The latest statistics show a drop in Super Bowl viewership, an increase in
the cost per game ticket and drops in average per game attendance—yet NFL games remain popular with sponsors and advertisers. A 30-second Super Bowl LIII ad costs at least $5 million, about the same as 2018. Some newer brands will be making their first appearance at the big game, including dating app Bumble and expense management company Expensify. Planters is returning for its first Super Bowl commercial since 2008. Anheuser-Busch, a veteran advertiser of the championship game, is buying 5 1/2 minutes of airtime, its largest-ever media spend for the game.

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Marketers tend to focus on more: More leads, more content, more website traffic, more engagement. We have to adapt quickly as digital marketing evolves, but there comes a point where you give up certain tactics. You aren’t still doing fax marketing, are you?

Rather than add to your ever-lengthening to-do list for 2019, I created a list of what your fellow marketers plan to stop doing or to do less of this year. The answers come from about 40 marketers who responded to an informal poll in late December 2018. B2B marketers made up more than half of the respondents. 

The answers below are ranked in order of how often specific tactics were mentioned. Remember that what has stopped working for one person might just be ramping up for another. But some of these suggestions might be right for your marketing strategy, too. Who couldn’t use one less thing to do?

1 Facebook Advertising

If you happen to own any Facebook stock, this change might give you pause. But the most common answer from marketers in the survey is that they plan to do less Facebook advertising in 2019. This was far and away the most-mentioned tactic that marketers plan to stop or do less of.

Although Facebook’s privacy missteps are a concern, that’s not why marketers are backing off the platform: Facebook ads just don’t work as well as they used to. Marketers are practical people—when something stops working, they tend to move on. 

Two marketers mentioned one metric specifically: The cost of acquisition for leads is rising. Another mentioned that the marketing qualified leads from Facebook are increasingly bad. Many other marketers didn’t cite specific metrics, but said that the Facebook advertising platform in general is getting more expensive and competitive. 

2 Cold Outreach

Cold outreach is an umbrella term covering LinkedIn Inmails (two marketers mentioned Inmails expressly), cold emails and cold calls. The dreaded sales pitch that comes immediately after connecting on social media was also mentioned several times. Most survey respondents did not say they planned to stop doing instant sales pitches themselves because it’s not a tactic any of them have ever found to be useful, they just wish other people would stop doing it. 

It’s a nice wish, but don’t hold your breath. Most of us are still getting two to three of these auto-reply sales pitches every week. The response rates are probably abysmal, but because these messages can be automated and take little effort to send, the offenders may just keep sending them—even if it annoys the rest of us.

Kevin Thomas Tully, North America senior vice president at Creation Agency, has some advice for people who want to use cold outreach: “Would you respond to the email you just sent if it appeared in your inbox? Would you even open it? If the answer is a resounding ‘No!’ it’s time to start over.”

I’ve got one more suggestion for you, too: If you must use cold emails, at least use a signature with links to more information about you. People often click the links in those signatures to check out who you are. If they like what they see, they might reply. 

As Gail Gartner, a small business marketing strategist, says, “I like to vet the people who contact me via email. The ones wise enough to include their LinkedIn or other method of contact outside of email are far more likely to get a reply.”

3 Social Media

This isn’t something people intend to quit so much as they plan to scale back on. Consultant Sophia Le spoke for a lot of our respondents when she described the situation this way: “Social media is heading toward a phase where less is more.”

Facebook takes a hit here, too, with marketers naming it as the No. 1 social media platform they plan to scale back on. 

Four marketers said they were scaling back specifically on Facebook posts, either for their clients or for their own companies. This is consistent with cutting back on Facebook ads, too: Organic reach is mostly gone, so if you’re trying to make organic content work on Facebook, you’re probably using advertising to amplify successful posts. 

The disillusion with Facebook is tipping into Instagram as well. ÂÜÀòÉçčÙÍűt half of the people who said they were stepping back from Facebook tactics also said they were going to cut back on Instagram. 

Then there’s the issue of video on Facebook. Social Media Examiner cut back their Facebook video efforts recently, to much ado, and they’re not the only ones: Conversion optimization consultant Nils Kattau said he plans to step back from Facebook’s live streaming in 2019. As he explains it, “The reach got killed by the platform. Where I used to have up to 10-50,000 views, I now get like 2,000, although 20 people share the stream.”

There were also a few marketers who said they’ll tweet less often in 2019, although two B2B marketers said they’d be refocusing their social media efforts on Twitter and LinkedIn. 

One person mentioned cutting back on Google+, which is clearly not worth investing in going forward, at least not until Google decides what to do with it. Shaheen Adibi, president of Web Upon, hopes Google will turn Google+ “into a social platform on a local level,” especially now that Google Local posts aren’t effective anymore. 

LinkedIn isn’t safe from the chopping block, either. No one said they planned to stop using it entirely, but they did plan to cut specific tactics. Most notably, LinkedIn expert Brynne Tillman said, “I have stopped using LinkedIn Groups. While these were at one time one of the best ways to find and engage a targeted audience, the new redesign has done away with all that was good about Groups.”

None of the marketers I spoke with mentioned SlideShare specifically, but other sources have noted that it has gone out of vogue. 

4 Blogging (Mostly on Third-Party Sites)

Three people mentioned cutting back on various types of blogging. The most interesting comment came from Kathryn Aragon, a content marketing pro who says she plans to do “less blogging and a lot less social media. Trying to keep the focus on tasks with a higher return.” 

Cheval John, founder and CEO of Vallano Media, said he’ll stop guest posting and put more content on his own site. Speaker and author Matt Sweetwood says he’ll stop writing articles for LinkedIn Pulse: “They have (made) the algorithm so restrictive, essentially no one sees your articles. Publish on your own blog and promote instead.”

One Last Thing


I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that 20% of respondents specifically said they don’t plan to discontinue any tactics, but that’s only one in five people. Eighty percent said they plan to stop doing at least one thing.

Are there any specific marketing tactics you plan to step back from in 2019? 

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When Michael Robb’s two kids, 4 and 6, play games on the family tablet, the games are occasionally interrupted by ads. Although they sometimes forget what to do, Robb trained them to look for a red X when ads pop up—short of that, they’ll turn the device face down until the ad ends. 

This isn’t how most kids interact with ads on apps: Developmentally, children don’t know where games end and ads begin until they’re 8 years old, according to the American Psychological Association. Robb says that kids don’t understand  the fact that advertisers are trying to sell them something. 

Robb has a Ph.D. in psychology and works as the , an advocacy and education nonprofit supporting safe use of media and technology for children. He’s spent the last 15 years researching media’s effect on children and says that apps have made for a vastly different media landscape. Robb recalls how Saturday morning cartoon ads in the early 1970s would blend in with TV programming, which gave way later in the decade to clear demarcations that an ad break was coming (“After these messages, we’ll be right back!”). These show-bumpers were a mandate from the Federal Communications Commission’s 1974 Policy Statement, a compromise struck after advocacy group Action for Children’s Television requested in 1970 that no commercials air during programming for kids. But there’s no such bumper between ads and gameplay in free apps; Robb says that there should be, as kids playing free apps often think that ads are just another part of the game. 

