Commercial Intimacy
Commercial intimacy and Trade Me
I think Trade Me is real live, real life proof of the business potency of commercial intimacy.
Very soon you will be able to buy shares in Trade Me on the New Zealand stock exchange. Four years after buying Trade Me for $700m, Fairfax are floating 34% of the company at a price which values the Trade Me business at just over $1 billion.
Four years ago, many wondered if Fairfax had paid way too much for Trade Me and doubted it could grow enough to repay their investment. The price of the new float and the enthusiasm with which it’s being greeted by prospective buyers suggests otherwise.
Trade Me’s on-going growth and success is down to one thing, and I suspect it’s a thing it has always known is the key to its business. Let’s face it, the Trade Me brand wouldn’t win any design awards, but most well-polished brands would gladly trade their gorgeous collateral and clever campaigns for what Trade Me has – a deep, enduring and mutually profitable relationship with its vast community.
Connecting in meaningful ways with each individual in your community, and backing those relationships with performance that does what those individuals want and need, is more important than anything else in your business. 
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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
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! —
Social Media
Social Media Maturity
The way people behave on social media tells us little about their age, life stage and everyday behaviour. Rather, it may simply reflect their level of exposure to, and comfort with, social media itself. This means that traditional expectations about the ways in which old and young express themselves, and interact with each other, may no longer apply. Fifty-year-olds can act like 15-years-olds, and vice versa, on social media – making online behaviour an unreliable guide to an audience’s everyday life maturity. More
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
Customer Interface
Simple wins on the small screen
Mobile content can sometimes be the best kind of web content. If delivered well, it’s short and contains only the essential information. Content designed and written into bite sized chunks lets users get to information quickly and cherry pick what they want. It’s fair to say being lean and delivering only the bare essentials elegantly is a hard discipline, but one that is becoming increasingly relevant.
It is common for the content style to be the last thing companies think about when it comes to their website. Aesthetic requirements and an organisation’s need to get everything across to users usually get in the way. But content (arguably content ‘over’ style) on the web matters. On websites via mobile it matters even more.
If you’re checking out a site on your phone, your attention is usually divided. You’re busy and short on time. You want content that addresses your needs and is actionable now. There’s nothing more frustrating for a user than a mobile web experience that’s slower than the royal wedding. So, how do you create a great mobile web experience? Here are a few ideas:
- Use the inverted pyramid: Bring home the bacon at the start and put your most useful content at the top of the page. Then users can have the option to find out more details later (1).
- Cull, cull, cull – be brutal: Don’t make your key content harder to find than Osama. Be concise and try to keep sentences short. Make each word work hard. Test your content on a mobile screen.
- Write headings and subheadings that are descriptive: Make it clear what content sits below the heading. A user will usually scan for keywords to figure out if they are in the right place or not.
- Simplify page layouts: Single column layouts usually work best. Eliminate or reduce image sizes and don’t use unnecessary animation or gimmicks.
- Consider making a mobile only version of your website: Some of the more complicated elements and details can go on your standard site. The basic most accessed information can be put on the mobile site.
Check out these great resources for a little more detail on putting together mobile content 'Writing for the mobile web' and 'Best practices for mobile web writing'.
We think these rules are mission critical for mobile, and in fact they are gold for your main site too. The discipline of making sure less becomes more is sadly lacking in too many user experiences. —
Customer Experience
Change can be fun – or it can be fraught
40 years later, words from the cockpit of Apollo 13 still echo, “Houston we have a problem!”
Today customer habits are changing – be that through technology adoption or a desire to self serve – much more rapidly than many organisation’s existing capacity to adapt, yet there is little evidence that organisations are effectively applying new strategies, customer understanding or thinking patterns to these new challenges.
Despite the overwhelming evidence of major market shifts, driven by the global digital grid and accelerating customer choice we continue to use old ‘solution’ models to address the new ‘challenges’ that are confronting our businesses and service lines. Would we expect NASA to utilise the same approach in resolving a modern day technical glitch as they did in the 1970 crisis? No, in fact it's clear NASA do more to mitigate potential challenges than many businesses.
Despite the ability by many businesses to rationally see the need to change – the ruts of past success often dictate future pathways. And because businesses were once able to accurately forecast customer demand they continue to be seduced by old forecasting models, old technologies and outdated research approaches. This, despite the overwhelming evidence of the increased complexity of choice – in not just products and brands – but channels and interface. So what do we do? We need to ‘live’ the customer journey.
People expect more from products and services and are becoming accustomed to an increasingly personalised and intimate experience, yet how many programmes are you aware of in businesses like yours that are embracing a systemic service experience approach? Let me ask that question in another way, “Why are people choosing to buy iPhones versus much less expensive Nokias... they both get a dial tone and internet? Why are people flying Air New Zealand versus Jet Star… they both get you to the same destination?
Cost efficiency is created at great cost, and customer satisfaction and sustainable market position are never guaranteed, but living and adapting through the journey of service experience is something to be invested in as it will build trust, confidence, intimacy and most of all the insights to adapt.
