Axon Publishing | Customer Publishing Agency, London UK

Last week, another new digital communication was announced, whose content is assembled on the basis of a person’s other online activity. There are several now, which draw upon Twitter feeds one follows, articles one “likes” or sources to which one subscribes, in order to aggregate “relevant” content. This one, I read, is “using personalisation and behavioural targeting to filter content”,  ”tracking the information users are reading frequently”, in order to ensure that the content is “relevant”.

Which simply raises the question of whether people’s past content consumption really should dictate what they encounter in the future – whether people know what they are going to need to read.

Steve Jobs of Apple was notoriously dismissive of customers effectively determining for themselves what they will get. “Some people say, ‘Give the customers what they want’. But that’s not my approach,” he declared.

“Our job is to figure out what they’re going to want before they do.” Could there be a better definition of a good editor, planning content ahead of publication?

I have been voluble in my criticism of publications which claim they are turning over their content to their audience. There are magazines which say they are being “edited” by readers, or even “edited” by Facebook fans. Of course, they are not really; readers are usually simply helping with a list of options whose relevance, feasibility and legality have to be determined by a professional editor. The claim to be “edited” by readers simply erodes the value of the job of editor.

For readers are not creatives. It is our job, in editorial content, to predict what will be relevant to particular readers, in five minutes time, five weeks or even, with some publications, five months from now. We start each “issue” (whatever form that now takes) afresh; and new ideas may have to replace old regulars if their relevance wanes. Or as they say on financial investment ads, past performance is no indication of the future.

Which is where, of course, this idea of tracking past and frequent use to determine relevant content simply falls down.

Sometimes, what we need is an editor – or a salesman – to put unexpected things in front of us, to explain why we need to consider a thing we had never previously considered, and why it will be relevant to us.

I hope we all remember the magnificent pitch which Don Draper made, in an episode of Mad Men, for the Kodak slide carousel. Instead of promoting its technological wizardry, its efficiency or its storage capabilities, Don pitched it as a time machine. “It goes backwards and forwards. It takes us to a place where we ache to go again…to a place where we know we are loved.”

What people would buy, what was relevant to those consumers, was not a slide carousel, not an innovative product of its day, but an emotion – nostalgia. It took a creative to see that what was relevant to those consumers was something which the consumers, or indeed Kodak, could not have predicted.

Or, as Steve Jobs concluded, “Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.”

Originally posted on the APA Blog

I’ve been intrigued by a recent post in which influential US social media guru Avinash Kaushik proposes a new set of metrics to measure success in social media.

It comes down to four aspects: conversation rate (number of audience comments per post); amplification rate (retweets per tweet); applause rate (number of “likes” or “+1s”; and economic value (conversion into spend).

Now, Kaushik’s post is about measurement; the opportunities which social media provide for accurate and immediate assessment of success. But what struck me is that, even though we may not have had the means of measuring our publishing successes so easily in the past, those are actually the objectives which our content has always had. They’re as valid for digital publications, and indeed for print, as they are for social media.

Conversation – isn’t that the number of readers who respond to a call to action, plus the to-and-fro of a letters page or online forum?

Amplification – isn’t that “pass-on”, the way in which a good publication’s readership always exceeds its circulation?

Applause – the growth in readership, the letters and e-mails of appreciation from customers?

And of course, economic value – not just the tracked items which sell because they are mentioned in a publication, but the longer-term financial benefits which editorial engagement can achieve.

In other words, the “new” social media metrics are actually a reflection of the ways in which publishing agencies have always measured success for clients, across all of the platforms on which we engage with customers. Those objectives are in our professional DNA, and underpin our experience. And while there may be new ways of measuring engagement with clients, it’s still the content which we create, whether for social media, digital publications or print, which will best achieve it.

Originally posted in the APA Blog

(Photo: miriam via flickr.com)

Frequency is a key element, often overlooked, in the construction of multi-channel communications.

It is a crucial consideration in what you are saying, and where you are saying it.

A frequency needs to be something an audience understands instinctively if they are to anticipate publication. Few communications, for example, go out every six weeks, just as few things in our lives happen every six weeks. By coinciding with a cycle in the audience’s life, communications combine expectation with desire, and are positively received.