There’s risk of children clicking an ad and making an erroneous purchase. In 2014, the Federal Trade Commission responded to these purchases by filing federal lawsuits against Apple, Google and Amazon for allowing children to spend millions of dollars on in-app purchases. Apple and Google each settled that year; Google refunded at least $19 million to customers and Apple refunded at least $32.5 million. Amazon battled the lawsuit in court until 2017, when it dropped its appeal. Now, Amazon must refund customers approximately $70 million.

The FTC can’t decide what is and isn’t ethical, only what’s unfair or deceptive. Mary Koelbel Engle, associate director for advertising practices at the FTC, says that the organization has a policy statement on what constitutes deceptive or unfair practices. If something is deceptive or unfair, they can file a federal lawsuit or an administrative cease-and-desist order. The main question of deception: Is this practice likely to mislead reasonable consumers about something important? The question of unfairness: Will the practice cause injury to consumers that they can’t avoid? 

“When you’re talking about advertising to children, you look at it from the standpoint of an ordinary child and understanding that kids obviously are less sophisticated than adults,” Engle says. 

But if young children are less sophisticated consumers, not knowing where games end and ads begin, it may not be ethical to advertise to them on apps at all.

A Brief History of Tiny Targeting 

It’s always been considered ethically murky to target young children with ads. In 1984, Lynda Sharp Paine wrote in Business & Professional Ethics Journal that advertising is justified if it helps consumers make wise decisions in the marketplace, but she argued that young children don’t yet have the capacity to make wise decisions. In the 2000s, many studies concluded that childhood obesity was tied in part to ads for snacks, sodas and sugary cereals—most companies cut down on advertising sugary cereals, and later cut down on the sugar content of the products themselves. But as the media landscape changed, so did advertising to children. 

On smaller screens, parental oversight became tougher and apps took advantage.  that online ads are more aggressive in engaging with children through gaming platforms and more aggressive about telling children to reach out to their friends about advertised products.  and published in the Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics found that 95% of apps marketed to or commonly played by children younger than 5 contain at least one type of advertising. , examined thousands of free apps targeting children and found that the majority were in violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), a federal law passed in 1998 to protect the online privacy of children 13 years old and younger. Most of the apps targeting young children don’t allow users to easily shut off tracking and behavioral advertising, the study found. Worse, 19% of these apps collect personally identifiable information, leaving children’s data at risk.  

“It’s hard to enforce the law, but again: These are apps for kids where they’re clearly trying to better target advertisements to these kids,” Robb says. “In doing so, they’re hoovering up lots of information that they shouldn’t be collecting, parents probably aren’t aware that they’re collecting and kids certainly aren’t aware that they’re collecting.”

Many free apps also offer in-app purchases for digital items to be used in the game. The “Strawberry Shortcake Bake Shop” app, for example, is listed as appropriate for ages 4 and older, but features $45 worth of in-app purchases. Robb says that the game asks kids to help the character bake a cake, but it can’t be completed until they buy a special utensil. In the meantime, he says that the app’s character makes a frowny face and looks pleadingly at the screen. 

“That, to me, is emotionally manipulative,” Robb says. “Trying to extract that stuff from games will be a step forward.”

What’s Fair?

“The question is, how ethical is it to take advantage of young children’s limited cognitive abilities while they’re playing an app they enjoy in order to sell them something?”  held by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. During the press conference, Blumenthal said that parents who allow their children to play with these apps are opening their homes to “a Trojan horse.” , Blumenthal and Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., asked the FTC to investigate how children are targeted by free apps. Specifically, the senators want to know to what extent developers, advertisers and app stores comply with COPPA.

“I think that the FTC letter was a really good first step,” Robb says two days after speaking at the press conference. “There probably needs to be more discussion between industry and the child development experts about what kids know and at what ages [they know it].”

Robb also believes that new research should examine what’s fair for kids in advertising. Should it be easier for kids to take app gameplay offline, away from the reach of advertisers and data collectors? Do ads in apps need to be clearly marked, just as ads during Saturday morning cartoon commercials were? Perhaps there can be an agreed-upon framework by the advertising industry, app stores and childhood development experts, Robb says. This way, everyone can know what kids’ rights are when it comes to online and mobile experiences.

“A lot of people who make games or experiences for children aren’t necessarily child development experts, so they may not even realize that they are unfairly manipulating or preying on a child’s psychological vulnerabilities,” Robb says. “And then there’s probably a lot of game designers who don’t care. It’s their business and maybe they don’t think it’s particularly harmful or it’s just what the bottom line is.”

Until advertisers and game developers address the problem, it falls to parents. Robb says that parents should try to play on the apps with their kids, teaching them what ads are when they pop up; he says that the most important learning happens between the child and their caregiver. Parents may also consider avoiding free apps for their children—those most ad-ridden—and instead pay a buck or two for the app’s uninterrupted premium version.  

Changes to app-based advertising to kids will likely come with time, whether from within the app and advertising industries or from pressure outside. But the industry is still adjusting to the changes wreaked by easy access, shrinking screens and advancing technology. FTC’s Engle, who has worked in her role since 2001, says that the business is much different than it was when she was sending her teenage daughter into a TV- and computer-free bedroom. Now, kids almost always have a tiny screen within reach, an open window to the world. For now, what floats into those windows is largely up to app stores, game developers and advertisers.

​

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Though marketers and designers seem to fall on different ends of the spectrum, they can have a great working relationship. Those partnerships are on full display when a campaign is visually pleasing and backed by all the right data.

Marketing News spoke with two marketers (, and ) and two designers (, and ) about how they can ensure a great working relationship. These conversations have been edited for clarity and length. 

How is communicating within your discipline different from communicating with a marketer or designer?

Sears: Regardless of who you’re speaking with, it’s always helpful to put yourself in their shoes. How does their brain work? What does this person care about? How are they rewarded? When you understand what makes someone tick, you’re more likely to connect. For example, with a previous design colleague I found it worked best to communicate ideas via visual mood boards versus a written brief because that’s how they processed information best.  

Brusselback: One surprising difference in communicating with designers and marketers is how tactical conversations vary from strategic conversations. When a marketer talks about a color choice, they’re often talking about their personal preference. When a designer talks about a color choice, they’re usually commenting on strategy. Designers speak in shorthand with each other because they assume the receiver knows the “Why?” behind the choice: “The yellow isn’t working.” But when a designer is communicating with a marketer, it’s critical to connect the design choices to the strategy and user: “The yellow lacks the sophistication needed for this consumer and price point.”

