From bots to AI, everyone’s in a tizzy about this new technology which threatens to take over the world, eliminating vast swaths of good-paying jobs as it goes. And yes, we did use the word “tizzy.” Here’s the thing. This is a two-way street. There’s an inherent creative challenge here that no one is talking about. And that’s making the positive case for this technology, which—spoiler alert—often saves jobs, rather than displacing them. We know. We toil in these trenches quite often. So what’s this all about? Let’s take a second to discuss these supposedly-evil technologies before we weigh in on how to portray them, positively, from a creative standpoint. Broadly, the two we’ll discuss here are robotic process automation, or RPA; and artificial intelligence, or AI. Quickly and purposely over-simplified:
Honestly: Does any of that make you shake in your shoes? We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: We’re not any more threatened by these than we are by a word processor. They’re just tools. Powerful tools. And that’s why they’re making such a big splash nowadays. They’re new. So there’s a fear-of-the-unknown factor at work. The good news We have a client that custom-builds lots of AI-powered bots. And we help to promote them in various media. So the age-old creative challenge goes something like this: How do you “portray” a bot that you’d like to sell, knowing that it’s actually an evil job-killer? This would have you asking yourself things like: “Should we even portray it at all?” and “Do we even mention this evil technology?” Well, we’d spoiled this above, and so we’ll dive in here. This technology, this tool, is hardly evil. And in the majority of the use-cases that we’re tasked with promoting, they’re a downright godsend to the people who “work side-by-side” with them. How is that? Imagine you’re a worker. Sitting at your computer all day. Doing tons and tons of drudge work, like creating reports using data from one system, and manipulating it in another and doing all this stuff, over and over, because none of the systems talk to each other and, importantly, all this drudge work is eating up the time you’d rather be devoting to the more important and fulfilling parts of your job, such as serving clients or customers or developing new solutions. Wouldn’t you love it if you could simply flip a switch, and all of the work, in your day, that you hate-hate-hate, magically goes away? That’s what happens. You’ll never see this in the news, because it isn’t scary, and the media’s job is to try and scare you in order to keep you clicking. But workers who get bots not only love them; they actually show them off to their co-workers, who each want their own. Talk about viral. The creative challenge that solves itself All of the above discussion was not a digression. To the contrary: It was the setup for solving the initial creative challenge. The answer, as you can now see, is to address this one head-on: In other words, feel free to depict this technology as friendly, as an assistant, a life-changing development like the microwave oven or the cell phone. Thus, we routinely work on marketing materials which, yes, personify and anthropomorphize RPA bots. And they’re all portrayed as eager, friendly helpers. Incidentally, this entire tale is a great example of taking a customer-back approach to a creative challenge. Once you know what the end customer (in this case, the worker who could benefit from the addition of an AI-powered bot) needs, the way of expressing the solution, creatively, becomes not easy… but straightforward. Need help with challenges like these? Contact us. We’d be delighted to hear from you.
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The competition for talent epitomizes supply-and-demand. We’re not recruiters here at Copel Communications—but we have helped numerous clients of ours to improve the “Careers” page on their websites. That’s our contribution to this challenge. In this article, we’d like to share some tricks and tips which you can use to make your own site’s “Careers” page more enticing for the people you want to attract. First things first Did you notice the last six words of the previous sentence? They’re crucial: “The people you want to attract.” Before you go changing layouts, or writing copy, or producing videos, think about who the careers page is for. That might sound like a ridiculously simple question. It’s for the people looking for jobs here, duh! But it’s not that simple. Not at all. Let’s plant a few seeds in your head: Who are the job-seekers you want to attract? Naturally, the answer to this question will vary with the open positions you’re posting. And while it’s great to be as focused as possible, the wide range of jobs you may offer generally forces you to, well, generalize. That said, there are some commonalities, given your vertical. Think of it this way: The U.S. Army is always looking for people. But they’re not just soldiers or privates. There are technical jobs, there are leadership roles, there are logistics jobs, finance jobs, you name it. But if you visit the Army’s website, there’s a distinct commonality to the look and feel of the messaging. That’s because they’ve identified the common traits of people who would be considering jobs in the military: These are people who, for example, value structure. Discipline. Strength. Professionalism. Patriotism. Once you know those “target audience” attributes for your business, you can get a much clearer picture of what your “Careers” page will need. Where else are they looking? A job-seeker isn’t just looking at your site. That’s a given. So where else are they looking? For those potential Army recruits, it’s