Category Archives: Uncategorized

Why do some ideas go viral and others don’t?

Posted on by

As marketers, our job is to spread the news about our products or services to as many relevant people as possible using various channels. What marketer wouldn’t want his/her new campaign to go viral and be shared by millions of people? At the end of the day, in an overcrowded competitive landscape it is all about awareness and being top of mind so when consumers want a product, yours is the first one they think about.

But how do you design a campaign that will have a better chance of catching on? After all, 50% of the videos on YouTube have less than 500 views. If nobody passes the message along, then nobody will know about your product.

Can anything go viral?

Conventional wisdom suggests that some ideas are naturally contagious and some aren’t. And this makes intuitive sense if you think about an interesting product such as a cool new smartphone versus a boring old kitchen blender. But when you think about how the ‘Will it blend?’ video series from Blendtec went viral, it makes you question the convention.

Jonah Berger offers a framework to make ideas go viral in his book Contagious. After researching hundreds of campaigns that went viral on YouTube and other social media channels, he identified 6 qualities that are common to all of these ideas, which suggests that virality is not born, it is made.

1. Social Currency

Simply put, social currency refers to the fact that people share things that make them look good to others. If you discover an amazing new hole in the wall restaurant in the city, you want to share that information with your friends. Perhaps you will go online and write a review for it, or you will post on your Facebook to tell your connections to go try it. This gives the information sender social currency by being the person who shares “cool new things” with others.

Things to Consider:

  • Remarkability: Sharing extraordinary and novel stories makes people seem extraordinary. Normally you might not even consider looking at a blender ad, let alone sharing it with your friends. But the unexpected content makes it so remarkable that you do.
  • Game mechanics: Leveraging game mechanics has been an increasingly popular method, especially with gamification. When brands design successful loyalty programs that generate a lot of buzz, there is almost always a game aspect to it. You collect points and as you hit certain milestones, you receive rewards or reach a certain status that puts you in an exclusive tier. (Think airline loyalty programs, air miles etc).
  • Being an insider: When people feel like they are part of a special, exclusive group, they like to talk about it. Because having insider knowledge is social currency. This is generally achieved through scarcity and exclusivity.

2. Triggers

MarsTriggers are the stimuli in the surrounding environment that makes us think of a product or brand. They are environmental reminders for related concepts. When you are walking down the street and smell the coffee aroma wafting from the coffee shop it might remind you that you are running low on coffee at home. We are surrounded by stimuli that constantly trigger related thoughts and concepts. These triggers are important because when particular thoughts are top of mind, it leads to action.

A great example of this is how the candy bar company Mars experienced a completely unexpected increase in sales in 1997. The company was taken by surprise because it had not changed its marketing tactics, nor had it adopted a new pricing strategy. But 1997 was the year that NASA’s Pathfinder successfully reached Mars (the planet, not the candy bar) to collect samples. It was all over every news outlet, which acted as a trigger for many people.

Things to consider:

  • Frequency of the stimulus: It is important to choose a trigger that is frequent enough for people to establish a strong connection to your brand.
  • Strength of the link: If the trigger is tied to too many different things, the link will be weak. If you are using the colour red as a trigger, you might not get too far, as too many other concepts are already tied to that trigger such as Coca Cola, Ferrari and Marlboro to name a few.
  • Where it is happening: You want the triggers to happen near where the desired action takes place. Public service announcements on TV are good examples of this. In general they carry very powerful messages conveyed through remarkable stories but they fail to catch the target audience in the right touch point.

3. Emotions

We are emotional beings driven by our instincts and impulses. As much as we try to act rational in many situations, emotional connections are what make us tick. This is why focusing on feelings rather than the features of a product is much more powerful on a very fundamental level.

When it comes to sparking an emotional response, the most critical thing is to focus on what kind of emotion is evoked. Recent research suggests that high arousal emotions such as anger, awe and excitement trigger action whereas low arousal emotions like contentment and sadness stifle action.

High Arousal Low Arousal
Positive Awe
Excitement
Amusement		 Contentment
Negative Anger
Anxiety		 Sadness

Activating emotions is key to transmission. Anthony Cafaro, who helped create the ‘Parisian Love’ video understands it very well.