Lewellan: Everyone is sensitive to criticism of their work. For marketers, you can point out that they missed an audience segment, that timing a launch during a holiday week won’t drive the results they want, or that they didn’t look at the data of a previous campaign that would inform them on improving this one. Communicating with designers should be no different: If there are data or best practices that the piece doesn’t meet, if there are branding guidelines they didn’t follow, or if they didn’t read the creative brief, point it out. There shouldn’t be hard feelings. Where conversations get heated or people feel attacked is when the feedback they are given is “I don’t like that picture” or “Green isn’t my favorite color.” When your colleague from product or sales approaches you in the hallway and says, “I’ve got a great idea for a campaign,” we bristle. The same thing happens when marketers approach designers with a bag of personal preferences. 

Olives: I find that designers often approach their work thinking about the full experience the audience has while taking in the marketing and advertising. Marketers are more driven by the end effect said experience has on the audience. Most of the time, that means: Will they open their wallet? This difference in thought process seems to be even more relevant now as data-driven marketing takes over. Creative leaders need to understand how to balance art and science.

Tell me about a time you had great communication with a designer or marketer. What went right? 

Sears: I got to know the designer first before presenting “the ask.” Team performance and ability to meet objectives is ultimately about people and the trust between them. 

Brusselback: Across the board, the best communication with marketers is when there’s a shared vision of the problem being solved and we see each other as equally accountable for getting the best solution. Recently, we were hired to design a new brand and kicked off the project with a working session with the cross-functional team. It was very effective, as each of the team members brought their knowledge of the project as well as their assumptions about the right solution to the branding needs. Together, we looked at mentor brands and current competition and spent our time strategizing different approaches. Having the marketing partners show up with what inspires them allowed us to understand where stakeholders’ minds were before beginning the work. Many designers are opposed to bringing the marketers into the creative process; we feel the exact opposite. Making design the work of the entire organization and bringing in more diverse viewpoints at the inception of the work makes the solutions more robust, holistic and consumer-centric.  

Lewellan: Every 12 to 18 months, marketers get tired of the email templates they use and will put in a creative brief to create new ones. It was during a meeting about developing new templates when a designer asked about the results we were getting with the current designs. She asked which were being used and which had better results. She reminded the marketer of the research and testing that had gone into the current set and asked what had changed since then. This all showed that the designer was willing to do the work, but also wanted to make sure she understood the reason behind the change. She was trying to be a partner and deliver what the team wanted, but also what was going to drive better outcomes. 

Olives: Sometimes, it just clicks. There are some people you have great chemistry with and when that happens, cherish it. But over the course of your long and storied career, that’s going to be the one-off, not the norm. My successful partnerships have come from having high empathy, as well as a lack of fear and self-consciousness. When I haven’t been afraid to say what I don’t know and ask questions from a curious place, the barriers break down quickly. Not only does the work become easier, but the end result is better.

What about the opposite, a time where communication went wrong? In retrospect, what changes would you make? 

Sears: A junior designer “yes’d” me often but never seemed to bring anything new or innovative to the table. I later learned that they didn’t think they were “allowed” to bring up new ideas. This shocked me at the time, but now I make it a point to tell designers that I want them to challenge my thinking and bring their ideas to the table. 

Brusselback: Communication that falls apart often starts with a common thread: Marketers approaching design as something to evaluate versus a problem to be solved together. We had a working meeting with a client where they’d requested a preview of the work before the formal review. Generally, we love this approach, but everything went wrong this time because the entire session was criticizing what wasn’t working, much of which we already knew because the work was unfinished. It felt personal and unnecessarily harsh to the designers and left the marketer nervous and afraid. In retrospect, we should have managed the dialogue more specifically, starting with close-in options and asking for what’s working and where we should double down. We should have also set up the session to include some “tissue” work, meaning giving the marketer an opportunity to create solutions themselves versus only evaluating in-process design work.

Lewellan: I learned to get along with the creative team early in my career, which is why I’ve been able to manage creative teams from an operations role. But as a young marketer, I had a head full of ideas on how I thought something should look, but not enough reason or words to properly explain why. I breezed through the creative brief—it’s long and I’ve got so many other things to do—and hadn’t taken the time to develop a thoughtful strategy. When the first draft was completed, it looked nothing like what I expected and when I approached the designer about it, she pulled up the creative brief. Sure enough, what was on the page I was looking at met the requirements set forth in the brief. I really learned from that experience; the more information you can give the creative team up front, the less time is wasted in multiple rounds of revision. 

Olives: My No. 1 strategy in collaboration is to ask a lot of questions and to be as transparent as possible in my thought process. This is not an easy thing to do, especially when your brain juices are flowing. When I was younger, I expected people to be able to read my mind when it came to why I made the creative choices I was making. I have to remind myself constantly that those connections my brain makes are why I became a creative in the first place, but not everyone works that way.

How can you avoid tension when working together?

Sears: Tension tends to occur when there is either lack of clarity or misaligned objectives. If you are disciplined about clearly communicating the project vision and objectives, you’ll spend less time on and be less frustrated about revisions. In the end, you should have a positive outcome for the project and a good working relationship with the designer. 

Brusselback: Spend time at the beginning of every project, no matter how small, to get very clear on three questions: What does success look like? How will you measure it? Who is the decision-maker and who are the inputters? Then, bring them along for the entire journey. Share work in development. Give your partners a peak behind the curtain. Get their point of view outside of official presentations and milestones. Ask for their ideas. Lastly, let your partners know what to expect. If you’re showing something that will scare them, tell them they’ll be scared by this work and tell them why you’ve pushed the boundaries. Tell them if you’re starting close-in or far-out. Tell them what’s working and not with each direction. Despite popular belief, surprise is not a friend of great design reviews.

Lewellan: Stick to the facts. If your A/B tests show that the form needs to be at the top of the page and overlap the header image to produce a lift in form fills, tell them. Show the data to inform them of the scientific reason to change the design instead of pushing a personal preference. Also, listen to the designers. Many of them are doing their own research now and looking at best practices for page design. Designers are just as invested as marketers in their work performing well. Finally, give them time to do it right. In every organization I have been in, there is a focus on speeding up the creative process. In today’s agile world, we look for process improvements to reduce time to market. That is fine if there is a bank of preapproved header images and headlines that just need to be married together. But if you need an original, creative campaign developed from nothing, give your team time to go through the creative process. Don’t get upset if you walk in and the creative team is playing a game—it might be what it takes to come up with the next award-winning idea.

Olives: It’s important to keep a healthy distance from your work. I am not telling you not to care about your creative work, but it’s necessary to check yourself every so often and remember that what you create at work is not who you are. You will always have another great idea. There is no shortage of great ideas in that big brilliant creative brain of yours. If you are working with a marketer who isn’t into what you presented, do not take that personally. That is a them problem and not a you problem; now you get to come up with another dope idea. And when it comes down to it, getting to come up with ideas is why we’re in this game, is it not?

What recommendations do you have for working closely together as marketers and designers? 

