Jeremy Mancini

Jeremy, your passion for the spiral method shines through. You not only did a great job explaining how it works, but I find it helpful to know what types of situations/projects would benefit from using it. There are so many types of projects and methodologies that it can be overwhelming to learn about ! I would be interested to learn what other methodologies you came across during your research – would you say spiral is best in terms of risk ? Are there other methodologies good for risk-related projects, but didn’t appeal to you?

Hi, Jeremy, I think you have a nice post! I agree with you that FeedMusic did a great job creating their brand site – an innovative way without losing clarity and usability. Among all the websites we browse everyday, classic layouts and designs dominate. It is such a unique and pleasant feeling when you see a site like FeedMusic. As pointed out by Steve Krug, any innovation on web design should be easy-to-use, clear and self-explanatory, no learning curve – innovate only when you know you have a better idea (otherwise take advantage of conventions). I think FeedMusic site is a successful innovation following these rules, resulting a good user experience. The browsing procedure is just like an exploration along a hiking route. In another way to look at it, I think it really improved the affordances and discoverability of the site, two important components in Norman’s seven fundamental design principles. I like the site!

A nice post, Jeremy! I think this is a perfect example for customer journey mapping (CJM). As Samaritans is a unique charity that provides support to people who are struggling to cope, it is a service totally dependent upon customer experience (CX). In order to help every customer who has trouble in his/her life, the business process has to be optimized to build brand trust and to reduce anxiety and worries. The CJM lists all the touchpoints where customers interact with Samaritans to tell a complete story about CX. I am sure this mapping will help the organization to improve their operational process. Other technologies that can be incorporated into the process might be interactive app or smart wearables (even AR if it is possible). Those digital platforms will provide real-time interaction and unique experience to users, thereby improving the customer engagement and process efficiency.

Could not agree more, Jeremy. The customer journey is always interesting to see once it’s worked out and visualized. More often it’s a non-linear experience where in order to truly grasp, understand, and add value the proper research must be done. As the article “using customer journey maps to improve customer experience” said Uncovering the customer journey has to be “grounded in customer research, preferably including in-depth ethnographic-style interviews and in-context observations.” Better understanding the customer journey should be one of the top priorities for any company, as you noted it helps to provide insight and enhances the experience of the customer and their needs.

Similar to Cliff, I also judge a company based off of their website but I didn’t realize how much of my perception on a company is based solely off of their website until starting this degree. I started paying attention to my experiences and found that when I see a company (walking down the street or in an advertisement) my first step is to find their website and see what their website is like. If it’s outdated or complicated to use I associate that with the brand. Websites are definitely a platform in which companies need to make sure they are utilizing all the available resources for improvement because it effects how the consumer will see their brand. After all, image is everything.

Hi Jeremy! I think storytelling marketing is a great way to make consumers feel like are a part of the story. It strengthens the bond consumers have to brands and can help them understand why the brand exists. I think Nike does a pretty good job at sharing the stories of athletes like Serena Williams and Colin Kaepernick. Earlier in the semester I did my brand brief of Chipotle and they use their YouTube channel (other social media outlets, too) to tell their story. They want to prepare and serve food with integrity, which they do with their unique sourcing processes. They build long-term partnerships with farmers who prioritize the long-term health of their land. One of my favorites is this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v25zvj8su8M) which features one of their rice suppliers. As a consumer I am more likely to purchase a product if they are telling me a story.

Every brand has a story to tell and building storytelling into your content marketing strategy can be very powerful. It brings the brand to life and really can connect with the audience on an emotional level. Sometimes with out the customer even realizing it.

A good example of storytelling I can across when I was doing some holiday shopping was for Minnetonka Moccasins. (Yes, I did have someone on my list that said they wanted moccasins! ) They first thing they do online is tell you “Our Story’ with really great visuals. They start in 1946 and go through the years, highlighting some of their iconic mocs throughout the decades, ending with a video for “Today” with the line “Evolve With Purpose”. It;’s very heartfelt. It talks about history and heritage but has visuals of younger ‘hip’ peopel wearing their moccasins today. Really well done. Check it out at https://www.minnetonkamoccasin.com.

Hi Jeremy,
You make some excellent points about how Days Inn recognized their customers and instead of blanketing the market, they stuck to their base and provided well focused and targeted ads. I’ve often been turned off by some companies who have tried too hard to appeal the everyone instead of focusing on their core customers. SWOT analysis are always useful regardless of what level they are applied at and I think Days INN was smart for using that strategy to take a deeper look at who they were targeting. And as you pointed out, even with targeted ads, other consumers not part of a company’s normal target market may see the ads and be attracted to the service.
Knowing your brand and your customers is the best way to understand the purpose behind a company’s business and their marketing strategy. Staying focused and execution are the next steps in pushing the brand forward. Great article, Jeremy!

Really insightful post with great tips! Data collection may become the easiest step in all of this – knowing what to do with it is where the magic happens, right? I have seen organizations make big decisions based on bad data – and then rather than dig into the data to see what the problem may have been, they blame the system or the data!

Jeremy — Oh how this has been my experience as an email marketer…let’s collect it all and figure out what to send to people later!! It was certainly easy to collect the data, but it became a data hairball when you went to write queries to figure out who to send an email to. I worked for a organization that wanted to send emails to HR, which is very broad, so I had to pull the raw data and look at job titles-lots of job titles-to determine who exactly was HR. Many times it came down to someones opinion of who HR really was versus what the data told me who HR was. I do sometimes miss writing queries—just kidding!!

Jeremy, my ePortfolio post was an interview with a friend of mine and we discussed this topic. He drove home the point that it is very important to make sure that you are collecting the right data from the start, and how important it is to take a look at your creative along the process. If your creative is bad, then all the data you collect will be bad along with it. On top of that, he stressed the importance of looking at historical numbers when setting up any KPIs of your own company or when working with another company.

Here is my post about the interview: http://digitalmarketing.temple.edu/cfeiring/2019/02/11/avoiding-data-pitfalls-to-help-strengthen-your-brand/

I had to trim down the interview a bit for the ePortfoilio. It was an excellent conversation, and if you are interested, I can send you the entire transcription.

Jeremy, I think it is a great point you bring up in reference to how do we structure these different types of data into something usable. A major challenge for businesses, in my belief, will be not only figuring out how to use meaningful applications today, but also in the future. Voice has the potential to be something transformative. I wonder how Amazon and Google use this data currently, how do they tie it in with other data. To answer your question on best approach to collecting data; I think it should not be a capture everything and figure it out later. I think a nuanced approach geared towards what is meaningful to your business.