Making sense of digital is an art. Our agency was founded on it.
Over the years, corporate chieftans, social disruptors and savvy black swans have all seen themselves in this artwork–created for us by Modernist Richard Brewer–that depicts the 3 pivots to our approach. In focus we position your brand in relation to a zeitgeist we can leverage and exploit. We achieve clarity by isolating your “dot” or essential truth, then give it the dimension to crush Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
As the years pass, I wonder if another digital marketing firm has ever been nuts enough to found their firm on a painting. It's funny, though, that as we redouble our focus on brand advocacy this year how this painting continues help clients make sense of online chaos. Because if you cannot find clarity through the chaos you simply cannot begin the rest of the customer journey.
Two Things At Once
Because of this, at my agency we frequently talk about 'taxonomy' as we help clients complete their customer journey work. Taxonomy is the technical term for the logic, organization and efficiency that good information design requires. Much has been written about 'customer journey' but less is shared, we feel, about the art of the taxonomy.
The 3-Point Process
The goal of taxonomy is to implement structure in an “unstructured” world of information. Many articles, books, and presentations provide details on taxonomy methodologies and techniques, but the central, underlying theme always revolves around the three key factors of Information Architecture (IA): business context, content and users.
Context is the business environment that impacts our taxonomy–or how it addresses business objectives. In web applications where taxonomy will be used, corporate culture, current brand artifacts and industry “archetypes” are analyzed to create meaningful insights.
Content is all material that is searchable and informative. Unlike traditional “content marketing” or “brand journalism”, we prefer to generate original creative content that drives your brand forward. Original content is superior to curated content and paid content is often spam.
All for one audience > your advocates
Ultimately you want content good enough to create advocates that feel so passionately about your brand that they can’t stop talking about it. The best advocates are those who are already respected as a “third party” opinion which is why our approach leans on media pundits. Media people, at least in theory, have the credibility that a non-professional pundit lacks.
Beyond this channel, however, we group online advocates into these 7 “archetypes.” These people can be moved from liking to loving to defending your brand. I'll talk about them in my next post.