SapientNitro Blog

Women’s Leadership Network NY Hosts Q&A with Danielle Gray

Mon, 13 Mar 2017 14:38:23 -0400

For the Sapient NY Office, the highlight of International Women’s Day week was our Q&A session with Danielle Gray, former Senior Advisor to President Obama, moderated by John Casey, Head of PR & Media Relations for SapientRazorfish.

She made her way to the front of the audience with little notice. For someone who has made such a great impact on recent American history, Danielle Gray came across as down-to-earth and relatable. After describing her “normal Long Island kid upbringing” going to public schools and bar mitzvahs, and her early aspirations of being a cartoonist, she recounted key moments from the years since. Taking us from how she got to the White House, she brought us to the work she’s doing today as a Partner with the world’s largest law firm.

Ms. Gray spent two years campaigning for Obama’s presidency and then five exciting years in the White House serving in his administration in senior legal and policy positions, most recently as Assistant to the President and White House Cabinet Secretary. In just those few years, she was instrumental in the judicial selection and confirmation of both Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. In describing the appointment of a Supreme Court justice as “law nerd heaven,” and like playing “fantasy Supreme Court,” she had the audience giggling. Then on an earnest note, she told us “Justice Kagan was a professor [at Harvard Law School] and mentor. [Confirming her] was a unique honor of mine.”

Also responsible for helping pass the Affordable Care Act, she calls this legislation as a high point of her time working with President Obama. “This mattered. People’s lives would be better for it.” But before it passed, she confessed to another unforgettable moment. Invited to a very last-second meeting about the plan, she ran to the Oval Office in track pants and a cashmere sweater—with a hole in it. Worse than being razzed by Obama, a staff photographer snapped a shot of the working session that would hang prominently on the White House wall, among other public places. Mortified, she recalled “the photo was all over the place. Friends were sending it to me!”

After leaving the White House in 2014, she became a partner at O’Melveny & Meyers in New York, addressing issues at the intersection of public policy and government. With a true passion for public service, she spends a good amount of time today doing pro-bono work for the NAACP defense fund and helping to safeguard voting rights and immigration rights, most recently fighting the travel ban.

When asked by a young woman in the audience about how we as average Americans can make a difference, Ms. Grey spoke about the importance of protests like the Women’s March and she encouraged the audience to keep it up and stay active, from supporting our local leaders to making phone calls to Congress. “They really do matter.”

So how did Danielle Gray become the incredible woman she is today? As women who inspired her, she cited her mom, Justice Elena Kagan and of course, everyone’s hero, Oprah. See, she’s just like us.

Women’s Leadership Network seeks to empower SapientRazorfish women through inspiration, advocacy and guidance to help them achieve their greatest potential.

Join SapientRazorfish and Adobe at Innovation Day at SXSW ‘17

Fri, 10 Mar 2017 12:00:42 -0500

We’re hosting this year’s Innovation Day, a collection of talks dedicated to how artificial intelligence (and its brethren) is helping brands understand, predict, and more effectively engage with the wants and needs of people in a deeply personalized way. Spend the day getting your fill of boundary-breaking insights from trailblazers such as Sideways Inc., TUNE, Adobe, NEW INC at New Museum, The Community, and SapientRazorifsh. Then, get your chill by attending our happy hour!

Innovation Day | Sunday, March 12th
Time: 10AM and 4PM CT
Location: Palm Door on Sabine, Austin (click here for directions)

See the schedule below for details and follow this link to RSVP and attend. Looking forward to seeing you there!

GET YOUR FILL: INNOVATION DAY

10AM - 10:50AM Augmented Intelligence: The Next-Gen AI
With Melanie Cook, Head of Strategy & Content, Southeast Asia, SapientRazorfish

The Super Intelligentsia believes that AI and Armageddon go hand in hand. Robotics and AI have integrated human and mechanical capabilities at work, with jobs lost and skills condensed to a keystroke. But human intelligence is far from obsolete. With crowd-computing, we have knowledge exchanges like Wiki and real-time, curated news. Semantic technology helps leaders understand what is happening in the workplace, but neurology shows that these leaders cannot make choices (and therefore take action) without emotion. Augmented Intelligence takes human intuition and imagination, and combines it with AI’s ability to automate and scale, making the Intelligent Workplace hard to beat.

11AM - 11:50AM The Future of Content Creation
With Ron Nagy, Senior Evangelist, Adobe

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) are transforming the way content is stored, retrieved, displayed, and created. We are creating more content for more channels vying for ever-dwindling attention. While social is driving a lot of content explosion, personalization across channels is driving higher content velocity. You’ll learn how Adobe has consolidated a number of technologies under Adobe Sensei to enable our customers to deliver more experiences faster. Join us to see a variety of demos from the not-too-distant future of content creation; and hear how you can leverage AI/ML to create better experiences.

12PM - 12:50PM Building the Cognitive Business
With Simon James, Global Head of Performance Analytics, SapientRazorfish

Technological innovation has fundamentally changed human behaviour, but perhaps no technology has been hyped as much as AI. How do businesses prepare for an AI-first world when they are still coming to terms with mobile-first thinking? Find out how AI is changing and challenging businesses today, why AI is a platform play and not a product play, how any business can start down the road to becoming AI-first, and how to overcome internal blockers to generate real business value.

1:15PM - 1:50PM HeyMap: Blending Social Media with the Real World
With Andy Amendola, Director of Digital Strategy, The Community; Juan Aguilar, Art Director, The Community; Lindsey Stormer, Copywriter, The Community

Join Juan Aguilar, Lyndsey Stormer, and Andy Amendola from The Community as they discuss the possibilities of merging our physical and digital worlds. Get a sneak peak of HeyMap, an app that lets you connect with friends through physical places by sharing posts in specific locations around the world.

2PM - 2:50PM Same, Same, Different: A Conversation on Changing the Ratio in Creative Technology
With moderator Keri Elmsly, CCO, Second Story and panelists Ian Sefferman, GM, TUNE Marketing Console ; Julia Kaganskiy, Director, NEW INC at New Museum & Aina Abiodun, Head of Strategy, Sideways Inc.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. It’s time to discuss some different tactics our industry can take to create a more vibrant, inclusive, and diverse environment.

3PM - 3:50PM Lessons Learned from Birthing a Bot
With Chris Messina, inventor of the hashtag, former Googler, and proud participant in the open source/open web communities

For nearly a year, Chris has been incubating his own mini me, which he lovingly and accurately calls “MessinaBot”. It lives on Facebook Messenger and can tell you all about him, as well as pull content from all places he publishes to across the web. You can access cocktail recipes from MessinaBot, and if you connect your Uber to it, then it’ll send you his Foursquare tips based on your destination. In this session, Chris will share his journey to birthing his own bot and what it portends for social technology more broadly.

GET YOUR CHILL: HAPPY HOUR

4PM - 6PM Happy Hour Drinks
Unwind with authentic Austin musical flare. Co-sponsored with our friends at Adobe.

Follow this link to RSVP for any and all of the above!

5 Key Takeaways from FilmGate Miami on Creating Interactive and Immersive Content

Wed, 01 Mar 2017 08:00:33 -0500

FilmGate Miami is a growing conference, held annually in early February, focused on interactive and immersive media. In previous years, I had projects featured there and was invited to help the team curate the 2017 festival.

At Campfire, a part of SapientRazorfish, we embrace these types of experiences because they are great places to gain inspiration and knowledge that we can take back to inform our work and share with our clients. Inspiring work was on full display at FilmGate and creators shared many lessons learned:

· Embrace the limitations of a technology - The VR project Notes on Blindness: Into Darkness invites the audience into a series of environments that show how the blind “see”. Current VR headsets are still fairly low resolution, so the creator chose to limit what is visually presented to the user. This naturally focuses the user’s attention on the smaller details of the experience.

· User choice must be meaningful - Giving users agency is a key concept in any interactive work. The interactive film Tantalum is a great example of an experience that successfully gives users agency in a narrative through a limited set of choice points. The audience uses an app to help direct the main character at five key points in the story. Each point feels meaningful and important to the story. (We worked through similar challenges with our interactive film for Infiniti called Deja View.)

· Fish where the fish are - Priya’s Shakti is an example of building an audience and using technology to enhance an already compelling story. The project is focused on raising awareness around violence against women in India. The creator chose the comic book format because the target audience was young men. He added an Augmented Reality component to the project, but it was an ancillary experience to the main narrative.

· Blend analog with digital to create surprise - Giant VR is a VR experience that creates an unforgettable moment through the use of haptics. A small rumbler is hidden at the base of the seat and it rumbles when the bombs go off in the background of the VR experience. (We often mix analog and digital to create moments of surprise in an experience - an example of this is the Westworld VR experience we recently created with HBO.)

