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Archives for 2015

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.

UK Consumers Will Share Private Data with Brands Under Certain Conditions

data sharing privacyWant UK consumers to share their private data with your brand so you can use it to develop personalized and highly targeted brand marketing campaigns? Don’t assume because you’ve been in business a long time or have a lot of positive customer reviews that consumers will start giving you all of the data you ask for. They won’t. However, there is a way to get more UK consumers to share their data with your brand. As eMarketer reports, the key is communication.

Based on the results of a study by DBS Data, the Direct Marketing Association UK, and fast.MAP, UK consumers want two primary things from brands in order to share their private data with them: trust in the brand and a clear and concise data protection policy. Let’s take a closer look at the findings from the study.

Here is the ranking of reasons UK internet users said they believe a brand will handle their data responsibly:

  1. Trust in the brand = 26%
  2. Clear and concise data protection policy = 25%
  3. Ask with whom they can share data = 19%
  4. Give me the option of how to communicate = 19%
  5. Previous experience of good customer service = 18%
  6. Easy-to-use website with obvious security = 15%
  7. Ability to update/edit data held = 11%
  8. Easy to find data protection policy = 10%
  9. Thorough contact details = 9%
  10. High street presence = 8%
  11. Positive customer reviews = 8%
  12. Been in business a long time = 6%

The results of this survey are good news for brands. There are some very specific ways that you can increase consumer trust in your brand and convince them to share their private data with your brand.

First, develop a transparent, easy to read, and easy to understand data protection policy, and make it easy to find and read. Second, give them choices so they feel like they’re in control. Allow them to choose who you can share their data with and how to communicate with you. Third, your customer service team is often the “face” of your brand, and how they treat customers trickles through to affect many aspects of your business, including brand trust and your ability to collect customer data. With that in mind, make sure the customer service team is well-trained not only in serving customers but also in advocating the brand and building brand trust with callers.

Do you collect data from your online customers? Leave a comment and share what works well for your brand.

Image: ilker

Brand Social Customer Service is Failing Consumers

question marksConsumers want social customer service, but according to the fourth quarter 2014 data from Social Bakers’ Socially Devoted study, consumers are very disappointed in the customer service they’re actually receiving from brands on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites.

To put this problem into perspective, Social Bakers reports that the telecom industry offered the best social customer service during the fourth quarter of 2014, but even that industry leaves a lot to be desired. If you asked a question via social media that was directed to a telecom brand during that time period, there was a 33% chance it would be answered if asked on Facebook and only a 14% chance if it had been asked on Twitter. And that’s the best performing industry! No wonder consumers are disappointed in the social customer service they receive from brands.

What all companies need to understand is that social media isn’t just for brand marketing. Consumers expect companies to offer customer service through brand social media profiles and pages, too. In the retail industry, the demand for social customer service increased by 22.1% during the fourth quarter of 2014! Other industries where the demand for social customer service increased the most during the fourth quarter are e-commerce (up 20.5%), software (up 17.2%), services (up 14.4%), and industrial (up 13.8%).

Social Bakers points out that providing customer service via social media increases social interactions with “socially devoted” brands getting 3.4-times more interactions than “non-socially devoted” brands. In other words, every one of those interactions could lead to a conversion or sale—directly or indirectly.

The Top 5 Brands Offering Social Customer Service

The five brands that provided the most social customer service on Facebook during the fourth quarter of 2014 were:

  1. KLM – 99.1% response rate and 99 minutes response time
  2. Robi Axiata Limited – 99.0% response rate and 20 minutes response time
  3. Grameenphone – 95.9% response rate and 88 minutes response time
  4. Banglalink Meia – 98.8% response rate and 41 minutes response time
  5. Telkomsei – 65.3% response rate and 35 minutes response time

The five brands that provided the most social customer service on Twitter during the fourth quarter of 2014 were:

  1. Telkomsei – 70.6% response rate and 7 minutes response time
  2. STC – 81.6% response rate and 32 minutes response time
  3. ASOS Here to Help – 71.1% response rate and 316 minutes response time
  4. Virgin Media – 67.6% response rate and 256 minutes response time
  5. O2 in the UK – 67.6% response rate and 371 minutes response time

Follow the link at the beginning of this article to get the full top 10 brand lists as well as all of the statistics from the Social Bakers study.

One thing is certain, consumers want brands to offer customer service via social media, and they expect the response rate to be high and the response time to be low. If you’re not delivering on those wants and expectations, you’re disappointing your customers.

Image: Benito LeGrande

Facebook’s Growing Problem – Passive Users

keyboard passiveFacebook is the most popular social networking site in the world (except China) with the most members (81%) and the most active users (42%) according to December 2014 data from GlobalWebIndex. However, Facebook was the only large social network to see its active usage drop in 2014 (by 9%). At the same time, Facebook is facing an even bigger problem, which GlobalWebIndex refers to as passive Facebooking.