“Whether it’s a digital product, like Google, or a physical product, like sneakers, you should make something that will move people. People don’t want to feel like they’re being told something—they want to be entertained, they want to be moved.”

4. Public

To be a bit clearer, we are talking about making what is private public. The premise here is that if a behaviour is observable by others, it is more likely to be widespread. People imitate one another and tend to use others’ behaviour as a guide to make their own decisions. Ideas are much more likely to spread if others can see it out in public. An interesting social consequence of this effect is observable in different regions due to different climate patterns. In sunny places such as California and Miami, people are much more likely to be influenced by their neighbour’s car purchase than they are in colder climates where cars are kept in enclosed garage spaces. The reason? Because they can see it out in the driveway.

movemberA good example of this phenomenon is the Movember movement. Until a group of drunk Australian guys decided to grow moustaches to raise awareness for prostate cancer, men’s health was a private topic that nobody barely talked about. It is now a global campaign that has become more public than ever with hundreds of thousands of men growing their moustaches every November for this cause. Intentionally or not, the Australian group started a global initiative that went viral since it began, all thanks to making a private issue public.

5. Practical Value

Passing along practical and useful information such as helping others save time and/or money is a powerful incentive for people to share the message. The advantage of this is that the incentive is embedded into the message, which makes the information naturally shareable. Social currency is about the information sender; practical value is about the information receiver.

We talked about the new restaurant that you just found under Social Currency. When you spread the word for that restaurant, that give you social currency and makes you look good to others. Now imagine that the same restaurant has an amazing deal that offers a 2 for 1 dinner deal. Not only did you discover a hip new spot in town, but you also came upon an unmissable deal. When you share this information with others, you are earning yourself some Social Currency, and you are providing practical information to others that will help them save some money on a nice night out.

6. Stories

Humans don’t simply think in terms of information but in terms of narratives. Making sure that the information is embedded into a story will help the potential virality of an idea.

Before we had radio, television and the Internet, we only had our friends and family to tell us stories about what is going on around us. Stories are the vessels that carry important and valuable information.

In a world where user generated content is becoming one of the most important sources of information for making purchasing decisions, telling stories are more important than ever. When we are trying to make a decision on which product to buy, we turn to user reviews and see what others are telling us about that product. These peer reviews are almost always embedded in narratives that give us background information.

Here is a real online user review about a laptop:

“I bought this laptop a few days ago and it has been really good.  The size is perfect to bring to school and back. The only thing I don’t like about it is that it’s red, if it was silver it would have been better. I would definitely recommend this to anyone in high school because it is small enough to carry and does just about everything.”

Just from that one paragraph of information there is already a story that is forming about the user; his/her preferences as a consumer and lifestyle. If you are a high school student reading this review, you will most likely decide to go with this product.

Things to Consider:

  • Relevancy: Something might be remarkable but if it is not relevant to the product or brand you are advertising, nobody will remember your company’s name. They will remember the idea but not what you are trying to advertise.

Incorporating these components into the content

There are no guarantees as to what content goes viral and what does not. However, virality is not a random occurrence and this framework is a good guide for content producers to make sure that their ideas are as shareable as possible.

Social epidemics follow certain patterns and these six steps cover critical aspects of them. Some ideas may already have some of these steps embedded into them and some may be more difficult to incorporate them. But what we see from Jonah Berger’s research is that the most successful ideas that achieved viral status have all six components entrenched into them. In a landscape where content marketing is becoming increasingly important and competitive, this framework sets a clear and tangible goal for marketers when designing content.

Decisions, Decisions…

Posted on by
Reply

About two months ago I wanted to buy a beard trimmer. It is a very simple and straightforward device that can be found in pretty much any electronics store, drug store or supermarket. It has been two months and I still don’t have one. Not because of scarcity or the price range of the product. It is simply because of the number of choices that were available to me in the store. I got overwhelmed by the variety of different devices that were hardly differentiated from one another and finally gave up.

trimmer

Following this unsuccessful mission, I started thinking about the amplitude of choices we have for many other product categories. Every time we go shopping for virtually any product, there is an abundance of product assortments that we have to filter through. This whole experience coincided with a book that I was reading at the time called ‘The Art of Choosing’ by Sheena Iyengar. Professor Iyengar talks about this exact phenomenon in her book; how the number of choices we have actually makes it difficult for us to make a decision.