likely... the Navy. Or the Marines. Similarly, you need to look at the “Careers” pages of your competitors and take some notes. The task here isn’t to copy them, but rather to beat them! Now that you know your target audience well, it will be easy to spot the gaps, to detect the tone-deaf messaging, which invariably hinders the competition. Who else might look at this page? This is the question you likely never even considered when creating your site’s “Careers” page. Who, besides job-hunters, would ever look at this page? And why would you ever care? The answer might surprise you. It’s quite possibly prospects for your business itself. Any savvy shopper will want to learn more about you than just the goods and services you offer. This is why your “Team” page and its bios are so important (we have a nice article to help you with that challenge). And it’s why the “outside look” at your “Careers” page is important: A good prospect will want to know how you treat your people. Because that’s a reflection on your business generally—and how you treat other people, such as clients, specifically. So while you may want to convey something like “We’re a no-nonsense organization who pride ourselves on getting things done” to job-seekers, that’s 1) not too exciting for them, and 2) hardly exciting for a prospective client who wants to see the passion and humanity behind the hard work and execution. Sell, sell, sell Now that you’ve answered the three questions above, you can begin to better populate your “Careers” page. To wit: What you’re doing here is basically the intro. That is, all the stuff that comes above the specific job postings. So you want to show off here. Talk about what makes the company such an amazing place to work—better than any other place to work. Are the assignments challenging? Have you automated away the tedious busy-work? How’s the workplace atmosphere? The perks? The work/life balance? What cool things to see and do are nearby? You’re looking for “evergreen” content here—that is, stuff you don’t need to update periodically. Testimonials, from both management and line-level employees, can be killer here. Lights, camera, action Sure, you’ll have intro text about the “Careers” at your business. But this is one area where video really shines. We’ve made “Careers at [Company]” videos for numerous clients, and they come across like a cross between a fun movie trailer and an ad for an adventure vacation. Which leads to a hidden benefit of the “Careers” page video: They reinforce that good feeling among the existing workforce. Your people will watch it and think, “That’s right! I’d forgotten about that perk!” or “Hey, there’s Lexi from Accounting!” and get a renewed appreciation for the great gig they’re lucky to have. We can’t claim that a “Careers” page video will solve all your talent-retention issues. But it makes a little dent. Need help with your company’s “Careers” page? Contact us. We’d be happy to help. Y’know, it’s funny. A voiceover is truly an old-school skill: it dates back to the birth of radio about 100 years ago. And radio itself, while still around, isn’t the front-and-center medium it once was. But what about voiceovers? Have they suffered the same fate? Au contraire. They’ve not only survived. They’ve flourished. They’ve exploded. The internet—specifically things like B2B and B2C videos on YouTube and Vimeo, cross-posted to platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook—have made them ubiquitous. Essential. And the way they’re done has changed, too. But we’ll get into that in a minute. The point of this article is to help you get more out of each voiceover you buy, so that your target audience buys more stuff from you. Basic premise, but packed with nuances. The new reality As we’d noted above, online videos are everywhere. And pretty much all of them have a voiceover—if not for the entire thing, then definitely portions of it. Even if (and this is common) it’s a little video that will scroll by, with the sound off, and big “closed captions” rolling past, Karaoke-style, you’ll still have that voiceover track, which you can hear, the instant you click the “un-mute” icon. Voiceovers are important. Sure, they tell the story. They explain what’s going on. But, done right, they do much more than that. In a subtle way, they represent, and sell, your brand. Is that voice authoritative? Seductive? Approachable? Intelligent? Likable? Or what if it’s the opposite? There’s a lot at stake here. Which leads to casting. Which leads to the new modality of simply producing voiceovers. The new modality Here at Copel Communications, we’ve been directing (and of course writing) voiceovers for decades. Back in the day, we’d do them at sound studios and/or radio stations, and everything was in person. We’d show up. The voiceover artist would show up. The engineer would show up. We’d bring the script, printed on paper, in triplicate, so each party could have a copy. And then we’d sit in the control room while the V.O. artist sat, on the other side of the soundproof glass, in the booth. We could see each other. (Although we could only hear each other via headphones and microphones.) And seeing is a huge asset when recording a V.O. As the producer, we could see how the artist was performing. They could see our reactions: good, bad, and indifferent. And there was instant feedback. After a take, we’d rate and review it. We might request a quick punch-in fix. And we could get everyone out of the studio pretty quickly, most of the time, with a great product in-hand. Fast-forward to the 21st century. No one works like that anymore... at least for the scope and budget of projects such as those we’re discussing here. For the business videos you’re producing, you’ll be posting them online—and you’ll be casting and producing them online, too. The downside is you lose the eye-contact and the immediacy. But pretty much everything else is better:
