What goes into an experience strategy?

I'm often asked what goes into digital strategy. I usually steer the question towards 'experience' so that we aren't limited to encounters in digital media and channels and recognise that people travel from off- to online seamlessly.

So what goes into an experience strategy? In it's most basic form:

What are we trying to achieve?
What are our participants trying to achieve?
What do we know about their needs and behaviours?
What content and functionality do we need?
What is the journey to, through, and from the experience?
What is the best way to structure it?
How can it be phased?
How can it evolve?
How do we manage it?
How do we measure it?

Will write soon about Pompeii, Sorrento and Berlin, but in the meantime:

How to make the perfect poached egg. The vortex method really works!

Can't wait. Yazoo - Reconnected Live (sampler) by MuteRecords

Can't believe this is still even here. Don't believe anyone is reading it, but must get back into the habit of reflecting on things.

I recently downloaded, Sleep Cycle, an application for my mobile iPhone that monitors my sleep. Because the phone itself is sensitive to movement, you place it on your mattress, near the pillow (with the network turned off) and it monitors movement; the idea being that the deeper the sleep, the less tossing and turning one does. It then looks at the cycles of light and deep sleep to determine when the best time for the alarm to go off. For example, if I set the alarm at 6am, but that would the deepest part of the sleep cycle, it goes off instead at 5.45 when my sleep would be light. It's kind of fun/ creepy to watch graphs of one's own sleep cycles. I seem to sleep well for five hours (say, 10-3am) and then have lots of light/deep cycles from 3-6. Anyway, I find it fascinating, sad git that I am.

State of anxiety

This week, I am in Bangkok. I thought the worst thing may be the heat. It's 100 degrees and humid. But turns out, I was venturing into political instability.

Red Shirts are a group of rural poor who are faithful
to the last PM who was overthrown in 2008 and want him reinstated.
They have been protesting in central Bangkok for the last six weeks,
but peacefully, and as such, the PM declared them a legal
demonstration and vowed no violence which the army and Red Shirts also
vowed. They then stepped up the protest and stormed Parliament on
Wednesday. As such, the PM declared a state of emergency, but no one
really knows what that means. They are trying to shift the Red Shirts
out of Bangkok and the PM has now declared them an illegal protest. He
is still vowing no violence, but has said that the march on Parliament
was an act of violence itself, although no one was hurt. There's a
feeling on all sides that the media is playing it all up but everyone
is watching what's going on. The PM is seen as being very by the book
and cautious and the Thais I spoke to don't think much will come of
it.

Saturday starts the nine-day celebration for Thai New Year and all
parties want it to be resolved by then so that the Red Shirts can go
home to celebrate with their families. People feel tomorrow therefore
will either be a climax or the end of it. We're being told to stay
away from the centre of town and have been assured by Global Unilever
that we are safe where we are (not being near any government or army
areas and, being a laundry detergent conference, not likely to be seen
as very political. Luckily, I didn't pack anything red). And like I
said, no one seems anxious about it including the British Consulate.
And the two Brits who have lived here for a while.

If things do escalate tomorrow, they are almost sure to close the
airport (they did it last year for five days during a similar
protest.) which means I may not be going home on Saturday and may
instead be lounging by the pool.

I think the worst thing that's going to happen is that I won't be able
to go shopping at Siam Paragon which everyone recommended. And as the
5-star hotel is a fort-like complex with six restaurants, two pools
and a cheeky Thai Jazz star named Lilibeth playing in the bar it seems
utterly civilised. It would be a shame not to get to sight see, but
better to be safe for the time being.

So, little apparently to fret about besides which Thai curry to try
next. I'll keep you updated but in the meantime don't worry. No one
here seems to - they haven't even interrupted the TV with it.

Businesses need social strategy not social media strategy

Yet, most "social media" strategies have one or more of three goals: to "push product," "build buzz," or "engage consumers." None of these lives up to the Internet's promise of meaning. They're just slightly cleverer ways to sell more of the same old junk. But the great challenge of the 21st century is making stuff radically better in the first place — stuff that creates what I've been calling thicker value.

