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Archives for February 2015

How to increase your return on content (here’s a clue: Press Play…)

video-content
Remember that corporate website you visited yesterday? You know – the one that was very light on content? Or how about the site you looked at the day before? You must remember that – there was lots of stuff on that site, although admittedly it wasn’t very engaging, was it?

No? You don’t remember either of them. Well I’m not surprised…

The above scenarios may be imaginary, but the context isn’t that far away from reality. Let’s be frank about this. A website with low levels of content or content that just isn’t very good isn’t going to encourage visitors to stay around, let alone remember what the site was trying to say. And this kind of visitor response is of course extremely bad news if you’re trying to tell your corporate story and engage with key stakeholders.

So it’s no surprise that companies are spending more in the quest for quality content that’s engaging, memorable, and, perhaps most important of all, good enough to share on social media. The extra spending required to source good content has to be justified however, just like any other form of corporate expense.

At Corporate Eye, we’ve investigated how different types of content can deliver surprisingly different returns on investment or, as we like to call it: “Content RoI”. Now, a blog post isn’t the best way to go into much detail on how we measure “Content RoI”, but here are some key success indicators to look out for.

If the web content on your site…

  • Creates an emotional connection with a site visitor
  • Encourages sharing to social media
  • And sends out clear engaging messages about your company

…then you’re definitely on the right track.

It’s also important to remember that different types of content can deliver varying returns.

Text can engage and entertain (and I have to say that as the writer of this blog post), but even the best prose can appear a little flat on its own. Combine text with the right kind of visual content however, and this can increase a visitor’s willingness to read by 80%.

It’s also important to note that visual content doesn’t have to be well chosen quality images of the company team, products and services – we’re big fans of using engaging infographic content on web pages, because it’s a great way of grabbing a visitor’s attention and sharing key facts and figures fast. If a web page includes well-chosen quality images or inventive infographics, adding visuals of any type is a sure-fire way to aid content memorability, as we typically remember 80% of what we see, compared to only 20% of what we read.

The king of visual content is unquestionably moving pictures, and that’s no surprise when a whopping 60% of us say we prefer watching video to reading text online. Video can engage a view in a way that can leave even the best text and infographics far behind, and it can do it incredibly quickly.

If a website can include video of the right quality, and also locate it in the right place (in the site structure), video content can successfully…

  • Reduce bounce rate
  • Increase time-on-site
  • And increase recall.

Another great thing about video is that it can be used to tell different stories in different ways. Short interview clips with everyone from the company CEO to front-line staff can quickly get across key messages, ranging from strategy and attitudes to risk, right through to what it’s like to work for the company. Alternatively, videos that tell stories can be used to share everything from what a company does, to corporate values and social responsibility case studies.

Whatever the format of online video content, the rules of “Content RoI” still apply.

If the video content…

  • Creates an emotional connection with a site visitor
  • Encourages sharing to social media
  • And sends out clear engaging messages about your company

…it’s passed the return on investment test with flying colours.

If you’d like to see a great example of how video content can make a fantastic emotional connection with the online visitor, and lead to multiple sharing, then check out Corning’s three videos revolving around their “A Day Made of Glass” theme. These are videos that demand to be seen, and at the time of their release, demanded to be shared too, with over 21 million views on YouTube alone.

The Day of Glass videos are also great examples of custom-made content. And creating content of this standard does require investment, although the potential return, if that content leads to a sharing chain reaction, surely justifies the spending required.

So, the key to effective content is a possibly expensive custom-made video, yes?

Well, no, not necessarily – It’s also possible to create great video content, by using existing corporate video material that shares key messages or common themes. With some clever post-production and creative guidance, we’ve helped some of our clients use video they already have, and turn it into new content that is engaging, memorable and just asking to be shared.

If you’d like to talk to us about getting a better return on your web content, or how you can use visuals and video to connect with key stakeholders, why not drop us a line and we’ll be happy to share our knowledge.

World’s 50 Most Popular Brands

earth globe worldBased on an analysis of billions of online conversations, social media intelligence company Infegy ranked 800 brands to determine which were the world’s 50 most popular brands in 2014. By analyzing billions of online conversations from 2015, Infegy based its ranking on the volume of conversations per brand, the overall positive or negative sentiment for each brand, levels of positive purchase intent, and the topics people reference when talking about brands.

According to the study, Google is the most popular brand of 2014 followed by Twitter, Facebook, Apple, and Tumblr. This is the second year in a row that Google has taken the top spot.

However, it was Disney that got the most positive brand sentiment (86%) in social conversations during 2014 followed by Nordstrom (83%), Mercedes-Benz (81%), Adidas (81%), and BMW (81%). On the other hand, CNN got the most negative brand sentiment in social conversations (52%) of the top 50 most popular brands followed by Fox (52%), Soundcloud (51%), Tumblr (46%), and NBC International (43%).