To explore this seemingly counterintuitive concept a little further, she ran an experiment in a high-end grocery store. The premise was simple: set up two different in-store tasting stations in alternating days; one offering 6 different flavours of jam and another one with 24 different options. The hypothesis was that the higher the number of choices, the higher the sales should be. After all, if you have more variety in your product line, you can appeal to more different tastes. However, the results told a completely different story.

24 Jams 6 Jams
# of customers passing by 242 260
# of customers stopped by 145 104
# of customers who purchased 4 31
% customers stopped by 60% 40%
% customers purchased 3% 30%

Two important takeaways came out of this study. The first one being that providing more options is in fact more powerful in attracting customers. The stand with 24 jams made 60% of the passers-by stop and take a look at it as opposed to 40% with the stand that offered only 6 jams. This part was completely in line with the initial assumption. While it is important to grab attention and stand out of the crowd in a competitive market, the ultimate goal is to make sales. After all, why would anyone be in business if they are not selling? And this is where the study took a completely different turn because only 3% of the customers who stopped by the stand with 24 jams made a purchase whereas the same ratio for the other stand was 30%.

It can be argued that this is just one isolated study about a very specific product, conducted with a very small sample population. It is true that there are numerous other variables in decision-making. Factors such as our environment, the price range of the product, and even the mood that we are in on that particular day are all elements that contribute to our decision-making. We live in an unpredictable world and anything that involves human beings brings with it lots of uncertainty and variability. This does not mean that the other end of the spectrum, having only one or two products per line, is the right solution. The objective is to find the optimal number of products that will work for the category in question. Unfortunately, like with most other topics in marketing, there is not a one-size-fits-all solution for this and the length of an ideal product line varies from one industry to another. Michaela Draganska, a professor of marketing who spent a lot of time researching product line management, conducted an in-depth study with yogurt brands. As anyone who has ever gone grocery shopping would agree, yogurt aisles in every supermarket are arguably the most overwhelming areas in terms of alternatives.

yogurt

Draganska sifted through years of data to build a mathematical model that establishes a connection between the length of a product line and consumer choices. As a result of her research, she found that only 3 out of the 13 yogurt brands that she analyzed would actually benefit from a line extension. In other words, 77% of the researched brands were better off keeping a lean product line with limited offerings. Interestingly enough, the three brands that were recommended to have longer product lines were all local, no-frills products, which, according to Draganska, is because a longer product line might be a signal of higher quality and boost their image on the market.

Another study conducted by Joseph Goodman and Selin Malkoc, professors at Washington University in St. Louis, revealed that consumer preference for a larger product assortment decreases as the psychological distance increases. In other words, shoppers prefer to have less number of choices if they are making a buying decision for the future. The researchers concluded that “the lure of assortment may not be as universal as previously thought.”

The Needs of the Many Outweigh the Needs of the Few

When it comes to consumer decision-making, nothing is black and white. Making choices is a complex mental process that involves multiple inputs and that can only have one output. This is why it is important to make the distinction between choice overload and information overload. The yogurt case is a typical example of choice overload where the shopper gets confused simply by looking at the multitude of options available. The beard trimmer case is a good instance of poor information, as well as choice profusion. From a business standpoint, it is critical that companies understand how their customers are shopping for that particular product, the thought process and the customer purchase journey in order to design a product line that is not stretched too far but one that offers enough variety to keep most consumers happy. It is not impossible to design a separate product for everyone’s taste, nor is it financially feasible for any company in the world. The objective is to come up with the optimal number that will satisfy the majority of the target audience.

The Difference Between Social Media and Content Marketing

Posted on by
Reply

“Your customers don’t care about you, your products, or your services. They care about themselves”.

