Flourish Lead Developer, Hussein Alhammad, is a founding member of the Email Markup Consortium (EMC). The EMC is a community-led group working to improve the user experience, accessibility, performance, consistency, and reliability of email markup. They have recently published an insightful report on the state of accessibility in HTML emails based on their analysis of over 35,000 emails.
More than 99% of the analysed emails had accessibility issues. This means most businesses are sending emails that are made difficult for a percentage of their audience to consume. Whether you are trying to increase conversion or simply communicate better with your customers, sending accessible HTML emails to your audience can make a huge difference.
Accessibility in email makes your products and services available to customers who are blind, colour blind, dyslexic or need to use assistive technologies or alternative input device – potentially a large proportion of your customer base.
Automated testing is immensely helpful, but more attention is required to truly produce accessible HTML emails. Accessibility work should be a core part of all stages – not only implemented during development, after everything has been decided already.
For example, design has a major impact on the accessibility of your email. Designers should consider colour choices and typography, as well as the dark mode friendly images.
There are also best practices to apply when writing copy for your emails, such as avoiding ‘click here’ calls to action, optimising SEO for email, and making the most of personalisation and creative subject lines.
Your unique audience could be more diverse than you think. Therefore, translation software can be considered an assistive technology. And when it comes to email, many email clients including Gmail and Outlook have a built-in translation feature. Ensuring any text that is critical to delivering your message is not embedded in an image is crucial here. Translation software is not going to translate embedded text for the user. You could make key information inaccessible by embedding it in an image.
Do you need help with improving your email accessibility, deliverability or generally your CRM practices when it comes to communicating with your audience? The Flourish team are here to help. Working alongside our in-house experts like Hussein, we can help you optimise, elevate and transform your use of email to deliver the best customer experience. Get in touch to discuss your challenges and to request a free email review.
Inclusive marketing has come a long way over the past few years. This is because for the consumers of today, creating a stellar product or providing a first-class service is not enough to convince them to buy from you.
Customers care about the ethics behind your brand more than ever before and will make purchase decisions based on factors like diversity and sustainability.
And while we are now firmly in the “Age of Diversity”, many brands are still falling short.
We think it’s time to change.
To that end, we’ve put together a new industry guide, “Digital Marketing: The Age of Diversity?” And you can download it free here >>>
The guide addresses the discrimination that still exists across the digital marketing industry, and what we can do as an industry to champion diversity.
In essence, we want this guide to start these difficult conversations and help brands take those first steps towards creating content that is inclusive for all.
The AI and advertising industries have a gender bias problem. And yes, while this bias may not be as obvious as it used to be, sexism still exists within these industries, and we could do a lot more to overcome these bias boundaries.
When we look back at advertising from the mid-1950s, you’ll notice that BIPOC, LGBTQIA+ communities, and people with disabilities were non-existent, and women were only depicted as domesticated goddesses, sexy, slim, with perfect hair and makeup.
You may think that these misrepresentations or lack of representation are a thing of the past… but that isn’t the case.
Billions of people every day use the internet to buy clothes, book holidays, play games, watch videos or search for random trivia.
For a lot of people around the world, navigating the world wide web can be done with a simple touch of a button. However, a huge proportion of the population can find this navigation process a lot more challenging.
The vast majority of websites today are “inaccessible”, which prevents the world’s one billion disabled people – 15% of the global population – from enjoying an easy online experience. So how can we change this?
You can get a free copy of the guide here. And if you have any questions, feel free to drop us a message.
– Flourish becomes Harbour Collective’s dedicated CRM specialist agency
– With a heritage in direct marketing, Flourish has helped brands like Samsung, Twitch, Coca-Cola and Nissan to revolutionise their approach to customer communications
LONDON, 5th September 2022 – Brand communication consultancy Harbour has today announced the addition of CRM agency Flourish to Harbour Collective, its collective of 12 specialist independent agencies and 500+ experts.
Flourish will now become the collective’s dedicated CRM specialist agency.
Headquartered in Bristol and with teams in London and Dubai, Flourish was founded in 2004. With a heritage in direct marketing, the CRM specialist agency has helped brands like Samsung, Twitch, Coca-Cola, Nissan and Crisis to revolutionise their approach to customer communications.
Harbour Collective’s group of independent agencies work together on multiple shared clients to combine skillsets across data and insight, media, content creation, engagement, experience, and delivery.
Ian Reeves, Managing Director, Flourish, said: “We’re genuinely delighted to join Harbour Collective as the group’s CRM specialist agency. Traditionally Flourish and our client partners have been brave and ambitious, and we believe joining Harbour Collective is a reflection of this. As part of a collective we can extend our offering of genuine sector expertise, stand apart from network and integrated agencies and open up a world of further complementary possibilities.