In terms of purchase intent, FitBit was highest at 36% followed by Amazon.com (23%), Google (22%), PayPal (18%), and Playstation (14%). The brands that ranked lowest of the top 50 most popular brands of 2014 in terms of purchase intent were Soundcloud (0%), CNN (2%), MTV (3%), BBC (3%), and NBA (3%).

The biggest jump in ranking was experienced by Chipotle, which moved up to 46th place (a 13-spot increase) while Chevrolet experienced the biggest fall of the top 50 to 30th place (down from 20th place the prior year).

Five new brands made it onto the list of the 50 most popular brands in 2014. They are Flappy Bird (#39), NBC International (#42), Toyota (#44), Intel (#45), and Fox (#48).

The Infegy data also provides statistics related to brand popularity by gender. According to the report, MTV, Starbucks, Chipotle, BMW, and Flappy Bird ranked highest among women. For men, MLB (Major League Baseball), NBA (National Basketball Association), NFL (National Football League), Playstation, and XBox ranked highest.

Technology brands make up 70% of the top 10 most popular brands of 2014 according to the Infegy study. Those top 10 most popular brands are:

  1. Google
  2. Twitter
  3. Facebook
  4. Apple
  5. Tumblr
  6. Disney
  7. Microsoft
  8. BMW
  9. YouTube
  10. Nike

You can follow the link at the beginning of this article to view the full list of the top 50 most popular brands as well as to see additional data related to brand sentiment, purchase intent, and gender.

Image: Stephanie Hofschlaeger

Usability, Customer Service and Website Workarounds

usabilityIf your website is causing your staff to have to work around it, or perhaps even duplicate the work of the website, then it is time to review the site’s design and functionality.

Every time you find yourself explaining to a customer that there’s a problem with the website it should serve as a reminder to get it fixed—or, if you’re in a big company, to get a message to those responsible for the site to explain the impact on the customer-facing front line.

***
Example:

I recently made an appointment online at a well-known large department store. It was straightforward and simple to do. Exactly on brand.

I was asked to pick a consultant from a list of names, or to select ‘anyone’. Not knowing any of the people, and there being no information to help me choose between them, I chose ‘anyone’.

I received a confirmatory email and a text telling me who I’d been booked to see, and what it would cost. Then, I received a reminder email and a text. That’s fine, though given I’d made the booking so soon before the date, it did mean I had a lot of communications in a short time.

Suggestion: if confirmation and reminder emails and texts go out within a day or two of each other, only send one set.

The day before my appointment, I had a message to say that they’d been double-booked, and they had to rearrange me. After the usual rounds of telephone tag, I spoke to ‘my’ consultant, who told me that it happened quite a lot. “Some problem with the computer system”. Hmm. OK. But this person wasn’t able to rebook me, so I’d get a call the next day.

At this point, I was considering cancelling the booking completely, out of frustration.

I waited. Another person called the next day and conducted a preliminary discussion about what I wanted. She told me that the problem was that not all the staff listed on the website had all the skills required for all the appointments, and the person allocated to me hadn’t had the relevant training.

Suggestion: if you are listing names on the site, and asking the customer to choose someone, give them some indication of which people would be appropriate. Or—better—force an appropriate choice: ideally, given service A has been selected, then only people X, Y and Z would be available to choose from.

Still, the excellent customer service skills of the second person meant that I did make the rebooking. And received another set of 4 messages to tell me what I’d booked when, with whom, and what it would cost.

That was yesterday.

Today I had another call, from yet a third person, to check that I had realised that I would have to pay in advance for this service.

Apparently, some people who book online don’t realise that they have to pay. Yes, despite it saying so on the website, and in each of the (by then) 8 texts and emails. So, the store calls people who have made a booking to check that they know they’ll have to pay. And yet they didn’t ask me to make that payment as part of this call (I offered; but they said ‘no, pay on the day’).

That makes 6 phone calls between me and the store dealing with this simple online booking.

Suggestion: given that the store has a high-function online shop (I know, because I buy from them regularly), why not take online visitors who have booked an appointment for which they have to pay in advance through the online checkout immediately? That way the store gets its money in advance, and people who haven’t realised that they have to pay, and don’t want to, will drop out of the process, freeing up the appointment time for someone else.

Final, and most important, suggestion: if you suspect that a web page isn’t clear to the visitor, then review the web page. Maybe the content isn’t clear, or the process is confusing. In this case, maybe a mandatory checkbox ‘I understand that this will cost £x’ before completion would help.

