good viral – you don’t need Kylie writhing on plum plush to be successful.
A viral can be a picture (including a discount voucher), a simple game, an email, or even a phone message.
Irish internet and phone company Perlico created a ‘quack’ viral. If you rang the company you were given this amongst your options: “Press three to hear a duck quack.” Through word-of-mouth and email, the company received 70,000 extra calls in the campaign’s first three days and added what the company described as “a significant number of new customers”.
Don’t park your brain
It’s all very exciting, but the most important thing at this stage is sanity checking your creative juices using people who are outside the campaign team. I suspect this didn’t happen with the » Burger King Angry-gram
You also need to decide if the target for the viral is the direct target for your business or if the aim some form of ripple influence where the viral recipient influences your ultimate customer group? An example of that approach is »L’Oreal’s ‘Every mum is worth it campaign’ from March this year
You need to be prepared for a number of things, including the viral element becoming dissociated from you and your brand and taking on a life of its own. If you (or your CEO) find loss of control unacceptable – maybe viral isn’t for you.
The other thing you really have to understand is why people share things and accept things from people they don’t necessarily know that well – and not just as this applies to the internet (quaint word, but I still love it).
People do things because they make sense at the time. Online is also disinhibiting, so people will share (and accept) things, including links to raunchy Kylie videos, which they might baulk at sharing face-to-face. So the reason to share a viral must be clear. Its humour must be instant and universal and any essential usefulness immediately obvious.
And Christmas is a great time of year for a viral. Which reminds of the music channel that created a viral of a boy unwrapping a Christmas present. It was a light sabre which he wielded with gay abandon – until he cut grandma’s head off. Ho, ho, ho – or no. no, no? You decide.
Make your website take the personality test
Posted by Lab rat in audience engagement, branding, customer engagement, online communication, online language, web content on September 3, 2009
Your website is just like any other member of your team… Okay, they don’t draw salary (in quite the same way) and they don’t turn up at the Christmas party clutching half a bottle of tequila. But they represent your organisation, its products, services, values…
The question is – what type of personality have you got fronting the most important doorway and window onto your organisation’s world and what kind of job are they doing?
Here in the lab we’ve created a personality test for your website. It’s fun and easy to do but it may also reveal some interesting facts about your site and the way it represents your brand.
There are 6 possible types. Is your website an ‘aging’ rock star, ‘Pretty Woman’, the technical genius, the selling dervish, the librarian or the gardener? And what do these personality types reveal about your site?
In our PDF you can read more about each type and how these personality traits may represent themselves (and you) online. Oh and it’s totally free as well as fun.
The ‘face’ of online delivery
Posted by Lab rat in audience engagement, communication training, customer engagement, online communication on August 7, 2009
Increasingly organisations understand the importance of creating the right Tone of Voice (ToV) for their communications. That tone needs to be ‘modulated’ for online delivery, where communications must be conversational and reply-focussed. Organisations are beginning to understand even that these days.
But when we converse with people face-to-face so much of what we infer and derive is based on visual cues rather than verbal ones. Online, what’s the equivalent of maintaining eye contact? As well as tone of voice think – the face of delivery.
This came to me this week when Mark Tyrrell, a very talented hypnotherapist and hypnotherapy teacher (I was lucky enough to attend one of his courses a couple of year’s back) Tweeted a New Scientist article about how we’re more likely to think other people are attractive if they’re looking straight at us and smiling.
A study at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, UK, paired nearly identical photos of computer-generated faces, with smiling or disgusted expressions. The pairs only differed in where the irises were pointed: straight at the viewer, or off to the side.
Hundreds of participants then rated the faces for sexual attractiveness, and (what I’d like to focus on) for ‘likeability’. Both men and women found faces looking straight at them to be more attractive and more likeable, even if the faces looked disgusted (though smiling faces were preferred). I think we’ll leave the sexual attractiveness of websites for another day.
I think this face of delivery is very important online because of the conversational and even intimate nature of the communication.
- We know that a brochure is not an exclusive communication (even if our name is lasered at the top).
- A letter may be personal but it isn’t (generally) intimate.