Organizations don't need "social media" strategies. They need social strategies: strategies that turn antisocial behavior on its head to maximize meaning. The right end of social tools is to help organizations stop being antisocial. In fact, it's the key to advantage in the 2010s and beyond.'

Umair Haque, HBR

State of anxiety

I came all the way to Bangkok and all I got was a stay at a 5-star hotel.

Bangkok, as you may know, is under a state of emergency. Delcared yesterday by the Prime Minister,

I love the phrase and the sentiment of 'three dimensional consumer-brand interaction' that VandenBosch describes:

You know, the real geniuses out there are the unsung talent at a lot of digital ad agencies. They may go by a variety of titles -- interaction designers, user experience designers, information architects -- but what they really do is connect the dots, they think about how the consumer is really behaving; and if they're really big thinkers, they can extrapolate that into designing how consumers interact with brands in real life. So from a strategy standpoint, it's about being one of those people who can think and plan for a three-dimensional consumer-brand interaction. If I could start my career over again, I think I'd like to be one of those people.

Beautiful images from the Indian Portrait exhibition opening at the National Portrait Gallery in London.

Russell Davies' brilliant quips at the Ogilvy planning conference

I'm back! And determined to use this blog to relieve the manic feed in my brain. Mostly to practice writing things in a clear and digestable way without Powerpoint.

Welcome to Experienced redux (or dux)

This week I'm in Istanbul for a worldwide Ogilvy conference and the planning community got to experience a talk on 'interesting' things that Russell Davies so well threads - giving not only a gentle Sunday morning introduction to the week, but also some immensely relevant challenges for an organisation with the size, history and ambition of Ogilvy.

Rather than transcribe the brilliant talk, I'm sharing my random notes.

............................................................

In an example of analog objects with digital identities, lamposts in Gateshead have unique numbers so that people can call up the council and report outtages...

According to Gartner (?) 1/3 of Internet traffic to belong to 'objects' -- analog objects with digital feeds.

Digital-skinned architecture is the new preoccupation of architecture graduates (and it's only a matter of time before Coca-Cola will be asking to brand it.)

Instapaper is a simple tool that will store online articles and text into a PDF so that it can be read later. And, obviously, it can be printed.

Other analog objects with digital feeds?
Botanicalls a plant sensor that texts you when it needs watering.
Watson home energy monitor which estimates the annual cost of your eletricity as you use it.
Tower Bridge Twitter feed. The bridge goes up, there's a tweet...it goes down, well. you get the idea.

In the Nature of Technology, W. Brian Arthur delcares that as a rule, 'what starts as a group of loosely arranged objects becomes solidified into a single thing. But that thing becomes encrusted with systems and assemblies over time meaning that if you really want to innovate with it, you need to 'redomain' -- go back to another group of loosely arranged objects.

In the Robotic theory of the uncanny valley,

'The uncanny valley is a hypothesis regarding the field of robotics.[1] The theory holds that when robots and other facsimiles of humans look and act almost like actual humans, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers. The "valley" in question is a dip in a proposed graph of the positivity of human reaction as a function of a robot's lifelikeness.'

(How will we make this more friendly? Pink rounded type.)

So while we strive for ever closer targetting and personlisation, would we be better going for mass likeability?

The excitement of digital and the sentiment for analog will lessen over time. What can we do? Look for the legacy systems that the analog industry has left behind and use it to our advantage. Example: it wasn't downloads which finished off Blockbuster, it was ordering DVDs via the post (like Lovefilm or Netflix)

Analog products with digital identities also have a a built in comms channel and give relevant and action-based messaging that people can use. It gives us a not all-ways, but best-time on channel. (Think Nike Plus)

San Francisco wanted to turn the dead corner near the Tram stop at Castro and 17th Street into a pedestrian zone. Rather than wait years to file for the necessary permits, the city bought some paint and some chairs from Ikea, created the zone, and said that if anyone complained they would quickly remove it. Instead, it's become a pedestrian plaza. They call is the 'reversible pilot'. Trying something cheaply that can be easily undone if it doesn't work. This is what digital can be.


Great talk. Have been ruminating on digital's relationship with physical objects and this has fired me up... but then so has the thought of dinner....