Sears: Empathy is important. Don’t treat your agency or design team like support staff. They are your best strategic thinking partners in a world that is ever more dependent on visual and tactile communication. 

Brusselback: Remember only one direction will be used. We often spend the bulk of our time with marketers talking about why most of the design solutions aren’t quite right. Focus your energy on what is working and how to maximize the best direction. Also, have a co-creation session with your marketing partners before design work begins. It will provide the designers with the clearest understanding of the marketers’ assumptions, needs and desires in the work. And get to know your marketing partners as people. It’s just easier to work well with people you know. As a side benefit, the better you know your partners, the better you’re able to read between the lines, identify potential road bumps before they arise and provide the stimulus they need to evangelize your design solutions within the organization.

Lewellan: Treat them as a partner. You both are in it together. There is a symbiotic relationship between marketers and designers—you can’t go to market without both. And the best campaigns will be a collaborative effort between the two.

Olives: Tap into that same empathy you use when you approach your creative work to understand the motivations of the marketing folks. Even if they’re not able to do the same initially, you’ll be modeling great behavior and, unless you’re working with an actual sociopath, your actions will rub off on them. It’s all about that long game. And it helps to never forget that you’re on the same team and working towards the same end goal.

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HLW transformed the existing warehouse into stunning office and technical spaces, including three new dynamic mezzanines connected by a series of bridges. The overall look and feel of the space is creative with both artistic and cultural elements. The completed space consists of reception, offices, conference and meeting rooms, workstations, community areas, café and pantry, broadcast studio, as well as other types of broadcast functions.

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Q: Did you always intend to work in advertising or branding design? What drew you to this work? 

A: The short answer is no—I originally wanted to be a vet and a musician. Long answer is my first foray into design actually occurred in high school when I was on the yearbook team. It forced me to be super familiar with Adobe programs and it’s also the reason I applied to a bunch of journalism schools when I was looking at colleges. I ended up studying visual art at the University of Chicago instead. It was a very conceptual, theory-heavy program and I was mostly focusing on large-scale installations, sculptures and painting, so I’ve never actually had any formal [design] training.

By the time I graduated, I knew I wasn’t interested in pursuing a career in the contemporary art world and was better suited to design, which is something I had been pursuing on my own time outside of my coursework. I do feel very strongly about maintaining a kind of analog, organic touch in the digital work I do. As an artist and designer, it’s important to bridge those two worlds, and what draws me to digital design is that it’s perpetually shifting in response to culture in the same way art always has. 

Q: When you receive a client brief for a new campaign, what are the key pieces of information you’re drawn to?

A: So much of this process is very emotional, for all parties involved. I frequently work with clients who have no idea how to verbalize exactly what they want, so a big part of my job is to be super sensitive to the overall feeling propelling the creative and where they’re coming from. I’ve compared the design process to therapy more than once—in that it’s cathartic but can also be agonizing—because it’s a very personal, extractive process that goes beyond colors and specs.

Q: Where have you felt pain when working with marketing teams? How have you overcome any differences in communication or focus? 

A: The biggest struggles I’ve run into usually occur in one of two situations: There are too many stakeholders in any one project, or you’re dealing with someone’s immovable ego. If you’re reviewing the creative for a newsletter with a room of nine people, there’s a chance you’re going to get an unproductive amount of feedback and the rounds of review will be eternal. Having a thoughtful process and internal hierarchy is critical no matter how big your company is, as well as making sure that everyone feels heard.

Q: I see that you recently moved from working as a designer at an ad agency to working as art director of the brand Winc Wines—congrats! What are some of the changes you expect in this new role? Will you miss working for different brands?

A: Thank you! Two weeks in and it’s frankly been wonderful. My stint at the agency was an incredible learning experience that allowed me to create wonderful stuff for some huge brands, but I found myself missing the energy and control that comes with smaller startup-type brands and I decided to move in-house, which is a trend I’m seeing with a lot of brands and designers. I tend to always have a few freelance projects on the back-burner no matter where I am, just to keep things interesting, so I’m not too concerned about getting bored. 

Q: Now that you’re in this new role, what are you focused on learning about the brand that will help in leading Winc’s art direction?

A: The nature of working with a company in-house is that you have a finger in every pie—instead of only being concerned with social, I have to touch base with the email folks, the web folks, the paid media team and the social media manager. It becomes an exercise in being aware of everyone’s different needs and making sure the creative feels cohesive despite the variety of platforms.

Q: You do some freelance work and personal projects in your own time. How has that impacted your professional work, be it creatively or time-wise?

A: It’s important for every creative to have some kind of side project that brings you joy. In the past, it’s been a money issue, and while I was in college I was picking up absolutely everything that came across my desk. As I got older and more experienced, I was able to get more selective and take on pro-bono work or freelance projects that just made me happy. I’m always on the “I should just quit and freelance out of a van and travel the country with my dog” fence, but for now I’m perfectly happy with that nine-to-five, queen-size bed, indoor plumbing life. 

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One of the outcomes of companies adopting a customer-centric approach is a new view for​â¶Ä‹ sharing technology across internal functions. Once the blinders are off, conversations about additional practical uses of technology can take place. One such example is marketing working with human resources and using the power of marketing automation to better engage with employees.

As marketing begins to transform from the pens and mugs department to a revenue contributor and partner, I advise marketers to create a cross-functional communication plan based on personas and launched from the marketing automation system. This allows them to see the digital body language of the stakeholders and to course correct through a variety of communication vehicles. Given the success of these programs, it makes sense to use the same strategy with HR. 

HR Struggles with Communication

OK, admit it: The last email you typically want to open is from HR. You are already buried in email and this just adds to the pile. Plus, you know it is a mass e-mail and you can look at it later. HR doesn’t know you, and how you respond or don’t respond represents their lack of knowledge.

Your lack of attention to emails from HR creates a communication nightmare for HR. All they have control over is writing and sending the communication. They hope you see it, read it and take action —but hope is typically their only strategy. If you are a marketer using a good marketing automation system, you should be jumping up and down saying, “I’ve got the answer!” The answer is to treat employees like prospects and customers :  engage them with personalized omni-channel campaigns.

Campaign Basics: Build Personas

Employees can definitely be grouped by persona. Think about it: You might have a persona for executives, for functional groups such as sales and service, for states, for age, for benefits, for preferred communication channels
the list goes on. While HR has to be careful in what they write in a communication, there can still be some amount of personalization that will improve open and click-through rates. Plus, HR can see who is engaging and who is not. This allows them to make course corrections quickly and based on data.

Campaign Basics: Define Campaign Types

Your next task is to help HR define campaign types. Elements that define a campaign type include the intent, topic, cadence, source, target group, channels, call-to-action and measurement. The intent of the campaign might be to inform, educate, influence or collaborate. HR sends a wide variety of communications, so identifying the general intent of the communication is a good place to begin.