- Online communication is an intimate space because of the way we engage with the delivery system – leaning in to our computer, cradling our Blackberry in the palm of our hand…
Reviewing web content against the above – starting with the visuals
So, online, how do you give your tone of voice eye contact and a smiley face? And, when you’re reviewing web content, what measures might you use to determine the face of your current online delivery?
One place to start might appear to be the visuals you use. Ideally they should be of things and people who ‘connect’ in some way with your business. Be aware of simply purchasing shiny toothed smiley faces from an image catalogue. There is something about model poses and a trick they use, pointing their eyes at the camera but allowing their gaze to soften. This widens the iris – in theory more attractive – but reduces the intensity of the eye-to-eye engagement.
I’m also very grateful to Richard Sedley at cScape for drawing my attention to a study that looked at how web users attention could be drawn to different parts of the screen by using the eyeline of the person in a photograph. Eg if you wanted somebody to look at a product / product offer, have someone else in the ad’ looking in the direction of the offer.
The question here is: do you want to engage with the user (in which case do you want the eyes on the screen to connect with the eyes of the user), or do you want them to be drawn to a product or service offered on the screen (in which case should the eyes on the screen connect with the product or service)? Something to ponder
But don’t stop with the visuals
But the more I thought about it the more that focusing on the visuals alone seemed to be missing the point. When we port a concept online we have to rework it for the new space. It pays not to be to literal in your interpretation of offline best practice for online. All of which begs the question… what is the ‘face’ of your website and who is it focusing on?
Welcome to my hypothesis…
I reckon the face of your website is your Home page. And in the case of larger sites, you may have several web personalities grouped together, so you might also have ‘faces’ on primary landing pages – such as the start of a big section. I’m a great believer in treating your website with the same respect and governance you would any other member of your organisation, so logic dictates that the Home page is the face. (What do you think?)
So, above and beyond the basics of a good Home page; clear layout, clear and consistent labelling, easy to follow nav, good tone of voice… how do you assess the eye contact?
Here are the basic proportions of a human face:
- traditional rules of proportion (Disagree? Take it up with Vitruvious) show the face divided into six equal squares, two by three
- the upper horizontal section ends at mid-forehead
- the lower at the base of the nose
- the eyes rest on the horizontal centre, the mouth on the centre of the lower third.
Just for fun I then overlaid these proportions on some web Home pages I liked or solicited from others who didn’t know what I planned to do. I situated the top of each Home page at the forehead line.
What I find interesting is just how much important stuff is going on in the mid-face section, around the eyes . And much of the very practical information – including links, T & Cs etc – lines up with the mouth area.
So, lab rats, where are you going with all this?
Firstly, check out how much interesting stuff is going on in and around the eyes above (about the only exception is Philips).
The lab rats are still working on this one but I strikes us that, in terms of the way you evaluate your web (and particularly, Home) page real estate, you might want to draw a smiley face on your wire frames.
1. Is there something your users can make ‘eye contact’ with – a responding human face, other strong visual, focusing information?
2. Is there a face-like quality to the page? (Keep in mind that faces are not totally symmetrical.)
3. How do you ‘feel’ when you engage with your Home page?
Not only is very engaging information concentrated around important facial elements on our examples above, but this content is written and displayed in a very ‘likeable’ way. I don’t think you should disregard the basics, including the role of the F Pattern.
But… it makes you think.
Useful links – each one takes you away from the lab, so we’ve opened them in new windows for you
>> The cScape Customer Engagement Unit blog (CDA are CEU members)
>> Mark Tyrrell’s new website – Uncommon Help
Useful links within this blog (we want to keep you here, so they open in the same window)
>> Reply-focussed communication
PS I’d be very interested to hear about the role of ‘eye contact’ and conversational tone in Asia where the rules for appropriate interaction are different.
Are you a warden or a prisoner online?
Posted by Lab rat in audience engagement, auditing websites and emails, chief content officer, communication training, content director, content strategy, online communication on July 20, 2009
The Stanford Prison Experiment looked at what happened psychologically when you placed some people in positions of power and other’s in positions of vulnerability (wardens and prisoners). Irrespective of their previous internal moral ‘clock’ – how would they behave?
