Church+State

Our ongoing partnership with Sago continues to add value to us AND our clients. Thanks, Jill!

This needs to be discussed more: Well-being is a marker of productivity. Your team's well-being will impact their work performance. So why don't we measure it? By broadening the definition of productivity, you can nurture a happier and healthier team to achieve better overall performance.

With all the focus on CX, don't forget the importance of good ole customer SERVICE. To deliver it, many of you are using contact centres (remember when we called them "Call Centres"??). There, good service is characterized by - the ease of resolving issues - the accessibility of information - the integration of communication channels so that every interaction contributes to a cohesive resolution process. Expectations have elevated. Customers don't just want solutions. They want personalized understanding and engagement. We've all heard, "Your call is being recorded for quality purposes" but what the hell happens with those recordings?? How are they used? Well, AI has just joined the chat: "Conversational intelligence enables organizations to understand the multiple reasons behind a customer’s call, which in turn helps in resolving issues more effectively and proactively sharing information across the organization to prevent future frustrations." Lotta good stuff here. And if you need help, just reach out to @Wilma Chan and her colleagues at IntouchCX. They're revolutionizing the global customer experience across all industries, delivering value-driven CX management, digital engagement, and AI and automation solutions to the world’s best-known brands.

WHO YOU GONNA BLAME TODAY? Wise words of wisdom from @Seth Godin: Blame the clients. And blame the conditions. But then, you’re on the hook to get better tools, find better clients and work in better conditions. It’s not convenient, but it’s possible. If it’s not worth the effort, we can simply accept what we’ve chosen and get back to work.

We love the term "Echoverse" to describe the new marketing terrain. It's defined by "a complex web of feedback loops and reverberations that are created by consumers, brands, news media, investors, communities, society, and artificial intelligence (AI) agents. This assemblage of actors continuously interact, influence, and respond to each other across a myriad of digital channels, platforms, and devices, creating a dynamic where messages circulate and echo, being amplified, modified, or dampened by ongoing interactions." If that doesn't describe (looking around at the chaos) THIS.. We don't know what does. Communication is omnidirectional. Roles are blurred. Messages are continuously evolving. Value creation is collective. This is one of the best marketing reads in a while and we highly recommend you devour it.

SOME RESERVATIONS: As you know, Uber launched a food delivery service that disrupted the food industry. Since then, there’s been a wave of innovations changing the way we eat and cook. Companies like UberEats aren’t just transforming restaurants… they’re building a new arm of the food industry to compete with them, too. Oh — and the new food establishment paving the way to the land of milk and honey? Well, they don’t make food… and increasingly, neither do I. Today some are predicting the end of the home cooked meal altogether… But beyond our own kitchens, what is the rise of even faster food doing to the cooks at our favourite restaurants or the farmers we pass by on the side of the highway? And is all this convenience actually making our lives better, or just quicker? We’re going from table to kitchen to cyclist to farm to table to find out.

Glad we could finally talk about this one. Many clients talk about total transformation but the team at Humber is not just talking. We've been so impressed with the team so far and look forward to sharing the great external work that will follow the deep strategic work we're currently engaged in. Shout out to our team at @Church+State for their efforts to clearly communicate why we thought we were the best choice in a large group of wonderful agencies.

Be sure to check out our Director of Strategy, Ophelie Zalcmanis-Lai at next week's Canadian Research Insights Council. She'll be presenting her brilliant thoughts on (and experience with) Virtual Audiences.

The creative in me certainly likes the spot - it's a pretty simple communication of, "You get a lot of creativity packed into this product." But the human in me who is sensitive to the fears that people have with advancing technology - even though tech like the iPad has increased access to creative tools - wonders what the hell they were thinking/