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076 - Neophilia: Obsession with the New
Update from Emily (in rainbows).
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064 - Jason Fields: Combining Voice and Visuals - Multimodal
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Jason Fields, Chief Strategy Officer, Voicify
Jason Fields is Chief Strategy Officer at Voicify, a top CMS (content management system) for designing voice experiences on Alexa and Google Assistant. Jason and Emily discussed the meaning of multimodal design for voice assistants and why this kind of conversation design matters. How can brands create experiences for customers to interact with a voice assistant from different devices with varying screen sizes or no screen at all? It’s all about context.
Overall, the question becomes: How do we connect and organize a variety of communicable assets in a way that meets basic (and reasonable) audience expectations? Jason and Voicify have created a free downloadable guide about modality for brands.
Topics:
Amazon Echo Show 5 - an entry level multimodal smart speaker (voice + visual)
Multimodality in voice experiences
Johnnie Walker tasting Alexa skill - good example
Saucony is doing a nice job in audio responses and visual components with emotive vs instructive images in specific parts of the conversation (this is sensitivity to multimodality)
Images should match the conversation tone (e.g. a dispassionate conversation about product features should be accompanied by a feature set image, not models wearing the product out in the world)
“How do I get to your store?” should show a map - seems obvious but isn’t being done often enough
Use case for multimodal experiences: a woman getting ready for a flight. The experience could contain or present information to assist customer with: packing, organizing, car service, check flight time, traffic, terminal location, gate, TSA status, etc. - all the devices information can be displayed should take advantage of screen space and contextual data such as location.
Voicify can detect type of voice assistant device (such as Echo Auto or smart TV or mobile phone or smart watch) and respond appropriately based on context and device, even offering secondary information such as gate update
Key: suss out what information is most useful to user at that moment and how best to present it visually and with sound: first, map user intention
Brands have been assembling digital assets for twenty years: we have vast libraries so it should be simple to assign a framework to these assets
Jason’s podcast recommendation: Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Connect with Jason and Voicify:
Twitter: @Voicify
063 - Michele Arnese: Why Brands Need Sound - Voice Marketing and Beyond
How can brands use sound to connect with customers? As voice technology becomes embedded in consumers’ lives, the sound of your brand will be increasingly important.
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What should your brand sound like on Alexa? Because this is a transitional moment in voice technology, right now there is a real opportunity to be an early adopter, especially for a vertical like FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) as we expect an $80 billion voice commerce market by 2023.
Bottom line, this is about using sound to connect with customers and strengthen your consistent brand voice.
Guest: Designed in Italy and assembled in Germany, Michele Arnese is a self-driven strategic and creative thinker with a strong entrepreneurial approach. As Global CEO and Creative Director of amp, in the field of audio branding, he's considered one of the world's foremost experts, with clients including Mastercard, Mercedes, Porsche, BBVA, Geberit, BMW, UniCredit, MINI, Triumph, The Linde Group and a range of international awards for his work with amp.
Sound DNA by amp
Topics and Timestamps:
03:00 Michele’s story from management consulting and music to founding amp a decade ago
04:10 Why sonic branding matters. First: think of James Bond as a sonic identity: this is key to the elevator pitch to convince clients of the importance of sonic branding. Close your eyes and listen to Shirley Bassey or Adele. You can see James Bond in your mind.
05:30 Sonic DNA: a core track or melody that translates to all different brand touch points such as video, commercials, transaction sounds
06:00 Sonic logo has been around a long time (famous examples include Intel and T-Mobile). Sonic DNA is a new idea: it’s about ingredients, you can combine differently to create different sonic assets for different touch points (like James Bond has different sounds for Skyfall or other editions).
07:00 Sonic branding must be more flexible and complex than just a jingle
07:15 Mastercard client work: a melody approach to the sonic DNA then developing music for very different touch points including audio visual and digital channels plus global campaigns like 2019 where we did a sonic watermark.
