Capturing a Digital Nomad

Capturing the attention & imagination and the hearts & wallets of a target audience has always been a hard ask. There is no doubt this challenge has got harder as the market has become busier with more platforms to sell, more products and more services – and a nod to “less is more”, austerity and the “need over want” movement.

Clever marketers have used location and environment - through geomapping or hotspotting - to be able to place their customers and market to them effectively. However, what happens when that customer changes their location and their environment weekly, even daily? What happens if their working environment – like me on holiday – goes from an office in Brighton to the ski slopes of New Zealand? When your target customers’ constants are not constant and their needs and wants could be changing day in, day out?

The answer lies in the brand.

We are entering a world where choice is at a maximum. Whether it’s the choice of what to wear, the phone we use or the coffee we drink or the choice of where we work and how we work. With every one of your customers’ choices comes multiple options from providers offering better deals, different products with different benefits. To be able to make your product or service the chosen one of choice, customers need to know and trust your brand.

Good brand relationships are a bit like good friendships - they need to understand what you are about, and like a friendship, choose to have you as part of their life. It’s about having the same values so that whatever the situation you remain relevant to them – wherever and whenever. It means customers understanding what your brand values are and being clear in your communications about what your brand stands for and standing by it.

Like all the best friendships, you might need some time away from each other for a while – so maybe if that digital nomad is travelling you connect in work mode but not in rest mode. It might be that your brand is relevant across both work and play but like a good friend needs different things from you at different times. In brand terms that could be the phone that takes the best photographs and allows you to download them super-fast, but in work mode means has the capability to connect you to your colleagues on the other side of the world. For a coffee brand, that could mean a coffee cup that collapses so you can take your “keep cup” with you on the go, and a loyalty scheme that works across the world.

It also means knowing your place and not overstepping the line. So, for example, it might mean offering downtime on your phone or encourage less data usage for rest periods. It might mean no adverts during the weekend or after 6pm. It might mean no winter promotional offers for those travelling to hotter climes and vice versa.

There is no doubt that the way we live and work is changing rapidly – and mapping our customers’ lifestyles will become a tactical task, rather than a strategic approach. Understanding the strength of your brand and how you can adapt to their adapting landscapes will be the answer to a truly successful brand of the future.

Collective Communication

I spent a day this week confined to the halls of Olympia at a trade show for those in the learning industry.  As anyone who has attended a similar exhibition will know, they are full of companies showing their wares, those shouting about trends, the latest innovations and a ton of gimmicks - cupcake anyone?

As well as being exhausting for those present across the full two days, they often spark great ideas, put faces to names and hopefully a chance to firm up those virtual deals face-to-face.  As a consultant whose main objective is to represent clients, I am normally looking for the Next Big Thing. Not what someone else is showcasing but what the company I am working for can be doing. 

Having attended a number of similar events over the last few months across different sectors, you begin to start seeing some macro trends emerging. Not surprising when you think that most companies need to think about similar issues - technology, people, profit, etc.  But for the first time ever there seems to be a wave happening in all industries that could influence and infiltrate the way we work.

I have also been reading The Economist's MegaChange 2050: The World in 2050, whose authors touch on four different themes - People and relationships, Heaven and earth, Economy and business and Knowledge and progress - with a futuristic nod to what they think is ahead. 

And to me, it all seems to be coming back to one thing - User Generated Content. Crowdsourcing of intelligence, of ideas. Collective information and collective decisions.

As of the fourth quarter of 2016, Facebook had 1.86 billion monthly active users. If FB was a nation it would be the third most populous on Earth outside of China and India. So it is no surprise that Facebook is utilising this community not only to generate its own content but also to moderate and filter content for others.  Martin Giles in MegaChange 2050: The World in 2050 predicts what many of us already know that friends’ opinion count and that content will be curated by friends in the future.

However, the change for the future will be in the content that is curated. Moving from baby photos and updates on martial status, the news that will be shared from your friends will be world events, their opinions on these world events and their friends’ comments on their opinions. So effectively friends and friends of friends become the social filter of content.

The Pew Institute claimed that in the 2008 Presidential Election over 20% of US adults with access to a computer used social media as a way of getting information about the candidates and their policies.  Not news sites, not manifestos, but what their friends and influencers thought.

Social media cuts through social-economic status and allows us to talk to people we would never talk to about things we would previously would never discuss with all and sundry.

So what does this mean for brands? And how do B2B businesses work in an environment where more and more people are being influenced by the 360 Effect?

At Antelope, we believe it’s about being part of the conversation and having a voice in the debate around them. It’s about being transparent and realising there will be the naysayers as well as the advocates. It’s about promoting yourself, sure, but also about not being arrogant or cocksure.  It’s about showing your values and getting people to know you, as if they don’t know you, how can they like you?

It’s welcoming your users (your customers) to talk about you and joining in with them. It means being not only proactive in your content, but looking at the content about you and around you and participating in it. It’s seeking out the conversations in the corridors, by the water fountain and joining in.

It means a well planned content strategy and one that is agile and flexible. It means having a genuine voice. It’s a little more complex than the odd blog, the occasional tweet and posting across Hootsuite. That’s why companies who hope to be around in 2050 are already the ones who are not only listening to their customers, but those allowing them to talk.