In the context of HR communications, there are lots of different topics. These also need to be categorized into areas such as updates, surveys, stories, general health and resources available. For example, imagine how much easier it would be to have a campaign template developed for large web meetings. The invites go to targeted groups and all follow-up attendance communications are automatic. Plus, HR can see who attended and who did not and can correct course in a timely manner. Your campaign type will dictate the cadence. For example, HR might send communications, as needed, on topics such as a change in leadership. They may also plan a short informational series of regular communications at certain times of the year around open enrollment for employee benefits and a longer series on general wellness tips year-round.

An additional element characterizing the campaign type is the source. Similar to marketing emails to prospects, the open and click-through rates improve if there is a name and a picture of the sender. The target group should be based on your personas. You may communicate differently based on the personas. Channels will vary by employee and by persona segment. Thinking creatively and taking an omni-channel approach is an excellent way for HR to better engage with employees.

As marketers, we know the value of a well-written and well-placed call-to-action in an email. This one lesson would probably improve HR communication and actions required. 

Finally, measurement is now possible. HR can develop an entirely new series of employee engagement metrics that will help them improve communications and make it more employee-consumable and -actionable. They can see how different pieces of content performed by persona, they can see who is engaging and what topics are most engaging. They can see the average number of automatic reminders required or what channels are preferred.

Campaign Basics: Track and Improve Campaign Performance

By using a marketing automation system to send communications, HR can test, track and improve the actual campaign performance. Just because we think we wrote the right message, created the best piece of content or had the perfect call to action, chances are we didn’t —and neither will HR. Just using basic campaign performance metrics allows HR to improve communications. Creating a basic dashboard for campaign metrics will help HR adopt a measurement mentality.

Getting Started

It will take time to ensure the quality, correctness and legal compliance for all emails. In this case, the marketer is acting as a consultant and you will need to conduct a discovery project to better understand pains and issues.

Once you have gathered this information, you can suggest a set of use cases so HR can test the idea. The simpler and easier to measure, the better. The use case is a written document outlining how HR would use marketing automation in a specific and limited way. The outcome of a use case is agreement to try. Another outcome is helping HR see if and how this works. This educational process will be critical for HR as they do not have a marketing background.

Use cases might involve a single communication such as an update of benefits. They might involve a short nurture stream such as open enrollment or a long nurture stream such as a monthly company newsletter. The key is to select a use case that will highlight the possibilities and produce quick wins.

Whatever the use case, the idea is that HR can improve their communications with employees; they can improve their understanding of employees and they can share valuable employee data with decision-makers. For marketers, working with HR represents a new group to consult with and a measurable way to make an impact on your company.

Marketing depends on HR to hire talent, so it makes sense to help them communicate effectively and recruit the best employees.

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B2B vs. B2C: There is a big difference, right? We often think of B2B decisions as big (million-dollar enterprise software) and B2C decisions as small (tube socks). But that’s not always the case, as illustrated by these two decisions:

• B2B: Office supplies such as paper clips.
  
• B2C: Senior housing.
  

One is B2B but trivial, the other is B2C but critical. Yes, you can differentiate between B2B and B2C marketing, but a better distinction may be in the weight of the decision. Is it a high-consideration, high-stakes decision? Or is it a low-consideration, low-stakes decision?

When the stakes are high, people need more time to decide and there may be several people involved in the decision. They do a lot of research, have more decision criteria and require more expert advice. It’s likely a consultative sale.

When stakes are low, people decide quickly. There are few decision criteria, with the process often simply a click. It’s likely a transactional sale.

The type of decision determines the content you should create. When the decision process is long, you just can’t expect the visitor to become a lead on their first visit. And you can’t expect them to remember you and come back soon for more information.

This is why middle-of-funnel content is so important. If you can nudge your visitor and get them to take a small action—download the ebook, register for the webinar—you’ve captured the email address and the nurturing can begin. Now you’re in the game. 

The Content Cycle Begins

The content cycle starts with a welcome email series, which is that series of automatic messages they receive after the ebook download or the webinar registration. The emails in this series often have high open and click-through rates because the subscriber is engaged and expecting something

• Immediately: The first email is a thank you and a follow through on the promise of content.
  
• Later that week: A quick follow-up with a link to more content that would logically follow the first piece.
  
• A few weeks later: Hello! Here is the most valuable thing we have ever published.
  

Often, this welcome series can include five or more messages. They’re automated, valuable to the recipient and a powerful mechanism for the brand to keep in touch. The final message may even be a direct sales pitch.

Alongside that welcome series is the newsletter. This is where the difficult, ongoing work of the content marketer comes in. Once per month at least, you put a message in their inbox. The sender name is a person (not just a brand) and the subject line specifies the topic (not just something clever). The body text of the email is an invitation to click and read an article.

That article is a lovingly crafted, easily scanned and detailed explanation of something helpful, insightful or entertaining. Anything less and they’ll slip away. It’s hard work, but it gives you a shot at being top of mind when the key moment comes.

Structure of a High-Converting Page

The engaging emails will likely lead consumers back to your website once they’re ready for help. The structure and flow of your sales page will be critical at this point. They must include each of these elements:

• Content that answers top questions and addresses objections.
  
• Evidence that supports that content.
  
• Clear, specific calls to action.
  

Ideally, these elements appear in the general order of importance to the typical visitor. The content guides the eye down the web page, answering questions, addressing objections and adding evidence to support each message. 

Address the ‘Why Not?’

Bad websites toot their horn and ramble on about how great their offer is. Better websites answer visitor questions and provide the answers they’re looking for. The best websites address the underlying motivations of visitors, addressing the hidden objections in the mind of the visitor.

Conversion copywriters know a secret: The key to visitor psychology isn’t to just address the why, it’s to address the why not. They know that even a small amount of uncertainty can kill the lead. 

The best copywriters address objections such as: Will it be hard? Expensive? Time consuming? Will it connect? Will it break? When will it be ready? Will this choice make me look foolish? 

Only after the main objections are defeated will the visitor become a lead.

How Do You Know The Audience’s Triggers?

The sales team can help marketers get into the mind of the prospect and locate their hidden objections. Tap the sales team to answer the questions of why leads buy and why they don’t.

For complex offerings and high consideration decisions, the sales person acts as a guide. They’ve had hundreds of conversations with prospects, learning their hopes, fears, goals and objections.

Ride along on some meetings, listen in on some calls and dig into the sent mail folder of the sales associate. Ask your top salesperson to search their sent mail folder for question words such as why, how, when and who. You’ll find it’s a goldmine of questions answered and objections addressed.

These insights will help write better copy for sales pages. It will also give you ideas for the next newsletter, webinar and ebook. Once those pieces are produced, they can be shared with the sales team who can share it with the next prospect. 

You’ve given the sales team a reason to follow up with current prospects during that long sales cycle, prompting them to offer solutions such as: “We just published an ebook that addresses some of the questions you asked in our last meeting. Would you like me to send it along?”