07:50 MasterCard New York restaurant watermark for different soundscapes
08:00 Flexibility and recognition is the payoff for sonic branding, the ROI essentially
08:15 Budget for visual brand identity with logos (think of Gap or Tropicana logo rebrands) - why don’t we question this but in sonic branding it is harder to get budget
09:00 Music is an old connection to humans (in our brains) but a new discipline for brand strategy. Brands must break through clutter. Voice assistants like Alexa and voice tech introduce an awareness for the need to be recognized in a non-visual environment.
09:40 ROI of sonic branding - amp client UniCredit’s study: client had savings in terms of music production budget and licenses and AV production (able to begin with owned material)
“The Sound of BBVA: Bringing the age of opportunity to everyone. Using the BBVA sound DNA, we developed a holistic audio identity covering all digital and physical spaces. This sonic branding project stands above and beyond the rest, serving as a benchmark for future audio branding projects.” Case study: amp - BBVA’s sonic branding
11:10 We process sound and music in the limbic system, same place brain stores emotion - this where brands want to be processed, too
11:30:
There are a lot of studies that explain the brain statistics, but if you go back to yourself, to your experience: what counts is the association that you get with the brand and the sonic ecosystem. - Michele Arnese
12:00 Michele’s research process to create a sonic mood board through immersion (example: he walks through retail store and listens)
12:30:
We create a new dimension of a brand identity. - Michele Arnese
13:00 Some of amp’s clients are in banking and financial services, also many in auto industry and FMCG
13:30 His financial sector work began with UniCredit then BBVA - this sector had a need for greater human connection between brand and customers
THE SOUND OF PORSCHE. AN ENTIRELY NEW, INTERACTIVE BRAND EXPERIENCE.
“Tasked to create an audio branding concept for the Porsche sound lab, we created an interactive sound installation featuring soundscapes and video mapping techniques.” - amp
13:50: Some banking and financial brands realized that the human connection was missing and music could help. This is why we have seen an explosion of cases [for sonic branding] in the financial industry. - Michele
14:20 Financial services is changing greatly in last five years: fewer branches and physical location, but need to instill trust and physical security. Must compensate for changing landscape of brand experience with something that can establish the connection like music.
15:20 What is the function of the Mastercard Acceptance sound (the sound indicating that payment is successful)?
15:50 Acceptance sound for credit card company is to 1) establish trust and 2) reiterate brand recognition
16:30 How does a brand apply sonic branding to voice as with Alexa or Google Assistant? Understand the translation of the brand into sonic attributes.
17:00 How to create a voice profile for a brand (attributes such as introverted or extroverted must be heard in the brand voice)
18:10 Alexa Skills for a brand: sound and voice can join together
19:10 Understand the North Star of a brand - sonic branding helps examine this
20:00 There is a set of feelings, tonalities, impacts which must be the same for the entire brand. Define the borders. Consistency is key.
20:30 How will conversation between brand and consumers change as voice assistants have greater impact on marketing and consumer touch points?
21:00 “We have said that brands are dying on Alexa. But now there is a journey for brands to get back to more connection in creating, for example, voice avatars.”
21:45 We are in a transition phase regarding branded voice experiences
22:00 Brands who’ve done their homework will succeed in voice - establishing sonic branding is first step
22:30 Opportunity exists to be first brand to define acoustic domain in many sectors: look at FMCG, blue ocean here (with $80 billion voice commerce market in 2023, fast moving consumer goods can take advantage and be first movers with sound branding)
25:00 Music Journalism Insider: News, job listings, and interviews from the world of music journalism. Edited by Todd L. Burns.
Learn more - articles:
Drawing on the findings of the Best Audio Brands Ranking, Michele Arnese discusses with Paul Armstrong in an interview for Forbes what it takes to create a killer sonic brand that delivers and delves into the implications for big and small companies. - These Are the World’s Best Sonic Brands by Paul Armstrong, Forbes
Connect with Michele:
Twitter: @brandingamp
Stay updated on voice marketing. Follow @beetlemoment on Instagram:
062 - Amit Dogra: Voice AI in Finance: Alexa at Sanctuary Wealth
What is the future of AI and voice in financial services, and why does this technology matter? Amit Dogra is the Chief Experience Officer at Sanctuary Wealth, which reached $10bn in AUA (assets under advisement) within 15 months after its 2018 founding. Sanctuary is a partner owned firm that brings together an elite group of wealth advisors under the banner of partnered independence.
