Google: Rethinking Readiness

The Challenge

Helping a large tech brand protect their leadership position with marketers by providing a new framework for talking about the human value proposition of products, particularly machine learning.

The market leader was facing pressure from multiple angles. To grow its leadership position it needed newer ways to deliver value to its partners. So, the tech brand’s Ads Marketing team launched a new messaging platform called “Rethinking Readiness”. The Sound helped them to strengthen the messaging platform by enabling them to help their partners (marketers) to provide the right content when it matters most. We explored three types of relationships: human-to-human, service – oriented professionals and their clients, as well as brand and consumer.

The Approach

We started off by capturing stories from those who have been ‘helped’ by other people when they may not have specifically asked for help. This allowed us to explore the various types of impact that occurs, both positive and negative. We did this with 5 open-ended survey questions rotating between 1000 respondents. The next building block was to unpack how service-oriented professionals, operate and prioritize for the clients they’re working for. We talked to those in service-oriented roles where anticipating others’ needs is critical for success (executive admins, hotel concierges, wedding planners, etc.) Lastly, we quantitatively mapped and sized the impact territories and uncovered the intersection of impact with consumer needs

The Impact

The end game here was to inspire and showcase the positive side of machine learning and develop guidelines for how marketers can leverage it while building people’s trust. To this end we helped the client to define deep consumer needs and understand what people expect of brands today and to identify when and where there are opportunities.The Sound developed eight universal needs people believe brands can deliver and can deliver through ads alone. We also helped the client guide their business partners to navigate the murky world of ‘Permission’ in 2020. We unpacked four types of permissions people think brands have (in decreasing amounts). This helped the client to design guidelines for its partners to build an empathic relationship with consumers, to enable them to assess where they are in the relationship and to guide when and how to use information/data respectfully and helpfully.