Remember, they’re hanging out in your sales funnel for weeks. Content keeps them warm and you’ve got time to make something just for them. This isn’t tube socks, after all. 

Andy Crestodina is the co-founder and CMO of . He’s an international keynote speaker and the author of Content Chemistry: The Illustrated Guide to Content Marketing.

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Goal

People joke that nobody goes to Hooters for the wings. It’s a tongue-in-cheek quip about the staff’s dress code, but wings are, in fact, the breastaurant’s featured menu item. The same can’t be said about hamburgers at IHOP. Nobody goes to the International House of Pancakes for the burgers—right?

Burgers have actually been on the IHOP menu since the restaurant opened 60 years ago. IHOP ran previous campaigns to hype their burgers, but the brand couldn’t build the momentum they wanted for their so-called p.m. menu items. Plus this latest iteration of burgers—called Ultimate Steakburgers—were a little more special: These were 100% USDA choice, Black Angus ground beef patties that are smashed on the grill to sear before being tucked into a brioche bun. They deserved an extra-special campaign.

Action

IHOP’s new line of burgers may be fancier, but they were entering an already crowded market. “It had to be something that was bold,” says IHOP CMO Brad Haley. “It had to be something that was disruptive because A, we wanted people to know that we have this new line of amazing burgers and and B, it had to shake people up to get them to think a little bit differently about us, this House of Pancakes that actually now sells a really good burger.”

Haley says a few people in the company kicked around the idea of flipping the “P” in IHOP to a “B.” They presented the idea to their agency, Droga5, who ran with it.

The campaign was broken into two parts, the first being a week of teasers. The brand released video on social and traditional media that showed the IHOP logo on a white background, with the uppercase “P” in flipping to a lowercase “b.” The clip included a hashtag and announcement date, but little more information was offered. “That was really all it was,” Haley says. “And that generated enough interest in what the heck was going on with IHOP that it started trending.”

Media outlets picked up the story, doing man-on-the-street interviews asking the public what they thought the “B” could represent. Haley says the company also got reports of office pools and radio contests about the mystery “B.”

“There was this gamification aspect to it,” he says. “That was by design. It was all around this notion of making this fun and funny, with a wink and a nod so that people would have fun playing along with us.”

There was potential for the secret to get out. To prepare for the big reveal, IHOP sent signage to its franchisees, and some restaurant staff did try and leak the news early. To further muddle the list of possibilities, IHOP posted photos on social media for fake “B” menu items, such as bagels and beer (although the latter does actually exist: IHOP partnered with Keegan Ales brewery to make a pumpkin spice pancake stout in 2018, called IHOPS).

The second stage of the campaign was the reveal. At the corporate level, team members changed their LinkedIn profiles to say they worked for IHOb, and some even pulled the theme through to their titles, such as chief burger officer. “We had our letterhead that we pushed out with our press releases (reading) IHOb as well,” Haley says. “Even that was a wink and a nod: The logo looked like someone used Wite-Out to change the ‘P’ to a ‘b’ and used a blue Sharpie to change the logo, so even if someone looked close enough they’d (wonder), ‘Are they really serious or not?’”

Signage was also changed at one location in Hollywood, California—or, as Haley puts it, the restaurant was “completely burgerized.” Even the restroom names were updated, to “bur-guys” and “bur-gals.” This restaurant rebrand drew enough tourist interest that the franchise owner has opted to retain many of the burger-themed changes. The burger-fication wasn’t as overt in other stores, although Haley says they received a lot of interest from signage companies wanting to participate in the rebrand. A typical IHOP restaurant advertised the campaign via merchandising and menu changes. 

The second part of the campaign, post-reveal, lasted about four weeks. The company officially said its name change was a joke in an advertisement of its 60th anniversary promotion. Sung to the tune of “Happy Birthday,” the lyrics go:

IHOP’s turning 60

With a pancake party

And yes we said IHOP with a P

Because the B was just a stunt.

Results

“IHOb is the guy who gets a face tattoo of the girl’s name after 1 date”

“Well, IHOB seems like a really smart idea, since there are so few places to get burgers.”

“You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become IHOB”

“it sounds like iHop has a cold! I hobe it gets better soon”

“NŽÇČú±đ.”

Twitter certainly had its opinions. In fact, the IHOb reveal was the No. 1 national Twitter trending moment that day, beating out net neutrality and the North Korea-U.S. summit. “We knew that there would be some blowback from some people, because anytime there’s something that’s this disruptive, you’re going to get some people that are confused by it,” Haley says.

Other restaurant and food brands got in on the joke on social media. Hot Pockets posted a photo of its logo reading “Hot Bockets,” Burger King changed its Twitter icon to “Pancake King” and Whataburger tweeted, “As much as we love our pancakes, we’d never change our name to Whatapancake.”

Despite all the internet razzing, the campaign had notable results: In the first 10 days, the rebrand accumulated 1.2 million tweets, more than 27,000 earned media stories, 42.5 billion impressions and more than $113 million in earned media value. Haley says IHOP quadrupled burger sales at the peak of the campaign, and sales are still double what they were before the rebrand fake-out.

Research firm YouGov wrote a report on the campaign (unsolicited from IHOP) about the brand’s ad awareness. Data from YouGov BrandIndex showed the June 11, 2018, rebrand announcement saw the number of U.S. adults talking about the restaurant increased from 19% to 30%, as of June 18, 2018, marking IHOP’s highest word-of-mouth score since YouGov began tracking the company in 2012. 

It was a win for the brand, either in spite of or because of the massive social media response. “It was all fun stuff,” Haley says, although he never got around to burger-fying his professional title on LinkedIn. 

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When Jessica Best describes Wingstop’s campaign for April 20—better known as 4/20, the unofficial holiday for cannabis consumers—it elicited chuckles from her HO​W Design Live audience.  featured a twist on the classic “Let’s All Go to the Lobby” jingle from the 1950s, with the update featuring the restaurant’s products dancing to “Let’s all go to the Wingstop.” Each version of the commercial, released throughout the day, gets a little trippier.

While giggle-inducing, the campaign is a great example of following the customer journey, says Best, director of data-driven marketing at Barkley. The quick-service restaurant never would have known to target this demographic had they focused exclusively on the marketing funnel, which Best says is more keyed to what the company wants consumers to do. The customer journey, on the other hand, flips the script to learn what the customer is doing and what they feel at each stage of the process. The company was listening to consumers online, finding the terms “weed” and “Wingstop” frequently mentioned together and pointing to a new route in the customer journey—and an experience design opportunity.

This is Best’s passion as a data-driven marketer, to locate customers and meet them where they are. She hypes the benefits of designing a customer journey map, which includes design in the literal, creative sense. She presented on the topic at the 2018 HOW Design Live conference in Boston and will speak again at this year’s event in Chicago. Best’s presentation is for an audience of designers, to illustrate how important it is that they understand the consumer’s motivations. But it’s also a reminder to marketers to involve their design teams earlier in the process. The Wingstop insight came by way of the customer service team, an example of what can happen when more teams have a hand in solving the “why?” in a customer journey.