· Keep it simple - Native advertising programs at The New York Times generate strong consumer engagement and increase credibility. Nelly Gocheva, an Editor at T Brand Studio shared how their content approach focuses on making media easy to scan, straightforward to interact with, quick to load and simple to share.

Those wanting to dive deeper into the kind of immersive work on display at FilmGate should check out:

· MIT Open Documentary Lab, another participant at FilmGate, maintains two great tools that surface trends and inspiration in storytelling: Docubase and the Immerse Newsletter.

· StoryCode has a comprehensive index of various types of immersive projects and also produces a monthly newsletter called the Immersive Media Dispatch.

· Lance Weiler’s “Digital Storytelling - a look at the last 12 months” is a list of 38 interactive projects of note, released in the last 12 months.

By Mike Knowlton, Director Business Development, Campfire

Soon, We Will Have a Bot for Everything

Mon, 27 Feb 2017 09:24:53 -0500

Imagine communicating with machines by writing or speaking using our natural language. While this might have been fiction in the past, it has now become a reality with the emergence of conversational applications or chatbots. And, soon, we will have a bot for everything.

“By 2020, autonomous software agents outside of human control will participate in five percent of all economic transactions.” – Gartner

2016 saw an eruption of chatbots and conversational systems, a disruption driven by the simultaneous growth of messaging platforms, progress, and ease of access to artificial intelligence (not to mention APIs). In this article, we will address how a chatbot works, simplify the concepts surrounding it, and hopefully inspire all to build bots.

How does a Chatbot work?

Let’s first understand the difference between traditional and conversational applications. A traditional application such as a mobile app or website works in a point-and-click fashion. Its interfaces are built on blocks of elements with which users can interact via limited actions (e.g., click, type, touch, or swipe). This arrangement is extremely convenient and efficient for a computer as there are finite interaction points, often in a sequence. Developers can, therefore, write code for each finite set of interactions very quickly.

That being said, there are also some challenges presented by traditional applications. First, the user must understand the flow required to get the work done. While many flows are commonly used and seemingly simple, specific business domains might necessitate user training. Second, if additional requirements get added, then new user interface (UI) elements and interactions must be introduced.

Conversational applications, on the other hand, take the command from the user in the form of his/her natural language. The example illustrated below is a simplified version of a multi-dialogue, chatbot interaction for buying groceries.

While many may argue that chatbot interaction may be cumbersome as users have to type what they want instead of simply clicking a few times, the statistics on messaging platforms say otherwise.

“Users around the world are logging in to messaging apps to not only chat with friends but also to connect with brands, browse merchandise, and watch content. What were once simple services for exchanging messages, pictures, videos, and GIFs have evolved into expansive ecosystems with their own developers, apps, and APIs.” – Business Insider

We haven’t quite made the full switch from traditional to conversational applications. For now, while the speech recognition and natural language comprehension continues to evolve, we will see many hybrid interfaces making the best of both worlds.

How do we make an application conversational?

A conversational application’s primary aim is to translate natural language into user intent. The intent, in this context, is the command the user intends to execute. The conversational app can either be rule-based or actions-based.

Rule-Based

A rule-based application is preprogrammed with multiple phrases against an intent (see the simple rule-based flow below). While these bots are intelligent and able to understand natural language, any conversation that goes outside the boundaries of their rules fails. Having said that, the rules are also what make these chatbots extremely accurate.

Actions-based

Natural language processing (NLP) is the class of artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms that enables a computer to understand human language and process commands. These actions-based, conversational applications basically convert human language into bits and bytes.

Consider the lifecycles of human beings. Children are taught by feeding them information. As they grow, their interactions with the environment continue to develop their intelligence. NLP works in a similar fashion. Initialized with a set of training data, the AI builds upon its learnings via usage and interaction.

Breaking down a Chatbot

From this point forward, we will focus on the application of natural language processing in a chatbot and the key concepts applied by current bot platforms and software developers’ kits (SDKs). The objective is to become aware of the ecosystem and quickly start building chatbots of your own.

Conversational Channels

Conversational channels are like the eyes, ears, and mouth of a chatbot. The most common conversation interfaces are currently text and voice as they allow interaction via natural language. Also, chat platforms have become popular mostly through our mobile devices and desktops, which are ideal for text interfaces. Therefore, while multiple interfaces in addition to voice and text exist, we will focus primarily on these two.

1. Text-Based Channels

These are simple chat platforms that allow you to communicate with bots via text, which their NPL algorithms can directly consume. These interfaces can be completely custom-built as mobile, desktop, or web applications, or they can be integrated with existing messaging platforms. A few key examples of text-based messaging platforms include Whatsapp, Slack, Tropo, Line, KIK, and Facebook Messenger. These chat platforms provide web-based API hooks for transmitting the text received via their chat interfaces to a chatbot service. If the interface is the platform, then the chatbot can be developed and exposed as an API.

2. Voice-Based Channels

Voice or speech interfaces like the Amazon Echo allow users to converse with bots by simply speaking. Since the chatbot only understands communication in text format, an additional interface is needed to convert speech into text (and text back into speech when the chatbot responds). A few notable platforms/services that provide speech-to-text and text-to-speech services include Google’s Speech API, Amazon’s Voice Service, IBM’s Watson Speech API, Microsoft’s Azure Speech API, and API.AI.

The Chatbot Core

Let’s try to see and dissect a chatbot’s inner workings. How does it understand language, intelligently process commands, and respond as natural (read: human) as possible? Every time a user tries to communicate with the chatbot, he/she has the “intent” of asking a question or giving a command. Natural language processing (and the algorithms supporting it) is responsible for figuring out that intent based on the inputs the chatbot receives.

General English Language

Chatbots can be taught general, spoken English or any other language by giving it predefined learning data. For example, hello, greetings, or hi are understood as an intent of “salutation.”

Domain Specific Language

Unlike generic vocabulary, vocabulary specific to a business can be interpreted differently. Let’s take “I am planning to travel to New York” as an example. The phrase can be interpreted by an airline service as the intent to book a “flight,” while a hotel would interpret it as intending to book a “hotel room.”

Ideally, we would want a chatbot to be very open-ended and have conversations with much wider contexts. Since these kinds of open domain bots are quite complex, most of the bots today are dedicated to specific businesses or domains.

Let’s assume that the chatbot is focused on the “airline domain” and is connected to the business API of the airline’s booking system online. Based on the “travel” verb, the chatbot understands that the user intends to travel and knows that it needs to call the API “searchTravelOptions” before it can book any flights.

To make a successful API call, the chatbot also needs to identify the parameters required to complete the operation. NLP applies a concept of named entity recognition, which enables the bot to associate the parameters with known information like place, time, date, etc. For example, “New York” can be associated with either “Destination” or “Source” based on the named entity training data with which the chatbot is pre-loaded. Similarly, if the user had given a date, then it could be associated with either “Travel Date” or “Return Date.” To evaluate these possibilities, the chatbot uses prepositions such as from or to to accurately identify an entity. For example, “from location” signifies the source, while “to location” signifies the destination.

Dialogue

In the aforementioned example, not all entities are provided to the bot in a single sentence. The bot platforms are, therefore, equipped to construct “dialogues” or series of conversations in order to complete a process. As you can see below, the chatbot continues to have a dialogue with the user until all the information necessary for a “searchTravelOptions” API call is gathered.

Context

In the example conversation above, the chatbot is aware of the user’s current location based on his mobile’s GPS and assumes the source. The chatbot can use the information gathered from mobile devices to determine physical context (like location, speed, etc.) and it can also use saved user data (such as class preference) to determine domain context. Context awareness and the ability to derive entity information makes a chatbot more aware and human.

Unsupervised & Supervised Learning

The identification of intent and entities enables the chatbot to know which API to call, what data to fetch, and which parameters to pass. The pre-loading and classification of Common Vocabulary, Domain Specific Vocabulary, Named Entitles, and Domain Specific Entities can, therefore, be deemed the chatbot’s unsupervised, “learning” processes.

However, there will be many instances when the chatbot will not be able to accurately translate a user’s phrase into intent. For this, all bot platforms allow developers to review missed translations and manually label these phrases with their appropriate intents. With this process, the chatbots learn from their mistakes or “lack of knowledge” in a supervised environment. In the example below, the bot cannot associate “whazzup” to any intent and has asked the developer to associate it to the appropriate one.

How does a Chatbot respond?

Now that we have discussed how a chatbot processes natural language, let’s discuss how chatbots respond to questions or commands in a manner as similar to natural, human responses as possible. There are multiple algorithms and models that allow a chatbot to determine its responses, but we will touch on only one approach: the retrieval-based model.

Retrieval-Based Model

A predominant approach due to easy implementation, the retrieval-based model involves a predefined response to a command or question. The response can be static or selected from a predefined set of commands based on rules or persona information (that of the user interacting with the chatbot). While this approach may seem smarter, the truth is that responses are limited to a finite set of vocabulary.

