Infectious communication is the result of creating such compelling experiences and content that your customers enthusiastically become your best advocates.

It involves any method through which your message is conveyed by willing and (usually) unpaid intermediaries. It can cover everything from word of mouth to shared media such as TedTalks, for example. Success is when things go ‘viral’ and develop a life of their own beyond your control, scary though that may be.

More and more organizations see the benefits of infectious communication. Brands such as Burberry, LEGO and Apple are moving most of their marketing activity to social media platforms. Unfortunately many others are simply applying old rules to new media. You see it on websites that are clunky to use and therefore deliver poor user experiences. You see it with demeaning pleas for customers to ‘Like us’ on Facebook, or worse still, the purchase of followers and fans from sweat shops in India. Why do some organizations simply not get the power of infectious communication and how to achieve it?

Marketing Should Be A Verb, Not A Noun

The answer to the above question is that in many organizations marketing has become a noun, a set of processes and a function. Instead it should be a verb, a set of behaviors and everything that an organization does. When John Lewis, Arthur Guinness and Conrad Hilton started their brands they saw marketing holistically. They believed that it was how they treated their customers and ran their companies. But, perhaps, because of the introduction of the scientific view of management largely founded by Frederick Taylor and continued by Alfred Sloan in his time at General Motors, fueled by the rigor of P&G’s approach to brand marketing in the 1960s and 1970s, and reinforced by the plethora of MBA programs since then, marketing has become a function supported by its own set of rigid principles not dissimilar in their rigor to finance. But this is changing.

The advent of social media has opened up so many communication channels that are beyond the remit of traditional ‘above the line’ marketers. The ways in which consumers form impressions of brands are so much richer than advertising alone that marketing activity has become an experience in and of itself in many organizations. Adam Greenwood, a teen ‘vlogger’, discovered that there was no toilet paper available when he used the toilet on the Virgin Train from Euston to Glasgow so he did what any good millennial would do – he tweeted Virgin HQ about it. Virgin picked up the tweet and within a few minutes a Virgin employee was knocking on the door with a roll 
of toilet paper to rescue Adam from his predicament. That tweet and its  follow-up story have been ‘liked’ and shared by over 6,000 people.

Is this story about customer service? Is it about complaint resolution? Or is it about marketing? The answer to all of these is ‘yes’. The fact is that ‘above the line’ is now ‘below the radar’ for many consumers.

Research by Thales S Teixeira for a Harvard Business Review article revealed that the percentage of ads considered fully viewed and getting high attention has decreased dramatically, from 97 per cent in the early 1990s to less than 20 per cent in 2015. In 2013, the average American was exposed to about 52,000 TV commercials. So it is no surprise that, in these days of remote controls, TiVo and digital video recorders, consumers vote with their fingers and skip the ads – unless they are entertained. The most powerful way to entertain people is to engage them emotionally through brand storytelling. At Christmas 2014, the British supermarket brand Sainsbury in partnership with the Royal British Legion released a moving video that celebrated relationships forged in the First World War. Despite it being 3 minutes 40 seconds long, nearly 17 million people have viewed it on YouTube.

Tell A Story That People Care About

John Lewis Partnership released its own Christmas ad, also celebrating relationships, in this case featuring a penguin. It has been viewed nearly 23 million times.

Neither of these ads promoted a brand or a product. They told a story that was emotionally engaging about a higher purpose – being with people whom you care about at Christmas.

So we have two interesting but opposing trends: one is the decline in consumer attention to traditional advertising and therefore the increasing cost of buying awareness; the other is the increasing trend for consumers to willingly view marketing material and even share it if it strikes a chord. How much would John Lewis have had to pay to air their ad on prime-time television to attract 23 million viewers, we wonder?

Some brands go even further. LEGO’s purpose is ‘to inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow’ and it does this through its range of plastic building blocks but also increasingly through its social platforms and media activity. In February 2014 it released The LEGO Movie to critical and consumer acclaim. By September 2014 the movie had enjoyed sales of $468 million and LEGO was reporting a shortage of product. The trailer has also been viewed over 27 million times on YouTube. If you are one of the apparently few people that haven’t yet seen it you can do so here.

Think about that for a moment. LEGO has earned nearly $500 million in income by enticing consumers to sit through a 98-minute advertisement for the brand. A very high proportion of those viewers were ‘highly qualified prospects’ in the jargon of marketers – kids, to you and me. LEGO achieved this by creating marketing that is so infectious that their target consumers are willing and enthusiastic participants.