MN: Anytime I read about design and marketing, much of the focus is on individual assets: video, logos, infographics, things like that. It seems as though marketers might be missing an opportunity to get the design team involved in the full customer journey. Have you found that a lot of markers aren’t thinking about how design works in the bigger picture, versus individual assets?

JB: Yeah—it’s easy, right? It’s easy to focus on the piece at hand, it’s easy to focus on the brief, the design assignment instead of focusing on the design opportunity. In a lot of cases, the design assignment is for the logo on the outside of the takeaway bag, but the design opportunity is, “How do we surround that pickup experience for a to-go bag at a quick service restaurant? What are the pieces of that experience that have design components?” Just staying within the design space, there’s point of purchase, there’s window signage, there’s everything from how you’re greeted when you walk in or what materials you see when you’re sitting there considering your order.

It’s easy to focus on what projects have been assigned to you as a designer or even as a marketer instead of thinking about what the more holistic opportunity might be.

MN: That sounds like the difference between people working in silos and actually crossing departments.

JB: That’s a big piece of this. We talk a little bit about the difference between capital D Design and lowercase d design. Lowercase d design asks, is it beautiful? Does it add beauty? And capital D Design is more like, does this solve a problem? Wayfinding signage, for example, would be both lowercase d design but also design with a capital D, meaning it’s solving a problem. Is it useful? Is it intuitive? Those types of words are where we start to really fall into the larger design system and not just creative design.

MN: When I think of the intersection of marketing and design in the customer journey, I think of the mobile. We hear all the time about how poor mobile experiences keep customers from engaging with the company. Would you say that mobile is one of the best examples of how good design matters in the customer journey?

JB: It can be. The bigger picture is to see the impact of how a bad mobile experience can make a difference in how a customer sees your brand. It’s one of those things that didn’t exist 10 years ago that we have to think about now. The lack of attention to that becomes really noticeable. The loss of customers, the loss of traffic, the loss of the purchase becomes really noticeable on that end.

We just haven’t gotten our brain around experience design. That’s the opportunity of not just how do they make the purchase, it’s how do we help put them on their own journey to purchase our product—as hopefully our product is part of the solution for their own journey.

MN: How can marketers better involve design within that? How can those conversations change?

JB: The easiest answer is to bring (designers) in first. Bring them in earlier than we’re currently doing. That’s something that you’ll hear the lead designer at Barkley’s say often: The earlier that you can bring him in, the more we are thinking about the design opportunity and not just trying to fill the design project on a deadline.

What is the challenge that we’re trying to solve? Well, we need a menu. OK, what does that menu going to do? It’s going to help people choose what they want to order. OK, in that case does adding pictures to that menu make it easier for somebody to just choose what they’re looking for? We had a quick service client, for example, people would come in, they would see the menu and they would physically take a step back because it was so overwhelming. That’s not just a lowercase d design problem, that’s an experience problem. We have the wrong things on that menu.

If you take that to a designer at the point at which you’re saying, “We’re noticing that we’re not selling the highest return on investment item,” or “We’re noticing that customers aren’t having a positive experience,” or “We’re noticing that the time that somebody spends in our restaurant is five minutes longer since we’ve rolled out this new menu design—so how do we redesign that?” Well if we asked that question first, if we bring in a designer at the “why?” stage instead of just the “what?” stage, then they have the ability to solve for that bigger problem.

MN: Can you give me an example of when a designer was involved with some of the initial conversations and they noticed what none of the marketers on the team had thought about?

JB: Blue Cross and Blue Shield, an insurance company, one of the things they were working on is, what does the American consumer need and want from their insurance and health care providers? Not “What is the right way to market our insurance services?” I have to quote [Executive Design Director Paul Corrigan] here: “Ask a more beautiful question.” Back all the way up. We’re not selling this insurance product. Why? What do consumers need from their health and insurance providers? We can’t sell something that isn’t the right product for your audience. We’ve got to come at the “why?” stage. We’ve got to come in at this stage where we listen to what customers are looking for, what they hate about their current insurance provider or their healthcare provider, how sterile doctor’s offices are or how you have to deal with somebody different when you go to a doctor, versus when you get your claims reviewed. All that was very separate.

Blue Cross decided to open their own primary care clinics. And that’s what Spira Care is. We got to be part of everything from naming it to what the insurance packages look like and what the benefits look like in that package. The spaces are designed by our experience design team here at Barkley. It was very different from a typical marketing team task, but we got to start with a bigger, earlier question.

MN: Can you give me an example of the opposite happening: when the marketing team started to drive forward without the design team and the result maybe wasn’t cohesive?

JB: Unfortunately I have a lot of those examples. I don’t have to call out any names but the symptoms of that are more like, say, when you’re in the fifth round of creative revisions. That means we didn’t understand the problem well enough. We didn’t ask the tough questions or we didn’t start early enough. Maybe it wasn’t outlined well enough for us to internalize it and for the design solution to actually solve the problem.

MN: A lot of people look at design in terms of the logo, using the right colors, the right font. How does it go beyond that and help create a cohesive customer journey?

JB: Brand system is what we call the font, the colors, the sizes, the treatment—that type of thing. For example, I’ve worked with Hallmark before and they did a project launch for baby clothes and they dictated hue or the tint or the exposure level of the photography they wanted us to use across all channels. As they were preparing social and email and cross-channel assets, they had an Instagram filter that made it look like their brand. That specific, bright, crisp color, smiling faces, all of that is really part of your design. 

If we stretch that one step further, then the messaging is part of the system, too. At Barkley we call it your editorial authority: What is yours to talk about and what is not yours to talk about? And this is kind of in the wake of news-jacking, when something that had nothing to do with your company would be popular on Twitter and a brand would be like, insert a funny quip about that thing here. If you don’t have the authority to speak on politics or you don’t have the authority to speak on travel, then don’t. Spend your time with the influencers or the topics or the messaging and the tone that really fits your brand. Designing that up front is one of the things that’s most prevalent across most channels, because copy rarely changes as often as design does. 

MN: Have you ever seen examples of brands trying to hide something that doesn’t work with their brand voice just by designing it to look or sound like them?

JB: I can’t think of an example off the top of my head but I go back to that news-jacking thing. Do you remember, there was  I thought yeah, it looks exactly like an AT&T ad, but it’s way outside their editorial authority. You do not sell cell phones because it’s the anniversary of 9/11. I mean it was just so far off. The tone didn’t match, the reverence didn’t match. And it stinks of advertising. It doesn’t take a skeptical millennial to smell that of advertising. It’s icky, that’s the most formal way I can say it.

MN: That example sounds like a conversation didn’t happen between the marketing team and the design team.

JB: That is the whole reason for a design team to not be just taking orders, but to be part of the kick-off, part of the solution. That is how we fix it. You have more people in the discussion earlier on and frankly it also should be something that you run by the person who doesn’t work at an ad agency.

