#1nwebinar: top 15 for '16

Trends from 15 for 16 on 17

17 February 2016

Today’s Presenters

Jen BullettManaging Director, Marketing & Talent

Kalev PeeknaManaging Director, Chief Strategist

1. Brands Are Back

2. Millennial Madness

3. Markets of One

4. The Everything Effect

5. Orchestration

6. Digilog Smashup

7. Service Design

8. Digital Details

6

Back to Brand

“When the financial crisis hit in 2008, a certain word went missing in business. And,

another word became all too powerful. The word, invest, and the inertia behind it,

lost traction in B2B business. Rocked by the financial crisis, many plans were

shelved. Collecting dust. The word, cut, became dominant in business vocabulary.

A few short years later, B2B business leaders in the C-Suite are waking up from this

slumber of cost cutting and extreme focus on tactics … Today’s business leaders are

having a renewed drive towards top-line revenue growth. Rediscovering the critical

role branding plays in contributing to overall growth and profitability. ”

Source: Tony Zambito

Brand is your strategy.

Brand is your calls to action.

Brand is your customer service.

Brand is the way you speak.

Brand is the whole array of your communication tools.

Brand is your people.

Brand is your facilities.

Brand is your logo and visuals, too.

Source: HBR. A Logo Is Not A Brand

• Authenticity helps fuel success in today's over-traded markets, as consumers search for greater meaning and sincerity from the brands they choose.

• At its heart, authenticity is about practicing what you preach; being totally clear about who you are and what you do best.

• When a brand's rhetoric gets out of sync with customers' actual experiences, the brand's integrity and future persuasiveness suffers.

Source: The Economist

Authenticity

Authenticity: Commercial ValuePerformance on 'Core Authenticity' drives business performance. The stronger a brand's Core Authenticity, the more likely people are to become advocates for the brand, and the greater the share a brand will have of high value customers in its market.

Source: authenticbrandindex.com

Year after year, CEOs worry about talent gaps and the effect they have on their organizations’ competitiveness.

• In 2014, 63 percent said availability of skills was a serious concern (5 percent more than the previous year). Gaps in certain high-demand fields (most notably in the STEM fields) cause even greater anxiety.

• A study by McKinsey found nine in 10 executives say they have a “pressing need” for digital talent, such as developers, analysts and UX designers.

Source: McKinsey & Company

Employee

63%

Employee Branding

Although many long-established, heavily advertised but mediocre products are losing force, and the fickleness of consumers is making it harder for them to maintain premium prices, for those firms that get the product right and have a genuine story to tell, the rewards can still be huge.

The textbook example of this is Apple, whose devices’ superior design and ease of use make it a powerful brand in a commoditized market. Last year, it had only 6% of the revenues in the personal-computer market, but 28% of the profits. That’s real authenticity.

Source: The Economist

Premium Pricing

Millennial Madness

We’re Obsessed

Millennials are now the largest, most diverse generation in the U.S. population – 75.3 million.

Millennials have been shaped by technology.

Millennials value community, family and creativity in their work.

Millennials have invested in human capital more than previous generations.

Millennial women have more labor market equality than previous generations.

Millennials tend to get married later than previous generations.

Millennials are armed with $200 billion in annual buying power.

Millennials are sitting on both sides of me as I write this presentation at Starbucks.

Millennial Madness

Influx of millennial founders and leaders in the coming year, competing with the likes of Pinterest, Airbnb, Facebook and Instagram, to name a few.

Watch out for more horizontal leadership, collaborative working techniques and new career paths.

Millennials are career-driven, politically progressive and–despite popular belief–do indeed develop strong brand loyalty when presented with quality products and actively engaged by brands.

Millennial Founders

Interactive Considerations

Generation Z is a generation that would seem to claim San Francisco as its cultural capital, the place where the apps and interfaces by which it learns the world were made. In embracing “founders,” it affirms the idea that creativity is essential—and performed through business enterprise.

Don’t Get Too Comfortable with Millennials ….

This guy might be the next Zuckerberg or Managing Partner.

Imagine selling Professional Services to him or trying to hire him.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Markets of One

Marketing to One Account at a TimeIn 2015, we saw ever-increasing pressure within B2B firms for Marketing and Business Development to unite their tactics around areas like lead generation and nurturing.

As part of the response to this pressure, Account-based Marketing encourages us to reconsider what we consider our “market,” and to tailor our communications into increasingly individualized formats.

“Account-based marketing (ABM), also known as key account marketing, is a strategic approach to business marketing in which an organization considers and communicates with individual prospect or customer accounts as markets of one.”-- Wikipedia

But How to Make That Happen?Agreeing that key accounts should receive customized marketing and sales is easy enough…

…Identifying who comprises the “key accounts” is tough but doable…

...But pulling off the level of customization required, without an influx of resources, is a real struggle.

Personalization to the Rescue!The struggle for personalized communication is one area where digital can offer a real solution, in the form of personalization.