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Amit and Emily Binder talked about Sanctuary's unveiling of their Alexa Skills and what it means for their business. Voice is symbolic of more than just embracing new technology.
Topics and timestamps:
03:15 Sanctuary Wealth’s focus on anti-Wall Street and anti-big bank culture, more intimate and partner-oriented: #PartneredIndependence - here’s a video from CEO Jim Dickson about partnered independence
03:45 What does a Chief Experience Officer (CXO) do? He focuses on culture, growth, and innovation.
03:50 How does a Wall Street M.O. cause client experience to suffer? It’s results-driven instead of client-centric.
Amit Dogra unveils Sanctuary Wealth’s Alexa Skills at Oasis 2019
04:15 Creating fictitious bank accounts to hit numbers (you know who) - and the corporate culture that drove this
05:15 Amazon as the ultra customer-centric company
06:30 Sanctuary Wealth’s Alexa Skill announcement in fall 2019 at Oasis: What is Amit’s team doing with voice, and why was this initiative important? Who benefits?
07:28 The audience for their Alexa Skill is both B2B and B2C: there’s corporate and internal use and also advisor to end client
09:45 If I’m a Sanctuary advisor, how do I use the Alexa Skill? Functions include internal phone/directory, corporate contact information, and archives of the monthly all-hands call (“Alexa, play Sanctuary Wealth corporate update”).
11:15 Looking at Echo devices for video calling features, Amit is excited about the Echo Show for multimodal (they deployed on the Echo Show 5, passing up the Dot because the video feature was key)
12:15 Emily: Echo Dot was successful as an affordable entry level smart speaker. Great for habit formation. But today screenless Dots or Google Home Minis aren’t as popular as multimodal voice assistant devices because people want a screen for visuals.
13:10 Results so far: adoption and useful feedback
Sanctuary Wealth unveiled personalized Alexa devices for their advisors (tweet)
14:50 New habit formation
15:30 “Advisors are leaving wirehouses and the banking industry because they’re tired of the past. But we have to give them a reason to stay with us. Doing things differently by embracing tech is key.” - Amit
16:15 You have to spell out and educate with voice at first
16:30 Voice hits the limbic system (this emotional processing center happens to also be where we store music and memory) - and we all know that money is emotional
17:35 What does Amit see happening with AI and technology in financial services and the RIA space in the next two years?
18:13 You can’t imagine the business will be static. AI will be embraced but not as quickly in financial services as other industries.
We want to be the early adopter because this is a copycat industry. -Amit Dogra
19:10 AI can change the financial services game like analytics changed baseball - as far as interaction with clients and doing business in a better way
20:10 Bonus question: What is Amit’s opinion on Jeff Bezos as a CEO?
23:00 The best podcast Amit has heard lately: Everything is Alive hosted by Ian Chillag
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061 - Dr. Daniel Crosby: Boating and Selfies Are Dangerous, Investing Is Not
Do you know the biggest misconception about investing? New York Times best selling author Dr. Daniel Crosby joined Emily Binder to talk about the psychology of money. Many investors are mistaken that success in the markets is about being analytically minded, but it’s actually more about self control.
So yes, C.R.E.A.M., but emotion rules cash. Daniel shares the three legs of effective investing and why education alone isn’t enough to save us from investing mistakes or weight gain. (Yes, the two are linked.)
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Daniel Crosby, Ph.D is author of The Behavior Investor and host of Standard Deviations
Guest: Dr. Daniel Crosby is an Atlanta based psychologist and behavioral finance expert who helps organizations understand the intersection of mind and markets. A New York Times bestselling author, his most recent book is The Behavioral Investor. Dr. Crosby is Chief Behavioral Officer at Brinker Capital.
