In the past week, your Facebook feed has likely been inundated with people listing a number of bands and one being a lie. The week before everyone was talking about the Mother of All Bombs or the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast. And the week before that the world was tearing into Sean Spicer for claiming Hitler never used chemical weapons. In the same period of time, Bill O’Reilly was kicked off the air, Silicon Valley darling Juicero was found to be an expensive paperweight, and we can’t forget the countless photos of Starbucks’ Unicorn Frappuccino. Add all that to the millions of cute animal photos and pictures of food your mom keeps posting to her wall. So how in this age can a brand cut through all of this noise? The battle for your attention has only just begun, and it’s through trust, transparency, and exceptional experiences that a brand will succeed. This is according to the Vox Media CEO Jim Bankoff and Casper Mattress Cofounder and CEO Philip Krim, both who spoke at DIG SOUTH Icon, a conference series that celebrates startups, tech, and innovation in the Southeast.
Trust and Transparency
In the early days of digital media, consumers and publishers treated online content in a very similar manner to print. The printed content would simply be placed online, occasionally there would be a few extra photos, and readers would have plenty of options to choose from. Now, there are practically endless choices to consuming content, which has in turn further empowered Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms to incidentally become aggregates of both news and noise. In order to get consumers to buy something online, a brand needs to establish trust. This can be done through having a secure site, product reviews, and eventually a track record for having quality goods. For consumer brands, the process is relatively straight forward; however, for media companies it’s a constant challenge even when simply reporting facts. As far as news organizations go, Vox Media is still quite young, yet they have carved out their niche in the way they tell stories, not by gaming the system. Though a constant necessary struggle, trust and transparency is but a foundation for retaining readers or consumers.
User Experience and Delight
In a separate keynote fireside chat at DIG SOUTH Icon, Casper Mattress Cofounder and CEO Philip Krim discussed how their user experience, transparency, and instances of surprise and delight have led them to rapid success. To start, prior to the wave of jack in the box style beds, they had to go to a store, speak to a commissioned salesperson, and then awkwardly lay on each bed. In response to an outdated approach and being able to cut out a few middlemen, Casper was on a mission to build transparency in the industry with a customer-focused mentality. When they first hit the market, the team started to receive positive press coverage about what they were doing and how they were innovating in the space. Although Casper was not the first mattress company to sell these kinds of mattresses, it’s the entirety of their experience that has people still talking. According to Krim, they were the first to really brand the experience. A quick look at both Instagram and Twitter confirms this sentiment, with customers showing off everything from the Casper dog beds to them unboxing their own bed. The other component for the brand is that while they started entirely online and with ecommerce, the team embraces physical retail as well. “We are at the convergence of offline and online,” said Krim. Between mobile popups and showing their beds off in various partnered stores it allows consumers to still follow the traditional model if they wish. For their standard approach, Casper will send you a bed for up to 100 days, and if you don’t like it, they will ship it back free and then donate it to a local charity or upcycle it to a showroom (after being cleaned). Read more about how your brand can succeed here at Tech.Co.