MN: What got you thinking about how design really plays a role in the customer journey?

JB: I have become a representative or the voice of the customer journey because my path to being a data-driven marketing director was through database marketing, email marketing specifically. I sit between the social media team, the creative team, the video team and the paid media team. One of the things that has always been owned by that CRM or data-driven person is the idea that you don’t just have ads based on what somebody just did, but based on your relationship and the history of that relationship and where in that relationship you are with that person. In that sense, email has always been prepped for the customer journey. That sense that you change your relationship with somebody over time has always been my M.O. 

Then we ladder that up and talk about how an email address can be key to curating the content in social or in paid media along that person’s journey. Because we had a key, we know who that person is now and we can help follow that person with what they need at that point in their own journey. Three years ago Forrester really started taking off with this idea that companies that focus on the customer journey and not necessarily the sales funnel are the ones that are finding the most success. Those people who understand the customer’s ethos and what they need and when or what they’re thinking or feeling—and that sometimes it’s not even our turn to talk.

MN: Can you talk more about the differences in customer journey versus the traditional funnel?

JB: I have a client that is a nonprofit for higher ed loans. The mission of the company is to try and drive down the number of people who graduate university or leave university with crippling debt. In this case, we could wait until somebody is looking for a loan and then target them and hope that they are finding all these great resources for how to borrow. Or, we realize that the point at which they are picking a school is actually a better entry point for us because the same mission-driven organization doesn’t believe that every school is equal and that your return on investment in going to a university on the beach in Florida for $50,000 dollars a year is not likely to pay you back the dividends that you’re investing when compared to a state school.  

On the flip side, there are entire parts of the journey that are not ours as advertisers to own. When you think of the sales funnel, what do we say to people when they’re researching? What do we say to people when they’re shopping? What do we say to people once they’ve bought? What do we say to people to get them to buy again? That’s the sales funnel. That is what we want them to do at different stages of their relationship with us. The customer journey flips that around and says, what is the customer doing? What are they thinking and what are they feeling at each stage of their process? 

MN: Are you designing a new customer journey with each new product?

JB: What we found is that personas vary it more because the customer journey is consumer-focused. It’s from their perspective. A, it should always be research-based, but B, it should be something that a customer sees and goes,“Yeah, that’s exactly what I do,” as opposed to when we go through a sales funnel. We build an awareness, preference or consideration, purchase and retention, those are sales funnel stages. The customer might not even recognize those or they might have off-ramps that we’re not even considering because all we’re looking at is the happiest path. 

There are off-ramps for a journey, too, but the customer journey should always be from the perspective of the customer: What do they need, when, how are they feeling about it, where are they researching it? Then we as marketers go, “Oh, you’re looking for information like this in this place?” That’s a brief. Now it’s marketing, but we’re letting the customer research drive that, we’re letting the customer’s mentality and needs drive that instead of saying, “Well, first I need somebody to be aware of me.” 

MN: That sounds like it could be a little bit scary for marketers, letting go of the funnel template. How do you get people comfortable with allowing the customer to lead?

JB: The biggest ammunition that I’ve had in that vein is if what we build ends up having exactly what the customer is thinking, what they need and where they’re looking for it, no marketer would say no to that. Everything that we do, every client that we have is a solution to some challenge.

Sometimes it’s Dairy Queen soft serve solves the challenge of, “I want something sweet to eat.” It’s not always lifesaving, but there is always a purpose or a solution and they have other solutions that they could consider. If we take a look at what the customer is looking for and where they’re looking for it, I’m literally sitting next to 50 people that would die to have that information. Where we market, how we message to that person and what we offer them, it writes itself. The marcom plan writes itself at that point. It does take more effort, it does take research, even if it’s a single survey, but even if you get into the brain of the consumer with a survey and use that information and quotes from those people in your journey map, that can be where you start to get real. 

MN: Does this look like one massive map with maybe a few different starting points and then they’re branching off in a zillion different ways? Or do you create separate maps depending on the persona?

JB: I’ve done both. If we have different products for different personas, then they can do two different ones. The one that we kept coming back around to where we only do persona nuances is the idea that somebody gets into the funnel or into the journey then they might fall out and come back in. Instead of just one line, it’s a line and then a loop. We have to think, how do we get away from the tried and maybe still true method of the funnel? At that point, your map starts to look a whole lot like a funnel, it’s just the information that’s in it is more customer-centric. 

MN: When you’re speaking at HOW Design Live, on designing for the customer journey, you are talking almost exclusively to designers. How are you explaining this concept to designers and what are some of the big takeaways that marketers can pass along to their design team?

JB: The biggest thing is for designers to know that this is where marketing should be coming up with some of this stuff and to expect the insights from that journey. Even if it’s as simple as your brief for a design project should include what we know about our customers: What do we want them to do after interacting with the campaign or program or whatever? That customer insight in every brief should come from knowing your customer’s journey.

MN: What was the reaction after you gave your presentation?

JB: I started my presentation with saying, “I’m just going to have to pay [the opening keynote] to speak before me.” He basically set me up for success because his whole M.O. was that brands don’t own their own brand anymore. They don’t own their message. They don’t own their communities. Everything is in the hands of the customer at a point. It basically keyed me up. 

A ton of people stayed afterwards because I took his theory, his approach, and was like, don’t think inside the box, don’t just design something: Make a different experience and know that your customer is really the one both co-designing that with you and expecting that of you. 

MN: Was there anything else that you wanted to add about the customer journey or how marketers can talk to their design team a little bit better about designing for the customer journey?

JB: No matter how much research you do, the people who are on the front line talking to your customer every day, that voice, a customer representative inside your organization can absolutely change the direction of your marketing campaigns. 

A perfect example of that is our content management team, our social media platform managers, the people who were listening to conversations for our quick-service restaurant client Wingstop. Three years ago about this time, one of the trends that they saw was that there were over 30,000 instances of the word “Wingstop” and the word “weed” being mentioned together in tweets. We all get a good chuckle out of that and go about our day—except that then 4/20 rolls around and before it was cool for brands to do this, we realized that we have an opportunity. As our creative director said, that is a giant invitation. We knew that people already associated our food, our experience with a certain culture. We basically had this invitation to participate in this discussion and ended up, three years running, doing some very fun content around 4/20. It’s even more relevant now as marijuana is becoming more available. 

Everybody got a good laugh out of the fact that we’re working with this [large] brand that is putting together a marijuana-based campaign. But people loved it because we were listening to the organic conversation that was happening on that front line. We would never have asked, it’s not going to go on a survey. We’re never going to say, “What do you think about a 4/20 campaign for Wingstop?” We wouldn’t have even known to ask that. That’s what bringing in the customer service team at the initial strategic kick-off can do. They tend to have their thumb on the pulse of things before us marketing folks ever get a hold of it. â€‹â¶Ä‹

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