As 2014 drew to a close, GlobalWebIndex reports that only 52% of Facebook users were active users, which is a significant drop from 70% in 2012. When they do use Facebook, users are just browsing without actually posting or commenting on anything they read or see. In December 2014, two out of five Facebook users (not including China) used the site passively to browse but not to interact.

What’s causing the shift to passive Facebooking? Is it that people are becoming more interactive on other social media sites? Are they unhappy with privacy and tracking policies used on Facebook? Are they using their mobile devices to access Facebook which makes them less likely, statistically, to interact rather than just consume content? Have changes to how Facebook presents information in users’ news feeds affected their behavior?

While Facebook is seeing a decline in active usage (although still at levels higher than other social media sites), competitors are seeing huge gains. Pinterest grew its active users by 97% in 2014 while Tumblr grew active users by 95%. Snapchat was the fastest growing social/messaging application in 2014 (+57%), and YouTube is getting visits from more people (82% of internet users between the ages of 16 and 64) than Facebook (73%).

GlobalWebIndex also reports that the total amount of time that people spend on social networks continues to increase. In 2012, they spent an average of 1.61 hours per day on social networks, and in 2014, that number increased to 1.72 hours per day.

Bottom-line, social networking and social media overall continue to grow, but Facebook appears to already be moving past the maturity stage into the decline stage. If the trend toward passive usage continues, the company could be in big trouble very soon. Already, brands are unhappy with how Page updates are displayed to fans, making it nearly necessary to pay for advertising to get any brand exposure on the the site. For a site that depends on interaction of its users for many things, passive usage is a very big problem.

What do you think? Should Facebook be worried? Are you investing your 2015 social media time and online advertising budgets into Facebook at the same levels you have in the past or are you shifting your brand to other social sites? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Image: Teresa Howes

State of Marketing 2015

calendarLeads, acquisition, and technology top the list of marketers’ highest priorities and biggest challenges in 2015 according to Salesforce Marketing Cloud’s 2015 State of Marketing report.

It’s important to note that marketers from around the world participated in the Salesforce survey, so these results are representative of a diverse pool of marketers, companies, and industries.

While challenges abound for marketers in 2015, budget increases will focus on digital marketing, particularly social media and mobile marketing.

In total, 84% of respondents to the Salesforce survey indicated that they plan to increase digital marketing spending in 2015 with the most common budget increases going to: social media engagement (67%), location-based mobile tracking (67%), mobile applications (66%), mobile-push notifications (65%), web personalization (65%), marketing automation (63%), and content marketing (62%).

Despite these budget increases for digital marketing strategies and tactics, calculating return on investment did not rank as one of the most important metrics for marketers in 2015. Revenue growth ranked as the most important metric for 32% of marketers who responded to the survey followed by customer satisfaction, which ranked as the most important metric for 30% of respondents. Only 23% of respondents said that customer retention, acquisition, and ROI, collectively, was the most important metric to track marketing performance.

Taking a closer look at the high priority challenges identified by marketers for 2015, respondents ranked 20 specific challenges. The full breakdown is shown below. Notice that the gap from the top priority challenge and the lowest priority challenge is only 19 percentage points (not including the “Other” response). In other words, marketers have a lot of challenges and they’re all priorities.

Marketers Top Challenges in 2015

  1. New business development = 27%
  2. Quality of leads = 27%
  3. Remaining up to date with current marketing technology and trends = 27%
  4. Customer acquisition = 26%
  5. Quantifying marketing’s return on investment = 25%
  6. Integration of marketing tools and systems = 25%
  7. Demand and lead generation = 23%
  8. Budget constraints = 23%
  9. Building deeper customer relationships = 22%
  10. Creating personalized, cross-channel experiences = 22%
  11. Producing unique, original content = 22%
  12. Using existing data to drive more relevant messages and experiences = 21%
  13. Keeping pace with competitors = 21%
  14. Staying ahead of social media trends = 21%
  15. Talent acquisition and retention = 20%
  16. Understanding what data to analyze = 20%
  17. Shifting consumer demographics = 19%
  18. Channel expansion and device adoption = 18%
  19. Enterprise-level system optimization = 18%
  20. Other = 1%

It’s not surprising to see the expected increase in digital marketing budgets in 2015 given the positive results marketers have had with social media and mobile marketing. The Salesforce study found that 68% of marketers believed their email marketing and social media marketing efforts were effective. Other digital marketing tactics were reported as effective by 58% or more of the survey respondents.

Comparing marketers’ opinions about their top challenges, anticipated budget increases, and prior program effectiveness, it’s not surprising to see digital marketing as a top priority for marketers in 2015. Now, they just have to ensure their investments are driving leads and converting those leads into new customers. Of course, that’s a challenge that never stops for marketers.

 Image: Felipe Wiecheteck