The Sentient Brand Experience

Of the 5 Principles of Brand Experience previously explored: Ubiquitous, Social, Semantic, Sentient and Human - there is one that stands out as an opportunity to be owned... Ubiquity - Being across the experience chain is clearly owned by Nike - Nike call themselves a services business, not a sneaker business. They create value around the use of sportswear, not focus on shifting units. Social - Enhancing the experience through the social graph and prompting conversation and shared experiences: The recent Facebook and Spotify alliance. Semantic - Creating meaning from complex data in a way that’s usable by humans - Google Human - Reducing complex technology to the point of democratisation - Apple Which leaves us the fourth principle - that of the ‘Sentient’ brand experience. What do we mean by sentience? Not the often misunderstood conscious awaking of artificial intelligence - but the simple ability to react to, or rather pro-act against context, or put simply, a trigger. Who’s closest? Generally brands involved in Location Based Services, or rather location based Services themselves - the leader so far? With it’s release of ‘Radar’ foursquare has taken a step closer to context awareness - yet Foursquare isn’t really a mass consumer Brand with a clear proposition - it’s more a tool for brands to push to customers, and for customers to interact with each other and the environment driven by simple game mechanics. Most location based services are in fact ‘dumb’ - not dumb in the derogatory sense, but dumb in that most re-act to a single parameter, location, only when asked: press button... receive nearby pubs - hardly clever. No location based service can as yet can re-act to, or more powerfully pro-act against context. What is context - Its a combination of place (environments not points), people (implicit and explicit networks and their collective knowledge) and history (where I and my network have been, were we are now, and where we plan on going) - Where we are, our relationships, collective knowledge, and behaviour over time. Why hasn't this been cracked? The technology required has only just reached our pockets, even with the release yesterday of Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus device incorporating an accelerometer, GPS, compass, gyroscope, light sensor, proximity sensor and barometer we are only just arriving at a real ability to sense the environment in a mass, yet personal way. Layer this with increasingly intelligent, lightweight applications, ever more power-full devices and faster networks and the opportunity only just begins to emerge. The question is, who’s going to take it?

5 Principles of Brand Experience

In a world where Brands are no longer defined by positioning but their roles in peoples lives, the experience that a Brand creates and curates though it’s products and services is fundamental to the sustainability of the business. Most peer-to-peer recommendation is based on experience - our perception, the emotional take out of interacting with products and services - if the experience fails, then so does the Brand. So how do we design the end-to-end Experience? How do we support the role of the Brand in the world? The following is presented as a set of principles and questions that brands should consider when designing this system.   The modern Brand Experience should be: Ubiquitous, Social, Semantic, Sentient and Human.

Ubiquitous

- Throughout the experience / value chain - Across multiple channels - 24 - 7 - 365

Where many brands will focus on a few discrete stages of the end-to-end experience, the opportunities for providing increased customer value will usually lie outside of these. Typically many brands will focus around stages of consideration and transaction, yet for customers greater value can typically be gleaned post purchase - Services vs Sales. As a brand, what are we uniquely positioned to offer? What and where are we credible for? Where do we have permission to play? How can we fit seamlessly into or enhance existing systems? How do our customers want to interact with us? Where? When? What are the patterns of these interactions?   Social

- Enhanced by the social graph (but not dependent upon it) - Creates and facilitates conversations - Shareable

Brand experience is improved by the presence of other people - their knowledge, opinion, history and future intent - can the experiences we design be enhanced by people but still work in their absence? Does the experience prompt and capture conversation and build on the insights?  Is the experience itself and the artefacts within it shareable, viral?   Semantic

- Gives meaning to complex multi layered data - Understands human requests - Connect-able

More data exists in the world than ever before, data that can immeasurably enhance our existence if understood and interpreted correctly. Yet this data is complex, multi layered and disconnected - how do we interpret meaning from this, build connections to form insights and answers? When we allow people access to this data, how human is the interaction? Why do we only ask binary questions? How much do we cater to subtly or nuance? With the data we own, do we build and allow connections to and from it? Often data only makes sense when layered with other data that gives it meaning.   Sentient

