Brand Experience
I do!
I recently got married and am now someones ‘missus’. If you work at DNA you would probably already know this due to the constant wedding chatter that was coming from my pod, but not ordinary chatter (bridesmaids dresses, suits etc) this chatter was all about colour palettes, icons, look and feel – and that all important consistent thread, making sure our guests got a consistent ‘on-brand’ experience.
It dawned on me halfway through the wedding prep, that this wedding was really just a big client brief and by default I was applying the very principles that make campaign generation and activation so successful. You take for granted working in this industry, having the knowledge of all these tools and bringing something large together. So naturally I swung into suit planning mode. “Everything needs to be seamless, have that sense of integration”. (Cue awkward looks from my fiancee and bridal party) “Bridgette – briefings, mood boards, iconography?” My husband didn’t understand why it was so important that everything was integrated and planned out perfectly, the answer seemed obvious to me, but then I thought how many people really understand the importance of integration, planning and process and how it can make or break your campaign.
On even the smallest of budgets, campaign integration allows you to leverage elements – driving greater reach, and efficiency. Sound planning and process enables you to stick to the brief, and ensure things run smoothly. Sounds simple right? It is, but sometimes we fall victim to lack of time or will to follow process. So often it is easier to approach every brief in silo, put your blinkers on and get it done to the deadline. Doing so usually means you loose consistency, projects cost more and things take longer. Short term win, but long term fail.
Take my wedding for example….
When I (we) started planning the wedding I (we) had a clear vision of what we wanted. We worked up a mood board and segmented it into different categories – from this out fell the theme ‘Vintage romance with a hint of contradiction’ think dusky pink, hand written type, DIY feel, animals, big character. This became the consistent thread that brought everything together. Everything we did going forward was assessed against the mood board – did it fit? Was it conducive to the overarching look and feel? Does it add to the consistent experience – no? fail, yes? lets consider it. It took all my strength not to fall into the silo trap. Just because something is cool, and I like it, does not necessarily mean that we should include it.
Our event plan also drove integration and ensured things ticked along nicely – every element implemented at each phase of the wedding, was consistent – and again provided our guests with the same experience. Vintage furnishings, nude and pink colour palettes, hearts, bucket loads of bunting and lots of DIY loveliness. Towards the end of it, I have to admit I did get over all the paper – updating of running sheets, contact sheets, briefs. But perseverance paid off.
So what did the end result look like? The day went off without a hitch. The project plan, running sheets, briefs, moodboards, site layouts all paid off. The theme was evident throughout and people appreciated the effort and the long DIY nights that went into bringing it all together. I received a few jabs in the speeches about my lists and ‘ticking boxes’, but that’s okay they will come across to my way of doing things soon. At the end of the night my husband and I took a walk down the boat ramp and looked back at the marquee. Laughter filled the air, bunting swayed in the wind, the photobooth and pinata were going off. Chris turned around and said ‘I get it now, this was big, and everything came together and slotted in nicely, you aced it… I will never question your process again’. So this suit and new wife smiled ‘good, you have a lifetime ahead of spreadsheets, boxes and lists’.
So it just goes to show that process and the benefits of ‘the consistent thread’ and associated tools – are transferable to every day life. Why change something that is not broken? The proof is always in the pudding. 
—
Service Design
Clever Government?
It’s been a busy start to the new year for many of us and how come it's already March? We are winding out the financial year, looking forward to the next and in Wellington eagerly watching the manoeuvring around the Government’s planning for their new year and May’s budget. It’s no secret that significant change is on the way. The impetus to constrain Government spending is gaining momentum. But will the change be just brutal reductions reminiscent of Muldoon’s razor gangs of the early eighties – a 10% cut in every department – or something cleverer? Do our politicians have the vision and our public sector leaders the nouse to innovate rather than cut our way to a more effective public service?
