Brand Experience

Killing The Single Voice Of A Brand

I once had this conversation with another copywriter. What if there was no definitive voice & tone for a brand?

Or, what if the voice remained the same, and the tone shifted, based on the context (which is what it should do)?

Or what if we got rid of voice & tone altogether, and understanding the brand’s identity was enough?

We explored this question because in the world of tech companies, it’s difficult to have a distinct brand voice when everyone’s copying each other and trying to sound “more human”.

But… could AI kill the single voice of a brand? And replace it with the most individualized, most personalized communication at-scale that simply wasn’t possible before?

Marketing Experience

15 Examples Of Social Proof

In every copywriting framework, the most important element is proof. Why? Because proof is how you build trust.

Then you have to make sure you have the right kinds of proof because everyone’s different, and different forms of proof trigger different responses.

From reviews to testimonials to user generated content, here’s a comprehensive list of social proof ideas that you can use right away. Like everything, experiment and find what works for you.

User Experience

First Impressions or First Milliseconds

Hey web designers. You have 50 milliseconds to make a strong first impression on people, according to research done in 2006.

What’s 50 milliseconds? It’s one-thousandth of a second.

To give you a sense of scale, a blink of an eye takes about 100-400 milliseconds, so within the time it takes you to blink an eye, anywhere from 2-8 first impressions could have been made.

A hummingbird flaps its wings around 50 times per second, but only 2.5 times in 50 ms, completing one first impression on a website.

Bottom line: it doesn’t take long for people to:

• Trust you

• Like you

• Dismiss you

Of course, that research was done back in 2006, a much simpler time in terms of the internet.

Whether you think much has changed since then, or not, what hasn’t changed is how fast people will judge your site based on:

• Color

• Typography

• Photography

• Navigation

• Design & visual hierarchy

Here are 25 examples from Shopify on websites that nail that first impression.

Customer Experience

The Next Era Of CX With Generative AI

Before ChatGPT, chatbots were pretty dumb. Is dumb harsh? Ok, let’s just say they were severely scripted and limited (to their scripts).

With generative AI, that’s slowly changing. But will it be enough? Won’t people still need people? Sure, in the short run.

But imagine a future where chatbots, fully trained on your unique brand, are able to deliver those very personalized, unique interactions with your customers — without human intervention.

And that’s just the beginning.

• Service

• Sales

• Marketing

There’s not one aspect of any business that won’t be touched by AI in the very near future.

More here.

Employee Experience

CEOs Finally Get Culture? Yes.

The data doesn’t lie. In fact:

“CEOs looking to accelerate performance in today’s volatile market can do so by ensuring culture remains at the top of their strategic agenda.”

And what aspects of culture are CEOs focusing on?

• Direction and purpose, which saw the largest growth from 37% in 2021 to 69% in 2023.

• Agility, innovation, and growth mindset (57%)

• A positive spirit and vitality (46%)

Read more here.

Data Experience

How Top Consumer Brands Measure Marketing

This is a nice gem from Lenny’s Newsletter featuring Michael Kaminsky and Mike Taylor, two experts at understanding the dark art of marketing attribution.

It includes lessons from how 40+ brands measure their marketing impact, such as McDonald’s, H&M, Amazon, Airbnb, and Uber.

They’ve also included a link to an Airtable showing how these companies measure their success.

They generally use a mix of these three ways to measure marketing effectiveness. They are:

• Digital tracking/multi-touch attribution (MTA)

• Marketing mix modeling (MMM)

• Testing/conversion lift studies (CLS)

Definitely worth a read. Full article here.