So, how can we make chatbots more perceptive? The more context a chatbot has, the more intelligent it can become. The chatbot can begin to select responses based on the user’s mood, physical, or linguistic context. Services like IBM’s Watson™ Tone Analyzer and Personality Insights can be used to gather this user context, and change the style or flow of the dialogue accordingly.

Let’s build Chatbots!

There is an enormous list of available chatbot ecosystems and platforms, along with many tutorials that can help those looking to build chatbots. These platforms are very simple and easy to use, and do not require vast amounts of artificial intelligence knowledge.

The chatbots and machine intelligence space is expanding at a rapid pace, and has to be taken seriously by organizations and individuals alike. In the near future, AI and machine learning will shift from being the domain of a closed community to touching every sphere of our lives. Being aware of this space will be as important as knowing how to operate a smartphone.

By Siddhartha Lahiri, Senior Manager, SapientRazorfish

In Their Own Words: Kim O’Brien

Mon, 20 Feb 2017 05:00:09 -0500

Has data ever called to you? No? It did for Director of Marketing and Analytics Kim O’Brien and you’ll be hard-pressed to find someone with as much passion for data analytics as her. Kim has been with us for just under a year, but is no stranger to the Publicis family, having started out at DigitasLBi. She is now thriving as a leader in our London office, driving her teams with an innovative spirit and a true open-door policy. Originally a Boston-native, Kim has been living in London with her husband and their young son for almost ten years. I sat down with her to gain insight into her impressive career and get her take on life in the industry.

Why did you chose a career in digital analytics?

I started my career in database marketing operations, designing email and direct mail marketing programmes with a focus on how to structure and process data. I found I really enjoyed working with data but I quickly realised there was more value in understanding what the data was saying than to simply preparing it for a campaign. I honestly feel that it called to me! As I progressed through my career ‘digital’ happened, which made data more readily available and a lot easier to use to tell a story, which is my favourite part. Using data to tell a story that influences decisions is an amazing feeling.

What made you want to join SapientRazorfish?

SapientNitro, now SapientRazorfish, was an agency I’d heard a lot about. What really stood out to me was the consulting aspect, which meant I could truly partner with brands to deliver value through data. Today I work exclusively with one client so I’m able to understand the drivers of the business and the challenges that come with a business that operates at a significant scale across multiple brands and countries. When I combine that with my experience and the expertise in areas including data strategy, digital marketing and CRM, I feel I can almost immediately see the impact of the recommendations that are being made.

Which one of our company values resonates most with you?

Creativity, even though that probably sounds a bit strange coming from a data person! Everyone I work with, including the clients are open to new ways of working, being creative in the way in which we use data to solve problems, and also exploring the possibilities and value that data provides. Whether or not it’s creative in the traditional sense, I feel our team is creative every single day and it’s super exciting to see our ideas come to life!

What has been the most rewarding experience in your career so far?

I really enjoy managing people and I’ve been lucky enough to have had some truly amazing people to both lead and learn from. One of the most rewarding experiences for me is to see someone I’ve hired as a junior analyst grow and develop their own unique skillset. There’s nothing more rewarding than watching someone be successful using the lessons that I’ve taught them or we’ve learned together.

What makes you stay here?

One of the things that drew me here was the flexibility with where and how we work. I am a working mother and was seeking a job that allowed me to play a role in my son’s life. At SapientRazorfish everyone is open to collaborating in a way that makes sense for the people on the team. Being able to support working parents through initiatives like the Career Returns Programme is so inspiring. There is so much effort that goes into making sure the people who work here are able to balance their work and life commitments.

What challenges have you faced working in this industry?

The challenges I face are likely similar to what many women face regardless of industry. Just getting a seat at the table is one of the biggest challenges. As a woman in technology with focus on data—both male-dominated fields—sometimes it’s difficult to be taken seriously and make my voice heard. I think a lot of women struggle with this. The way I deal with it is to try to find ways to add value to my team, my clients and our organization as a whole so people can see I’m not just a woman but I have a voice and I have value to offer. And it certainly helps that I’m not shy.

How can we encourage more women to get involved in digital?

Events and mentoring are so important. Providing women, especially those who are just starting out in their careers, access to strong, successful women to help support and guide them. The mentoring, the encouragement, the support, really pushing young women to be future stars is key. Encouraging them to be vocal in conversations and meetings and helping them figure out how to calm those nerves and just go for it!

Do you have a favourite piece of career advice?

Jump in feet first. Accept a challenge even if you don’t know exactly how to do it and figure it out as you go. This is good advice for women especially, because opportunities don’t always come our way so when they do, seize the day! If something interesting or challenging, or something you’re passionate about comes along, even if it extends beyond your comfort zone, seize the opportunity - don’t let your own insecurities get in the way of going for it.

By Elyce Falzon, Senior Associate, Hiring

Picture This: Four Art History Principles for Humanizing Digital Experiences

Wed, 15 Feb 2017 07:00:26 -0500

Creating customer-centric experiences often revolves around mining data to identify patterns of behavior. But what are the emotions driving that behavior? What are the universal feelings that make us all human and that can, in turn, make your brand experiences feel more human?

Through the ages, art has served as a powerful tool to help us make sense of the world we live in, the people in it, and the way we collectively view things. Here, we explore core themes in Western art that can help brands craft digital experiences that speak to our shared humanity.

Existential Evidence

From cave-painters’ handprints to Instagram, people have always felt the need to confirm their unique, individual existence. We have a basic human desire to distinguish one person from the many. Today, when so much of life is conducted online where you have no physical presence, your digital identity is what gives you a voice and lets you function online as “you.” The media may have changed, but the value of identity remains. Allowing people to express – and then protect – their unique identity is essential to a positive customer experience.

Kinesis

The human body is designed to move. Through time, artists have grappled with portraying the power of movement not just physically, but in the patterns of nature, in divine and human affairs, and now, in the constant flow of data and information circulating throughout the planet. When designing a digital experience, we imagine users going on “journeys” that take them from awareness to desire, past obstacles and distractions, to fulfillment and conclusion. And, while kinetic energy is the essence of the digital world, experience design is the process of understanding and harnessing it.

Spatial Awareness

Movement is futile without a sense of where you’re going. Because the ability to make sense of space is a key survival tool (“Exactly how far away is that lion?”), our brains reward us for developing it. There’s something inherently dopamine-inducing about depictions of illusory space.

The foundation of most interaction design is in spatial awareness; indeed, the illusion of spatial awareness is widespread. Digitally, we use a form of imaginative spatial awareness to navigate through non-linear, digital experiences – identifying a destination and then plotting routes through multidimensional space to get there. On the Internet, we move deeper into a website as we shop. Servers live in a diffuse cloud. Even our operating systems uses a physical metaphor of layers of folders and files.

Interaction designers need to think like classical artists, considering not just surface and signage, but also the fundamental principles of volume and plane, solid and void, mass and scale in order to shape the space in which we reside, prompting customers to step inside and soar. Spatial awareness is also key to designing interactive experiences that accurately reflect the virtual world that we increasingly live in, especially as virtual reality becomes more common in marketers’ toolkits.

Open and Closed Forms

Movement and spatial awareness equip us to explore the digital world. But what kind of world do we imagine it to be? Is it logical or capricious? (The same can be asked about us as humans.)

Human history is the story of this conflict, and exploring this dynamic with open and closed forms has long been an artistic tradition. Closed (or tectonic) forms are self-contained: edges are respected and there’s no coloring outside the lines. They propose an orderly and organized, but somewhat immobile world, full of balance and harmony. On the other hand, open (or a-tectonic) forms respect no boundaries, but seem to point outward to an infinite world, where growth and movement are inevitable and desirable – a Dionysian view driven by emotions and instincts.

This conflict between open and closed forms remains very much alive today. Internet founder Tim Berners-Lee argues that the Internet’s fundamental nature is open: its laws and protocols are open, fluid, and public. Even the structure of websites reflects the tension between open and closed. A gaming experience, for example, should be more fluid, with crossing paths, and a dynamic feeling of infinite possibility. In contrast, a financial experience should instill feelings of security, with more predictable and linear paths. Every brand experience should be architected to reflect the brand tenets and the emotions it’s meant to evoke.

To grow well, digital will need to mature, deepen, and acquire art’s wisdom of human experience. With every experience we craft, a union of technology and emotion is needed: a mutually beneficial symbiosis to give art relevance and digital a soul.

Find out how to reach this balance and more by downloading the full report PDF.

By Matthew Maxwell, Associate Creative Director, SapientRazorfish London

Capitalizing on Context: Location Awareness for Marketers

Wed, 18 Jan 2017 08:00:21 -0500

In recent years, brands have used technology to make location-based marketing increasingly immersive and experiential. Brick-and-mortar retailers and the brands they carry are reaching consumers before, during, and after purchase by applying emerging technology such as smarter online targeting tools and physical objects (like Amazon’s Dash). The most successful experiences, however, are the ones that redefine location marketing by considering additional context.