We are hearing encouraging noises from the public sector itself – receptiveness to, interest in and even concrete plans for innovation in the way public service is delivered are clearly evident. And the opportunities are myriad. One example is Inland Revenue’s quest to get 95% of their transactions enacted online. Imagine the transaction volume and the quantum of system innovation necessary to get all but a very few trusting their tax to the online medium. I imagine that New Zealand would be one of the first jurisdictions in the world to achieve such a transformation. In the late eighties the Rogernomics inspired reform of the Government sector was similarly world leading and spawned a considerable export of our expertise to the world. The same opportunity exists now. Innovative ways to deliver more service with less cost would find a ready export market right now you’d think.
This sort of breakthrough though is tough, and requires a similarly innovative approach to the challenge of change. Going back to the Inland Revenue example, what will it actually take to change people’s well entrenched behaviours around their tax business? Whatever IT systems drive this, if they are not incredibly well grounded in the realities of life of the intended users they will fail. The challenge will be not so much to roll out the system – though that will be challenge enough – but to understand what the barriers are in the heads and hearts of the users and to imaginatively and realistically transcend those barriers. This will take some brave leadership, and dare I say some superb application of design problem solving. Let’s hope for all our sakes that this combination occurs in many departments. —
Customer Experience
Money is not the only currency
It's true. There exists a value exchange between business and customers which is not confined to money. People are willing to trade in other currencies of value, if only business would front up for the exchange.
Challenge your business to deconstruct the value exchange with your customers to find what else you can be trading with. In addition to price and cost, people value their time, their energy, their efforts and their psychological wellbeing. If you are smart, you will tune into the latter and start trading on them. Money will follow.
Some examples.
- Macey's Backstage Pass exchanges instant expertise and advice for customer confidence and validation prior to purchase
- Tesco barcode shopper exchanges a virtual shopping list for the assurance of a full cupboard and no forgotten items
- A Tesco variant for the Korean market exchanges a whole virtual store which rebates people's time and energy
Want to gain advocacy and have people mention you on Twitter, post a review on MenuMania, Like you on Facebook, Pin it on Pinterest? Find out what you can exchange for their time and energy post service experience.
Like to gain loyalty without squeezing your profit margins? Employ the construct of Gamification to bring fun into the exchange. Foursquare successfully exchanges loyalty for play
Get out of the money obsession and start deconstructing the value exchange with your customers. Identify what they value, at what part of the service, and start offering it as currency in the value exchange.
If you believe usability is a fundamental value, see Charlene Turei's article, Getting Over Usability, to disrupt your thinking. —
New Zealand
Sorting out New Zealand is a design job
At DNA we help organisations thrive by making sure that everything they do lines up with, and springs from, their essential nature It’s a design exercise sometimes labelled as branding, service design or customer experience design, but, labels aside, in principle it’s a simple process. Understand clearly the essence of the organisation, then design everything – the way it works, the products it makes, and the way it communicates, recruits and connects with its world – to reflect and reinforce that essence.
The brighter future we are promised will materialise only when we collectively earn a better living in the world. We need to export more and get paid better for what we export. And we need to do that in a world economy which looks shaky at best.
Analysing New Zealand the way we would analyse a client before starting work quickly identifies the problem. A lot of what of what we do is in conflict with our essence. More
Commercial Intimacy
Who are these people?
At the end of the day it's not about the numbers. Not even about the conversions. Not about repeat visits. It's about depth. Sure a person may use your service a lot, but if they leave as soon as a rival pops up then their depth of commitment was low. Once you have an engaged customer it's not about telling them your hopes and dreams, it's about listening to theirs. Also while it's nice to hear your grand plans, I also want to know your past times, secrets, fears and embarassing cock-ups. Until then intimacy is still just surface level. If you want customers to flirt with you you're going to have to flirt with them and show them some leg. Not too much too soon though or you'll appear to be some co-dependant attention starved moron who loves long walks on the beach and would you like to move in with me? More
Commercial Intimacy
Social Media and Commercial Intimacy
Social media was, as its name suggests, envisaged as a phenomenon of the social rather than commercial sphere. The frenetic adoption of social media for commercial ends belies that vision. But as an immature medium (or at least a still rapidly evolving one) the end, or mature state is not yet clear. So far the bulk of corporate and commercial use of social media seems to treat it as just another channel.