This is how Joe Pulizzi makes the introduction to his book “Epic Content Marketing”. As counterintuitive as it may seem to start a business book this way, pretty quickly you understand the point he is trying to make as he gets into more detail about content marketing and its role within the customer purchase journey.

Before we actually get into the main subject of this post, the difference between content marketing and social media, what exactly is this trendy concept that we keep calling ‘content marketing’? It seems to me that it has become a buzzword in the business world where executives keep giving directions to their subordinates to take advantage of content marketing in order to increase leads. But what exactly is it? In a nutshell, I believe that it would be an accurate description to say that it is the type of marketing that focuses on the customer rather than the product/service you are trying to sell. It is about satisfying the informational needs of your target customers or prospects. And let’s make one thing clear; although content marketing may seem like a new idea, it has existed since the beginning of time. It is about conveying important information to one another in a compelling and interesting way. Taken out of a business context, this is how we human beings interact with each other on a daily basis. We seek information, we look for solutions to our ongoing challenges and we want a reliable source that will provide us with the answers.

PNR-content-marketing-John-DeereYou may have noticed that so far I haven’t mentioned anything about hard sells or call to actions and it is not because I forgot about them. Content marketing is not about pitching your products; it is about creating and nurturing a relationship with your target market through sharing relevant information that they are seeking out there in the cyber space (or whatever other medium you are using). How does that help you improve your business or increase your leads? Let me answer that with a well-known example. Most of us have heard of the agricultural giant John Deere & Company. The firm has been manufacturing agricultural equipment since the 1800s and has a very strong and loyal customer base around the world. What you may not be aware of is that they have been using content marketing techniques since 1895, the year they launched The Furrow magazine. This publication was solely about providing information to farmers about how they can improve their businesses, maximize their profits and overcome the challenges they face. This way, John Deere started connecting with all these prospective customers in a well-defined segment, forging the association as the company that genuinely cares about the needs and success of the farmers. The magazine was only about sharing knowledge, without a single piece of promotional item in it. So when the time came for the farmers to buy new agricultural equipment, what was the company that they first thought of? John Deere. So as you can see, content marketing is not a quick-fix solution, but rather a long-term commitment for long lasting results.

Now that we defined what content marketing is with a real-life example, let’s talk about how it differentiates from social media. At first sight, they may seem almost identical and there is definitely a lot of overlap between the two. Having said that, they are not interchangeable, but rather complimentary.

“The difference between content marketing and social media is huge. Social media is a new channel. And it competes with other media channels like TV, radio, print and all the digital channels available to us. Content marketing and storytelling are as old as human beings. We have always needed to find ways to convey important information in useful and entertaining ways.” – Michael Brenner (VP of Marketing and Content Strategy, SAP)

Elaborating on Michael Brenner’s statement above, one of the main differentiators between social media and content marketing is the focus of the marketing activity. When you are working with a social media channel, your marketing activity is focused (and limited) to that particular channel. Say, if you are running a Twitter campaign, you are essentially operating within the confines of the Twitter ecosystem. Not to mention the chosen social platform’s own restrictions such as the character limit on Twitter. In content marketing, on the other hand, your operating platform can be whatever you want it to be; a website, a microsite, a landing page or even print media. In other words, you have more freedom and control over the distribution of your content.

In my opinion, the main difference that sets social media and content marketing apart is the steps they focus on in the customer purchase journey* (or customer purchase funnel as some call it). Although you can design your content to serve various purposes, social media mainly revolves around creating awareness and customer retention. (Steps 1 and 5).

* Customer Purchase Journey
customer-purchase-journey

The objective of content marketing is to help and guide the prospects through every step of this journey providing the relevant information that they look for in each stage. The focus is then to identify and understand the specific interests and expectations of a particular segment in a given step of their journey with your brand. Consumers in the awareness stage will likely be looking for very different information than those in the preference or purchase stage. What is crucial is to provide the right information to the right prospects, in the right place and in the right time. Of course, this is easier said than done. This is why we are witnessing the rise of marketing automation, a series of technologies that are designed to help marketers more effectively target consumers with relevant communications in each step of the purchase journey.

