The fine 'Art of Disruption'

the fine 'art of disruption'. 

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Simple online search to a memorable offline experience

“At the core of every organisation is the product that outlines what the organisation does, and at the core of every product is the consumer who decides what he/she/it prefers”.

Isn't this what every enterprise small, medium or large is aspiring to achieve? How often do we get to experience the “ah!” brand moment ourselves? I am sure, we all do. Well, here is an experience of my own, unexpectedly in a small, elegant fine dine restaurant in the beautiful area of Erlangen in Germany, located just a few kilometers from the city of Nuremberg.

The online experience

Few days prior to my anniversary, I was in search of a fine dine restaurant. Being on the move, I performed a quick mobile Google search - “Fine dining in Erlangen” and the relevant recommendations popped up in top half of the search page. Using the coordinates listed on the search page, I reviewed few of them online, and later called this restaurant to reserve a place for two.

The offline experience

On the eve of the anniversary, as we settled down at our table, the headwaiter greeted us with a pleasing smile. After exchanging pleasantries we turned for the menu, and were surprised to hear that the restaurant didn't have any. Instead they preferred that the Chef is introduced to the guests first hand and prepare something delicious to suit the palate of the guests. The Chef went on to ask us “what do you feel like having today?” (In German). They spoke German or Italian, and very little English, and we somehow managed to communicate with each other. As he continued he faced a challenge in front of him (evident when he said “Mamma Mia!”) – What to serve a vegetarian, in the 4-course menu? I could understand the difficulty of the task — being Germany, and intending to eat in a fine dine Italian restaurant, without meat, a staple in diets of both these regions. They took a few minutes to get to know my palate and my likes, and said I am in for a great night. I was hoping it wasn't sarcastic.

That “ah!” moment

The rest of the evening, I was served with 3-course vegetarian dishes at the right time followed by a dessert that were scrumptious. One of the dishes was not to my satisfaction, but I was offered an extra desert at no additional cost to compensate. Honestly, I wasn't expecting anything spectacular, but dining at this restaurant turned out to be more than just a meal for me. It was a very memorable experience for a perfect date!

The repeat mode

Hoping it wasn't a onetime wonder, I repeated my visits on two other occasions, and unexpectedly returned with a positive experience every time. Later, I went on to share my recommendations with my friends and colleagues.

Key learning's

This was a personal experience on how a simple mobile search led me to the right content and reviews that drove me to the right restaurant which delivered the right product and unexpectedly an excellent customer service.

Despite being a local brand, the experience this small restaurant generated has left quite an impression on me to recommend this eating place to anyone visiting Erlangen. Isn't this what we are trying to achieve within the offline and online space today? The message from our day to day being is simple - the content that your consumers want is out there in various channels, namely the web, social, retail stores, wholesale, TV etc. – you name it! Now, imagine only if your brand could take the locally relevant contents to the remotest regions that helps generate a personalized experienced for your consumers, so they could take informed decisions and experience something amazing and exhilarating. Wouldn't keeping the person in the personalized and customized experience be like achieving nirvana for your brand? That’s exactly what this little Italian restaurant nestled in a corner of Erlangen did.

Engage with Anand Rao via twitter @anands_rao

Readings also available at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/simple-online-search-memorable-offline-experience-anand-rao

Notes from Gartner's Digital Business Conference in London, UK on Sep 4, 2014

My notes from the Gartner’s Digital Business Conference “Taking the Business Digital: Your time is Now” in London, UK on Sep 4^th, 2014.

The presentation was divided into two subjects facilitated by two Gartner leads,
> The State of Digital Marketing – Jennifer Beck
> Social and Mobile Marketing – Jennifer Polk

The following is the random scribbling from the (well-presented) Gartner conference for your reference. Kindly ignore the grammar and structure. 