In reality it’s potential to turn the tables on big, one direction marketing is enormous. The interpersonal networks that social media supercharge have enormous, latent commercial clout. Any brand or service that performs well or poorly can and will be instantly outed, for good or ill. What is emerging is a hugely powerful, instant and pervasive referral system. This sort of power in the hands of consumers is new – we are picking it will be a powerful driver towards more personalisation and to greater brand integrity. More
Commercial Intimacy
Self Service and Commercial Intimacy
The ability to access products and services without requiring personal assistance is a relatively new phenomenon. In the bricks and mortar world the first example was probably the supermarket. Since then internet and kiosk based versions have revolutionised the retail environment and beyond. Everything from government information through banking, travel, groceries right through to pornography can be accessed privately and without help.
Perversely, this lessening of person to person contact is a powerful driving force for greater personalisation of service. For a start the ability to capture, store and process data from the digital interface is much greater than from the face to face encounter. Data underpins the ability to tailor offers to personal preferences and needs. Secondly reducing the number of face to face contacts, and consequently the staffing required to support those, allows suppliers to employ fewer service people but of a much higher quality thereby improving the service, whilst reducing its cost. —
Brand Experience
Everyone has baggage
In fact we had bag-loads courtesy of my fiancés desire to pack for every conceivable occasion as we arrived at a prominent hotel in Hong Kong. Despite the luggage challenge, I was excited about the prospect of staying at a hotel that was about 3 stars above my usual station. Armed with confidence given this hotel rated highly in its star category, the last minute website deal that gave us an attractive rate, the positive guest review comments posted, not to mention the free upgrade voucher to a suite – my expectations were high. And this hotel delivered – the sweet scented foyer was grand, the front line staff were friendly and attentive, the room was beautiful with more technology than I knew what to do with, the roof top pool had exceptional views, alluring bars, quality restaurants, cigar rooms, spa facilities and the list goes on.
But in a field where a 5-6 star rating suggests a place is ‘top class’ – how do you rate one ‘exceptional’ hotel from another? Does price set the expectation or is it the comfort of the bed, the size of the television, the proximity of its location or the depth of the mini bar that wins us over? Is it the ‘grandness’ of the foyer or genuineness of the smile that greets you? The balance of such expectations are of course essential, but what is to say a five star hotel down the road would not deliver an equally impressive experience? It’s the little things you may say, but how do you define what they are? More
Placebranding
Turn a deaf ear to the roar of the crowd at your peril
OK. So Wellington has an international reputation as a film destination (quite apart from everything else that's wonderful about the city), and it's perhaps a useful thing to highlight and raise with visitors flying into the city (well at least those sitting in a window seat on the left hand side of a plane landing in a Southerly). To keep pushing a concept that is quite frankly insulting to all our collective creative intelligence is quite one thing. To ignore the outrage of the populous is quite another.
Place branding is one part the physical location, another part the people who live there, make up the culture and contribute to the local economy. The Airport company seem to lack an understanding of what place-branding is all about. (According to them we're also aparently 'Wild at Heart' which I don't actually mind.) They said they opened this up to the public, to get their ideas, and got diddly-squat back. But what was the forum, the brief.
Come on, really, Wellington is held up as the creative hub of the country, and we can't come up with something more original? This is a PR opportunity waiting to be milked. An open transparent competition that's well publicised would actually do a lot of good. It would seem, however, that those sitting around the table are determined to push ahead and argue that it's all just a little too late. The fact that they aren't listening to what would seem the majority, that the idea is unoriginal, that the idea is already subject to some kind of trademark, that the threat of vandalism hangs over any planned installation should really smack this one between their ears. More
Human Factors
Touch, pause, hold, engage
What kind of supporter are you? Who are you supporting and why?
Being perfectly positioned in the heart of party central, it’s been interesting to watch the fans from different countries. One thing’s for sure: if you have flown to the other side of the world, you must at least have some passion for your country or the game. Passion and enthusiasm are definitely not based on how well the team will perform.