Timestamps and topics:
02:00 Daniel’s background: trained in clinical psychology then searched for non-clinical applications of psychology, stumbled on behavioral finance: the intersection of the mind and the markets
02:50 What do people most misunderstand about investing and their money?
03:20 “My business is full of human behavior” -Daniel’s father, a financial advisor for forty years
4:00 Many people think that success in the markets is about being analytically minded… when in reality the most successful investors have one thing in common: being able to control their own emotions. See Buffett.
4:15 It’s quite easy to be okay or good at investing
04:40 Cognitive errors
05:00 Our brain is wired to keep us alive long enough to pass on our genes, not to achieve excellence
05:25 The ways our brains betray us and hurt our investing: Our ego (especially a problem for men: see Consider Firing Your Male Broker by Blair duQuesnay), emotion, conservatism, and attention (tendency to confuse what’s easy to recall vs. what is probable)
Taking selfies is riskier than investing.
06:20 Example of attention leading us astray: People are very afraid of sharks but not of taking selfies, even though the latter has a higher death rate. Attentional bias for the vivid.
07:13 People think investing is risky even though over any given fifteen year period in history you couldn’t have lost money while invested in the general stock market
07:30 Multi-asset class diversified investing is much safer than, for example, taking selfies or boating, but we don’t perceive it this way
Boating is riskier than investing.
08:20 We tend not to answer the complicated question but to substitute: so we ask, “is this enjoyable?” And investing isn’t fun, but boating is fun. So instead of answering “is this risky?” we answer the question “is this enjoyable?” And then boating seems safer than investing.
10:25 It’s more complicated than just having an advisor help you.
The three legs of good investment decision making:
Education: learn about stocks, bonds, accounts
Environment: your portfolio - well-diversified that won’t scare you to death
Encouragement: good advisors to slap the bad decision out of your hand before you make it
11:00 Self-control parallels to diet and exercise: know what to eat, don’t have junk in the pantry, have a trainer or workout buddy to get you in the gym (apply these analogies to investing)
11:20 We added nutrimental information and calorie labels to food but we are actually twice as obese now - behavior change takes much more than just education
12:00 We want to think that we’re rational but information/education is a weak predictor of behavior change (nutrition labels alone don’t change our behavior)
13:25 For the same reasons that we’re fat, we’re poor. It’s complicated information, and it’s just information alone, which is ineffective (see the three legs). There’s a cottage industry of selling complexity.
Our tweet storm - what do people misunderstand about investing?:
14:00 Are people more empowered to manage their money now with technology and more transparency? Are we on a better path to managing our money better now that we’ve gotten away from old school stock brokers dialing for dollars and manipulating our emotions?
15:00 There’s never been a better time to be an individual investor, yet things we think we want like transparency and liquidity can hurt us. E.g. the more you check your account, the more it induces action, panic, and mistakes.
You’ve probably heard of the famous Fidelity study which showed that investors who had forgotten their account passwords performed better than ones who logged in and traded actively.
16:00 Across 19 different countries, the more active people are with trading, the worse their portfolios tend to perform.
17:15 People need financial advisors, but not for the reason they think.
18:00 Emily mentioned this quote from Stephanie Bogan on Patrick Brewer’s podcast, The Model FA: “When people come into your office to talk about their money, they’re never really talking about their money."
19:00 Literally nothing has more excitatory power in the brain than money - not sex, not death, not anything else.
19:40 Daniel has a strong Twitter presence, is great at marketing himself, and at making his ideas accessible: what is his strategy?
20:35 Daniel’s long term plan: put positive messages into the world and study happiness
21:30 Daniel’s podcast recommendations:
Dateline NBC Podcast - listen on Spotify
Ologies Podcast - study of different sciences
The Pitch (“Shark Tank" for your ears”)
Standard Deviations (Daniel’s podcast) - Emily’s favorite episodes:
24:00 Daniel’s book recommendations:
He is writing a book on the meaning of life, so he is reading about this. Best one he read last year: Alchemy by Rory Sutherland (Ogilvy guy) - great book for anyone into marketing. Topic: behavioral economics and applying psychology to marketing.
