Your Brand in a Voice Centered World

Voice and Brand.    What ties them together to make them work, engage.   Stll not ure if the works unless your voice recognition and delivery is near perfect.  Good thoughts on connection if that is the case.

What Does It Mean for Your Brand in a Voice-Centered World?
Published on May 3, 2018
By Dave Isbitski of Amazon

Chief Evangelist, Alexa at Amazon. Keynote Speaker, Podcaster, Voicebot.ai Top Influencers in Voice 2019

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In my role at Amazon today, I have the absolute pleasure of talking directly with customers, developers and brands every day. Some of you have already seen my recent talks involving voice and brands right here on LinkedIn: Amazon's David Isbitski on Machine Learning, A.I. and "Voice-Enabled Everything" Those talks started great discussions, enough that I felt it would be good to create a LinkedIn article. I’m going to use this article to write about a favorite topic of mine, brand experience, and what that means as we move to a voice-first world.


The first thing I often do when talking with brands is to take a step back and reflect on how they interact with their customer today. In fact, this was the same discussion I had years ago when I was helping to build mobile apps for brands at Microsoft. In early mobile, there was a fear that the essence of the brand, which flowed so well on a website, would not come across in the mobile space. Particularly if the mobile app was defined by the platforms own design guidelines: at the time this meant iOS, Android and Windows Phone. What quickly became apparent was those design guidelines were not barriers, but guardrails intended to help create a consistent, and enjoyable experience for all users on that mobile platform. It didn’t limit the creativity of your imagination, or what you could do in a mobile app, it helped unlock it by removing technical barriers. But, it did mean an entirely new way of thinking about those customer interactions was required. The same is true with voice and conversational design.  ... " 

Brand Originated Robotic Delivery

Consider it inevitable, but there are many consequences still not addressed.  How messy will it be for every brand to have its delivery vehicles? 

Will PepsiCo’s robots replace the pizza delivery guy on college campuses?    By Matthew Stern in Retailwire

There is nowhere the pizza guy is more popular than on college campuses. But he may be getting a run for his money from a delivery robot stocked with healthy snacks that will be rolling around the grounds of one private university.

At the University of Pacific in Stockton, CA, PepsiCo, in partnership with Bay Area-based robotics startup Robby Technologies, has rolled out an autonomous delivery robot known as the “snackbot,” according to USA Today. Students using the snackbot app can order snacks for delivery to one of 50 locations around the campus. The snacks available are all part of PepsiCo’s better-for-you snack portfolio, Hello Goodness. By PepsiCo’s account, it is the first brand-developed delivery robot currently active in the U.S.  ... " 

Brand Loyalty Changing for Natives

Never liked the term Digital Native.    We are all more like digital tourists now, using the convenience and intelligence of it more or less.   .........

Marketing to Digital Natives: How Brand Loyalty Is Changing

Wharton's Americus Reed and Erik Gordon of the University of Michigan discuss reviving old brands for millennials and Gen Z. ... 

Marketing Content

Brand loyalty used to be something companies could rely on to grow and retain their customer base. It was driven in part by cool commercials on network TV and catchy jingles that consumers couldn’t get out of their heads. But younger people, specifically millennials and the Gen Z cohort, aren’t looking at the same media or ads that their parents did. Companies that were popular in past generations are quickly discovering that they need new strategies if they want their brand to appeal to the next generation of shoppers who can easily click and choose from millions of products from around the globe.

The Knowledge@Wharton radio show on SiriusXM invited two professors to talk about marketing to digital natives and what it means for companies. Americus Reed is a marketing professor at Wharton, and Erik Gordon is a professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. The following are five key points from their conversation. (Listen to the full podcast at the top of this page.)   ... "

Consumer Loyalty and Amazon Dominance

Hmm, quote something to worry about for big CPG.    All that money they have spent over the years in establishing loyalty can be overridden, depending on product category?  Meaning of band equity?

How Amazon’s dominance in consumer packaged goods can help score brand loyalty  By Tomi Kilgore in MarketWatch

Consumers are most loyal about laundry and diaper brands, least loyal about trash bags and paper towels  ...  

Amazon.com Inc.’s dominance in the consumer packaged goods space can teach Wall Street a lot about brand loyalty in a e-commerce world, with search trends suggesting consumers tend to stick with their favorite laundry, diapers and adult continence brands, according to AllianceBernstein.

Where consumers are least loyal, is when they look to buy trash bags, paper towels and cat litter.
Amazon’s AMZN, -0.05% retail platform in the U.S. is estimated to have driven about 80% of online consumer packaged goods growth. With that in mind, analyst Ali Dibadj said Bernstein firm developed a way, using some outside sources -- “and an excellent millennial summer associate” -- to track search volume of keywords and brands. A “Relative Search Volume” score was created, he said, to gauge how important a specific brand is to shoppers in a broader category. .... "

Your Brands Voice at Risk

Good cautions, but how different from other ad channels?

Don't Let Alexa or Siri Speak for Your Company: Protecting Your Brand's Voice on AI Platform

With the rising popularity of voice-driven AI assistants, it's important for businesses to offer a consistent brand experience. .... 

When companies first began establishing an internet presence a generation ago, brand-savvy businesses worked with designers and web developers to make sure their sites were customer-friendly and that content was consistent with their brand. They didn't just scan printed marketing collateral and post it online, leaving it to the search engine to present their material in the best light. But today, some brands are essentially taking the same risk by putting their brand's voice in the hands of third-party AI platforms.

That's a mistake.  .... "