I know that people skim read online, but some usability testing would not only reduce the level of frustration in their customers, but also reduce the workload on their staff, and hence costs (a bit).

And I wouldn’t have had that brand-damaging experience.

Brands with the Most Loyal Customers in 2015

shirt shoppingBrand Keys has released its annual ranking of the brands with the most loyal customers. This year’s ranking includes 64 categories and 540 brands that were self-identified by over 36,000 U.S. consumers between the ages of 18 and 65.

Overall, the 2015 ranking includes 36 new brands, which means consumers are actively looking for brand replacements in many categories. Some new brands that made it on the list for the first time this year include Under Armour, Reddit, Lyft, and Microsoft Surface. One of these debut brands ranked first in its category—Air Canada.

Other brands that have been on the list in the past but took the top spot in their categories for the first time in 2015 include Facebook, Chipotle, Exxon Mobile, Travelocity, Nationwide, and Kellogg’s Nutri-Grain Breakfast Bars.

Brands that held onto the top spot in their categories since the 2014 ranking include Hyundai, Google, Domino’s, Ford, Avis, Dunkin’ Donuts, and Konica Minolta.

Overall, Apple takes the top spot in the most categories with customers ranking it as the brand they’re most loyal to in three categories: laptop computers, smartphones, and tablets.

Here are the top brands in 2015 based on customer loyalty according to Brand Keys’ in several popular categories:

  • Airline: Air Canada
  • Athletic Footwear: Nike
  • Automotive: Ford and Hyundai
  • Banks: Chase
  • Credit Cards: American Express and Discover
  • Laptop Computers: Apple
  • Online Music: Pandora
  • Online Retailers: Amazon
  • Online Travel Site: Travelocity
  • Online Video Streaming: Netflix
  • Printers: Canon
  • Search Engine: Google
  • Smartphone: Apple
  • Social Networking Sites: Facebook
  • Tablets: Apple

It’s important to note that there is a growing gap between what customers expect to get from brands and what brands are actually delivering to consumers. Brand Keys found that although customer expectations have increased by 28% across all of the categories in the 2015 study, brands have only improved their ability to meet customer expectations by 7% over the prior year.

The most important part of branding is massaging consumer perceptions so they have realistic expectations for your brand (i.e., the expectations that you want them to have) and then meeting or exceeding those expectations in every brand interaction. Today, it’s too easy to switch to a new brand. If your brand fails to meet consumer expectations, they’ll turn away from it and find another that does meet their expectations in every interaction.

Are you meeting your customers’ expectations for your brand? Remember, if your brand lets your customers down, it’s very difficult to regain their trust. Without their trust, there is no loyalty and your brand will fail. Close the gap!

Image: Robert Linder

The World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies in 2015

innovation idea lightbulbThe world’s most innovative company in 2015 might surprise you. According to Forbes’ annual ranking, the most innovative company today isn’t Apple (which ranked second on the list), and it’s not Google (which ranked fourth). It’s not Facebook or Twitter (neither company ranked in the list of the 50 most innovative companies, although Facebook’s Instagram did rank in fifth place).

So which company is the most innovative in 2015?

In 2015, the most innovative company in the world is Warby Parker, an eyewear company that started as an ecommerce startup and today has retail locations around the United States with $100 million in revenue. The CEOs of Warby Parker attribute the company’s success to their “deliberate” prioritization of the brand.

Here are the top 10 most innovative brands of 2015 according to the Forbes ranking:

  1. Warby Parker
  2. Apple
  3. Alibaba
  4. Google
  5. Instagram
  6. Color of Change
  7. HBO
  8. Virgin America
  9. IndiGo
  10. Slack

This year’s list of the most innovative companies in the world includes companies from every continent except Antarctica making it a truly global list. The list features newcomers like WeWork and American Giant as well as global companies like Toyota, L’Oreal, and Tesla and Kickstarter companies like Oculus VR and Kano.

Forbes shared 20 lessons of innovation for 2015 that its staff learned while developing this year’s list of the most innovative companies. You can follow the link to read all of the lessons (it’s well worth it!). Five lessons that really caught my attention are:

  • Innovation requires speed, and velocity of change can make or break innovation.
  • Every company is a tech company regardless of the industry they operate in.
  • Platforms are powerful and can drive innovation execution.
  • Innovation follows the traditional bell-curve lifecycle, which means companies that fall off of the list of the most innovative companies can get back on the list as their innovations mature.
  • Collaborative disruption facilitates innovation and partnerships are becoming more common as companies realize the benefits of collaborative innovation.

You can follow the link at the beginning of this article to see the full list of the 50 most innovative companies of 2015 as well as a breakdown of the companies by sector. One thing is certain, it’s great to see a variety of companies on this list rather than the same “innovative” companies that always appear on these lists like Apple and Google.