About that last point. Decades ago, we’d pay about $150 for a voiceover session in a studio. Today, we’re getting the same product (actually a better product, since it’s digital and not analog) for about a third of that. And that’s after decades of inflation, so the real cost was higher then... or less, now, depending on how you look at it. There are lots of places to find V.O. talent. There’s Upwork. We’ve had good results with Fiverr. Which gets back to that first bullet: “Infinitely more talent.” We recently wanted a Morgan Freeman-style voice, and searched on “Morgan Freeman-style voice,” and found lots of them. And many of them were quite good! Just like that! It was a real gig-economy moment: This obscure Morgan Freeman sound-alike was just sitting there, when, bang!, he got work from us. Everyone was happy. Direct without directing We won’t get into the intricacies of casting here; that goes beyond the scope of this article. So we’ll assume you’ve found the talent that you like and need. But they might be halfway across the country... or the world. (We use lots of British voices, for example.) So how do you direct them if you can’t be in the control room while they’re in the booth? The answer is the script. That might sound like a no-brainer, but it’s how you craft the script that matters. Sure, you’ve got your “V.O.” in the “Audio” column of the script. (The other column is “Video.”) But you need to help that announcer along. Consider this V.O. passage (which we’re making up) for a corporate video aimed at banking executives:
That’s tricky! There are a few ways a V.O. artist could read this... but only one that you want. Let’s make it a little more artist-friendly:
“Brackets” signify “directions to the artist.” Pretty obvious. As fixed, above, you’ll now know that your artist won’t say “S-O-X” or “Ock”, which wouldn’t help you. Also note the addition of that hugely important hyphen. “Issue adverse action letters” became “Issue adverse-action letters.” So “adverse-action” will get read [“red,” not “reed,” get it?] as if it were just one word (technically a compound adjective), and just guide that artist along. Help them with things like numbers, too. Don’t write “1,600.” Choose what you want: either “one-thousand six-hundred” or “16-hundred.” Make it clear. Here’s another trick: Toss some intriguing direction, for the artist, on the overall character and tonality, at the top of the script. Make it challenging and fun for them; they’ll love you for it... and deliver a better read. We recently penned a script which included a voice for a robot character who was “nerdy yet likeable” with a touch of “efficient British butler” to him. We got a dynamite read out of our artist for that one. We work on this kind of stuff all the time (heck, we even served as preliminary judge for the Clio Awards for “U.S. Radio”). Need help? We’d love to come to the rescue. Contact us today. Some concepts are hard to convey. If you toil in the creative trenches, you can be tasked with presenting (and thus selling) ideas like love, or comfort, or peace of mind. Similarly, you might need to depict something malicious that can’t be seen: a disease. Or you might need an entirely new visual spin on something that’s pretty mundane and familiar, such as, say, a desktop computer. There’s a common go-to solution for all of these creative dilemmas: Personification. It’s a term you learned in fourth-grade English class to explain how an author used it to bring something like a natural force (fire, thunderstorm) to life in the reader’s mind. It’s a literary device that’s been around forever; think of how “Awful Beauty puts on all its arms” in Pope’s “The Rape of The Lock.” And that was in 1712. But we digress. Sure, you can employ personification in the written form, in copy. But copy requires “diving in” on the part of the audience; it’s not immediately apparent. Aside from, perhaps, a headline, it doesn’t grab the way visual elements do. What looks like a person? There are plenty of great examples here, both from our own experience and from well-known campaigns. We’ll start with the former, and work our way to the latter. In case you’re not up on your latest enterprise technology, there’s a hot new thing out there called robotic process automation which, despite its cool name, is basically just a souped-up computer macro that spans more applications than just, say, Excel. We had a client that was able to use this tech to actually pull information from corporate directories and Excel sheets, and then draw a process map from it in Microsoft Visio. That’s really impressive. But how do you market it? In this case, it was personification—and more specifically, anthropomorphism—to the rescue. Our graphic designer on this project created an adorable character of a cartoon “artist” robot, replete with paintbrush, smock, and beret. You see the bot holding the paintbrush, you see the gorgeous process map he’d created, sitting on its little cartoon easel... the thing barely even needs a headline. Another: We were working with a hospital client, and they wanted to promote their new cancer-treatment center. And one of the campaign concepts we presented to them personified cancer. Granted, this is a delicate subject. You don’t want the over-the-top monstrous allergen you may have seen in TV ads for antihistamines. So cancer could be depicted as a malicious, lurking presence. Perhaps just a pair of eyes, spying for an evil opportunity. Or it could be there, without even being shown, borrowing from the style of classic horror movies by Val Lewton such as “Cat People.” Going big Two of the best examples of personification that come to mind are from national TV campaigns: one old, the other still ongoing. The old one was for what we’d mentioned in the intro: “something that’s pretty mundane and familiar, such as, say, a desktop computer.” Depicting a gray box isn’t very exciting; it’s what you can do with it that makes it exciting. Or, conversely, what it can’t do (if it’s not such a great computer) that makes it frustrating and annoying. Remember “I’m a Mac. I’m a PC.”