Bigger Is Not Better

One of the things about infectious communication is that it is a great leveler. You don’t need to be a large corporate or spend mega-bucks to get your message across. In fact, the less you can spend the more likely it is that you will hit on something that really works because it forces you to be innovative.

For example, Air Canada staged an experiential event in a bar in London called ‘The Maple Leaf’ – which is popular with Canadians – in order to highlight its London to Canada service. A pilot and flight attendants visited the crowded bar and gave away free tickets so that expat Canadians could be with their families at Christmas. Here’s the result.

First Direct, the online bank owned by HSBC, went out to 580,000 of their customers and asked them what they liked most about the brand. Their answer was that being able to engage with a real person rather than an interactive voice response was really important for them. So First Direct said, ‘Great, would any of you like to be in our ad?’ Hundreds of customers said, ‘Yes!’ and so First Direct’s advertising agency created a number of advertisements featuring customers speaking about their First Direct experience. One, named ‘Call Center’, featured a customer speaking about her experience of calling First Direct and being able to speak to a person to get help any time of the day or night. The ad was shot in a bare room with the customer speaking to a single hand-held camera. She is nervous and stumbles over her words, but her enthusiasm for First Direct is clear. The simple treatment, engaging tone and authenticity are estimated to have produced 5 million in incremental revenues for First Direct – the ad cost next to nothing to make.

This was probably one of the first examples of crowdsourcing, and First Direct has continued to engage with its customers since then. It now has a section of its website called ‘Lab’, which tests new product and service ideas and invites customers to try them and give their feedback. First Direct has won numerous awards, including Best Banking Brand by Which?, and it remains the most recommended bank in the UK – achieving an NPS rating of 62 per cent in an industry that scores an average NPS of 0 per cent, according to Satmetrix Systems UK research. First Direct’s score is remarkable for any brand, let alone a bank.

Traditional marketing can be costly, slow and unengaging. Robert Stephens, founder of the Geek Squad, says, ‘Marketing is a tax that you pay for being unremarkable.’ There is a great deal of truth in Stephens’s comment; it often seems that the more boring the brand, the larger the marketing budget.

The average marketing campaign can take months to plan and execute, with all the risk that by the time it is aired circumstances have changed. For example, AT&T, Accenture, Gatorade and Gillette all dropped Tiger Woods from very expensive sponsorship and advertising campaigns in 2009, when he was involved in a car accident following issues with his wife and disclosures of infidelity.

The benefits of infectious communication, by contrast, include cost-efficiency and speed. Infectious communication allows you to be ‘in the moment’ and communicate something that is topical and relevant. But you have to be clever and you have to be fast. In 2014, Nissan produced an ad just seven minutes after Clarence House announced that William and Kate, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, were expecting their second child. Featuring the Nissan X-Trail, the company tweeted a picture of the interior of the vehicle with a crown on each seat. The message accompanying the image was ‘It could be triplets and there would still be enough room for the Queen.’

Plan To Win

You also have to be prepared and organized to take advantage of opportunities. In 2013, during the third quarter of Super Bowl XLVII, a power outage at the Superdome caused the lights to go out for more than half an hour. Within minutes, Oreo cookies tweeted an ad that read ‘Power out? No problem’ with a picture of an Oreo and the caption, ‘You can still dunk in the dark.’ The message was shared 20,000 times on Facebook and Twitter and gathered 525 million earned media impressions (five times the number of people who actually watched the Super Bowl (and its ads) on TV). Despite the fact that it was a spontaneous, unscheduled tweet on social media, Adweek voted it one of the Top 5 ads of Super Bowl night. Oreo achieved this because they had a 15-person social media team ready to respond to whatever happened at the Super Bowl within 10 minutes or less – and they were aware of a survey that showed 36 per cent of the Super Bowl audience would be consulting a second screen while watching the game.

The effects of infectious communication are long lasting. If you Google Oreo Super Bowl even now, you will find a plethora of references and links to it. But the important thing is to ensure that your social media message is consistent with what your brand stands for.

Excerpted in part from: On Purpose: Delivering A Branded Customer Experience People Love by Shaun Smith & Andy Milligan, in partnership with Kogan Page publishing.

