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Neglected alerts, error messages and other unglamorous digital touch-points can erode your brand

by Yannis |February 6th, 2013

I guess I could call myself an HTC fan. Not only because I think they produce decent products but also because I would like to believe that they follow Avis’s old moto, “We are No.2, we try harder”. Alas, they appear not to be doing so; they suffer from the same malaise that besets countless other companies with digital products and services.

A few days ago I was fiddling with the official HTC installer on my Windows 7 laptop and this shocking message came up:

Despite HTC’s efforts to provide quality service and engage with people (they were very quick to respond to some comments I made a while back on Twitter and to follow me) someone, somewhere dropped the quality ball. Alerts like this don’t just appear in a vacuum. They need to be specified, written, designed, programmed into the system that requires them, tested, approved and finally launched with the end product.

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7 Content Marketing Ideas To Steal From The New Coca Cola Corporate Website

by Yannis |December 10th, 2012

The new Coca Cola website is a great specimen for a new generation of corporate websites that turn the traditional monolithic company description into a humanised, dynamic and engaging narrative.

We have isolated 7 features that make this website an inspiration for any organisation looking to improve the way it engages with its audience.

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You’re as cold as ice – Why you need emotion in your corporate comms and how to introduce it

by Yannis |October 16th, 2012

More likely than not, emotion is absent from your corporate communications. Why is emotion important and how can you introduce it?

Are you as cold as ice?

How good are your website, mobile apps, intranet, customer extranet or CRM system? Do users go into a “Like” frenzy when in front of your content, or do they throw their hands up in the air in frustration and vow never to come back? The answer is probably neither. The likely scenario is that your digital properties are just ok; functional, usually reliable, offering an acceptable user experience and featuring adequate content. Not a bad feat considering the monstrosities corporations used to launch until recently. So is there a problem?

Unless you are one of the very few exceptions, your corporate communications are likely to be painting a not so exciting picture of your company: formal, sterile, dry, formulaic and above all impersonal. What is missing from this picture is the human touch: emotion, personality and a narrative to deliver it. The good news is that you are not the only one; your competitors, partners, suppliers and clients probably suffer the same ills. The bad news is that you are missing a great opportunity, first to differentiate and second to connect with your audiences in a more meaningful, rewarding and long-lasting way. Aarron Walter, lead user experience designer at MailChimp, recently said:

Until recently, emotional design has not been a high priority in web design because we’ve been fighting battles on other fronts–spreading the word about web standards, translating the history of layout in graphic design into our medium, and making our interface design process user-centric

In his book “Designing for Emotion” Aarron included the graph below (slightly amended by us) that illustrates the nature of the problem. Most companies have managed to reach a point where their digital properties might be functional, reliable and usable but, being devoid of any personality, they are also unable to evoke any emotions.

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Self service from hell: How large corporates serve an insulting user experience to job applicants

by Yannis |September 11th, 2012

Are you a manager recruiting on behalf of your large corporate employer? Are you a director hoping that your managers get their hands on the best talent out there? Are you in HR and certain that everyone is having a field day with the third party recruitment solution you invested in?

Below we reveal the misery your online job candidates are likely to be  subjected to, along with 25 tips on how to make things better.

Your organisation is likely to be investing quite a bit of effort and money into recruitment to ensure that it attracts the best candidates. There is probably a nicely written and designed careers website, a YouTube careers channel dedicated to company videos, interviews, employee testimonials and departmental presentations, social media career chatter on Facebook and Twitter and maybe a blog with polished corporate news and views written with job prospects in mind.

In our research we came across numerous examples of such online recruitment initiatives, most offering a decent experience. And yet, behind this sparkly, über-optimistic career-fest lies a big rot: the online job application process. As soon as a job candidate crosses the lovely shop front and enters the back room of online account opening, job searching, CV uploading and job applying, all cuddly content and design fade away. Instead, the unsuspecting user is asked to go through a clinical, impersonal, confusing, badly designed, badly written, patronising, and sometimes even impossible to complete, process.

