Winners and Losers in the Digital Age
Last year, a video created by Kodak for The Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital conference made its way all over the Internet. A blue-suited investor-relations executive started giving a staid, predictable financial presentation exalting the Eastman Kodak company and its creation of Kodak Moments. Suddenly, the speaker launched into an energetic tongue-in-cheek exultation of the new Kodak digital technology, building to a frenzied cry:
“You were a Kodak moment once, and by God you’ll be one again. Only this time it’s digital!”
And not a moment too soon.
Kodak and many other former brand giants have struggled to keep up with the pace and complexity of this new digital age, and have been suffering for it. Kodak’s video publicly and wittily – and, most importantly, via new media – acknowledged its outdated image and old, passé voice, and signaled that the frumpy, unhip grandfather of the camera industry intends to blow up its old voice and change how they communicate.
FROM CORPORATE VOICE TO DIGITAL VOICE
I introduced the CORPORATE VOICE concept in the 1980s to create communications programs that unified a company’s diverse exposures and built a distinctive, focused, coherent identity that would rise above all the background noise. Back then, the CORPORATE VOICE was channeled into controlled one-way communications segmented into a limited number of traditional media.
Everything has changed since then. The ongoing digital revolution has raised the din of information exponentially. The messaging environment has changed radically. Speed, novelty, distraction, and noise rule. It is thus more imperative than ever for everyone, from the start-up to the not-for-profit to the Fortune 100 player, to recalibrate their CORPORATE VOICE to find the right pitch, the proper tone, the ideal volume, and perfect placement to ensure crystalline audibility.
To build this DIGITAL VOICE successfully, organizations must:
- Honor the increasing individualization of the consumer audience.
- Move from one-way communications to building a two-way conversation, or dialogue, with their constituents, opening the doors for users to give positive and negative feedback, and even decide what new products they would like to see in the future.
- Respond to the need for personalization, flexibility, and simplicity expressed by their customers.
- Put into place and train people who can instantly respond to inaccurate, damaging rumors and speculation flying around the Internet.
- Convert their communications and marketing programs to rapidly expanding and evolving digital platforms.
- Integrate social media as part of their overall communications strategy. eBay, for instance, uses social networking to enhance brand loyalty with discussion boards, common interest groups, and chat rooms. Its Internet site will even help users start their own blogs.
Building a clear, distinct DIGITAL VOICE that reflects brand strategy and values and addresses the new demands of the idea marketplace is a complex undertaking for any organization.
The most effective corporate voices are generated by singular and powerful visions, passed down to employees and nurtured by environments that encourage innovation and excellence in communications.
There is a pattern in the corporate world to be concerned with legal protections, being overly cautious, and avoiding transparency. All of it can lead to paralysis and a hard time developing a distinctive, uniform voice for even something as basic as a report or marketing brochure, much less interactive digital media.
Many companies know they need a bigger digital presence, but are afraid to move forward with distinctive force because of legal issues. Others, often big brands, have developed impressive online presences over the years. But as they have grown, the divide between the voices they use in the digital world and the traditional world have moved further apart.
Very few companies, large or small, know how to create a unified voice that speaks across all platforms and gives employees the flexibility to innovate and develop products at digital speeds.
SUCCESSFUL DIGITAL VOICE
Creating a distinctive, effective DIGITAL VOICE requires choosing among and leveraging the expansive (and often expensive) opportunities afforded by technology to provide informative, accessible content and constant monitoring to ensure communications are clear, credible, and relevant.
DIGITAL VOICE must:
- Reflect the organization’s brand identity, positioning, and values. It should not be a radical change in character and tone. North Face’s marketing strategy is built around “communicating the soul of our brand to our core audience,” according to Sarah Gallagher, Senior Marketing Manager. They recently opted for an online chat with Dean Karnazes, the man who ran 50 marathons in 50 states in 50 consecutive days last year.
- Utilize the opportunities afforded by new technologies to personalize, customize, simplify, and build relationships. At NIKEiD – an innovative division at the activewear giant Nike that carries around 100 products, including footwear, apparel, and bags – the online experience can be customized by the click of a mouse to create something unique for each customer. By elevating the customer experience through personalization, Nike is connecting with their customers and reinforcing their relationship.