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Sweden national team captain Zlatan Ibrahimovic stars in the Volvo web film ahead of the 2016 UEFA Euro Cup, “Prologue” created by the creative shop Forsman & Bodenfors. Celebrating the independent mind and those who think differently, Volvo has centered in on the uncompromising Swedish striker who will captain his country at this years big tournament in France.

The Made by Sweden ‘Prologue’ ad promotes Volvo’s V90 car while focusing on a solitary Zlatan as he discusses his turbulent upbringing and the mentality which drove him to be one of Sweden’s greatest ever players.

“The campaign is a celebration of the independent mind, of the power that lies in the ability to think differently. There are many similarities between Zlatan’s and Volvo’s journeys. We haven’t got to where we are now by doing the same as everyone else,” said Anders Gustafsson, senior vice president of Volvo for Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Creative Credits:
Advertising Agency: Forsman & Bodenfors

A great TED tidbit we missed the first time around: In TIME Magazine last month, Tipping Point author Malcolm Gladwell (TED04) wrote a tribute to Freakonomics author Steven Levitt (TED04, TEDGlobal), who was honored as one of the TIME 100. It starts like this:

Not long after Freakonomics came out, Steven Levitt and I had a public debate at a salon in downtown Manhattan. The subject was crime. In my book The Tipping Point, I had argued that the cluster of innovative policing strategies known as “broken windows” played a big role in the dramatic drop in New York City’s crime rate. Levitt and his co-author Stephen Dubner argued, to the contrary, that “broken windows” was an illusion and that other factors, like the demographic changes brought about by the legalization of abortion, played a much bigger role. It was a straightforward back-and-forth. Levitt got up and made his case. I got up and made mine. But halfway through, I glanced over at Levitt and had a realization that I’m not sure I’ve ever had before with an intellectual opponent—that if I made my case persuasively and cogently enough, he would change his mind. He was, in other words, listening. More >>

The above-mentioned event was, course, a TED salon. Held at the TED loft in Tribeca, it featured the friendly, timely debate between Gladwell and Levitt, the week Freakonomics was published. Very pleased to see the salon had as much impact on them as it did on us!

By Richard Hardyment, Associate Director, Corporate Citizenship How many businesses can claim to be making a real difference in their communities? If you take a look through any Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) report, it’s filled with bold statements about “transforming lives” and “scaling impact.” However, the reality—according to new research from Corporate Citizenship—is that there’s […]

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to do a joint webinar with Dom Goodrum, VP Design and Employee Experience, at Percolate.  The topic was “Beyond Branding: Designing Brilliant Customer Experiences.”  I ended up learning quite a bit from Dom as we prepared for and delivered the webinar and wanted to highlight a few points he shared about designing the customer journey for Percolate’s customers because they seem relevant and useful to all organizations.

It’s relatively easy for us to understand the customer journey of retail, restaurant, or other consumer goods brands.  After all, we experience these kinds of products and services every day.  But most of us are probably not buyers of business technology like Percolate’s marketing software (Percolate’s clients include the marketing organizations of global brands like Unilever, GE and MasterCard as well as high-growth companies including Chobani, Pandora, and Shinola.)  The customer journey is different for these buyers — it’s more complex, longer, and more involved.

But I was actually surprised to learn that the basic framework Percolate uses to plan its tactics is based on the same building blocks as the customer journeys in most other sectors.  In fact, the framework provides a great universal starting point for any company wanting to design brilliant customer journeys.  There are five steps:

Awareness — Dom explained that, at Percolate, this involves figuring out how to capture its prospects’ imagination.  Percolate uses brand campaigns, direct advertising, and events to generate this kind of productive awareness. Consideration — Then Percolate develops deep materials to convert awareness into purchase consideration. Its product education and in-bound editorial efforts including its blog comprise this step of the journey. Purchase — For Percolate, this involves interactive software demos to walk customers through the benefits it offers. Adoption — This next step is a focal point for Percolate as its goal is to set customers up to be successful with its platform. The company’s service teams spend a lot of time with clients to understand how they work and then to map the software to their needs. Advocacy — Finally Percolate wants its clients to let others know about Percolate and how it’s helped them, since this fuels the customer journey into a virtuous, continuing cycle.