These context-aware experiences are happening in three crucial locations: in homes, on the go, and at or near a store. On any given day, the context of a consumer’s journey changes several times, depending on factors beyond these locations, such as the customer’s immediate surroundings (at a desk, in a car, etc.), the device being used, and ambient circumstances (such as weather conditions outdoors or noise levels indoors). Because all of these influence purchasing decisions, marketers must create experiences that resonate with consumers in the context of these ever-shifting circumstances.

Creating a context-aware roadmap

Location-based contextual moments represent opportunities for businesses to create context-aware content so long as the brand’s message is relevant and not spammy. But how does a brand figure out which moments to create and where to create them? We suggest that businesses identify their own moments by applying these filters:

Your customer. Who are your customers? What are their wants and needs, and how do those wants and needs change throughout the day? How do your customers use technology to get what they want? What do they expect from your brand: utility, engagement, or both? What opportunities exist for you to deliver context-aware experiences throughout your customers’ journeys?
Your business strategy. What is the vision for achieving your brand and experience goals? What are your near-term objectives from a location-marketing standpoint? For instance, are you trying to increase foot traffic to stores? Increase same-store sales? Both?
Your capabilities. What capabilities (e.g., inventory management, merchandising, and branding) exist in order for you to create context-aware experiences for your customers? What gaps exist with your capabilities, and do you have the budget and resources to fill those gaps?
Your technology. Ranging from analytics to platforms and mobile wallet offers, what supporting technologies (if appropriate to your customers’ wants and needs) do you need in order to create context-aware experiences?

The next step when constructing context-aware journeys requires that data be applied properly—beginning with basic customer information, then adding historical and behavioral data, and ultimately physical location. This information allows businesses to gain a better understanding not only of their users’ current context, but also of how to improve the future-state experience by addressing customer wants and needs—through utility, engagement, or both. These insights must then be mapped against a company’s unique business strategy, capabilities, and technology in order to determine which moments to create and where to create them.

A marketing mindshift

Capitalizing on the new context of location asks senior marketers to think differently about how they interact with their customers and agencies. Wondering where to begin?

Re-examine your multichannel marketing strategies in the context of your business goals. Are you trying to win more mobile traffic for your online storefront? Improve foot traffic at your brick-and-mortar locations? Both?
Design a more robust view of your customer’s journey from the home to the store. Doing so requires applying tools such as journey maps, which illustrate multiple decision-making points along the path to purchase. Journey maps also identify opportunities for your brand to participate in the decision-making. These maps need to be dynamic to succeed – for example, they should accommodate emerging platforms such as Snapchat.
Once you have a clearer view of the customer’s journey, start thinking of the contextual circumstances that inform decisions along each touchpoint. In what kind of home does your target audience live? Are they likely to be using smart appliances themselves? If so, how? How are they consuming content at home, on the go, and at/near the store?
Surround yourself with the right blend of talent and technology to design experiences that will support your business needs. If you are a retailer, for example, you’ll likely need a multidisciplinary team that combines expertise in merchandising, customer experience design, and mobile.
Identify your best opportunity to reach your customer with a contextual marketing experience at home, on the go, or at/near the store. Pilot a contextual marketing experience that occurs in one or all of these circumstances, with branded content appropriate for the circumstance.

Ultimately, context will allow marketers to redefine location marketing and create more valuable, relevant experiences. It always begins where purchase decisions are being made, and with the role your brand can play.

For more details on the increasing importance of contextual location marketing, download our report on the same topic, entitled How Brands Are Changing the Context of Location Marketing.

By Sheldon Monteiro, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, SapientRazorfish

CES Signals Even More Disruption From Connectivity

Tue, 17 Jan 2017 12:04:07 -0500

Following this year’s Consumer Electronic Show, Razorfish’s Shannon Denton, Chief Strategy Officer, shares four takeaways for CMOs and Chief Marketing Technology Officers (CMTOs) to build into their to plans in order to future-proof their brands. Continue reading at Ad Age.

Photo Credit: Courtesy CTA

IN THEIR OWN WORDS: SYMON HAMMACOTT

Thu, 12 Jan 2017 17:07:49 -0500

Symon Hammacott truly has a global perspective on experience design, having led design teams in Europe, North America, the Middle East and Asia. He has a deep understanding of how to create and manage highly effective design organizations.

Symon was brought into SapientNitro to build the Experience Design practice across South East Asia and has played a central role leading the Singapore office towards a lean, Agile approach to solving the digital transformation problems of some of the region’s leading businesses.

Now as Chief Operating Officer for SapientRazorfish Hong Kong, Symon is steering the same transformation for the Hong Kong market. Read on to take a virtual tour of our Hong Kong office and gain insight into some of the opportunities Symon is most excited about.

Tell us more about SapientRazorfish Hong Kong.

SapientRazorfish is a fusion of two powerhouses in Digital Business Transformation – SapientNitro and Razorfish. SapientRazorfish Hong Kong is a strategy-led, digital innovation and service design consultant helping steer the Digital Business Transformation for some of the region’s biggest enterprises.

We are a pioneer of the digital age and remain in an avant-garde position, having been named by Gartner as leaders in our field. We are busy working in an Agile way, creating prototypes, then solutions that transform our clients’ businesses. Our Hong Kong clients include Nike, HSBC, Estee Lauder, Marriott, Asus, P&G Pampers, Standard Charter, SPCA and more.

What type of person thrives at SapientRazorfish Hong Kong?

We have a diverse team with diverse skills. Of course, the hard skills are important but those who succeed in our team all have similar traits. They’re open-minded, they’re never afraid to speak their mind, they’re opinionated and they thrive in our open environment. They’re also natural communicators with a depth of understanding and natural curiosity when it comes to technology.

What roles are you looking to fill?

We’re looking for Strategists, Technologists, hybrid Experience Designers and seasoned Account Directors (we call them Engagement Leads) who are collaborative, engaging and consultative professionals.

What makes the Hong Kong office special?

Without a doubt, our way of working. We use the Silicon Valley way of working, organizing sprint teams in the same manner as some of the most disruptive enterprises. This means despite being a global organization, we have a lean, start-up mentality and an uber-collaborative environment.

We work in a very Agile, collaborative way. We use sprint teams in particular as a way of unlocking great initial ideas, designing and developing solutions – all the right minds in the same space, working together towards a great outcome.

It’s proper design thinking on the move. You’ve got the point of view of technology, the point of view of the business, the point of view of the design team, the researchers bringing the customer’s point of view into the room. Then you’re all solutioning together in a democratic way to meet the KPIs of all those different things. This means the quality of the product we deliver is higher and it’s delivered faster.

Why should people want to work for us?

If you want to make things, to see your ideas transition into being tangible, live solutions or products that are making an impact, you’d fit right in here. I meet a lot of people with an interest in using digital technology to make an impact on businesses and people’s lives and I believe this is the best possible place to make an impact.

It’s a big claim but it’s true. Just look at the Gartner magic quadrant for digital – we own the top right. The power of Sapient as a technology organization with experience at scale; coupled with the power of Razorfish, a brand of creative, digital pioneers – this is a truly game-changing combination for businesses.

Additionally, our people make us great. We like to celebrate our wins and each other. We have a democratic, relaxed, creative and professional tone to our office which makes it a unique place to work.

By Rebecca Simpson, Regional Relationship Lead - PR & Marketing

WATCH: Facebook Live CES floor tour with SapientRazorfish

Tue, 10 Jan 2017 12:19:00 -0500

At CES 2017, our Matt Arnold, Senior Manager of Technology of SapientRazorfish’s Second Story, took Campaign US on a tour through the CES convention floor, where he highlights the most noteworthy products and technologies most relevant to our clients and their business. Watch the captured video on Facebook Live here!

Content Strategy 2017 and Beyond

Thu, 22 Dec 2016 10:43:26 -0500

Content continued to be the wind beneath the wings of great brand campaigns in 2016, from Share-a-Coke and #likeagirl to the US presidential election. But as content extends far beyond marketing campaigns these days, what content strategies should marketers plan for in 2017 and beyond? We asked our team of global content strategists at SapientRazorfish what they expect, and here’s what they had to say:

“Continual decrease in time-to-market will result in a lean content strategy approach, where we have fewer weeks of strategy time. We will create frameworks that rely on targeted audits and research instead of broad time-consuming ones. We will encourage a model where content is created and then continually measured and tweaked. The reliance on measured content will see more partnering with the disciplines of analytics and data science.”