What do you think? Are you surprised by any of the companies that made the list this year or any of the companies that didn’t make the 2015 list? Leave a comment and share your thoughts on the 50 most innovative companies of 2015.

Image: Raja R

What is Non-Linear Video Marketing?

We all know that the way we consume content online is changing fast. I invited Jon Mowat to tell us how he sees the best way to approach video marketing, given these changes…

Over to you, Jon!

omniscreening
Video marketing has changed.

Gone are the days of creating elaborate advertising and putting it out as identical videos, across as many platforms as you can think of. In today’s interactive world people aren’t just consuming video content across a multitude of platforms, they’re interacting with it and sharing it across vibrant communities and in all manner of different ways and at all times of the day.

As a result marketers are scrabbling over each other to get their brand noticed over the din. This is marketing in the frenetic and dislocated world of the non-linear brand narrative.

Omniscreening

To understand how non-linear brand narratives work we must first consider the environment that predicated their emergence. This isn’t just about the growth of social media, this is about how people consume content on social media across multiple devices, often simultaneously. This is a crucial distinction as it helps us understand the way multiple narratives can be blended together.

The consumption of content across multiple devices is called omniscreening and it’s likely we’ve all done it at one point in our lives (many of us will do it on a regular basis). More often than not it involves sitting in front of the television while consuming content on your smartphone or tablet at the same time. It is this idle flicking between screens that has offered video marketers the potential to emigrate from the television advert break and colonise the content we consume on every screen we stare at. These are brand narratives that span platforms and formats and they are extremely powerful.

Omniscreening lies at the heart of the non-linear narrative and it has come about as a result of the habits we have fallen into in this 24/7 digitally connected age.

Minutes and Moments

Dr Simon Hampton is a psychology lecturer at the University of East Anglia and has noted that our tendency to flick between screens is grounded in basic and well understood human psychology.

“People’s inability to leave their phone alone is the newest addition to common displacement behaviours such as smoking, doodling, fiddling and picking. 62% of 18 – 32 year olds prefer to check their smartphone if they have any ‘downtime’ rather than just sit and think and 37% say they check their smartphone if there’s a lull in conversation with friends.”

Hampton’s studies have informed the concept of what I call minutes and moments. For most of its existence, traditional video marketing has been more or less confined to the television screen but now we carry our screens around with us in our pockets.

Advertising and marketing your brand on these mobile forever-connected screens is a world away from the passive audiences of the traditional TV ad break.

Consumers are often seeking out content without knowing what it is beforehand, browsing through a sea of information to fill that two minute window. Attention spans in this content saturated world are far shorter and can switch off or flick between apps and videos in a split second, so it’s become crucial to grab their attention in a short space of time.

These are the ‘moments’ in our non-linear narrative and they involve strong, bold emotional grabs utilising short form content on platforms like YouTube but notably also Vine and Instagram.

Telling a Story While Guiding Behaviour

Video marketers have long understood the need for emotional marketing to build brand recognition but linear advertising, however emotionally powerful, is not enough. Establishing non-linear narratives across social media and television allows consumers to engage and influence the story as it evolves and even tell their own stories, exploring your brand in a far more organic way. Marketing on Vine, YouTube, Instagram and other platforms involves understanding each platform and the audience you are engaging with on it. The desires, interests and demographics of avid Vine consumers may differ significantly from the casual YouTube consumer.

Vine users are interested in short, snappy messages, entertaining video clips that loop well and other bite-size content. Vine is great for reminding people about your brand, but it does not work so well for education. YouTube, on the other hand, allows for longer videos and attracts viewers who are willing to watch that content. YouTube videos can be longer and more educational or can tell a more detailed story. What works well when you are marketing in minutes is not the same as what works when you are marketing in moments.

It’s easy to mistake marketing in moments as simply trying to make noise by making bold evocative statements, but it is also crucial that you establish your narrative in these short vignettes. Brand recognition precedes and confirms brand association, which in turn created brand identity. Taking a viewer through this subconscious journey can be a subtle one and involve a number of different videos before an association has been made and a narrative ‘theme’ or ‘arc’ can be established. A shared video on Facebook here and a randomly discovered Vine there builds a picture and slowly draws the viewer into the wider narrative. These are when your minutes come in and it’s where you can actually talk about the benefits of your product in a more down to earth and more logical manner… in other words, this is the part where you get the chance to actually try and sell something.

Thanks, Jon…

Jon Mowat is the Managing Director and creator of Bristol based video production company, Hurricane Media, and has brought his expertise to bear across a number of successful content and video content marketing campaigns for both large blue chip corporations and small to medium sized businesses.