When first approaching the idea of personalization in a digital context, most marketers in search of ideas turn first to Amazon.

And it’s not a bad place to start. Amazon’s recommendation engine is second to none at connecting us quickly to relevant purchases among what might otherwise be a totally overwhelming set of choices.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that any reader interested in design thinking must be in want of Post-It notes.

How Hot is Personalization?A recent report from PwC and Forbes, Leading with customer-focused content: driving growth through personalized experience (Jan 2016), reveals much about the state of personalization among marketers today:

How important is personalization for reaching customers?

37% 57% 6%Respondents

Critical Important Other

100%"Trailblazers"

Critical

94% of all respondents say personalization is critical or important to achieving their business goals.

100% of high-performing respondents (“trailblazers”) say personalization is critical.

Personalization Grows in SophisticationFor years, we’ve been dreaming of offering experiences that serve exactly the content that each person wants, and nothing more.

However, in 2015, the personalization trend grew more expansive, and more sophisticated in its techniques. It’s now about a lot more than just automated suggestions.

It’s about understanding who someone is, and demonstrating the importance of the relationship you share.

Automated Suggestions

“See also…”“You might like…”

“Read next…”

Audience Selection

Alignment to industry, geography, or other

market segment

Localization

Adjustment to local interests and languages

Marketing Automation

Email linking to landing page that presents

individualized information

CRM Integration

Linking website activity to CRM profile and vice

versa

Email Personalization

“Not your father’s newsletter”: High-touch

and individualized

Social

Engaging users in a 1:1 fashion

UX Personalization

Changing the UX/UI to match buying stage or level of engagement

The North Face: Personalizing SearchThe North Face paired with IBM’s Watson to completely reimagine the product search experience.

Instead of complicated filters, or endless suggestions, it asks targeted questions about where, when, and how you will use the product – and provides truly intelligent suggestions.

Quartz: Text the NewsAs a news aggregation site, Quartz could have launched a personalized app like Flipboard or Apple News. Instead, it shifted the experience from browsing to interaction, through a text-like interface that moves quickly from “personalized” to fully individualized.

35

The Everything Effect

I’m not proud of it, but I yell at my computer

when it’s slow.


“The on-demand economy is all about “now” and “transparency.” I need my taxi now; I don’t want to pick up the phone to call or raise my hand to flag down a vehicle. Don’t tell me when my cab will arrive; show me on a map how far away it is.”

Source: Forbes


“They’re coming for you, [insert legacy industry here].”

-VentureBeat

Now: Consumers will want to interact anywhere at any time.

Can I: They will want to do truly new things as disparate kinds of information (from financial accounts to data on physical activity) are deployed more effectively in ways that create value for them.

For me: They will expect all data stored about them to be targeted precisely to their needs, or used to personalize what they experience.

Simply: They will expect all interactions to be easy.

Source: McKinsey & Co

Check Yourself

Orchestration

You Don’t Need Any More TacticsIn the past ten years, “content strategy” and “digital strategy” meant assembling an ever-expanding range of tactics.

B2B marketers now average active use of 13 tactics, of which 12 are inherently digital.

Source: B2B Content Marketing: 2015 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends – North America.

92%

83%

81%

80%

77%

77%

76%

69%

68%

65%

62%

61%

48%

47%

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Social Media

eNewsletters

Articles (website)

Blogs

In-person Events

Case Studies

Videos

Illustrations / Photos

White Papers

Online Presentations

Infographics

Webinars/Webcasts

Research Reports

Microsites

Marketing Orchestration is a Top Challenge

The top transformational problem in marketing is no longer “how to be digital.”

According to Forrester Research, the top problem is about how to coordinate and integrate fragmented activities into a coherent customer experience.

In short, the new goal is orchestration .

18% 18%

17% 14%

13%13%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

Long-term Relationships Cross-channel Experience

Which are your marketing organization’s top three goals?

First Second Third

Source: Commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Responsys, 2013

Marketing OrchestrationAn approach that focuses not on delivering

standalone campaigns, but instead on optimizing a set of related cross-channel

interactions that, when added together, make up a personalized customer experience.

Avoiding Brand FadeDigital has not only changed the look and feel of our brands; it has also undermined our ability to rely solely on visuals to create brand associations.

Cross-channel “success” for digital content leads it farther away from marketing-controlled contexts. Brand associations must be inside the content itself.

Brand-Integrated (Not Edited) ContentIntegrating brand associations into content requires more than sharp editing. Tone and style are important, but so too are the themes, formats, narrative approach, and even target audiences –aspects too often decided without marketing or editorial guidance.

TED@BCG: Though there is no “traditional” visual brand framework, the brand associations are clear – and apparent even as the content is shared throughout other digital networks.

Stable Patterns are EmergingIn areas like social media, we now have a better understanding of which tactics are effective for different kinds of content.

What’s Your Cannonball?