In print, there are established publishing frequencies for customer communications. At one end of the spectrum are weekly, often ‘newspaper’ formats, which can coincide with weekly activities like supermarket shopping. Monthly magazines are well established, and echo many customers’ familiarity with the schedule of upmarket newsstand magazines, as well as with their own regular financial cycle. Three times a year can be appropriate for publications in the educational arena, coinciding with academic terms. And annual publications have an authority, an overview status and potential for retention which makes them both popular and cost-effective.

But most clients print quarterly; research shows it is the most popular of the regular publishing frequencies for clients. It’s regular enough to maintain a relationship; it often coincides conveniently with quarterly budgets and marketing strategies; and a ‘seasonal’ frequency chimes with audience lifecycles. Whether it’s food, fashion, DIY or the great outdoors, we all have an almost instinctive association, reinforced by retail marketing, with the seasons of the year.

So what of digital communications, where a client’s opportunity to communicate is relatively unconstrained by production and distribution costs?

Audience anticipation is key; no-one would anticipate a branded ezine every day, any more than they would anticipate one Tweet every quarter. If the nature of the communication does not meet audience anticipation, then whether too rare or too frequent, they can become interruptions.

Frequency has to be considered along with the time one expects the recipient to spend with that communication, from the glance of a Tweet to the leisurely browsing of an ezine. Does the nature of the content merit communication several times a day? We can craft content which does; but we can also create content for platforms which suit any particular frequencies in a customer’s lifecycle.

Getting the frequency right must be seen as one of the factors in creating successful communications. Information, entertainment, immediacy, reading time, length of engagement and intended response all help to determine appropriate content for a platform – and, indeed, the appropriate platform for particular content. But frequency is another key factor; and a truly multi-channel approach should mean that a client has appropriate, diverse frequencies to hand; and always has the right medium, for the right message, at the right time.

Originally posted on the APA blog.

Agencies have to be aware of several different forms of the English language, in order to communicate for clients.

We are always aware of the language brands should use in order to communicate. I always quote as an example the two retail clients, one of whom sells to “children”, the other to “kids” – in that single choice of terms lies an entire set of brand values.

But agencies are also acutely aware of the language that customers themselves use. And the Chambers dictionary has just announced their inclusion of a clutch of internet, street and other terms such as “OMG”, “unfriend”, “meh”, and “bromance”.

As Chambers themselves admit, many of these are drawn from youth culture. If a brand is looking to communicate with that particular audience, then using these words might just be appropriate. But they would also be a reflection of the brand, and the way it speaks – and like the schoolteacher trying to be “down with the kids”, the danger is of being mocked by the kids themselves.

Equally inappropriate is the “retail speak” in which many corporate clients communicate internally. We have often been briefed in terms of flow items, SKUs and gifting opportunities, all alien terms to a customer. Only by standing outside the client environment can an agency ensure that internal, corporate language doesn’t sneak into customer communications.

A publishing agency is a middleman, operating between a client and its customers. Our role is to understand and translate the languages which are appropriate to each – the voice of the brand, and the perceptions of the customers.

And only an agency, which understands both but is part of neither, can ensure successful communication between the two.

Originally posted on the APA blog

In the digital space, it’s far too easy for a brand to end up saying too much, too often, about too little.

So your favourite brand of juice launches a new flavour. The tweet announces it; the website presents it as “news”; the blog explains the background to it; the Facebook page asks if you “like” it; the e-mail sends you an offer for it; and the e-zine runs a feature on the product development unit who created it.

But…it’s a new flavour.

We’ve all now encountered brands who are seduced by the unlimited capacity, unconstrained frequency and relatively low cost of digital communications. They tell us about anything and everything, all of the time. And when those communications are managed in-house, there is sometimes an employee justifying their role by spraying announcements and messages as widely and as often as they can.

The consequence can be an audience which becomes irritated by, and ultimately disengaged from, a brand’s messages.

An integrated strategy should reflect, amongst other things, the kind of message for which each platform is suited; its frequency, tone and length; the manner, including likely place and time, in which the audience will receive it; and the way in which it relates – and not simply connects – to the other messages.

Publishing agencies are in an ideal position to assess the engagement value of a client’s messages, whatever the platform; and our experience with space and frequency constraints on non-digital platforms are a useful discipline when it comes to balancing content across the different media of a fully integrated strategy.

Originally posted on the APA blog