In achieving the objectives of content marketing, the quality of the content you are publishing becomes critical. While there are opposing views on it, social media channels tend to be more about frequent and easily digestible quick updates as opposed to elaborate content. This contributes to a company’s online presence from a ‘search engine optimized content’ perspective. However, what’s more important is to understand the customer journey, identify the needs at each step and then provide keyword optimized, SEO friendly content that will not only boost your rankings, but will also deliver your prospects the exact information they are looking for.

Although they have their differences, social media and content marketing are meant to work together as interconnected parts of your marketing system. They compliment each other rather than work in different directions. What is important is to understand each channel’s purpose, identify your customer journey process and take advantage of these resources to meet the consumers in the right place with the right information. It is going to be very exciting to see this all working together with marketing automation systems so synchronized that the information that your customers want will be there waiting for them before they even get to that step.

Neuromarketing

Posted on by

As marketers, we are all driven by one simple goal: how do we convince our potential customers to buy our products/services and eventually turn them into loyal users of our brand? In doing this, we try different channels, different techniques and strategies to see what works the best. Companies have been spending tons of money in buying advertising space, trying to create awareness of their brands and conducting market research in hopes to get a better understanding of the purchasing behaviour. As a marketer I have always been fascinated with the latter. I always felt that understanding what drives the customers’ buying habits would be the key to launching a successful marketing campaign. It is the key to spending our marketing dollars on the right areas where we are confident that we will get a return. To explore this interest further, I took all the market research courses I possibly could during my MBA and I got involved in actual real-life market research projects for local firms to get a better understanding of how it’s done. As valuable as I think this experience was, I have always felt that something was missing. We were crafting surveys, conducting in-depth interviews to really understand what makes the customers tick. But I was never sure whether we were getting the right answers. And this was not because I thought people were lying to us or deliberately holding back crucial information that would help us. I simply thought that often times people did not actually know the real answers to our questions. They didn’t know what they wanted or even if they did it was not easy to articulate it in words. More importantly, I thought that a lot of the real answer were in fact hiding beneath the conscious mind so even if the interviewees wanted to give us honest answers, they just weren’t aware of them on a conscious level. Then I stumbled upon the concept of neuromarketing. Frankly, it sounded like something out of a sci-fi movie where people used mind control devices to manipulate others, which I guess it could be used in such a way if that was the intention. But what intrigued me was the potential of this fairly new field as it pertains to market research. Our customers may not be able to articulate their true feelings and opinions about a brand in words. But if we could somehow retrieve this information from its source –the brain- then they wouldn’t have to! This entire premise is of course limited to our current and incomplete understanding of the human brain. But with the recent developments in neuroscience, we are now able to generate neurological maps that can pinpoint the specific areas of the brain where neural activity is present. Although this technology is primarily used to enhance our understanding of mental illnesses and unlock the mysteries of human brain, its extensions into business management are starting to make a significant impact in market research.

fmri1

This amazing partnership between neuroscience and marketing is executed through the use fMRI (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) procedure where the brain activity is measured through the detection of associated changes in blood flow. This information is then processed and mapped out on a computer screen that allows us to see the brain areas that register activity during specific actions. This way, researchers can identify what areas of the brain are activated when a subject is watching a new commercial, the pilot of a new TV show, or even when different sensory impulses are activated. And thanks to our current understanding of the human brain, we can tell what emotions are associated with the activated brain area. Whether it is a pleasant experience that will result in a marketing success or just a horrible scheme that is doomed to fail.

 

Since it is still an evolving field, it is not very easy to find countless resources on the subject. However, If you are interested in finding out more about the potential in neuromarketing, I would highly recommend checking out ‘Buyology’ and ‘Brandwashed’ by Martin Lindstrom, ‘Brainfluence’ by Roger Dooley, ‘Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion’ by Robert Cialdini and ‘Predictably Irrational’ by Dan Ariely. I am looking forward to seeing the evolution of this field and how it is going to change the face of market research.

Sensory Marketing and the Future of Branding

Posted on by

Has it ever happened to you that you were walking down the street and you were stopped in your tracks because the person who walked right past you was wearing a fragrance that took you back to your high school years? If you are anything like me, then the answer is most likely ‘yes’.