- Adapt the existing voice to creative opportunities arising from digital media—such as video, dynamic visualization of information, expanded search capability, multiplatforms, Internet/webcast/podcasts, access to databases, links, direct content/feedback with customers, chat rooms/communities.eBay recently said in WWD that the next frontier is building its video offerings. “Instead of posting a picture and description of that prized guitar,” said Kevin McSpadden, Senior Director of Brand Marketing at eBay, “eBay is encouraging sellers to enhance the experience via video. One user did this and it resulted in four times the normal bidding amount that similar guitars garnered on the site.”
It’s instructive to compare the DIGITAL VOICES of same-industry companies:
The New York Times vs. CNN
The New York Times’s DIGITAL VOICE embodies every feature of its offline voice: It is comprehensive, open, and mindful of its heritage as a preeminent and trusted news source catering to a sophisticated readership. The writing style mirrors the newspaper—authoritative, objective, and comprehensive. The visual style is consistent across offline and online and control is maintained over content. External feeds from the AP and Reuters are clearly demarcated from the Times’s voice. Moreover, the Times takes advantage of web 2.0 digital tools to keep readers’ comments focused on specific subjects.
Contrast this with CNN’s DIGITAL VOICE, which has no consistent tone of voice, point of view, or unified experience. News comes from multiple news sources (primarily Time Inc. brand media properties, such as Sports Illustrated, Money, People, and Orbitz), and is a mix of stories and pop culture. There is no integration between its TV presence and its Internet site. CNN’s voice is that of an aggregator of infomercials, where the advertising embedded in the site conflicts with the editorial content.
Netflix vs. Blockbuster
Netflix, of course, was digital and interactive from inception. Netflix’s DIGITAL VOICE focuses on the individual with a conversational, helpful tone. The experience is highly customized, providing push-pull communications with frequent opportunities for customer input, ratings, and feedback. It continually reinforces its role in helping customers select movies they enjoy. Employing emails, focus groups, minisurveys, and frequent updates, Netflix gets continuous feedback to reinforce a democratic experience.
As Kodak has struggled to compete with the likes of Snapfish and oFoto, so Blockbuster has struggled to match the usability and interactivity of Netflix. Blockbuster’s digital voice is cold and corporate with a quasi-informational attitude. The content lacks originality, with, for instance, movie descriptions taken from books written in long, unwieldy paragraphs. Its writing is corporate-bland, full of legalese and frequently overwhelming in contrast to Netflix’s clarity and simplicity.
DIGITAL VOICE AND THE FORTUNE 100
Two examples of strong DIGITAL VOICES in the Fortune 100 are Apple and Prudential, though for very different reasons.
Apple – What sets Apple apart in the marketplace is brilliant, elegant design – both in Apple’s software and in Apple’s devices. But it’s never design for its own sake: You can hear its corporate-digital voice at the interface and in its very function. On the web, in its iPod, through its iPhone, in its packaging, Apple’s designs are driven by their purpose: to make information and entertainment intuitively usable to ordinary people. Apple’s voice, like Apple’s design, is not a static thing. It isn’t so much what’s in Apple’s products or what its website looks like – it is what happens when you start to use them. It is an aesthetic of action.
Prudential – “Dare to be dull” could be Prudential’s motto. It’s not just gray and boring; it is aggressively, in your face, unashamedly, happily stodgy and unornamented. But it’s not without a purpose. The graphic voice of the company is all type – solid, informative, useful – but, with a few exceptions, unemotional. The website homepage has a stock-like picture of a group of people representing all ethnicities, stating “Prudential proudly supports diversity.” The rest is a sea of gray and light blue boxes. It doesn’t look like much, but it’s packed with easy-to-get-at information of surprising depth. Prudential’s retirement planning section, for example, boasts research studies, white papers, computers, algorithms, and examples that are more informative – and more complete – than anything available at AARP, Fidelity, Vanguard, Merrill Lynch, or Smith Barney. The navigation is straightforward and every section is consistent. What do we hear in Prudential’s DIGITAL VOICE? Reassurance. Reasonableness. Informativeness, openness, and knowledge. It’s the voice of the rock – the perfect place to put your money.
THE MORE THINGS CHANGE…
Prudential is testament to the truth that despite the changing speed, sound, and style of the messaging environment, the origin of CORPORATE VOICE remains the same. It emanates from a company’s inherent values, its history, its people, and its vision, and it should govern all the organization’s interactions with its various audiences. In building a clear, consistent, unique DIGITAL VOICE, corporations must render organic their various communications to build and support a coherent, focused, and memorable identity.