While these steps in the customer journey seem quite straightforward, the actual experience for any customer and for any customer is less linear and more multi-dimensional.  And delivering on them usually involves multiple people and groups within the organization. So companies need to provide the infrastructure and support that ensures the steps are executed appropriately.  Percolate does this through:

culture — The company is committed to constantly training and sharing best practices.  It holds a weekly business meeting to connect its offices around the world and align everyone on the customer journey. process — Percolate uses its own platform to create, centralize, organize, and distribute its marketing assets — not only collateral but also branded templates — and gives every employee access to them. technology — By coding brand guidelines into the content creation workflow, Percolate helps ensure every piece of its content reflects the brand voice and look.  It uses what it calls “brand prompts,” or checklists, which include questions like “Do the images convey a optimistic, positive attitude?” and “Are we presenting progressive issues?” to guide people’s decision-making.  It’s easy to see how helpful this level of specificity would be.

While the webinar was intended to teach the participants about creating remarkable customer experiences in general, I appreciated the opportunity to peek behind the curtain at Percolate and hear about its approach to designing the customer journey for its clients.  I’ve been following the company ever since Noah Brier and his co-founder James Gross started it in 2011.  Given their bold vision to help define the future of marketing, it’s significant that their company’s approach is rooted in the basic fundamentals that should drive all customer experiences.

related:

Designing Brilliant Customer Experiences in the Sharing Economy 7 Steps to Deliver Better Customer Experiences It’s Still About the Experience

The post designing the customer journey appeared first on Denise Lee Yohn.

Although the definition of “television” has evolved dramatically in recent years, consumers’ voracious appetite for video content remains—and continues to grow. More opportunities than ever exist for tech-savvy marketers to identify and communicate with audiences through or alongside video content. This webinar will walk through three dramatic shifts in today’s television world and how marketers can set themselves up for success to take full advantage of these emerging trends. Key takeaways from this webinar included:

Why the consumer is the true driver behind recent changes to the TV industry
A list of challenges that stand in the way of fully realizing programmatic TV’s potential of converting mass reach into hyper-targeted audience outreach
Suggestions for a 2017 video/television media plan to outperform competitors and deliver maximum ROI

Recently I attended the 2013 Rotterdam Design Prize ceremony. The design prize remains one of the few prizes – in the Netherlands and abroad – that makes no distinction between the different design disciplines. I took home an important message from the discussion of jury members – Design in the times to come will be very much about meaningfulness. One of the scout jury observed, “In a world where technology is becoming ever more influential, it is important to me that designers continue to look critically at what it adds.” Now technology is hardly ever a barrier to making what a designer can imagine. As a result, in western world we often have more varieties of things than we can even grasp. Still, new variants and upgrades continue to be added at an ever increasing pace. In this regard it is interesting to watch a video by Lernert & Sander, which is a sarcastic commentary on the ridiculous variety of stuff that we have (in this case, perfumes).

Isn’t time ripe for designers to critically ask themselves, what they are really adding to their subjects’ inner lives by their designs? In sync with the general opinion of the jury, the award went to a tablet/smart phone app that allows schizophrenia patents to tackle on their own, the problem of hearing voices in their head*. The simple app beat nominations such as a flying car and a fancy smoking costume, among others.

Modernism was about emphasis on function and rationality. Post-modernism was (is) about self-expression. Perhaps now we are entering a new era in design – ‘the era of meaningfulness’. And the shift is not just being trumpeted by a handful of elite designers and critics. Quite interestingly, I observed a similar opinion coming from a company, which is as business oriented as any company can be! In his first email to Microsoft employees, CEO Satya Nadella observed – “…doesn’t mean that we need to do more things, but that the work we do empowers the world to do more of what they care about.” It so happens, meaningfulness makes a lot of business sense in present times. Aren’t market capitalizations of companies based on investors’ perception? If something ain’t meaningful, will you value it?

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* P.S.: During one of my master’s courses in 2012, I developed the original concept behind the award winning design for schizophrenia patients. The concept was taken by Parnassia Group (the sponsoring organization of the course), and developed into its present form with the help of a design agency, Reframing Studio.

Despite rapid digital innovation, booming spending on digital services, and spectacular tech-price declines, the New Digital Economy of mobile, broadband, and cloud has had little visible impact thus far on hard measures of growth, productivity, or profits. Optimists argue we just need to be a little more patient. Pessimists suspect that, behind the techno-utopian buzz […]

Listening to social conversations revealed three insights for developing communications strategies geared towards the Hispanic community.

“I think I speak for all writers, when I say that I am delighted by marketing efforts of any sort.”

— Tipping Point author Malcolm Gladwell, commenting in The Guardian on film-style trailers for books, being released online by publishers to build demand for new titles