Connect with Daniel Crosby:
Twitter: @danielcrosby
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060 - Does Digital Kill Advertising Creativity? Claire Winslow
Guest: Claire Winslow, CEO Best Practice Media joins Emily Binder to discuss the evolving definition of creativity in advertising, plus the problems with the ways that we recognize and award women in business.
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Claire and Emily discuss whether “advertising as we know it is dead” - prompted by Larry Light’s opinion piece in Forbes. The author writes:
The focus on short-term, disposable viewership is an unfortunate byproduct of the digital age. Sustainable advertising campaigns designed to create and reinforce brand loyalty will be a thing of the past.
The love affair with digital, data and devices has eclipsed the understanding that truly creative, memorable, persuasive and consistent advertising has an important role to play in brand building. Advertising is not a single use wet wipe. The primary role of marketing in general, and advertising in particular, is to create, reinforce and increase brand loyalty. -Larry Light
Audience segmentation and funnels are the new form of creativity
We should not limit the word “creativity” to a traditional definition of coming up with the ideas - it’s more than the ideas because it also involves the technical skill and strategizing of promoting the message, which can be done creatively even if it doesn't resemble Mad Men
The evolution of language: it always changes. Look at Olde English. Old people always dog young people - it’s the pattern of humanity.
Instead of taking slogans from traditional media and putting them on social ads, reverse it and let inexpensive social advertising inform the traditional ads which are more expensive to produce:
Case study from Claire's agency Best Practice Media: Buc-ee's Texas road stop, an amusement park/gas station - how Claire’s team is helping Buc-ee's choose effective copy for their road sign using digital (A/B testing 15 slogan options on Facebook to inform outdoor advertising).
More info: Buc-ee's, the convenience-store chain with a cult following and 'world-famous’ bathrooms
Female Founders Are Changing the World. Please Stop Calling Them 'Mompreneurs' and 'She-E-Os': Enough with the cutesy nicknames - Inc piece by Leigh Buchanan
Get in touch with Claire Winslow:
Social Media Week Austin: smwatx.com
Twitter: @bestpracticesmm
SPECIAL EVENT: SkillSetters Flash Networking at Project Voice on January 14, 2020
The official Tuesday night event at Project Voice:
Increase the discoverability of your Alexa Skill or Flash Briefing live at #SkillSetters premiere cocktail hour!
Come share your Alexa Skill or Flash Briefing, speed dating style! 50 Alexa Skill creators have the opportunity to give a short elevator pitch for your Skill in 1 minute to each person in the room. After each interaction, guests can scan each other’s QR code badge that opens their Skill on mobile.
You’ll leave with up to 50 new users, new friends, and great ideas! Come network with the #SkillSetters at Project Voice!
YOUR HOSTS: SkillSetters and Finalists for the Flash Briefing of the Year Award:
Emily Binder (Voice Marketing with Emily Binder)
Daniel Hill (The Instagram Stories)
Amy Summers (The Pitch with Amy Summers)
With featured guest Bradley Metrock, host of Project Voice along with Audiobrain and more great sponsors! Register now, spaces are limited.
059 - Celebrity Skin for Alexa: Novelty or More?
Amazon is charging users 99 cents to skin the standard parts of its voice experience with a celebrity voice. As we close out this decade, we can see a parallel between these early voice experiences and the beginning years of one of the most successful social media apps of all time: Instagram.
Filters—whether photo filters or voice skins—begin as a bolt-on and a novelty. But imagine where they’re headed.
Think rich, contextual voice experiences.
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Similar to what Google Assistant has done, Amazon is now giving customers the option to hear some familiar voices in addition to Alexa’s default voice. Today the company kicked off its celebrity voice program, and it’s starting with Samuel L. Jackson. - The Verge
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Finalist for Flash Briefing of the Year Award