Felice Schulz, Director Content Strategy

“Content strategists will increasingly need to speak to automated migration/transformation solutions, and why they still need humans to administer, finalize, and optimize automated content. Automation can’t link up or adapt to an enterprise’s unique business process without a content strategist acting as champion for creators and consumers. Automation will also compress many discovery timelines, making content strategy more affordable, expanding the domain to new types of clients and cultures — bringing another series of unintended consequences.”

“More companies and institutions for whom content is a foreign concept will discover that content is a critical piece to their major enterprise solution. To deliver, we content strategists will need to team up in our notorious diversity. Generalists, data scientists, taxonomists, editorial gurus, media librarians, etc. will band together to tackle these enterprise reforms, delving into change management, content marketing, content programming, thought leadership, and demand generation. Content strategists will begin to act like mini-agencies, a kind of content strategy special-ops or super-hero team.”

John Postley, Senior Manager Content Strategy

“I foresee a whole new discipline emerging, using data sciences to drive personalized and predictive content strategy. Stakeholder opinions will falter under the definitive proof of historical data, user experience tagging, and cohort analysis. We’ll understand more of the why behind content engagement versus the what. You’ll see a shift from planned content strategy to emergent, just-in-time content experiences crafted based on geolocation, CRM demographics, behavioral tracking and social media conversation.”

Caryn Lusinchi, Content Strategy Manager

“As we approach the ‘post-screen era’ and traditional companies transform into digital service providers, content strategists will have to become service designers at heart. Our future interactions with smart devices, support chatbots and augmented/virtual reality will be all about providing only the information that is most relevant and useful to a specific person in real time, seamlessly adjusting to their environment, mood and behavioral history. In this vast space of new services, information and emotion become one and the same. Content strategists will feel right at home there.

Laura Konrad, Content Strategy Manager

“Authenticity in marketing, already a key differentiator for millennials, will gain greater import for brands as they navigate a widening cultural divide among consumers in the era of ‘post truth.’ Successful marketers will tap into the ethos of their consumers to develop powerful content experiences that resonate and reinforce their brand’s embrace of those ideals.”

Sheri McLeish, Content Strategy Manager

“Customers are getting more and more sophisticated with regards to published content. As the amount of content continually increases — the customer will select even more than now what they want to consume. Therefore, brands are forced to plan and distribute content more from a publisher than from a marketer’s perspective — from quantity-centric publishing to a quality-centric publishing approach. Less is still more.”

“Personalized content on conversational interfaces is going to be one of critical trends and challenges in 2017. For example, chatbots and other intelligent services will force content strategist to re-think content strategy and design. This also refers to VR technology.”

“Measuring content performance with regards to ROI is still a challenging issue at brands. Only a transparent content performance measurement model assures that the effectiveness of content and its benefits justify content production costs and a continuous content (marketing) strategy.”

Kamran Sorusch, Content Strategy Manager

“As consumers continue to anticipate and expect sharing of personalized content and information across a variety of channels – think Google Now, for example – platforms and standalone websites will become less and less important for (and visited by) people. Apps that deliver personalized information in a uniform experience will thrive as they expand into more pockets of the “self.” Think Mona, the personal shopping assistant that knows your sizes, tastes, and brand preferences, or Mint, which pulls multiple user financial accounts to create a unified view of finances. Brands should look to create, curate and aggregate content to provide unique, useful, or otherwise highly personalized apps of their own or make available for others to use.”

Jason Bushey, Content Strategy Manager

“Librarians have been saying it forever: Don’t believe everything you read (in any format) — check your sources for authority and integrity. Here’s hoping that the web-wide epidemic of click bait and fake news in 2016 makes 2017 the year that content authority becomes a priority and a differentiator.”

Andrea Mercado, Senior Content Strategist

“The power of nostalgia in advertising — and increasingly recent nostalgia at that (think the ‘90s and the aughts) — will continue to gain steam. Brands will leverage readily available references to a decade that, although fraught with its own issues, on the surface appeared to be a more pleasant and positive era and inject these fond recollections with brands’ own values and stories.”

Sarah Jones, Senior Content Strategist

“Consumer interaction with technology, especially in the form of augmented reality, will further expand in 2017. Companies and brands, including but not limited to services and retail, will create more opportunities for consumers to interact with technology to provide immersive and informative experiences. Eventually these experiences will evolve to be the norm, embedded within our everyday lives. Similarly, the use of gamification will continue to rise as a method to increase user engagement.”

Jennifer Sarbahi, Senior Content Strategist

“With so much content competing for peoples’ attention, entertainment apps like Bitmoji and Instagram need to offer playful or unexpected content experiences to retain interest. Instead of data and metrics, “downtime” apps will benefit by enabling more personalization and exploration features. For utility apps like Uber and Amazon, however, speed of task completion remains most compelling. As half of site traffic comes from mobile, brands mustn’t confuse utility with entertainment and strive for content that does not overdo it, but is impossible to ignore.“

Becca Kanaverskis, Associate Content Strategist

“In 2017, more and more brands will realize the importance of taking a stance on issues facing our society. The more authentic and human a brand is, the less sales-oriented it feels. When consumers feel like they can relate to a brand on a social issues level, they will begin to see a part of themselves in the brand. Yes – taking a stance means that negative backlash is sure to come, but when that stance is actually relevant to a brand’s greater audience, the humanity of the brand will far outshine negative outlash and brand loyalty will grow.”

Lauren Parran, Associate Content Strategist

“In 2017, there will be no line between commerce and media. The relevance of a brand will be directly tied to the quality of the content that supports it. Brands that can entertain, educate and inform their audience visually will see greater customer loyalty, especially in highly sensory and experiential industries such as food, athletics, and travel. Not only will these companies see ROI with high-quality video content, more influential content will result in growth for the whole industry.”

“Consumers are more informed than ever and are using many outside resources to make purchasing decisions about products ranging from cars to cameras to baby food. Having an effective product metadata strategy is already key to running a successful digital business, but in 2017 having contextual data to guide consumers into purchase will be critical as artificial intelligence becomes a larger part of the shopping experience.”

Marcus Lee, Associate Content Strategist

“In 2016, entertainment and news showed the power of live streaming via social. With apps like Meerkat, Periscope, and Facebook Live bringing real-time video to the fore, brands need to think about how to create their own ‘in the moment’ experiences, produce live content, and monitor sentiments of others. Live video streaming allows for rapid content creation through Q&As, live events, company and product announcements, social experiments and campaigns, and behind-the-scenes views. Users may come and go as they please while offering instant feedback via likes, comments, questions, and live chats. Live video allows users to interact with brands intimately, authentically, and immediately. Just as audiences more easily connect to live performances, they will start to feel connected in the same way to live brands.”

Flo Wen, Junior Content Strategist

“An end-to-end cohesive plan for content across Strategy, Search, Social and Marketing will be the biggest win for brands looking to make a dent in the content universe. Content Strategy will continue to be uniquely positioned to help solve some of their biggest challenges by providing this holistic view of their future content ecosystem and support them as they build their own content centers of excellence.”

Matt Geraghty, Content Strategy Manager

By Sheri McLeish, Content Strategy Manager

Digital Business Transformation: 4 Recommendations For Success

Mon, 19 Dec 2016 11:13:49 -0500

Stemming from a recent SapientNitro survey of 250 marketing technology professionals, our CTO Sheldon Monteiro and ChiefMarTec’s Scott Brinker aimed to better understand how organizations are driving change, what barriers to transformation exist, and how leadership can improve their game. In this piece, Sheldon shares key recommendations for businesses that seek to hone their Digital Business Transformation (DBT) strategy, the overarching strategy that guides the reimagining of the business in a customer-first, networked world. Learn more here.

Five Steps to a Top-Performing Digital Experience Platform Solution

Fri, 16 Dec 2016 00:00:33 -0500

Consumer and business demands alike call for a transformation in the CMO’s approach to digital marketing: While consumers continuously and rapidly adopt new technologies and expect brands to keep up, businesses expect a stronger and faster return on investment from marketing. But in a world replete with new data sources—from mobile phones to connected cars and in-store beacons—managing the customer experience is more challenging than ever.

How, then, do you coordinate your marketing in this complex digital world? How do you plan and measure experiences? Leading companies are now realizing that they need to integrate their marketing systems into an overarching “operating system” that bridges and enables customer outreach at scale. They need what is called a Digital Experience Platform (DEP).

DEPs—also known as User Experience Platforms, Marketing Clouds, Marketing Operating Systems, and Marketing Technology Platforms—define a comprehensive, multichannel experience around the customer. They create, optimize, and orchestrate the multiple elements of modern marketing (like digital ads, mobile tools, e-commerce pricing, in-store signage), as well as help marketers streamline operations and manage creative assets.

DEPs can also help marketers initiate, execute and measure their activities. Once a cost center, today’s marketing departments (led by CMOs) are responsible for revenue generation, with a focus on achieving positive business outcomes like qualified leads, closed deals, and accurate measurements. The winners in this space will be the ones who can shift their thinking to making platform initiatives, such as the DEP, mission-critical.