Business leaders are preoccupied with the siloed intricacies of their social media community, location based cloud services and mobility services, but when we think about these services holistically we get a sense of convergence and the possibility of deep customer engagement at the interface. Based on experience and foresight I would say, 'Your ability to adapt and evolve at the interface will have a direct correlation with your ability to maintain a competitive edge.'
Change must be seen as an opportunity or else your organisation will be truly rooted… to the past! —
Commercial Intimacy
Protein Anyone?
We became one of the richest countries in the world by twice cashing in on British protein booms. Affluent middle classes emerging from 19th century industrialisation and Second World War austerity were able to eat meat and dairy like never before – and they got it from us.
In huge developing economies, rising income levels are changing diets to protein again, and in vast numbers. Our meat, dairy and fish exporters need commercial intimacy to cash in on this boom.
We could treat all Britain as one niche and we had much stronger cultural, social, historical and language linkages there than anywhere else – and the trade was protected. Lacking those advantages, we must get close enough to Brahmins in Bangalore, samba dancers in Rio, apparatchiks in Guangdong and thousands of other groups, to develop products that resonate for them. It’s a big enough opportunity to make us a rich country again. —
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
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. —
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.
I imagine some ‘Mad Men’-style advertising executive in the youth of the TV age creating this cunning plan to elevate the importance of mass media advertising by simply associating it with investments (rather than costs) through labelling it ‘above the line’. And gosh, it’s worked rather well. The whole industry still uses the term.
If ‘above the line’ is still broadly, if unconsciously, understood in these terms, then calling ourselves ‘below the line’ can be seen as pejorative. Perhaps we should stop doing it. We want to promote an integrated and interactive connection with customers, so we should consider using a more powerful and less reverential term to describe it.
The most successful change campaigns take control of the language – it’s a powerful tool. —
Mobility
The mobile phone as a change agent
With close to 6 billion mobile subscriptions worldwide, two-thirds of the world’s population now have access to a mobile phone. It is also estimated that half the world’s population are able to access the internet through a mobile phone. Penetration rates in the developing world have been described as happening at a ‘blistering pace’. In 2007 mobile penetration in Africa was about 30% – it is now well over 50%.
In developing countries the primary access point for the internet will be the mobile phone rather than a PC, and it is already a key weapon for improving access to health and education services. For example, Vodafone, Tanzania’s biggest mobile provider, helped solve a problem that prevented thousands of women from accessing a gynaecological service. There was a nice big hospital, full of good doctors – but no patients. Women either did not know about the service or could not afford the bus fare to get to the hospital. Vodafone linked with a local community organisation and used its mobile phone-based money transfer service to text message the bus fare to affected women. One international agency specialising in microfinance estimates that 1.7 billion people in the developing world now have a mobile phone – but no bank account. More
Service Design
Like changing airplanes in mid-flight
A client the other day used the analogy of changing airplanes in mid-flight to describe what service design is like for most businesses.
Imagine yourself flying along at 31,000 feet in a rather old aircraft that is getting a bit tatty around the edges – it smells a bit, rattles and shakes constantly, is not very fuel efficient and the food really sucks.
A brand new shiny, gleaming, fuel efficient and much more comfortable plane – representing what your business could and potentially should be – is flying right next to you. You really want to be on the that plane and not the one you are on.
It's easy to want to be on that other plane – the hard bit is transferring yourself and all your passenges (customers) while you are in mid-flight.
Through applying service design thinking it may be relatively easy to identify what needs to change with your business – the challenge still remains how you will make those changes especially when your business probably doesn't have the funding, resources, capability or time. —
Service Design
Not all services are designed equal
Every service experience you love or loathe has been designed – maybe in bits, sometimes as a whole. And that includes even the really, really bad ones. Lately we have been 'talking' Service Design with a few of our clients and 'doing' Service Design with others. What we have observed is that Service Design can be both a big, scary spectre and a liberating and transformative opportunity for businesses. People have described it as either small, iterative and manageable or all- encompassing and holistic – but, simply put, Service Design is the practice of delivering great on-brand customer experiences using optimised and efficient business systems and operations.
The thing we've noticed is that many businesses look to improve customer experience, and many also look to streamline processes, improve their offers, migrate to the channels and Touchpoints their customers most use, cut costs and so on. Service Design is the practice of doing both in unison. More
Mobility
Designing for mobile: A golden rule
Designing any kind of interface, but particularly mobile, is brokering a little deal between your business and your customers.
Essentially you are saying to customers 'You give me this much time, space and attention, and we’ll give you x in return'.
You are giving your customer some sort of value with your mobile app. Whether the app itself is your product, or you’re using it to sell something else, or helping them achieve something like checking their bank balance, getting a deal or even just finding your store – you are giving them something of value.
It’s important to realise that your customer is actually giving you something in exchange for that every time they use your app. They’re giving you time, space, and attention. Those are precious in the desktop environment, and more so in the mobile context.