In B2B marketing, the “cannonball” is the Big Campaign, centered around a key piece of thought leadership created and distributed in multiple contexts.

Arrange Timing to Create a CadenceDeveloping a true cadence is about more than just timing individual pieces. It’s about arranging pieces to carry key themes across time and get the most ROI from each content investment.

PwC Annual Global CEO Survey

Pre-launch Launch Post-launch

Digilog Mashup

Even in the digital era, our surveys show that personal interactions with sales reps remain the most influential factor —across touch points — for B2B customers. That makes salespeople a great source of information about the degree to which customers see your products as differentiated or worth a premium.

Source: McKinsey & Company

Behaviorally, we know that while consumers are spending more time online, there remains a growing urge to get in touch with the physical world.

Source: The Guardian

Digilog Mashup

Digilog is Hard

Service Design

What is Service Design?Service Design is a rapidly growing and maturing field, but still only vaguely understood by most B2B businesses.

In its simplest form, Service Design is the application of design thinking to the delivery of customer services, as opposed to products.

Like User-Experience Design, it’s an outgrowth of the fields of industrial design and human-centered design.

SD Methodologies are User-CentricGiven its heritage, it’s probably not surprising that most Service Design methodologies are inherently user-centric. They start with ethnographic research, iterate through design, and lead to productions “models” that are continuously measured and tweaked:

The Tools are FamiliarIn fact, the tools used in Service Design are almost identical in form to those used in digital UX design:

Personas Journeys Touchpoint Maps

So How is it Different?

UX SD

Research

Personas

Journeys

Prototyping

Participatory

Qualitative &Quantitative

Digital

Details

New Tech

Deep

Qualitative

Analog

Concepts

New BusinessModels

Broad

Experience Design

SD: Improving the Ground ExperienceIf you’ve flown recently through a modern airport (i.e., not O’Hare), then you’ve probably already experienced the outcome of some noted service design efforts.

Virgin Atlantic’s service design effort focused on the ground experience at Heathrow Terminal 3. It led to a 75% reduction in check-in times, and a 30% increase in overall satisfaction.

Digital Details

Details: Quick Trends for 2016Now for the fun stuff. These trends may not be as broad or far-reaching, but are worth keeping an eye on as inspiration for your 2016 efforts.

1. Big Imagery

2. Flat 2.0

3. Performance as Design

4. Interactive Timelines

5. Gridlock

Big ImageryBig imagery remains a strong trend heading into 2016.

Now designers are putting greater thought into how that space is used, introducing motion and interaction into the creation of that first impression.

Flat 2.0Turns out that flat design – a huge, ongoing trend since 2012 –can sometimes be unhelpfully… flat.

It the most radical cases, key signifiers of clickability or interaction get removed. And users can get confused.

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/flat-design-long-exposure/

Enter the Almost FlatNo one is going back to full realism or skeuomorphism. Instead, designers are exploring ways to reintroduce subtle elements like shadows, gradients, 3D layers, and movement to guide users through the interface.

Performance as DesignIt started with our phones. Ever since Apple and Google put the web in our pockets, people have shifted from desktops to devices that are smaller, slower, and connected to shaky networks.

And that was before we got “WiFi” on airplanes.

User patience is low: 40% of users start to abandon a site after waiting only 3 seconds.

Slowness: not just a phone problem anymore.

Faster is Always BetterFacebook:• Facebook pages that are 500ms slower

result in a 3% drop-off in traffic; 1000ms gets a 6% drop-off.

Amazon:• If Amazon increases page load time by

+100ms, they lose 1% of sales.Google:• If Google increases page load time by

+500 ms, they get 25% fewer searches.Shopzilla:• Shopzilla reduced page load times from

7 seconds to 2 seconds and saw a 7% –12% increase in conversion rate.

Yahoo:• If Yahoo increases page load times by

+400ms they see a 5 – 9% drop in full-page traffic.

General:• 14% of users will start shopping at a

different site if a page loads too slow.• 40% of users will abandon a website that

takes more than 3 seconds to load.• 47% of web users expect a page load of

2 seconds or less.

Source: http://www.guypo.com/17-statistics-to-sell-web-performance-optimization/

What are We Doing about It?

• Thinking about mobile networks … even when designing for desktop screens.

• Removing low-priority content and design elements.

• Embracing whitespace / negative space.

• Testing on real-world devices.

Interactive Timelines

Timelines are back! But don’t fret – these are not the Flash-animated, glorified brochures of previous years.

The new timelines are highly interactive, driven by real-time data, and designed for multiple devices.

GridlockAligning elements in a grid is good design discipline. Card-based, panel-based, grid-based layouts: they all have enormous advantages, not least is the ease with which they work on mobile.

But recently we’ve see the emergence of many designs that are literally breaking the grid in favor of something more distinctive.

For those of you counting, that was only 13 trends.

2 trends we hope die in 2016:

Flower Beards

Questions?

Thank You!

See You in 2017!