This embarrassing for the employer and insulting to the candidate debacle is more often than not owned by third party recruitment solution providers such as Oracle’s TaleoKenexa, or SAP’s Success Factors. Yet, this should not be an excuse for a poor user experience.  If you fail to attract the best talent out there, it is the future of your company that is at peril.

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10+2 Mobile Investor Relations apps to help you plan yours

by Yannis |April 29th, 2012

For most corporations, a mobile app catering for the investors’ voracious appetite for information is still considered a luxury. However, such an app makes perfect sense as not only does it make information available 24/7, but also it plants your brand in the hands of your target audience. Below we are exploring 10 such apps as well as 2 additional corporate apps that are not aimed at investors but still worth looking at for their exceptional user experience.

 

Unilever

This is one of the best looking apps. It is fast, simple, slick and rich in content. It makes great use of video and keeps PDFs to a minimum.

 

 

TVlogic

This app, probably created for the South Korean market, is rich in content, formats, as well as attitude. Although not the best looking app out there, it uses strong graphics that make browsing a more tactile experience.

 

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Refreshed Skyron portfolio on Flickr

by Yannis |July 25th, 2011

We have been using Flickr to hold our portfolio for a while and every so often we restructure the content to take advantage of Flickr’s ever expanding features. The new structure is using tags to drive traffic to a number of slideshows:

The complete portfolio slideshow can be seen here

Flickr is by no means perfect and it’s definitely not sexy (Behance looks much better), but it’s still an efficient way to manage a portfolio and make it socially accessible.

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Odeon: when the time has come to part, how to do it in style

by Yannis |January 9th, 2011

This is Odeon’s email newsletter unsubscribe page.

A nice example of how to face relationship break-ups with style and humour. A bit of AB testing would be an interesting exercise to find out if such display of wit actually reduces unsubscribes. A bit of wit might be just what your B2B email unsubscribe page needs.

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Sheridan&Co appoint Skyron to devise Social Media Strategy

by Yannis |December 1st, 2010

Sheridan&Co, one of UK’s leading retail design agencies, are looking to strengthen their market position as innovators and thought leaders and to expand their brand reach online. Skyron has come onboard to device a Social Media Strategy that will help Sheridan&Co redefine their corporate communications. Sheridan&Co’s unique proposition and strong brand personality make them the perfect candidate for community building and content marketing.

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Can’t see the money in B2B Social Media? Six reasons why you should still engage

by Yannis |November 19th, 2010

Typing FrenzyIn the exciting world of B2C, social media is not hard to justify. Consumer brands do an excellent job in engaging with their fans and special offers can turn the ecommerce revenue tap on within minutes.

But in the tough world or B2B, investing time, effort and hard earned cash in social media is much more difficult to justify. We often get asked the same question by B2B clients and prospects:  “Where is the money for me in social media?” Even if you think you are nowhere near discovering your social media pot of gold, here are six other, very compelling reasons why you should consider giving social media a go.

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Finally! LinkedIn adds more functionality to Company pages

by Yannis |November 11th, 2010
LinkedIn screen

LinkedIn Products & Services form

Company pages have been the weakest LinkedIn feature, until now. LinkedIn has finally added more functionality to the Company pages making them a far more powerful feature. The brand new Products & Services section allows every company to add a very detailed and comprehensive portfolio of their offering onto their LinkedIn Company profile. This is a fantastic opportunity for a number of reasons:

  • It is a fantastic showcase tool
  • It is a great opportunity for every company to fine-tune the description and details of their offering
  • Allows YouTube video imports and linking
  • The Company page can finally add real value and become a landing page (emails, business cards, etc.)
  • Allows promotion of the product/service on LinkedIn
  • Hopefully the products/services listed will be searchable, to bring buyers and sellers closer than ever

The only drawback is that companies have one more thing to keep up-to-date.

We are now working to update our LinkedIn Company pages.