Today, implementing a DEP solution is more about optimizing, rebuilding, and reconnecting than it is about deploying large, new chunks of software. Most organizations already have the individual pieces of technology they need, but are missing the connections and hand-offs between them. Knitting together software must be combined with alignment between the organization’s processes and technology roadmaps in order to succeed.

To help close these gaps, we recommend beginning with the following five critical steps.

1. Identify an immediate opportunity for improvement and create a business case

Most organizations are usually aware of their most severe gaps. Addressing some of these gaps early with a couple of small to medium efforts can create momentum and contribute to developing a business case for the platform investment in parallel with the quick-win activities.

2. Define customer journeys and associated experiences

Brands should frame opportunities along the dimensions (acquire, engage, etc.) of the customer journey. Prioritizing these journeys is the first step in the optimization of a DEP investment. Content for each of these touchpoints must be developed and then managed over generations of marketing campaigns.

3. Plan how to support these experiences with data

Using the latest DEP technology to deliver a continuously updated customer profile is key, as it informs which content types are delivered through the data-driven personalization mechanism. All sources of data, whether online, offline, generated in-house, or acquired by a third party should be leveraged to build a rich customer profile that can be segmented for targeting.

4. Define an architecture blueprint

Architecture patterns are simplified logical representations of a system that are used to drive discussions around the “what” and “how” of marketing strategy implementation. For instance, we use architecture patterns to describe how to implement multichannel user experiences for international markets, in-store digital experiences, or content management.

5. Develop a prioritization matrix and roadmap

We typically prioritize business scenarios and corresponding technology solutions as functions of strategic value, complexity, dependencies, and alignment with a company’s business objectives. The set of customer journeys and an architecture blueprint (defined as a collection of patterns) are the two key inputs.

Keys to success

Once you pass the planning stage, the implementation of a few notable best practices will ensure early and continuous delivery of value.

Start Fast: Deliver measurable value early by integrating an existing system with the DEP.
Buy vs. build: Reflect before building your own system in a world rich in third-party vendors who offer industry-specific solutions as SaaS or cloud configurations.
Invest in key infrastructure components, such as data tools and possibly a service layer, upfront.

Developing a map of business opportunities and a blueprint of the technology solution architecture is the most effective route to a strategic plan with executive support. A DEP can address many of the challenges CMOs face today while still leaving room for the strategies and challenges specific to each individual brand.

For detailed information on how to implement these five steps, as well as a client case study, download our recent report, The Rise of Digital Experience Platforms.

By Andre Engberts, Director of Technology, SapientNitro Minneapolis

Fact or Fiction? A Closer Look at the New Rules of Experience Design

Thu, 15 Dec 2016 10:59:22 -0500

In a world where digital interactions pervade almost every experience that customers have with a brand, business leaders can’t afford to get UX wrong. But how can they get it right when design opinions are endless, design patterns are seemingly infinite, and consumer interactions and expectations are ever-evolving?

We recommend taking a step back, understanding the foundations of experience design, and debunking some of the contemporary, mainstream myths.

Myth 1: Experience can’t be measured.

Measuring experience may not be intuitive, but it’s certainly possible. The reality is that all it takes to measure experience is a clear understanding of solution goals and a selection of metrics and targets that are good indicators of those goals. The organization can then measure experience design effectiveness by examining the outcomes of these goals. We refer to this business return-on-investment (ROI) in user experience as the “return on experience,” or RoX.

In addition to business outcomes, UX professionals employ a host of direct metrics to better diagnose experience design flaws and prioritize areas to improve. These range from behavioral metrics – quantifying consumer activity through instrumentation and observation – to subjective metrics that quantify end-user reactions to the experience.

Myth 2: Design standards yield success.

There’s no question that sticking to a set of well-crafted design standards is an important part of usability. In fact, we regularly review and analyze digital solutions whose user interfaces comply with well-regarded standards. Yet many of these solutions offer extremely poor user experiences. These solutions might superficially look familiar, but when it comes to actual usage – they just don’t deliver.

In addition to consistency, effective user experiences rely on a deep understanding of the user model – that is, how end users think about the world, and their associated needs and motivations. Smart brands acquire this understanding through a combination of direct research and know-how, and then choose where to improve the experience by building well-crafted experience frameworks and content taxonomies reflective of the user model.

Myth 3: Analytics alone reveal user needs.

Activity and site logs illustrate what end users are doing, but not why. User behavior is a response to what users encounter in the current solution ecosystem. For example, if users are following ineffective or misleading content and navigational cues, or neglecting to follow potentially valuable but visually obscure links, then the site logs could be merely reflecting these poor design choices.

To gather valid insights about user needs and motivations, analytics need to be supplemented with consumer research and insights methods, such as contextual inquiry, digital ethnography, and participatory design. These methods are structured to elicit design-relevant input from end users that, in combination with quantitative analytics, can lead to deep insights that will improve the overall experience as well as specific, tactical UX elements.

Myth 4: Consistency across devices leads to good experience design.

Propagating look and feel, as well as tone and voice, across devices makes sense. But a consistent experience across devices also entails explicitly tuning the interactions to the device, and further varying the experience to address the changing context of usage. Experience between channels is simply not transferrable. Brands must consider each channel individually while ensuring that the overall experience is consistent.

Myth 5: CX leaders create great user experiences.

A leading user experience demands a focus on learnability, ease of use, and productivity. The key principles of interaction design also include ensuring that users are aware of what actions are possible and how to select those actions. Yet the leaders aren’t always delivering against these best practices.

For example, Apple (the widely proclaimed master of consumer product design) leads the way in balancing form and function to appeal to both the core needs and emotional drivers of its customers. However, the founding fathers of Apple’s human interface design guidelines recently published a critical review of how Apple has abandoned user-centered design principles in favor of aesthetics like flat design and over-simplification. Where Apple products once embodied key principles of interaction design, they now seem to be heading in a different direction.

So, what’s next for brands?

Achieving breakthrough experience design relies on a strong, flexible, user-centered research and strategy process, as well as the right mix of talent. Our new report, entitled Dispelling 5 Myths About Experience Design, explores these myths in greater detail and offers practical recommendations for how brands can design better experiences for their customers.

By Paul Eisen, PhD, former Director of Experience Design, SapientNitro Toronto

5 Rules for Designing the Retail Experience of the Future

Thu, 08 Dec 2016 09:26:40 -0500

In the past few years, the retail industry has undergone a massive transformation driven by digital technology innovations that are fundamentally changing the way consumers interact with retailers and brands. Decreasing footfalls, new online-only competitors, and profound changes in customer preferences are increasingly buffeting the industry and posing it on a knife’s edge. Retailers are combating the online revolution not only to get people into their stores, but to drive them to purchase, as well.

The shift is pushing retailers to review and transform their traditional business approaches going forward. They are increasingly adapting to the new consumer demand-driven shopping paradigm and different segments (luxury, apparel, mass merchandisers, etc.) are developing. But as they strive to catch up with the trend, retailers must realize that retailing in the digital age doesn’t mean introducing “digital” to the physical space. Instead, it means redefining one’s entire business around operating in a digital world.

Brands must follow the customer’s journey across touchpoints — only some of which will include digital tools at all. A touchpoint might be defined by a smile or the feel of a linen shirt. A mirror image of you dressed in the new style of the iconic Burberry trench coat. The smell of a store as you enter. Operating in a digital world requires integrating the physical and digital, hand in hand.

So, how do retailers go about defining the best combination of physical and digital for their brand? Here are the five overarching rules for retailers to keep in mind when designing the future of their retail experience:

1. Retailers must become more flexible, immersive, and fit for purpose

Digital extensions — a great interactive kiosk, mobile app, or sales associate tool — are no longer enough. Retail brands must reimagine their business in the age of the customer. Retailing in the digital age should be more flexible than in the past. This means omni-channel and visibility; click and collect; mobile ordering; ship-to-home; and all the permutations.

2. Think experience-led and mobile first: Mobile as the gateway to the brand

For most retailers, smartphones are now gateways to the brand. Mobile is how they start and sustain customer relationships and is now a primary touchpoint for retailers. It is becoming an essential channel pre-visit, in the store (with growing expectations for image search, wayfinding, mobile payments, and voice-based search functions), and post-visit. Increasingly, both retailers and mobile providers are entering the mobile payment space, with 60% of omni-channel retailers predicted to launch customer mobile payment initiatives by 2018.