After doing some 'fan watching' and being a spectator at a game, it’s fairly easy to identify two different types of supporters. There are those who support their team with loud, jovial enthusiasm, win or lose, even if they know from the outset that their team are the underdogs. And then there are the aggressive supporters who believe in winning at all costs.
I think we forget that the journey to the Cup is all part of the experience. At the risk of sounding like a real Mom, there can only be one winner, so let’s make sure we all enjoy the ride, win or lose! —
New ways of buying
Torture chamber to engagement space
There is a change going on in the banking industry that is not about balance sheets and liquidity. It’s about what people need a high-street branch for, and how the banks are trying to get better utilisation out of hectares of retail space. It is not news to anyone that banking is in a state of flux. The relationship between the banker and the customer is shifting, the category is over-banked in every developed country of the world, reputations have suffered around the economic meltdown, and New Zealand’s banks are under scrutiny for tax irregularities. In effect the shine has gone off. More
Commercial Intimacy
The two faces of retail
Retail is highly competitive, so its got to be very clear just what benefits a customer focused, multi channel strategy can offer before anyone is going to invest. The evolution in creating value in retail is lead by efficiency, followed by intelligence, and then intimacy. Value innovation around customer intimacy is about “managing consumer relationships by ‘customerising’ the interface and interaction with individual consumers”. In simple terms that means putting the power in the hands of your customers to shop how and when they like. Do that and they will reward you handsomely. More
Service Design
Getting over usability
Having recently returned from an international conference on Interaction Design in Dublin what struck me most was a sense that we in New Zealand still seem to be hung up on the whole ‘usability’ movement while the rest of the world has moved. This has been on my mind for some time, a sense that we’re putting too much emphasis on usability testing as a way to produce ‘user centred design’.
We at DNA have been challenging this over the past few years and introducing clients to the power of Design Research upfront as a way to ensure your project is heading in the right direction from the start rather than solely relying on rounds of usability testing down the track. This is not to say that usability testing isn’t useful, it’s absolutely a useful tool for validating design and solution choices made throughout the process, but what good is usability testing if you’re designing completely the wrong thing?
When given the opportunity to get out into the field and talk with our clients customers and users we’ve seen enormous benefits for our clients. These have come out of the insights and understanding gained including:
- Greater connection and deeper understanding of their customers and users
- More focused projects where decisions are made with confidence
- Unearthing of different perspectives leading to new opportunities
- An ability to better balance user needs, business drivers and IT constraints
- Cohesive and collaborative client/agency teams where focus and priorities more clearly aligned
At Interaction12 where 750+ practitioners came to listen to 80+ talks, it was refreshing to see just how pervasive this way of working is amongst the rest of the world and I can only hope that as we continue to push ahead in this space we’ll start to see growth in research lead work here in New Zealand and the benefits that this brings to clients and their customers. —
Service Design
Consistency of service across partners
When a partner doesn’t deliver the same level of service your business can suffer as a result... My recent experience with booking a long haul flight to London with Air New Zealand and finding myself on sub 'Air New Zealand standard' partner flights between the US and London set my resolve to not fly with Air New Zealand again on a long haul route to UK or Europe.
There was nothing actually wrong with Air New Zealand itself and the experience on board their planes was good as usual. However I had paid ‘Air New Zealand’ prices and having booked with them I expected their level of customer experience across the whole journey. Unfortunately for them, their partners really let them down and I came away feeling disappointed and dissatisfied with Air New Zealand.
It may seem illogical that I should feel disappointed with Air New Zealand for their partners’ shortcomings, but when I think back across the entire experience from planning, to booking, to flying, I realised my disappointment stems from the fact that when booking the tickets, the Air New Zealand holiday shop agent didn’t inform me that I wouldn’t be flying with them the whole way. As a result my expectations were incorrectly set and I was also denied an opportunity to choose a different route to London where I would’ve been flying Air New Zealand the whole way.
