The Age of Engage: Reinventing Marketing for Today's Connected, Collaborative, and Hyperinteractive Culture by Denise Shiffman

Author:Denise Shiffman
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Hunt Street Press/Greenleaf Book Group
Published: 2008-02-29T14:00:00+00:00

For your voice to become authentic, you must use it to infect the DNA of your company. Every employee should be able to communicate the company’s tone, style, and personality, as well as the vision, in their own words. Your customers should be able to breathe your words as if they are employed by you. Let us consider in more detail how Viking Range Corporation sells lifestyle over cooking products.

One would think the professional styling and features of Viking products would attract a narrow market of home chefs. Yet, many people who own them don’t cook much or all that well. Viking doesn’t try to make you believe their stovetop or oven will turn you into a chef. That wouldn’t be authentic. What Viking believes, and what they want you to believe, is that if you own Viking products, you live well, travel extensively, and know good wine, good food, and good people. And if you don’t, you soon will. Viking extends their position and platform with cooking schools and cooking trips to exotic places. If you own Viking, when guests arrive, you show off the kitchen first (and you even love talking about your range). Viking has figured out how to connect with its audience in a meaningful way. Customers want to go on the Viking journey. Viking has seeped their values throughout the company and onto their Web site—while competitors Thermador and Wolf communicate only technology and product.

When Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed Google search, they simply wanted to make it easier to find stuff on the Internet. Today, the company vision is about organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible and useful. Since that includes music, television programming, movies, user-generated content, news, and books, among other forms of information, Google has morphed into a media conglomerate. And each time Google inks a deal with a content provider or a media business with millions of viewers, listeners, or users, the company adds one more plot to the storyline, and audiences believe they will succeed along their journey. When they do something that appears contrary to their stated vision, consumers scratch their heads and wonder what Google is really up to, that is, until the company helps us see how it fits in their plans.

An authentic voice is backed up by all the company does and says. Customers believe in the behavior they see over the words that they hear. Whether you are marketing crystal glasses for wine drinkers or laptop computers for business travelers, your voice communicated effectively will drive customers to choose your product over another. The most important elements of a believable voice are passion and execution. You must drive the product to be everything you envision.

Make it a Real Conversation

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