3. Focus on the full customer journey

By broadening the aperture of experience beyond its traditional focus in retail — the store — leading brands can create a new competitive battleground and begin winning sales before someone even arrives at a physical property. Capturing pre-visit sales with pre-orders, click and collect can help drive revenue growth for retailers. Another pre-visit technique is that of try-on and try-out innovation, which encourages customers to buy products in-store by letting them try products on at home. But even more important, in our opinion, is post-visit activity. Designing for the post-visit stage of the journey — using follow-up emails, texts, savings catchers, or other communications — is a significant opportunity missed, or poorly executed.

4. Move from data and reports to intelligence about performance and your customers

Retailing in the digital age requires the optimization of store environments, and analysing flow with real-time analytics is now possible and gaining a foothold. Recent research notes that 71 percent of retailers use or plan to use people-counting technology in their stores, while 68 percent are looking to introduce in-store Wi-Fi and loyalty systems. The evaluation of data from these installations can lead to major revisions in retailers’ understanding of customer behavior. Executives might find that store dwell time is significantly different than they thought, or that smartphone usage is primarily for entertainment or communication, rather than “showrooming.” These and other insights can lead brands to increase (or decrease) their investments into mobile apps, as well as their in-store use of digital endcaps.

5. Keep in mind that stores are far from irrelevant

The value of the store experience — tactile engagement, a full 360-degree experience, and of course a sales force — makes it a difficult channel to ignore, replace, or shut off. The store remains a predominant part of the total retail experience, but its role is changing and requires that it be more in tune with the needs of the Millennial shopper. For this, retailers need to reimagine and evolve their in-store channels and engagement innovations.

Retailers are on the verge and too few successfully blend the three main channels — mobile, e-commerce, and stores — together in a way that is optimized for customer experience. To succeed over the next decade, retailers must fundamentally transform themselves, touching every area from organizational structure to the products and services that they offer.

This wholesale reimagining of their business requires that retailers be focused on five main points: The need for a vision of a future retailer; the importance of mobile; the opportunities in the pre- and post-visit phases of the purchase cycle; the importance of analytics and optimization; and, finally, the continued, central role of the physical store.

The brands that succeed in this environment will be the ones that transition and evolve quickly enough to get ahead of the changes in their core business. How will you design the future of your retail experience?

Discover how these trends are evolving across the retail space by diving into our global research report, available for download here.

By Jemuel Ripley (VP & Global Retail Lead, New York), Zachary Paradis (VP, Customer Experience Strategy, Chicago), Hilding Anderson (Director, Research & Insights, Washington, D.C.) & Nathan Chmielewski (Senior Associate, Marketing Strategy & Analysis, Chicago)

Sapient Named Among Best Places to Work for LGBT Equality

Wed, 07 Dec 2016 13:24:04 -0500

We are thrilled to share that Sapient has earned a perfect score of 100 on the Human Rights Campaign’s 2017 Corporate Equality Index, an annual benchmark of U.S. workplaces on LGBT equality.

Now in its 15th year, HRC’s Corporate Equality Index is based on criteria that have been created to encourage employers to advance the best practices, policies, and initiatives for LGBT workplace inclusion. With this score, Sapient has proven our ongoing commitment to inclusion by all major benchmarks of the Human Rights Campaign and solidified our stance that discrimination has no place in our business.

We also extend our congratulations to DigitasLBi and Razorfish for receiving perfect scores as well, demonstrating the strength of our shared dedication to diversity across Publicis.Sapient.

Click here to view the entire 2017 Corporate Equality Index from the Human Rights Campaign.

Enterprise Startup: Three Pillars for Thriving in Fast-Changing IT Environments

Mon, 05 Dec 2016 10:28:58 -0500

As Tom Goodwin notes, Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate. Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. This may sound counter-intuitive, but, in fact, it’s the new reality for businesses operating in a digital world.

For these brands – and many of their fellow disruptors – success comes, in part, from the ability to better meet customer expectations. In today’s always-on age, consumers want brand interactions to be instantaneous, seamless, and personalized. This requires software delivery to be transformed into an outside-in function that plans, builds, and runs technology based on customer behavior and expectations. By extension, enterprise IT professionals must deliver software in an iterative and continuous manner.

The benefits of continuous delivery, as powered by development and operations (DevOps) and other methodologies, are significant. This model has been shown to enable business transformation and improve business results by delivering software products to market faster, cutting downtime costs, and reducing risk. And yet, many companies – particularly established, large organizations – are not embracing modern development best practices or adopting an experimentation culture.

To that end, SapientNitro surveyed senior technology leaders to better understand organizations’ enterprise IT practices and the current state of enterprise IT. As a result, we’ve developed and refined our “enterprise startup” approach – a new mode of operation that helps clients embrace a culture of experimentation and better organize around the customer. To create an enterprise startup, we believe there are three things that businesses need to do differently from the traditional approach:

1. Build Clean, High-Quality Code.

Our research found that clean, high-quality code at every stage in the lifecycle helps provide timely feedback to work groups, enables real-time adjustments to projects, and helps optimize overall results.

Building clean, high-quality code involves two steps. The first is making sure the code is of production quality from the start. The second step is to build and use a DevOps toolchain and ensure that it is adopted by enterprise IT teams. To help companies overcome this gap, we have designed and built our own continuous delivery DevOps toolchain, which builds in high levels of quality using mostly open source tools that help engineers test and perfect quality during the development process rather than waiting until a future, separate testing phase.

2. Automate with a NoOps Mindset.

In our study, 92 percent of digital leaders agree or strongly agree that clients want to “automate all enterprise IT processes.” However, just 16 percent agree or strongly agree that clients have been “very successful” in doing so across their organizations. In other words, companies recognize the value of automation, but are struggling to make it widespread.

We encourage organizations to look at automation with a NoOps mindset – which is to say that “no operations” team will be needed to manage and maintain the product. Few companies – be they startups or large enterprises – meet this standard today, with just 13 percent of our IT experts agreeing or strongly agreeing that companies “regularly” use a NoOps mindset. In our experience, the inability of IT teams to set up and maintain the test environments needed to run different experiments is a key challenge. There are occasions in which environment creation is so manual and error-prone that it takes weeks or months to create test environments.

3. Think “Small and Frequent”.

As leading companies transition to continuous delivery, thinking “small and frequent” is one way to minimize risk. We characterize this activity into three main categories: 1) adopting microservices, or breaking applications into small functional clusters to fuel automation; 2) thinking beta, or releasing changes to a small group of customers before expanding; and 3) rethinking measurement, or establishing key performance indicators to chart progress.

For many businesses, this step requires the biggest shift in mindset. In the end, it basically comes down to having the right architecture, right processes, and proper data in place to effectively inspire change.

As companies look to compete in a digital world and adapt to customers’ always-on mindset, the “enterprise startup” approach – embracing journeys, focusing on building quality code, automating wherever possible, and adopting a “small and frequent” mindset – can help drive change.

To review additional findings from our research and learn more about continuous improvement, download our full report, entitled Enterprise Startup: Tactics for Thriving in Fast-Changing IT Environments.

By Pinak Kiran Vedalankar, Director of Technology, Digital Transformation, SapientNitro London.

Driving Digital: How the Auto Industry Is Adapting for a Connected World

Wed, 30 Nov 2016 06:00:21 -0500

Technological advancements, government mandates, consumer trends, and emerging markets continue to drive evolution in the automotive industry, forcing automakers to rethink how they design, manufacture, and market vehicles. But despite the massive amount of disruption rippling through the global market, our recent report shows that innovation in the auto industry continues to be rooted in its long-time guiding principles of convenience, safety, and efficiency. Here we examine how technology, in particular, is shaping the future of this industry and helping manufacturers deliver on their brand promise.

Convenience

Digital disruption has prompted major shifts in consumer expectations – and the auto industry is no exception. Automakers today aren’t just tasked with delivering a high-quality, reliable vehicle – they’re expected to make the trip simpler, more comfortable, and more enjoyable. By incorporating important safety and navigation features into vehicles, automakers have become responsible for the overall driving experience, as opposed to just the car or truck itself.

For example, automakers are currently experimenting with biometric technology, such as unique fingerprints and retina scanning, to access and control vehicles. In the meantime, MIT is developing tattoos that connect with mobile devices to adjust in-vehicle features or exchange data with other devices via near-field technology. By using this connected technology, drivers can access their vehicle and automatically load preferences – such as seat position, climate settings, music preferences, and previous destinations – in a seamless way.

Connected vehicles can also provide drivers with useful information such as gas prices, weather reports, service station locations, and alternate routes. While these features are secondary to the design and mechanics of the car itself, they help set vehicles apart at a time when customers are seeking both customization and simplicity.

Safety

As in most industries, automakers have no shortage of customer and product data. However, it’s through careful analysis and application that this information can be used to improve customers’ lives. In this case, automakers can use sophisticated onboard platforms and advanced navigation systems to transform large amounts of data into warnings and recommendations for drivers, thereby improving comfort and safety.

