Case in point- I was working with a large pharma company that wanted to create hype around a new product (not exactly an exciting product). They were so bent on busting into the iPhone terrain and creating an “engaging” app that they lost sight of what really mattered: brand recognition and increased product awareness. They had us deliberate for hours to jostle up an app concept that served the core business agenda, and yet wheedled away at the features until only the “engaging” factor remained. By succumbing to the iPhone craze and pushing the “number of downloads” KPI to the top of list over “mobile website tap rate”, they dis-serviced themselves by stripping away the elements that would ultimately lead to brand awareness and support the product launch. Sadly, analytics revealed that while the app had over 1000 downloads per month in the months following the release, less than 2% actually tapped on the link that bridged the app to the brand & product. Essentially, entertainment was delivered, but the core business driver was lost and the objective of the iPhone app was never realized. Many tens of thousands of dollars later, a key lesson was learned: build apps that fortify your brand and are aligned with your business agenda and objectives. It’s easy to get caught up in the hype of an emerging, dominating digital trend, but it takes discipline to step back and make sure the business objectives don’t take the backseat over the more glamorous push.

1. The challenge of managing business stakeholder requirements with what online consumers really need and want
2. Getting overly seduced by sexy Ajaxian interaction at the expense of simplicity and convenience.
3. Poor understanding of creating bilateral brand experiences. All too often, companies just jump on the “Web 2.0″ bandwagon without forming a social media strategy.

These factors, amongst others, taint the customer experience and require media teams  to create a customer-centric digital strategy. Follow these three steps to mitigate these challenges and  capture a bigger marketspace by welcoming “headroom” customers (i.e. individuals who are not yet committed to you or your competitors):

1. Listen to your customers- several years ago, listening could only be completed through expensive usability studies. Not every project necessitates full-blown usability studies; you can harness powerful insight through more affordable means, specifically:

• Direct observation of family/friends- give them a $10 gift card, pull out your camera, fit them into a persona, and give them a go, while you aptly watch to find improvement opportunities.
• Plug into all the social media channels through listeners- although enterprise social media adoption has increased manifold over the past 3 years, companies are still struggling with harnessing value out of the myriad of data out there. Leverage tools such as Cision or Vocus to fish through all the core channels and segregate the data to gauge tone and messaging.

2. Power Analytics- today, data is not power as it once used to be. Information is king, and extracting info from piles of data takes robust analytics capabilities. There are dozens of web analytics engines out there that will help you get the data, but ensure that you’re tracking the right experience KPIs and making that data accessible to your user experience team & information architects so that they can marry customer insight from usability studies and social media listeners with precise data on how users are interacting with your site and where there are usability gaps/blips.

3. Build bilateral customer experiences- Gone are the days where companies push their messages onto consumers. Today, consumers have greater clout than ever before, and if your company fails to tap into two-media (e.g. WOMs, social networks, blogs, chat programs, etc), you will miss out on a crucial opportunity to engage in a dialogue with customers. The cost- pretty minimal. Start with tweeting away on Twitter, conversing through Facebook (ask questions, share stories and information that is relevant to the audience), and figuring out how to integrate WOMs & blogs into your overall social media strategy. Remember to capitalize on the synergies between all your channels, instead of a run & gun one-off approach, to create powerful new connections with your consumer.

The underlying premise for all three steps is open communication. Don’t let corporate politics stymie progress by pocketing information. Marketing, creative teams (info arch/user experience), public relations, information management, and business units need to collaborate and share info to ensure your customer experience is crafted based on all available information.

I’d be glad to provide free advice and insight to your company to help you get started. Reach me at brijeshp@gmail.com

The answer, from my experience, is simple: pictures. You read it- simple, unadulterated, crisp & clear pictures. How, you may be wondering, will pictures solve those woes? Visual communications can be a project manager’s most effective tool to drive the message home; keep project team, vendors, and stakeholders aligned; and communicate the whole picture to minimize communication gaps and keep projects running strong. Bottom line- visuals play a strategic role in clarifying and presenting information

When I say pictures, I don’t necessarily mean the high-end graphics that one can only create with Photoshop, InDesign, and Omnigraffle. It’s amazing what a simple pen and paper can accomplish. The who, what, when, where, and how of any situation just jives better when presented pictorially than words alone.

The next question is- how does a PM visualize and create the proper pictures? Dan Roam gives the perfect solution in his book “The Back of the Napkin,” as he presents five questions to help focus visual ideas:

1. Simple or elaborate? Vary the level of simplicity versus elaboration of a diagram to match the expertise of the listeners

2. Quality or quantity? Do you need charts and graphs, or compelling graphics to complement the words?

3. Vision or execution? Do you need to communicate “we know where we’re going” or “we know exactly how we’re going to get there”?

4. Individual or a comparison? Is your message focused on a single concept/idea/person/thing or a comparison of multiple concepts/ideas/people/things?

5. The way things are versus the way they could be. Do you need to communicate today’s status quo or tomorrow’s delta?

Thoughts?

-brijesh

Over the past five years, we have been witnessing the burgeoning of social media as a major shakeup and impetus for marketing, advertising, public relations, and web strategies. Online communities, social networks and blogs have taken off and are engaging, influencing, and connecting people around the world. We have witnessed user-generated content have a tremendous bottoms-up effect, slowly penetrating and  influencing the mainstream media. No single person can attest to the far-reaching impact of social media than the small-town Scottish singer. Within just days of her appearance, YouTube became saturated with different renditions of Susan’s performance. The surging hits and buzz around Susan Boyle quickly percolated into mainstream media and she became a celebrity icon across the world. Any doubts about the pervasive impact of social media have been cast aside- social media is the real deal.

What makes Susan Boyle such a hit? After all, reality shows have been producing platinum singers for nearly a decade. The answer lays in a fundamental principle known as juxtaposition, i.e., throwing together two disparate concepts to enable people to see things in an entirely different light. The immediate visual conjured when we say “music icon” is that of a physically attractive human specimen. Although our vocal chords have no correlation to our physical attractiveness, much like many other professions, looks certainly go a long way in the music industry. Susan Boyle, a 48 year old virgin who is not necessarily physically appealing, violates this cognition and, in doing so, creates a juxtaposition- a woman with a celestial voice who strays from the typical physical profile. The moment she stepped up on that stage, she was expected to fail based on appearance, but the juxtaposition of her singing to beauty has caught and opened the world’s eye, and in many cases, has inspired people to look beyond looks. We can learn a lot from Susan’s triumph for our own digital strategies. Introducing elements of juxtaposition that violate preconceived personalities, notions, styles, or concepts will resonate with targeted customers.