When thinking about service design, it’s well worth considering beyond your own services and scrutinising partner or flow on services in order to understand the full picture for customers and mitigate any potential issues they may experience that could reflect negatively on your business. —
Customer Experience
Post-digital – what the?
I'm always a little suspicious of such phrases and phases, are they truly the beginning of a new paradigm, or merely the sales driven twist to something current that an agency or channel guru has dreamt up. The latest term I've had throw at me of late is 'post digital'. So what is it and what is it not?
More than digital or after digital?
My first assumption was it meant 'after digital' – what's coming next. In reality it's merely a description of when digital grows up – well, in fact it should be more truly described as when we mature to include digital as a central part of the world we live in rather than a change agent or new toy. In reality then the idea seems to be that everything is now so integrated and multi-device, that digital has no real pulling power as a term or channel in its own right any longer. It seems to me that a more accurate description of the more assimilated-digital than actually post-digital.
Over time digital has just blended into our everyday life practices. 'Emergent technology' means there are now just more ways to get the interaction and interface between people, communities and commerce. The value exchange however between a business and a customer can now be anywhere anytime, and increasingly personalised. The challenge for business is to make sense of this and find a way to deliver it at a cost that is acceptable to you and your customers – ironically this may mean doing less.
The real challenge in this digital world still seems to be over-building (but that is another post altogether). So if post-digital is assimilated then what I expect as a consumer, a user and a viewer is something that is effortless to use, always available, reasonably priced (no not free necessarily), and most of all about me, for me and right for me. Is that too much to ask? —
Self-service
When is self service going to get personal?
For many businesses the challenge is taking the ‘self’ out of self service. If self service is more about saving you money, you may get high adoption, but you won’t get the loyalty you may be looking for. Self service is often attractive as a way for many customers to bypass painful processes, people or que’s, and increasingly mobile base allows a new realm of service and access that customers can drive themselves. However you can’t offer true self service unless its a suite of options that are personally relevant to a range of customers. Only through understanding the goals and needs of your customers, and by balancing this with what makes the best sense for the business will you define where self service and a more personalised service experience are right for you and your customers. We predict customers will increasingly demand a service that is right for them, so for today's businesses the challenge is serving a niche of one on a mass scale. More
Design
Is 'below the line' simply a pejorative?
I have been wondering for a while about the genesis of the term ‘above the line’ to describe mass media advertising – and its corollary, ‘below the line’, for everything else.
A little bit of online research hasn’t unearthed the source, other than to clarify its association with the same term used in financials. And that’s fascinating. In financial vernacular, the line separates where you make your money from where you spend it – and guess what – above the line is where you make money.
Business managers understand the difference between investments and costs, and what that means: maximise the return on the former and minimise the latter. It’s not absolute, but the things to invest in are mostly found above the line and the costs to minimise are found below it.
Convergence
Water makes its way to the sea
Just like water making its way to the sea, people take the path of least resistance to reach their goals. A state of flow along any given ‘retail journey’ is achieved by offering the shopper the right path in the right way at the right time – for them. Your customer doesn’t really care about the touch point or the channel you offer – its their goal that has led them to you and meeting that goal well means the difference between success and failure for you. Online/offline collisions occur when a business is channel focussed rather than customer focussed. Dividing a company into delivery channels ensures budgets, resources and key outcomes are neatly bounded and accountable. However, the reality is each channel eventually converges at the point of the customer. More
Commercial Intimacy
Loyalty and Commercial Intimacy
Loyalty schemes have for many years been part of our purchasing experience. But their pervasiveness and standardised blandness may force radical change.
When computing power makes it possible to differentiate and track individuals and their patterns, it will be possible also to customise rewards. By the time that level of personal responsiveness is the norm, the loyalty scheme will probably be an integrated part of the sales interface. Some loyalty schemes are already moving towards this future – is yours? —
Commercial Intimacy
Data Collection and Commercial Intimacy
The deployment of information and communication technology in our lives creates huge amounts of data about our movements, preferences, health, wealth, habits and more. Much of this data is collected and stored sometimes with, and sometimes without our consent. Much of the data collected is used by various organisations to better tune the products and services they offer to us. The potential to collect data will increase over time as technology becomes both more capacious and ever-present. This will make it more and more possible for organisations to use that data to more and more personalise their offers and their service.
