I’ve been working with IBM over the past several years on everything from the future of work to cognitive computing to social business to smarter commerce. Most recently, IBM and I have partnered on something a bit more experiential. The Commerce, Mobile and Social team at IBM selected X: The Experience When Business Meets Design as the company’s latest title for its monthly book club. As part of the club, IBM hosts a series of activities for employees and the…
Uber is Driving a New Generation of Collaborative Marketing
A few weeks ago, I had a very interesting conversation with Fortune’s Sarah Silbert, one that’s still resonating with me. Silbert was exploring Uber’s marketing partnerships and how they might be different than what we see from Lyft and others. Her hunch was that Uber not only amplifies “the on-demand economy—it’s also setting the pace for a new generation of brand marketing.” The story was prompted by Uber’s many partnerships with brands, specifically the promotion to launch the new BMW 7 Series. But that’s…
Tracking Our Next Digital Steps
It’s been a bit of a whirlwind since the launch of X. In the last two weeks, I’ve hosted conversations about the promise of experience design in London, Düsseldorf, Oslo, Sydney and Geelong. Somewhere along the Atlantic, I was asked to answer a few questions ahead of my arrival in Geelong for the Pivot Summit by Courtney Crane of the Geelong Advertiser. Thanks to the magic (or curse) of inflight wifi, I was able to make her deadline. But it…
How To Unify Your Sales, Service and Marketing Departments Around Customer Experience
Guest post by Omar Akhtar (@obakhtar), Managing Editor, Altimeter Group, a Prophet company Imagine you’re getting ready to drive your car. But when you turn on the engine, you get a mobile notification telling you that your oil needs to be changed, and it gives you a link to the nearest dealership with a 10% discount coupon. You’re left surprised and delighted by the sheer, almost magical convenience of it all. But is that event classified as a sales, service…
Marketing to Marketing to Reimagine Marketing
Guest post by Fred Studer (@fredstuder), Chief Marketing Officer at NetSuite Sometimes, in fact oftentimes, the most important audience for your message are the people who are already working for you. In an age of online surveys and instant feedback across social channels, articulating your message to the people who work in your company can often be neglected. In fact, if you haven’t convinced and energized your own people, you’re going to be hard pressed to convince the market. My…
Why Customer Experience is The Catalyst for Digital Transformation
As a digital analyst, I spend a lot of his time thinking about the future of customer experience. So much so that my next book attempts to rethink the term “experience,” X:The Experience of Business Meets Design. “X” explores experience architecture the various ways companies can design meaningful and shareable experiences in every moment of truth. I recently spent time with the team at VisionCritical as part of the prep for its their upcoming conference in Chicago, 2015 Vision Critical…
The 10 Commandments of Content Marketing
Marketers often confuse content marketing with engagement. Just because you get someone’s attention doesn’t mean your audience actually cares. You spend all of this time following the work of others, listening to experts who preach soundbites and executing against a programmatic calendar only to miss the very thing that connects with people…relevance. It’s hard to gauge or appreciate something so contextual however when we base our work on the measurement of the wrong things. Numbers do not reflect engagement. They…
Attention is a Gift: Once you have my attention, why should I care?
I’m frustrated that my worth is measured more by the numbers of followers, views or visitors that I have and not the merit or impact of my work. You too must start to feel discontent when it comes to your work being judged on hollow numbers alone. The ability to cause effect or change behavior is true influence and that’s the core of what we stand for. Numbers do not mean much. Without purpose and intention, our work becomes part…
It’s About the Customer Experience; So, Why Is Your Brand Ignoring Customers?
Humans are emotional creatures and they want experiences that engage them as humans. They’re not eyeballs, impressions, views, likes, shares, clickthroughs, or conversions. A few weeks ago, I visited New York on a beautiful summer day to participate in an event that I would love to repeat everywhere around the world. Prophet, a global brand strategy firm that recently acquired Altimeter Group, hosted an intimate event to explore the new horizons of digital customer experience (DCX). I was invited…
Why Marketers Should Care About Millennials and Anyone Living a Digital Lifestyle
What is a Millennial, and why should a marketer care? That was the question Adobe’s Simon Nicholson asked me during Adobe Summit EMEA in London earlier this year. I joined Simon in a live chat on the topic and have included the fun, casual yet informative conversation below… Let’s start with this, the definition of Millennials is imprecise, with the consensus being they’re aged around 18-34. But one of the key points that I emphasized in our discussion is that…