The simulation carried out by Stanford University in the summer of 1971 was ended prematurely because of the impact it had on its university participants. Those students who were given the role of prison guards showed themselves capable of brutality. The students consigned to prisoner roles became stressed and depressed (as if their confinement were real).
Stanford, and the earlier Milgram experiment conducted at Yale University, opened up interesting questions, not just about the deeper, darker side of human nature but how we behave when we assume a role, or are put into a certain situation. As psychology professor Phil Zimbardo, who led the Stanford research team, puts it: “Situational variables can exert powerful influences over human behaviour, more so that we recognize or acknowledge.”
Okay, now the digital communication segue…
While I’m not suggesting that digital content ‘controllers’ will ever resort to beatings and electric shocks, there is often a divide between those who police the content and those who do not. These schisms can exist between online content commissioners / editors and content producers / authors. Or between active members of the content team and ‘the rest’. The rest being anybody in an organisation that doesn’t take an active role in web, email, digital messaging strategy, development and delivery. It can also exist between on and offline teams (marketing, editorial, brand…).
The Stanford experiment didn’t end prematurely because the research team had learnt everything there was to know, but because they became alarmed at how quickly the abuse of roles and situations occurred.
So in any situation where there is authority and lack of authority there is the opportunity for abuse.
I can’t make over entire organisational hierarchies on the basis of the above premise, but I can suggest discreet changes to the way online content oligarchies are handled. That may seem a small change but just think about the influence your online content has on your brand and therefore on how wider audiences perceive your organisation. Plus online is relatively young and still relatively fluid. In-house content processes are not set in stone. Change them while you still can.
Where to start?
Who are the content controllers and what power do they have? A healthy content process has checks and balances in place reflecting different content steers. This shouldn’t be a cumbersome process but a light matrix approach to ensure that core organisational values, the needs of marketing and sales, corporate information, plus the rigours of online execution and presentation are held in balance.
When changes are made to online process and / or presentation – a new website, extensions to email campaigns etc – who is consulted (and who isn’t)? It’s hard for people to be all fired up about the company website if the only time they’re consulted about it is retrospectively: “Oh, the new website launches in 3 weeks. We need your new page content ASAP. Did you not get the email?)
How do you regularly test the water in terms of existing content processes and how they are viewed internally? Zimbardo points out that at some stage there is a shift from what’s reasonable to what isn’t. How would you know if this shift happened within your organisation’s digital content process?
If existing online content processes and manifestations aren’t working, do people (outside any content claque) feel empowered to say ‘this isn’t working’ or ‘our new website is rubbish’? If the emperor is in the buff you need to know quickly. Online is everybody’s business.
Checks and balances
A qualitative content audit can throw up weaknesses is existing systems. It needs to be carried out by an external team (but this could involve different departments or areas of online activity critiquing each other’s work).
Content should be reviewed against organisational values and Tone of Voice, online ambition and audiences. You may want to read an earlier post on personas (I’ve popped the link at the bottom of this post). I’ll work up a personality for any site I’m reviewing (as if it was a flesh and blood member of the team). If your website sat at the next desk, would you share your sandwiches with it?
I also came up with this acronym. I think you should be answering ‘yes’ to 6 out of 9 points.
1. Can a wide range of people within your organisation suggest a digital change and / or refinement and know someone will take notice?
2. Have they got a clear idea about who to approach if something isn’t working right – broken website links, poorly coded emails, spelling mistakes online… (or know where to find out)?
3. Are new digital projects only embarked upon after a well-rounded opinion-seeking process and shared collective understanding?
4. Little digital errors (page not found, spelling errors, broken links…) rarely happen.
5. Large digital errors (website down, email campaigns producing little or no response…) rarely happen.
6. Everyone takes an interest in what rour company is doing digitally, even if they’re not actively involved.
7. No faction, department, skillset, business unit, or organisational activity feels excluded (frozen out).
8. Guards need walls. Are the processes and decisions made about how your brand is communicated online done in clear view?
9. Eyes (2), ears (2) mouth (1). Is your organisation watching and listening to what’s been done and said online rather than simply talking about it. You should watch and listen more than you speak.
Internal link
>> More about personas
>> The 7 ages of content maturity table (towards the end of this post)