Slides from Kate O'Neill's presentation at the GIANT UX Conference in Charleston, SC in June 2015. From the session description:
"Marketing ain’t what it used to be. (Thank goodness.)
Gone are the days when merely being slick and pushy would result in long-term profitability. The era of data-validated customer insights is giving preference to marketers who understand how to create a meaningful and relevant connection with customers, giving user experience an advantage in effectiveness.
In this session, meaningful marketing expert Kate O’Neill will explore the overlap between meaningful experiences and effective marketing, and offer an approach to an integrated framework that places the customer first, emphasizes knowledge gathering, and, over time, results in greater profitability."
[STRONG, ENTHUSIASTIC START:]
Something radical is happening to marketing. And it needed to.
descr:
Marketing ain’t what it used to be. (Thank goodness.)
Gone are the days when merely being slick and pushy would result in long-term profitability. The era of data-validated customer insights is giving preference to marketers who understand how to create a meaningful and relevant connection with customers, giving user experience an advantage in effectiveness.
In this session, meaningful marketing expert Kate O’Neill will explore the overlap between meaningful experiences and effective marketing, and offer an approach to an integrated framework that places the customer first, emphasizes knowledge gathering, and, over time, results in greater profitability.
The problem isn’t this guy. This guy pretty much had it right.
That’s what marketing WAS. Or maybe could have been. But marketing has changed a lot since its early days.
Because then this guy came along.
And for a few decades, we found ourselves in this quandary where measurable, results-oriented, knowledge-centric, research-driven marketing was, well, less sexy than
eye-popping creative.
[this slide: about me - mindmap]
There’s a lot to my story, as I’m sure there is to yours, and there are many ways to describe
who I am and
what I do and
what I have done.
But I’ll just call your attention to a few things on this zany mind map of my life:
linguist by education
but I sort of “grew up” professionally through technology
I have a company called KO Insights. We focus on strategies that lead to better customer relationships.
Previously I founded a marketing analytics agency called [meta]marketer, and I ran it for 5 years
But what has fascinated me professionally for many years now is one particular idea, and it’s an idea that I’m pretty convinced about:
that if you as a business focus on customer experience and work to get that right,
that you as a business will be more profitable.
I’ve tested that idea by working in healthcare, e-commerce, education, entertainment, manufacturing, consumer goods, and other industries, across some really big companies and some really small startups, too (including Netflix when it was a small startup).
And as a side note, I’ve also lived in Nashville for 12 years now, and I’ve served the city in a variety of grassroots and organized roles that have to do with developing it and promoting it.
All of this to say, I’ve come at this from a whole bunch of different angles. And I find that there are some universals.
[next slide: my work has always been about relevance and meaningful experiences]
[this slide: my work has always been about relevance and meaningful experiences]
Throughout all of my work, there's been this recurring theme of meaning, of relevance, of human understanding, of communication of knowledge, and of experiences.
I would say that, more than anything, my life’s work is about meaning.
So once again, what do I mean by meaning?
[next slide: three ovals]
If you plot the rough timeline of the development of marketing as a discipline
And the trick is to introduce a process through which we can interact more meaningfully all the time with customers and learn from that interaction.
[this slide: Marketing is a knowledge center.]
Marketing is a knowledge center.
[next slide: ]
meaningful marketing is the ongoing process of
developing more profitable customer relationships
by better understanding your product’s value,
the customers’ motivations and
by using increasingly relevant experiences to ensure success
but wait, that sounds a lot like the definition of marketing
[this slide: what do I mean by meaning?]
And I guess, if we’re going to get all existential about it, we have to ask: what do we even MEAN when we talk about MEANING?
[next slide: let’s back up]
[this slide: three ovals]
Well,
There’s a premise in linguistics that there are three parts of communication
what the speaker intends to communicate, the message itself, and what the listener receives.
[next slide: shared understanding]
[this slide: shared understanding]
The overlap between these three is where there is shared understanding, or, you could say, where the meaning is. The more in alignment the three parts are, the more meaning is conveyed.
[next slide: context]
[this slide: context circle]
And there’s the larger context of the conversation which is always framing the way meaning can be understood. It’s everything from the relationship between the speaker and the listener, to the where, when, how, and why of their interaction. And it’s important to understand here that when I say “speaker” I also mean “company” or “brand” and when I say “listener” I also mean “customer” or “user.” Or “student.” Or “parent.”
And when I say context, I also mean place. But sometimes the place is part of both the context AND the message AND, if you’re lucky, the shared understanding.
[next slide: back to home and wandering]
So mkt funnel is not a fact
thought technology invented by people
[this slide: brand storytelling webinar]
by the way, there’s this webinar
this will be something you can use for your work, but also for you in your personal brand
[next slide: Take inventory of your stories.]
making meaning from chaotic complexity
One way to describe the difference between meaning and meaningfulness is in one of my favorite pieces of art, “The Treachery of Images” by Magritte. The representation of the pipe is an abstraction from the object of the pipe. This may not be a perfect comparison to meaning and meaningfulness, but if you can wrap your head around how meaning is the pipe and meaningfulness is the representation of the pipe, then you and I are on the road to a shared understanding.
[this slide: thank you and connect]
[next slide: KO Insights logo]
[this slide: questions?]
[next slide: into action]
[this slide: don’t forget - brand storytelling webinar]
don’t forget to register for this webinar if you wan help with your brand storytelling
and remember
this will be something you can use for your work, but also for you in your personal brand
[next slide: thank you and connect]