The power of sensory impulses is not news for anyone. We are emotional creatures and we create strong associations using our senses: A song that reminds you of your first girlfriend, a smell that takes you back 10 years through time, or a photograph that brings back memories of that incredible trip you went on with your friends. What is new, however, and becoming more and more popular is the way companies use the power of sensory impulses to advertise their products and services. Let’s face it; we are bombarded with visual images, logos, bus ads and banners all day long, every day. And for all male readers, even when you are at the urinal in a restaurant or a pub, you are forced to look at ads on the wall. In this state of visual assault and overstimulation of our visual senses, it is becoming impossible for our brains to focus on any one of these ads and we are blocking out the majority of what we see. According to a recent study, the companies now have less than two seconds to grab our attention.

times-dundas

In this visual chaos (just take a look at the photos of Times Square in New York and her little sister Dundas Square in Toronto), the power of sensory associations is becoming more and more crucial for companies. So much so that numerous restaurant chains are adding artificial food scents to their ventilation systems to appeal to our senses and to forge the brand-smell association in our brains. Or how a campaign by Dunkin’ Donuts in South Korea municipal buses increased nearby store visits by 16% and sales at the same stores by 29% simply by releasing a coffee aroma into the bus whenever the company jingle played. In his book ‘buy-ology’, Martin Lindstrom became the reason for one of the biggest disappointments in my life when he said that the new car smell that we all so passionately love actually comes from an aerosol can. The examples can go on and on but the bottom line is that the more senses are stimulated, the more enhanced our experiences are. And these influences are very subtle, which makes them even more powerful because we don’t perceive them as marketing messages and therefore we don’t react with the usual resistance to traditional ads and other hard-sell techniques.

The best way to summarize the increasing importance of sense-based marketing would be to quote Aradhna Krishna, the author of Customer Sense: How the 5 Senses Influence Buying Behavior: “In the past, communications with customers were essentially monologues—companies just talked at consumers. Then they evolved into dialogues, with customers providing feedback. Now they’re becoming multidimensional conversations, with products finding their own voices and consumers responding viscerally and subconsciously to them.”

So far I tried to convince you of the great impact of sensory marketing and I hope that I was able to make a good enough case. So what is going to happen in the future? There is no doubt in my head that sense-based marketing will become bigger and bigger. There are already firms out there focusing solely on creating sensory brand experiences and I think that we are going to see more of these companies in the near future. In a competitive landscape where it is becoming virtually impossible to differentiate your product purely based on visual appearances, there is no question that companies will resort to newer methods to try and break through the clutter. My question then is not whether or not sensory marketing will get bigger, because I believe that it will. To me it is rather a question of whether or not we will reach a point of saturation as we have with visual marketing. I am curious to see if there will come a day that we are so stimulated on multiple senses by product advertisements that we will reach a state in which our brains are going to filter out most of it like they do today. We will see…

Emotional Design and User Experience

Posted on by

14065e34df1fba1228c2553f453ad9cf

Anybody who works in a creative field has encountered the challenge of having a healthy balance between a visually appealing product that is perfectly functional at the same time at least once in their career. The product we are talking about can be anything from a website to a physical product or even writing copy for a marketing campaign. In my experience, the product was always a website. I don’t even remember the number of meetings I had with my marketing managers, discussing the visual design of a website we were working on. The discussion was always the same: How much text is too much? Should we have all these functionalities on the website?