? If you don’t, these were ads from Apple, aiming to show the superiority of their computers over Windows-based machines. And the brilliant thing about them was that they never showed a computer at all. There were simply two actors standing on an empty white stage. One—the hip, cool dude portrayed by Justin Long—was the Mac. The other—the pitifully unhip office wonk, portrayed by John Hodgman—was the PC. The Mac talked about, and showed, all the cool things he could do. The PC tried to do the same, and always failed, in an embarrassingly humorous way. Apple sold a lot of Macs off this campaign. The other campaign that really nails “personification” is from Allstate. You’ve just got to love their “Mayhem” character. Think about that, and how perfectly that works: A single actor, a person, portraying all the terrible things, both human-induced and acts of nature, that can screw up your life and your belongings. You don’t think of all these random evils as one single force... until you see those ads. And then you see him positioned up against Allstate, and the brand gets cemented in your mind. When to use it, or not Personification, like any creative trope, is no magic bullet. It’s certainly not new. And as we’d mentioned above in our cancer-center story, you need to be careful in how you employ it; used flippantly or indelicately, it can backfire on you. But done right, personification is a great tool, just waiting for fresh new applications. Need help with it, or any creative challenge? Contact us. We’d love to help. A simple fact of the consultant’s life is that most work is performed under the veil of secrecy. You can’t even review input until you sign a nondisclosure agreement or NDA. How, then, can you tell the world about all the great work that you do? In this article, we’ll address the thorny issue of NDAs and anonymization. We’ll also explain the numerous ways you can share and leverage that story, once it’s safe to tell. Defining success Before we get to the issue of scrubbing success stories of sensitive client information, we have a prerequisite to discuss: Success. We’re not going to tell you how to do great work for your clients. That’s your job. For our purposes, we’ll assume that you do it, and do it often. We’ve talked about sharing your stories of success. But what exactly is “success”? It may be very different for Client A than Client B. It depends on the goals they’re pursuing, the constraints under which they’re laboring, the target audience they’re serving, and so on. But that’s not the lens through which to view this. You need to take a more selfish approach. Who do you want to sell to? Who are your sweet-spot prospects? Answer that question—and then revisit the “success” of Client A. If it’s congruent with those of your target audience, you’re set. If not, you need to make some choices. You’ll need to either consider other clients/success stories, or perhaps other angles/challenges/outcomes of the original story. Don’t put the effort into telling the world a story if your world doesn’t care. How to anonymize data for safe storytelling We recently interviewed a subject-matter expert (SME) for a white paper, concerning a client engagement/success story. The SME shared with us tons of sensitive data about this client and the specific challenges they faced. No company wants this kind of information publicized. As you can guess, this was all under strict NDA. But our job, as we’d mentioned, was to transform the story into a white paper for broader consumption. You might think that this was a problem. But in fact it wasn’t. As it turned out, the “embarrassing details” were simply too specific to that customer’s situation to really matter to anyone else. They didn’t pass the “sweet-spot prospect” test. Which is great, because they were so specific that they would’ve been tough to disguise. What did pass the “sweet-spot prospect” test, however, was the context in which they resided. The broader issues which they represented were universal pain-points for prospects in this sector. Knowing that, they were a goldmine for the white paper’s input. You’ll find the same thing as you work. You really don’t have to worry too much about the “identifying data,” simply because it’s too arcane for a broader audience. Conveniently, it’s the exact same stuff you’d have to censor. Sharing the story There are different flavors of white papers. Some, such as those often promulgated by the big-box consultancies, offer to show trends in a given market, function, or vertical. Others are simply thinly-disguised case studies. Those are the kinds we’re interested in here. To transform your raw SME input into a compelling white paper, think about it from your prospective client’s point of view. If the pain-points you’re addressing are universal, then think backward from them: “If I were Prospective Client A, and I had this problem, what terms would I search on to try and find the answer? What topics would make me sit up and take notice? Could I find best-practice case studies of others, in