For example, a heads-up-display (HUD), which is a type of augmented reality that can be used to display speed, enhance visibility, and confirm stopping distances all on the windshield glass, gives drivers valuable information, while allowing them to remain fully focused on the road. Similarly, improved GPS in smartphones and cars has made pinpointing a vehicle’s location even more precise, which not only makes for better navigation, but also allows emergency services to locate a driver in times of crisis. Eventually, these in-vehicle features can be networked with other cars, making it possible for automobiles to communicate with one another and, in turn, make travel more efficient and secure.

Technology has also supported the rise of important self-driving options like auto-braking, lane-change avoidance, and auto parallel parking. These features are only the beginning as traditional manufacturers and tech companies alike race to develop a fully self-driving car, a concept that has the potential to eliminate human error, alleviate common traffic issues, and decrease accidents.

Efficiency

While hybrid, plug-in hybrid, electric, and fuel-cell vehicles were introduced long ago, continued technological advancements have helped make these power sources much more mainstream in recent years. In fact, a four-year study by MIT concluded that electric vehicles on the market today could replace 90 percent of the cars used in the U.S., reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent.

While the viability and speed of adoption of these vehicles are influenced by consumers’ perceptions of their driving habits and cost of ownership, auto marketers are also under pressure to reduce manufacturing and material costs, improve the charging infrastructure, and extend the life of the batteries. Fuel-cells, for example, have resurfaced as one possible alternative to traditional cars as their only byproduct is water vapor. Much like electric vehicles, fuel-cell vehicles have an infrastructure hurdle to cross, necessitating that gas refueling stations be replaced with hydrogen ones – implying that the rate of change in the auto industry will be influenced at least in part by the willingness and ability of other industries to adapt.

Driven by new technology, the global automobile industry is poised for a major transformation. While automakers are forced to contend with a whole host of new challenges – including ever-changing customer preferences and government mandates – they should remain focused on improving the driving experience through enhanced convenience, safety, and efficiency. Our recent report highlights these three pillars and depicts how, in today’s digital age, technology holds the key.

By Timothy Cory, Associate Creative Director, Creative Strategist for Consumer Experience, and Design Specialist, SapientNitro Detroit

Virtual Reality: Taking an Emerging Technology Mainstream

Tue, 22 Nov 2016 12:53:58 -0500

Virtual reality (VR) has arrived. Augmented reality (AR) is not far behind. And now is the time for brands to experiment with these emerging mediums.

VR and AR: What’s the difference?

-VR: A three-dimensional, computer-generated digital world that can be explored through the use of headsets, sensors, and other special equipment.

-AR: An enhanced environment that seamlessly blends the digital and physical world through advanced technology. While AR is used extensively by the military and in business-to-business applications, consumer-focused programs are less common.

As companies look for a way to differentiate their brands and set themselves apart from the competition, more and more businesses – particularly those in entertainment, retail, and travel – are seeing VR and AR as ways to build brand affinity, deepen customer relationships, and transform strategies and experiences. However, while these technologies hold great promise for organizations, consumers have yet to fully embrace VR and help it reach critical mass.

With that in mind, SapientNitro commissioned a global study of 2,500 people across five countries to gauge consumer awareness of and interest in VR. Here we discuss some of the findings of our study and leverage the data to offer a timeline for how the future of this technology may unfold. To review a full analysis of our survey, download our report, entitled VR and AR Demand Long-Term Action from Innovative Brands.

1. VR awareness is on the rise. Four in ten respondents in our global survey (40 percent) could name, without prompting, at least one brand of headset. Perhaps more important, awareness among younger age groups was even higher, with more than half (54 percent) of consumers under the age of 24 being familiar with the technology and its application.’

2. There is significant appetite for VR. Almost half (47 percent) of our respondents said that they were “very” or “extremely interested” in using a VR headset. In particular, consumers in emerging markets like China and India are especially excited about this technology, with 66 percent and 64 percent, respectively, expressing interest.

3. Consumers are willing to invest in VR. VR hardware ownership remains limited, with just 4 percent of global respondents saying that they own a headset. But signs of the technology’s growth appears imminent with two-thirds (66 percent) of consumers aged 25-34 saying that they are “extremely” or “very interested” in purchasing a headset within the next two years.

So what does this data mean for businesses? Our survey findings can help determine when and how consumers may embrace VR. For example, the platform’s existing user base, coupled with the high level of interest among younger consumers in emerging markets, implies that adoption and demand will be led by this highly-connected, tech-savvy group. In particular, the gaming industry – one of the early drivers of VR – will continue to develop content and experiences to help further generate interest and awareness.

At the same time, our survey found that consumer interest in VR runs much deeper than gaming. Through enhanced access and increased content, it is possible for this technology to go mainstream. To that end, mobile is likely the key to general usage. Just about every smartphone produced within the last two years is VR-capable. And as manufacturers constantly pack more processing power and higher-resolution screens into their smartphones, the pieces are in place for the mobile VR experience to take off with a wider audience. Similarly, headsets continue to get sleeker and cheaper, and are increasingly being bundled with cell phones, gaming systems, or other electronic purchases, which means this platform has the potential to become a household commodity.

While the mainstream adoption of VR relies, in part, on consumer interest, brands also have a role to play. Our survey suggests that many users may be waiting for companies to create more content and experiences before making a personal investment in the medium. To that end, brands should take this time to explore how they can incorporate both VR and AR into their existing marketing and technology strategies as a way to deepen relationships with consumers.

Curious to read more about how that can be done? Download our full report here.

By Adrian Slobin, Managing Director and Digital Strategist, SapientNitro Minneapolis

Continuous Transformation: Embracing Evolution in a Digital World

Mon, 21 Nov 2016 10:10:29 -0500

Pop Quiz: How many of the original Fortune 500 companies from 1955 remain on the list today?

Answer: 71. That’s fewer than one in seven, or just 14 percent.

And as businesses are forced to compete in an increasingly digital landscape – one where disruption and globalization all but force every organization to rethink its place and competitors in the market – no business’s position in the market is safe.

Today’s digital world requires organizational agility in order to remain competitive. Agility is what enables the change of processes, speeds the delivery of new products and services, and even allows internal cultures to evolve. It is what helps an organization respond to rapidly changing marketing dynamics and, more important, address the ever-evolving demands and preferences of its customers.

In our work with global clients, we often use three organizational agility frameworks to enable this type of continuous transformation: the Built-To-Change Model; the Agility Path Framework; and the Evidence-Based Change Framework. Our recent paper, Continuous Transformation: Frameworks to Assess Organizational Agility in the Retail Industry, explores these three common approaches to organizational change, as well as how organizations can assess the state of their business and prepare for change.

Here, we will explore the Built-To-Change model in depth and also identify several specific questions that organizations can ask to determine which framework may be best for their business. To read the full paper – and explore each of the change frameworks in greater detail – please download our recent POV.

The Built-To-Change Model

One of the most common agility frameworks is the Built-To-Change Model, which is designed specifically for organizations that are experiencing a crisis, such as declining sales or addressing a new competitor. This model enables an organization to embrace the mantra of “continuous change is business as usual” by focusing on a series of short-term competitive advantages rather than a single sustained advantage.

For example, we instituted Built-To-Change with a large department store retailer in North America, who, after a failed “big bang” transformation, was struggling to survive. The organization was facing issues with antagonized customers and shrinking sales. To ensure that they did not fall behind the competition – or even cease to exist – we helped this company experiment with small, incremental ideas and then adopt the ones that had a significant impact on both their customers and bottom line. In a year’s time, this company was on a solid path to recovery.

The Built-to-Change model forces organizations to break away from traditional design assumptions and focus on how a solution can be designed with flexibility and scalability in mind. The model challenges organizations to embrace change and plan for it instead of around it.

Organizational to-do’s: A practical approach to change

Retailers must be aware that the simple introduction of a transformation strategy will not necessarily lead to success. Instead, the transformation strategy must utilize a framework that is well-suited to the organization. To perform an assessment of an organization’s capabilities, and to determine the best strategy and roadmap for utilizing an organizational agility framework, we often start by examining the organization in the following four areas:

1. Analyze key end-to-end business processes and existing service design

2. Map out how information and data are managed across the organization

3. Review organizational structure and determine its current operating model

4. Review its innovation strategy

Based on the information gathered above and our subsequent analysis of the data, we determine the agility framework that will best enable the organization to reach continuous transformation.

In assessing the organization, it’s important to remember that continuous transformation is, in many cases, a cultural shift for an organization. Companies, their leadership, and their employees must be willing to adapt, embrace innovative thinking, and react to changing consumer needs and wants by getting products and services to market in increasingly shorter timeframes. Innovation alone cannot accomplish this – a framework, such as one of those highlighted in our report – may be necessary in guiding the organization.

By David MacDonald, Director of Business Consulting, and Sudip Mazumder, VP & North America Head in Technology Practice, in Dallas