I don’t intend to give a one-size-fits-all type answer to this question, nor do I think there is such a solution. Needless to say that the decision has many parameters such as who your target audience is, what kind of image you are trying to project and what type of brand identity you are trying to build. These high-level decisions will certainly affect the way you approach a design project. But generally speaking, I believe that there are certain facts based on how the human brain works, that gives us clues to how we can optimize the visual design of a product. The human prefrontal cortex is in charge of cognitive and executive functions such as attention and short-term memory. It helps us execute day-to-day tasks and make decisions. When we are presented with an emotional stimulus, the amygdala, the part of the limbic system that is in charge of emotional response, kicks in and releases dopamine into the system, which helps us register these events in our long-term memory. This is why people have been talking about Budweiser’s ‘Lost Dog’ Super Bowl ad even weeks after the game. The emotional connection it created with the audience was so intense that people haven’t forgotten about it. Aside from seeking emotional connection, our brains are also very hard working information processors. In his book “Designing for Emotion”, Aarron Walter talks about this phenomenon: “Beyond our ability to express emotion, we also share the instinct to search for patterns.” Our brain’s ability to search and identify patterns is a crucial tool for us to survive, as a break in the pattern alerts us to the existence of something unusual. This contrast identification is what helps designers catch the user’s attention in a given situation. However, as fascinating as our brains are, they are only capable of processing so much information in a given time, meaning that the more contrast there is, the harder it becomes for us to choose which one to focus on. As the American psychologists William Edmund Hick and Ray Hyman describe, increasing the number of choices will increase the decision time logarithmically. How does all this translate into the field of design? The more content we have on a website (or any marketing material for that matter), the harder it becomes for our audience to identify what to focus on, which results in unpredictable user behaviour.

On the flip side of this, there is usability and functionality. You want to have a visually appealing “sexy” interface that will draw users to your website. But we all know that it takes more than just window dressing to keep users on your website and offer a solid product that works. It takes a holistic design approach to achieve a good balance between these different levels of design.

Don Norman splits design in three levels in his brilliant book “Emotional Design”: visceral design, behavioral design, and reflective design. The idea is to find the right balance between these pieces. We talked about visceral design and the importance of creating a visually appealing product in the previous paragraph. Behavioural design is where the user interaction with your product comes in. It is the overall experience of using the product. It is based on ideas that are derived from behavioural science, which is a fascinating field that studies why people behave as they do. By investigating how people form habits and how they make decisions, it gives user experience designers amazing insight about how to implement user-centered functionality into a design. Finally, reflective design is the long term impact we create in user’s mind by the message, the culture and the meaning of the product that we convey.

Apple Pay and the Future of Mobile Shopping

Posted on by
Reply

mote_slide_mobile-payment1Adobe’s Digital Marketing Blog is one of the greatest sources to follow the most recent news and trends on online marketing. An interesting article by Aseem Chandra about the rise of mobile shopping makes very compelling arguments about why retailers should be focusing more on mobile now than ever before. According to Adobe Digital Index’s forecast, online shopping on American Thanksgiving Day this year will reach 31% of total online sales, up from 21% last year. Chandra argues that there are two main reasons behind the rise of mobile shopping:

  • Larger screen sizes are allowing users to conduct transactions on their mobile devices much easier than before. If this is true, the new release of iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus will contribute to this phenomenon even further with the bigger screens.
  • In line with the new iPhones, Apple Pay is regarded as the solution that will remove all the obstacles to mobile shopping. Within the first 72 hours of its launch, Apple Pay had over one million credit cards registered with it, validating Chandra’s point.

Apple Pay seems to offer a very promising transition to a mobile payment system. Although still new and only available in the USA (with no plans to launch in Canada anytime soon), it is not hard to imagine that it will be the future of payment. The key strength of Apple Pay lies in its simplicity. Users don’t even have to wake their iPhones in order to make a transaction thanks to the near field transaction antenna thats built into the device. And with the breakthrough Touch ID technology, the transaction is securely completed, allowing for faster and secure payment. While it is still the early days of mobile payment, Apple is already building the system into its new devices such as the Watch that is due to be released in early 2015.

As Chandra notes in the article, it is important that retailers need to make sure they have the tech infrastructure to cater to the tech savvy users sooner rather than later. Despite the fact that it is still a new technology, it is without question that it will be the future of payment processing, which makes it crucial for retail stores to make sure they have the resources and the infrastructure to make the transition as smooth and as painless as possible.

Wander for Distraction, Travel for Fulfillment

Posted on by

“The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.”
– St. Augustine

Growing up in a town that is fuelled by a tourism based economy, I have always been attracted to the travel/tourism industry. Combining that lifelong experience with my background in marketing and my most recent job in a travel agency, I got drawn to researching the travel and tourism industry for this artifact. Not only do I have a passion and interest for the industry, but also having moved to Canada originally from overseas, I feel that I am a good fit in the travel business as I understand the dynamics, the challenges and the customer side of the business.