- Context aware - Reacts (pre-empts) accordingly - Learns

The brand experience should be living - this requires an understanding of context and the ability to react to it. Do we sense context - time, place, occasion, preference, social connection and history? Can we react or pre-empt against context? Our lives are built around patterns - yet do we observe and learn from deviation?   Human

- Simplifies complexity - Democratises the service - Creates new behaviours - Gives immediate value

Simplicity democratises, and can allow a brand or its products and services to reach new audiences, so why do we often design complexity over simplicity? Why do we bombard customers with choice? Why don't we design for accessibility? Why a ‘press-and-click’ when a gesture seems more natural and intuitive? And can we even enable new behaviours by making things as easy as possible? Yet humanising an experience is not always enough - we need to make the value of an interaction immediately apparent, whilst conveying that this value will build over time with increased engagement.   While these principles are by no means definitive - as a starting point for challenging the existing experience, they can help a brand maintain a role that is living, human, considerate and above all - valuable.   Nathan Williams @nathanawilliams is a Strategist at Wolff Olins London specialising in Brand Experience and Technology. Thanks to contributors - Yelena Ford and Morgan Holt.

Calling Bull$&*% on 'Post-Digital'

I’m getting old. When I first started making stuff with technology and the Internet, things like Internet Explorer didn’t exist. In the insane calendar of Moore’s Law, it was an age ago. A little later I worked in places that called themselves ‘web design’ or ‘Internet agencies’. We built web sites, and other exciting stuff for things like ‘Interactive TV’ and ‘mobile’ using WAP 1.1. Driven by new technology, anything seemed possible.   Fast forward to say 2006, suddenly, everyone is talking about Digital. Digital referred, not to one’s and zero’s, but primarily to the Internet in its many fixed and mobile forms, the things living in it and connected to it. It was a term coined to describe new things that certain business didn’t quite understand, and were scared of…   Now fast-forward again a little, but only a year or so: did I hear you say Post Digital? Post digital was coined as a term to describe the fact that the Internet, or vague ‘Internet connected digital thing-a-ma-bobs’, were now so prevalent, normal and accepted in business and society that we are living in a ‘post digital age’ amidst an ‘Internet of connect things’.   Stop. So we went from Digital to Post Digital in a couple of years? I know technology moves fast, but here’s the rub: for many businesses, being digital was and is hard. Embracing technology in and outside of an organisation is not easy. But what if we can adopt the notion of post digital? That sounds easier! It implies we got digital, then moved on! Or rather, back to business as usual.   Sadly, there are more problems with this term. I give you Exhibit A – The Nabaztag.  So post-digital is all about digital being so normal right? Well The Nabaztag is a Wi-Fi enabled, Internet connected, talking, white plastic Rabbit. Say that aloud: A Wi-Fi enabled, Internet connected, talking, white plastic Rabbit. A Wi-Fi enabled, Internet connected, talking, white plastic Rabbit IS NOT NORMAL!   Exhibit B – Access to the Internet and technology outside of the developed world. I wont bore you with the stats, Google them. But if you don’t believe me, travel to a country where people have to charge their Nokia via bicycle power, then look at their blank faces as you show them your Nabaztag. I rest my case.

So where are we? Somewhere in the early to mid 90’s the basic technology foundations of the Internet we know today were laid, lets call it Web 1.0. In the mid naughties, everything got standardised and connected into a web of open data, Web 2.0. Today, we approach Web 3.0, an Internet of connected ‘applications’ underpinned by a web of semantic data. Exciting enough on it’s own, but now there’s a difference: Internet access devices and interfaces are finally beginning to meet expectation and deliver on the promises envisaged for them back at the beginning. Technology now works, and it works well. If we can work on equal access then we’ll hit ground zero, the beginning.

  Post digital? Bullshit, we’re just barely getting started. Lets do some awesome stuff…  

(Nathan Williams) @nathanawilliams  Nathan Williams is a Strategist in Wolff Olins London. He likes technology, and delicious cake. Photo courtesy of Lisamarie Babik via Flickr Creative Commons License.