When you balance the deal right, you’ll make your customers lives’ that much easier and they’ll love you for it. —
Brand Experience
A word from our sponsors
Corporate affiliations with sports teams to engender greater brand loyalty is nothing new. In the past they have been a proven strategy to not only to amplify brand perception through association, but get the formula right and commercially the rewards can be enormous. Just think of the global exposure and merchandise successful teams such as Manchester United push through as a fanatical fan base look to support their team with their voice and wallet.
So the notion of ‘sponsorship’ has never simply been an outreach of generous corporate support, there is always an expectation of a profitable return. Perceptually the equation is pretty simple – fans love their team, so will in turn love the sponsor brands that support them and we will all live happily ever after right? Well as Adidas and Telecom, two of the All Blacks principal sponsors recently found out, there is no right-of-passage to winning the hearts and minds of their fans through mere association alone. More
Brand Experience
Dropping the price or dropping the ball
OK, so in New Zealand the Adidas brand seems to have taken a bit of a kicking for not addressing a raft of public sledging and much media handwringing over the domestic price of replica All Blacks jerseys' – compared the the price in other countries. Their key partner the NZRU also did not seemingly fare so well as they battled to contain the issue only weeks out from the start of the New Zealand hosting of the Rugby World Cup (RWC).
A few things spring to mind, namely that markets and prices are fair game where seasonal or event based demand makes a difference and that the loyalty of All Blacks fans is being severely tested, as is brand loyalty to Adidas – but the bigger picture for both parties may have been lost. As I see it, the NZRU, kiwi fans and Adidas all need to acknowledge market forces, and as the saying goes you live by them and you die by them.
Adidas found out how quickly an issue can gain momentum – when the furore over their pricing of the jerseys blew up the Adidas line of response was flawed, it was defensive, it was inconsistent. Add to that the lack of unison they showed with the New Zealand Rugby Union (NZRU) and the argument they needed to convey ‘together’ all got lost in the fray. It is an issue more about the cost and opportunity – it was an argument lost solely on price.
The debate should have covered: More
Brand Experience
Out of the cave or the mob will get you!
I can't believe that I still hear people say, "All press is good press." There was a time when this statement was true – however at that same time the ‘brand’ authority within an organisation had the power, influence and impact of a highly trained 'operative' to create an often elegant and always heavily orchestrated reality. Today this statement is anachronistic, as the ‘brand’ authority has little control over issues. The influence of the 'operative' has been relegated to the status of rent-a-cop. More
Mobility
The omnipresent opportunity that is mobile
How do you use the mobile channel to solve many of your customer intimacy problems? Here are 4 truths, and 4 simple rules for mobile as I see them:
It’s trusted: you only interact with something you feel safe with. Your Smartphone is still seen as safe, secure and private, it even has access to your bank account!
It’s ubiquitous: it’s everywhere, and it also knows where you are, where you’ve been and where you are going.
Its always on: in fact it’s downright disruptive. It allows you to gain attention when it really matters, anticipate the real time need and offer the relevant solution, provide immediate results, whether that’s interacting, redeeming, purchasing, or simply providing a voice/opinion.
It’s mobile: Always moving with you, changing with you and ultimately it knows you best. What better place for the brand experience, custom application, or specific offer to exist than at the point where the need for it becomes most apparent. How do you harness its unique advantages - Build trust. Get local. Never close. Be there (when and where you are needed). —
Brand Experience
Bonding with a new brand
We’ve all been through it, when something breaks you weigh up its value against the effort and expense of getting a new one, and trying to fix it yourself. I’m more of a fixer – primarily because I’m tight with money – but also, I think, because of the achievement factor. After years of fixing and refixing a plastic handle back onto a steamer lid (with superglue) it was becoming increasing frustrating each time it broke off again, as well as being slightly dangerous if you were actually using it.
So when I heard about Sugru it seemed too good to be true, a mouldable ‘glue’ to hack all your old broken things back together. It works in almost all environments, materials, temperatures... WOW its really looks like the wonder glue and the answer to my problem! A lovely impression to start with, their website is clear and well designed and they seemed pretty on to it. Even ordering was a breeze, as I was a beginner (and actually didn’t need that much of it) I went for the mini 6 pack. However I tend need to see to believe so until it arrived I have to admit I was still a bit of a disbeliever. 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
Can you really get something for nothing?
Have you ever stopped to think that we spend a great deal of time striving for 'nothing'? When you look a little bit closer we do it every day, and it's been happening for a while. Some brands pride themselves on the fact they sell 'nothing' – just think of Antipodes water (the purest water in New Zealand), Charlie's Orange Juice (the juice, the whole juice and nothing but the juice) and Icebreaker (nature's genius, engineered for us). It seems to me that the more 'nothing' on offer, the more it costs, or at the very least, the more we want it.
It doesn't stop there though. Your product, or service doesn't have to be super premium to qualify and claim the 'nothing' phenomenon. It's intrinsic in our every day lives. We pay more for the property with the unhindered view, or the larger section so you can have your own territory of 'nothing'. We even treat ourselves to that holiday so we can 'get away from it all'. No phones, no pile of work, just being.
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. —
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. —
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. —
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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