THE STATE OF DIGITAL MARKETING

The digital organisation today, in collaboration with marketers and IT, plan on investing their budgets on,

• Building a seamless Consumer Experience (CX) journey for their consumers 
• Developing a robust Content Marketing strategy for context relevant engagement
• A Loyalty program that craves for advocac
• Data, yes you read it right. This is the holy grail of everything an organisation needs to know about a piece of content or track their consumer's digital footprint
• Developing program standards for the marketing of two speeds - reactive campaigns and full blown projects
• Conceptualising experience across touch points across multiple channels to connect with the consumers anytime, anyplace, with relevant content

CONSUMER FIRST

• The latest battle that the brands fight today is that of developing a seamless consumer brand experience across all channel touch points. 
• The buyer journey today is no longer linear. Consumers are looking for a “great experience” across channels. However, the definition of “great experience” keeps changing. It extends beyond brands’ products & services. And the line between products & services is non-existent.
• Gartner says, by 2016, 91% of companies will compete on the basis of the customer experience. 
• Brands & vendors/agencies must constantly evolve their capabilities around UX, content strategy to keep pace with the digital and consumer trends, else they will be left behind. Remember your competitor is just a click away!!

STORY SCAPING

• To succeed in digital business build the dream and vision for your clients, excellence is in the delivery. Tell constructive stories to your leads to elevate your pitch.
• Rethink your sales model by focusing on solutions than talking about pain points. CxOs know their pain points, they want to know what you are going to solve for them and how you are going to solve for them. Focus your pitches on these aspects.
• One question that every CxO’s would ask the sales account directors – What are you here to do for me? Why should I be spending my valuable time with you? This is not new, and always existed. Articulate your value propositions clearly.
• Today, CIO's are looking to engage with vendors who have clear visibility on how they are helping brands solve their challenges rather than talking about just technology and systems. Back to the first point - it's about story scaping!

IT’S AN AD, AD WORLD

• Marketing world is all about ads and engagement. 
• Buyers are channel blind. They don’t see channels, they see engagement, they experience.
• More and more brands are looking to evolve content marketing into their digital strategy - offline or online, across channels.
• They want to enable the discovery of intellectual, contextually relevant content in-house for their employees or curate contents to meet their consumer needs across channels.

LOYALTY IS GOOD, ADVOCACY IS BETTER

• A set of consumers who may have been loyal for many years, and some of who may have been inactive, will only generate a fraction of revenue and brand impression as compared to a recently  acquired consumer who talks about the brand with friends and families. Target such consumers. They are the one's who will build advocacy, and ultimately resulting in more revenue and brand impression for you.
• Get it right with the right team. Focus on tracking the consumer behaviour through marketing automation programs to deliver contextually relevant content to consumers.

BE SOCIAL, BE MOBILE

• The young today is always connected – on mobile, in social. 
• Gartner says, 71% of consumers use their smartphones atleast 5x per day
• Gartner says, online search using mobile device continues to be the leading trend followed by social
• Gartner says, Mobile traffic drives 22.3% of the revenue, whereas Social traffic drives 18.3% of the revenue

Brands and vendors who talk about mobile first, social first have to act fast. Just being mobile first, social first is thing of the past. Today you need to be talking mobile always, social always.

THE CMO vs CIO CHALLENGE

• CMO’s have always hunted for profits and demanded results. Gartner says, CMO’s will spend more on technology than CIO’s by 2017. Whereas CIO’s have always focused on business case and demanded cost optimisation & technology consolidation. 
• They both are right, but the stairway to heaven is in focusing on a digitally led organisation.
• The digital organisation structure today is being promoted in many firms to bridge this gap. The primary digital roles with budget, control and where digital marketing is critical to success are,

o   Consumer experience leader

o   Digital commerce leader

o   Marketing technology leader

o   Marketing analytics leader

o   Multichannel marketing leader

GARTNER DIGITAL MARKETING

Access to more (and much accurate) details from Gartner on http://www.gartner.com/marketing/digital/

Holding the Social media Torch @ Olympics 2012

mobile statistics stats facts infographic (2011)

By 2014, mobile internet is set to overtake fixed internet access. This was the big headline from Microsoft Tag's Mobile Marketing Infographic last year.

Source: Microsoft Tag

Insanely cluttered Social Media Marketing agencies

Source: Luma Partners

A Complete Guide To Every VC Firm Doing Digital Investments