similar situations, who were able to surmount these same challenges?” Answer those questions, and you have the approach for your white paper. Make it readable Some—okay, most—white papers are unreadable. They fall squarely into the MEGO (“my eyes glaze over”) category. Which is tragic, because they may well have great information starting on Paragraph Two, given that 99 percent of readers have tuned out by Paragraph One. So tell a story. Tease. Set up the problems. Make them believable, relatable, and (apparently) insurmountable. Quickly tag your characters (we wrote an entire article about this which you’ll like) so that the story is compelling and that it’s easier for the reader to follow. Then be humble. It’s a given that your company is the one that helped to bring about the great outcomes. But share the glory. Give credit to the hardworking people on the client side and all their great input and ideas. Heck, the white paper will have your logo on it, so it’s instantly apparent that you were the catalyst. So you can afford to be humble in the text. Leverage We’ve been saying “white paper” a lot in this article. But in an age in which content is king, you needn’t limit yourself to one venue or deliverable. Once you’ve crafted the story, there are lots of ways to share it. There are blogs. Press releases. Social media. Presentations. Direct mail. E-blasts. The list goes on and on; it’s just a matter of tailoring the same story to different audiences and media. Need help with that next success-storytelling challenge? Contact us. We’d be delighted to help you—just as we help others like you, all the time. A creative approach to business building We recently had the privilege of copy-editing the manuscript of a business book that’s soon to be released by a major publisher, and whenever we saw a mention of something like “Jim the CFO,” we’d jump in with our red pen. Why? Why should you care? And how on earth does this relate back to the subhead of this article and, most importantly, building your business? Bear with us. There’s a point to all this. Draw the reader in No, we’re not purposely changing the subject. We’re well aware of what we promised you at the outset of this article. That’s the set-up. This part, here, is building the backstory. But at the same time, it’s an intentional tease. “What the heck does ‘Jim the CFO’ have to do with helping me make more money?” We’re getting to that. That’s the pay-off. And all of the terms we’ve been bandying about—set-up, pay-off, backstory—are elements of storytelling. Storytelling. It is so important in building your business. Heck, we’d argue that it’s essential. How? There are a couple of ways to look at it. The customer’s story This is the most important story of all. Problem is, most people don’t think of it as a story. “We want them to buy from us! End of story!” is what you’ll likely hear. But think of their story. Then remember that there are two sides to every story. And in so doing, you’ve opened a window to more business. Let’s move from the abstract to the concrete:
That’s a gross over-simplification (“Suffering”!), but you get the idea. Sure, you want to back your presentation with quantifiable results, but if you can’t frame those numbers within the context of a compelling and relate-able story—and if you can’t grasp what your customer is going through today, without your help—you won’t move that person, or business, from “prospect” to “customer.” More concrete examples for you: These kinds of stories translate to case studies. Blog entries. E-books. Website copy. Ads. “No one wants to be sold to, but everyone wants to hear a story.” It’s an aphorism. Little wonder. Hearing, and following, a story connects to us at a deep emotional level. When we hear someone else’s story, we’re in a safe zone (“That’s not me”), where we’re not being judged (“I may have flaws!”), yet we’re unconsciously—or sometimes not-so-unconsciously—comparing ourselves to the characters in the story: “That sounds like my problem! I could learn from their experience!” It’s why storytelling, as a business tool, works. Your story Again, you can present your business in terms of hard numbers: how many hamburgers sold, to borrow a trope from McDonald’s. Yet how you came to be, why you do what you do, and how you help your customers to benefit, are the compelling and necessary framework for all these numbers. Vision statement. Mission statement. Positioning statement. They’re simply ways of codifying what we just described. Don’t let the marketing jargon intimidate you. Your leaders’ story Similarly, the bios you publish on your website, and promulgate on places like LinkedIn, should be more than bullet points. They should include a relatable origin and an admirable arc. They shouldn’t avoid the references to hurdles cleared and obstacles overcome; to the contrary, they should revel in them. Which brings us back to “Jim the CFO.” Did you know that, as a kid, Jim the CFO had wanted to be a fireman? Admitting that today might make him blush, but that’s humanizing, endearing. More to the point, he really is a firefighter today. Who is better at preventing the financial flare-ups and seeing through the smoke of battle than the company’s CFO? Who’s the guy who cares so much about his people that he won’t hesitate to rescue that kitten from the tree-top? Now, reading this, and learning this, you like Jim. He’s not just a numbers guy. He’s someone you’d want to work with. And isn’t that what business-building is all about? Need help finding and/or crafting your story? Contact us. We help people just like you to accomplish just that goal, all the time. |
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