With all that in mind, I conducted some research about the inbound flow of visitors into Canada. Based on the numbers, Canada has experienced a pretty steady number of visitors between 2007 and 2012, fluctuating between 15.583.000 and 17.793.000. Despite a decline in growth in the industry between 2007-2009, it picked up from 2009 onward and experienced a growth of 1.9% in 2010 and in 2012. However, this increase is not attributable to Vancouver in particular since the number of visitors declined remarkably between 2007-2009, which by many people is considered to be because the city is overly expensive.

Comparing these numbers to those of the USA, we see a significant difference in growth rates. In 2010, 2011 and 2012, the USA has experienced growth rates of 8.8%, 4.9% and 6.0% respectively, whereas Canada’s percentages were 1.9%, -1.0% and 1.9%. Even though the two countries are located in the same geographic region, USA’s larger population (approximately 10 times Canada) could be one explanation to the difference in these numbers.*

As mentioned above, I have been a traveler myself for as long as I can remember. I have been on the customer side of the travel industry many times and experienced all the great things about it as well as challenges. I believe that having that understanding gives me a great deal of advantage in performing on the business side of the industry. Not only because I can be empathetic with the client end, but also because I have a passion for the industry, which generally makes people more successful in what they do.

Vancouver is one of the most beautiful and livable cities in the world, yet it has experienced a decline in the number visitors per year. As someone who moved to Vancouver 6 years ago, I have experienced the city as a complete stranger, a tourist and now as a resident. Having been through those steps, I believe I have a lot to offer in terms of marketing the city to potential visitors.

* All the numbers are taken from Euromonitor International

The beginning of a new journey…

Posted on by
Reply

It is often mentioned in motivational speeches that the Chinese word for “crisis” is composed of two characters representing “danger” and “opportunity”. Ever since I learned about this, I have been trying to find the opportunity in any major change in my life even if all I can see is the danger. Growing up in Turkey in a somewhat “protected” environment close to my family and friends, I was free from crisis. However, in 2007 after I graduated university, I faced the first major crisis of my life. I decided to move to Vancouver to pursue a diploma in business management. This move was not only a big move in terms of distance from home, but also in terms of leaving my safe, crisis free environment. Moving to Canada meant being completely on my own away from family and friends. It meant leaving everything behind and going to a completely strange place where I didn’t know anyone. Not to mention having the language barrier in the beginning and the general uncertainty of my life at the time. But, business management in Canada was the opportunity I wanted, so I went for it anyway.

After finishing my business education in Vancouver, I was lucky to find a good job to do my co-op as part of the diploma program that I was taking. I built some good relationships in the organization, and thanks to those people, I was offered to be sponsored by the company.  I had not planned to stay permanently in Canada but I saw this as a great opportunity and a great experience that would contribute a lot to my life. Living abroad was a dream of mine ever since I was a teenager. I was never sure if it would be something permanent but the experience of living in a foreign country was always intriguing to me. And there was only one way to find out if it would be something that I would like permanently or not, so I decided to stay and see it for myself. 6 years later, here I am starting my MBA at UBC as a Canadian and I am incredibly happy that I chose to stay and live through this experience as it helped me become the person I am today: worldly, cultured, empathetic and much stronger than I was before.

Following my graduation from university to this day, I have had the chance to work for different employers in two different countries. I feel especially very lucky to have had this opportunity for I believe it is a great experience to see and compare different work cultures and ethics and it gives one a better understanding of global corporate culture.

It has been an exciting and interesting journey so far and I believe I have managed to find the opportunity even in challenging situations and turn them to my advantage. And even when I couldn’t see past the danger, I have looked at it as an experience and a lesson to learn. After all, we learn from both the positive and negative mistakes and experiences in life, and the important thing for me is to keep learning and improving. Throughout my entire experience in Canada so far, remembering that there is opportunity in danger, has been the biggest thing that has shaped me to move forward with choices I have made, paths that I have taken and remains my general approach towards life.