I have 3 iPhones. Two of them are dead, one is my working phone. I have the first generation iPad and can’t wait to get the 3rd generation iPad when it comes out. In our household alone, we have 3 monitors and 4 laptops. Include my wife’s iPhone and we have 12 screens.
The age of surplus pixels
We are entering an age of surplus pixels – more and more screens will be in our homes, doing nothing, just being dark and disconnected. Some of them will be used to show family pictures, not much more.
What are we going to do about the abundance of screens?
Most screens are designed to grab all the available attention. That would be a huge mistake. Nobody can deal with 12 screens, all screaming for attention. We can focus on 2 screens, maybe 3 but that’s about it.
The remaining screens have to be respectful of the primary screens and deliver something fast, valuable or useful when we have a spare second.
Just like the work of Dentsu/Berg shown below.
The future of secondary screens has an immense influence on the future of advertising.
In case you’re not familiar with Robert Heath’s Low Attention Processing Model (I think everybody in the advertising industry should), it’s easy to connect the dots of his model to the surplus of pixels with this summary:
“1. Because brands match each other’s performance so swiftly, and consumers exist in a time-poor environment, considered choice tends to give way to intuitive choice, in which emotions are more influential.
2. This situation inhibits the consumer’s desire to seek out information about brands, and minimizes the need for them to pay attention to advertising. Brand information can however be ‘acquired’ at low and even zero level attention levels, using two distinct mental processes. The first process is passive learning, which is a low-attention cognitive process. Passive learning has been show to be poor at changing opinions and attitudes but is able to record and link together brand names and other elements in an ad.
3. The second process is implicit learning, which is a fully automatic non-cognitive process that has been shown to be independent of attention. Implicit learning, as is discussed below, cannot analyze or re-interpret anything, all it is able to do is to store what is perceived, along with any simple conceptual meaning that we attach to these perceptions.
4. Because of this limitation, implicit learning does not establish strong rational brand benefits in the consumer’s mind. Instead it builds and reinforces associations over time and these associations become linked to the brand by passive learning These association are extraordinarily enduring and can trigger emotional markers, which in turn influence intuitive decision-making.”
Low Attention Processing builds patterns
Since branding is about creating patterns, not creating messages, abundant screens should be used for branding and the primary screens are focused on direct response.
It’s going to be a tough task for marketers to use the surplus of pixels appropriately. We tend to be big, bombastic, look-at-me and loud. Instead, we need to be quiet and small.
It could be a screen displaying my commute through colors. When it’s red, I’ll stay in the office. When it turns green, I’m coming home.
A screen displaying the current state of the global economy, based on various financial feeds.
I would love to see on a screen what music all my friends are currently listening to.
It has to be slow. It has to be small. More importantly, it has to be valuable.
I suspect, it will be more artful than the current advertising. Secondary screens as an accessory, a social object.
Are you still trying to integrate your marketing channels, working on that huge “Integrated Marketing” deck? It’s hard to keep up, new marketing channels are opening up each day and your deck gets bigger and bigger.
Here’s a little piece of advice: Stop what you’re doing. You sound like a dinosaur when you talk about integrated marketing, discussing things that should have been completed years ago. Integrating marketing channels will remain an important task for decades to come but it can’t be your corporate/divisional goal.
You have more important things to do.
When was the last time you talked to your Customer Service department, spend a few hours listening to people solving problems for customers? I bet, it’s been too long. (Actually, I bet you never did it.)
Fact is: Customer Service and marketing need each other to succeed. On a corporate level, marketing must be integrated with customer service. The one can help to enhance the other one, and if not planned carefully, one can easily distract from each other. All your marketing dollars can go down the drain with one bad tweet, one bad phone call, one bad customer experience.
Where to start
These are just initial ideas how to develop more synergies between both departments:
Testimonials: No, not the fake ones from people that never used your product. There are people out there that love your product or the service you provide. They might have left a message, wrote an email or even a letter. Give these singers of your company’s praises a megaphone. Marketing is good at handing out megaphones. (Sometimes too good, but that’s a different story.)
Customer Service as the marketing campaign: Your customer service reps are the best in the world, they are solving problems and helping people? Why are you hiding them in the basement? Put them on a stage and make them your stars. They deserve it. And your customers deserve to hear about it.
Market turnaround-stories: I’ve had many experiences where I picked up the phone full of anger and ended the conversation with a customer service agent 5 minutes later with a smile on my face. It happens a lot. The bad dinner that turned into a second, brilliant visit. The cancelled flight that changed into a first-class seat. People share these stories with others. Why don’t you share them, too. Nobody is perfect, only your resolution process needs to be perfect.
Listen to your loyal customers: You drive a car for many years and there are always things that annoy you. The navigation screen, the placement of cup-holders, the rear window visibility. Stop sending out these faceless surveys or interrupt my day with a call how satisfied I am with my car. Ask me real questions, give me time and space to explain my concerns. Once you see a pattern: fix it. And then market it: We listen and learned. We changed because of you. A powerful tactic.
Combine marketing and customer service: Why keep both departments apart? Merge them, since both of the departments are marketing to people. Integrate marketing into your resolution processes. (No, not THAT marketing: “While I put this information into the system, let me tell you about offer A.” THAT marketing: “You’re an important customer to us and we would like to understand you better. Can we discuss with you how to make our company even better and serve your needs?” or “Would you mind sharing your experience with your friends?”
It’s a mystery to me why marketing departments deploy expensive focus groups, research and other studies to understand their customers better while the department next door gets real insights about the needs and desires of people one call/email/tweet at a time.
Integrate marketing into your overall customer experience path. Suddenly, marketing works.
Is this an eye-opener or just another fact of life?
Kevin Slavin talks about algorithms and how they affect our lives. Worth the 15 minutes of your time.
Slavin explains how the hidden algorithms play a major role in our everyday lives. Algorithms can give us better search results, help us with recommendations for books or cause a financial meltdown. It sounds as if we’re creating a world we have problems controlling.
2 days ago, McDonalds announced the development of its biggest restaurant in London, covering 30,000 square feet.
On the same day, the Shuttle program came to an end.
We tend to blame the government for everything and look for corporations to provide solutions.
The shuttle program was one of the most complicated programs ever conceived. And it was done by a government agency. They envisioned it. They built it. They made it work. For 135 missions.
In our daily existence, we’re so focused on results. Metrics. Measuring sticks.
The human experience requires more.
We need to be inspired.
We want to be touched by human aspiration.
We want to see the human spirit in motion.
I will miss this amazing technology that turned into poetry.
We lost a lot this week. And we might have to wait for a while to admire human ingenuity again.
In the meantime, there’s always the world’s largest McDonald’s.