Before this can develop to a stage that makes truly individual service the norm, issues of data ownership and access will need to be resolved. For commercial intimacy to be realised in all its glory and potency the data used to personalise the engagement will need to be of a depth and intimacy best gathered with consent.
Equally the organisations most likely to gain that consent and the consequent access to powerful personal data are those who have earned the trust that consent is based on. More
Commercial Intimacy
Customisation and Commercial Intimacy
More and more the offers put to us have been in some way tailored to what the supplier perceives as our particular tastes and needs. Some such offers are pertinent and others laughably inept.
As this sort of tailoring becomes ubiquitous it loses its competitive edge, driving the leaders in the field to further refine and deepen the degree of personalisation in their offers. In this way the practice becomes both more pervasive and more acute. Add in increasing power to collect and process personal data and it’s easy to see this trend accelerating. At some point on this progression the pertinence, timeliness, and allure of the offer itself will rank alongside the quality of the product or service and cost in the decision to purchase – or not. More
Customer Experience
Branding is dead. Long live the brand!
I’d suggest that alot of what I do as Strategy Director at DNA is customer experience design. Simplistically if you design and deliver customer experiences you are branding.
“Brand” is all the past, present and future associations about an organisation that have some value in the eyes of the customer.
“Branding” is designing, building and operating everything in the present thereby creating positive memories and valuable future promises.
Customer experience is the interaction between a person and a business at any number of touchpoints. If you design and deliver customer experiences you are branding. So they are one and the same or another term for the same thing.
The problem with this thinking is that it is completely wrong. More
Commercial Intimacy
Heart on your sleeve or in your pocket?
Like never before, customers are being exposed to the head and heart of the businesses they buy from – or at least the market’s view of it – thanks to the proliferation of communications channels that give equal voice to an individual and an organisation. Beyond specifications or pricing detail of a product, potential buyers are faced with weighing up the opinions of other customers on any manner of related subject – not least the ethics, corporate citizenship, legal history, financial integrity – of the organisation they’re looking to purchase from. The backlash on Adidas by Polish graffiti artists and formation of the Adisucks facebook page is a fantastic example.
All well and good we say – power to those who invest in a clear corporate conscience. Transparency and openness is a good thing.
But the longer term implications are worth pondering. Does the threat of ambush by the masses really encourage greater integrity by corporates – or does it simply stifle innovation and limit boundary pushing? Worse still, does it actually perpetuate a greater propensity for guarded, whitewashed communications by organisations to avoid a social media headache? More
Commercial Intimacy
Can you really get something for nothing?
In a world which is growing ever more filled with messages and 'things' how do you set your product or service apart from the masses? How can you not only create a loyal customer base but have them sell and promote your service to others because they want to? It seems to me that the most compelling communication nowadays is 'nothing', and that's why we believe in Commercial Intimacy where every consumer can have what they want, in the way they'd like it.
If you want a better service experience, should it not be about process refinement rather than process complexity? The same could be said for products you love – they have all the features you need and nothing else.
So the next time you need to achieve 'something', how about focussing on 'nothing'. It just might grant you the success you're after. More
What Is Open
Open is a forum for exploring Commercial Intimacy – by looking at what’s evolving in the worlds of consumers, and where this is both challenging and liberating for business.
Open’s goal is to examine trends, issues and innovation, plus be a forum for discussion within the broader topic of Commercial Intimacy.
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Who Is DNA?
DNA is 55+ people, 4 disciplines, 2 locations, 21 years old and always curious.
We are insight-led, we question and challenge until we get to the heart of what will deliver the most intimate experiences for your customers in the most valuable and sustainable way for your business.
We have expertise in research, strategy, digital, retail, brand, product development, integrated marketing and internal and external communications. We design great brands; create innovative digital and interactive solutions, retail experiences to take customer intimacy and engagement to new levels – all of which we view within the context of Commercial intimacy.
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