“Meeting with the Harbour team, it was immediately obvious that we speak the same language, prioritising the impactful and the pragmatic. We know our clients will instantly be able to benefit from being part of the wider group and we look forward to supporting existing Harbour Collective clients in enhancing their CRM strategies, capabilities and programmes.”
Paul Hammersley, Managing Partner, Harbour, added: “The understanding and management of customer journeys and experience are key parts of today’s marketing plans, so it’s essential that we have this capability at the heart of our offering. Flourish are one of the best independent agencies in this space, with an impressive leadership team, a strong client base and an excellent skillset across strategy, creative and media, making them the ideal CRM partner for Harbour Collective.”
About Harbour
Harbour is an independent brand communication consultancy that sits at the heart of a collective of specialist agencies. It was launched in 2017 by Paul Hammersley (Managing Partner) who was joined by Mick Mahoney (Creative Partner) and Kev Chesters (Strategy Partner) in 2019. Its unique structure and client offering are designed as a contemporary alternative to the large legacy agency groups. Clients include McCarthy Stone, Tilney Smith & Williamson, The Athletic, BT, Match.com, Fitbit and John Lewis.
https://harbour.london
About Flourish
Flourish is a specialist CRM Agency, focused on the development and delivery of data-driven and creative communications and content in the B2C, B2B, B2G and NFP sectors. Based in Bristol, UK, the business opened its doors in March 2004. Since then, Flourish has extended its footprint with teams in both London and Dubai to support regional economic growth and a Global client portfolio.
With a heritage in Direct Marketing, Flourish has sector-leading CRM expertise, focusing on driving action at every stage in the Customer Journey, whilst acknowledging individual customers’ needs and circumstances. Flourish has helped brands like Samsung, Twitch, Coca-Cola, Nissan and Crisis revolutionise their approach to customer communications and, in-turn, maximise lifetime value through a blend of data, technical and activation solutions across a range of audiences, channels and touchpoints.
If you’d like to discuss how Flourish could help your business maximise the value of your customer audience then reach out to Ian Reeves via email on [email protected]
JonesMillbank, Bristol-based video production company, were commissioned by Cheltenham-based global coffee brand SOHO Coffee Co. to produce a range of brand-level photography.
“Whilst not our primary service, we’ve always supported clients with photographic commissions given the similarity in the disciplines. In fact most of our film crew started their lives as photographers” said Russell Jones, Co-Founder and Director.
“SOHO Coffee Co. are a new client but their values resonated with our own; SOHO actually stands for Simple, Original, Honest, Organic”.
The photography is part of a brand and menu overhaul, utilising bold colours and real people, with large-scale OOH and digital advertising in mind.
The JonesMillbank team worked alongside food stylist Joanna Resiak (www.joannaresiak.com) and makeup artist Naomi Lake (www.naomi-lake.com).
“It’s always a pleasure working with talented specialists. Both were fantastic and Jo made syringing egg yolks onto sausage sandwiches look easy” said Joffie Burt, Head of Production.
Visit jonesmillbank.com/work/soho-coffee/studio-photography for a selection of photos and behind the scenes stills, else keep your eyes peeled at your local SOHO Coffee Co branch and online.
***
JonesMillbank are a passionate full-service video production company
They work exclusively in-house with a talented team of multi-disciplined creatives, all the while telling authentic stories long before it was cool for a range of clients such as University of Bristol, Battersea, The Royal Mint, IDLES and Randstad.
jonesmillbank.com
01173706372
[email protected]
What is a creative brief?
A creative brief is a short document that sums up a project’s mission, goals, challenges, demographics, messaging, and other key details. Typically produced by the person heading up the project, a creative brief outlines the problems to solve and offers the tools they might need, without prescribing a solution.
Why do you need a creative brief?
To start – you need a plan! A solid creative brief ensures everyone is on the same page before the project has begun and acts as a guiding north star throughout. Simultaneously allowing a project to stay on track, whilst underpinning the creative concept and strategic thinking.
A creative brief helps align everyone on the task at hand. Even the best creative minds in the world can’t solve a problem they don’t understand. More than just an arbitrary document, it is a tool that allows for clear and thorough communication from the very beginning of the design process. It prevents potential last-minute project changes, misunderstandings, and conflicting objectives along the way.
Marjorie Newnham, Project Manager at Fiasco Design, adds: “With larger projects that involve multiple stakeholders and various rounds of creative, it’s especially important to agree on the deliverables up front, so there’s no potential for confusion later down the line.” Establishing parameters and crucially – building trust, at the beginning will help ensure a smoother project journey.
Who is a creative brief for?
It’s quite likely that the people who will use the brief are an external creative agency who may not be familiar with language that is specific to your industry. So it should be accessible to a designer or web developer, for example, and avoid lots of acronyms or jargon. However, worth adding that this doesn’t mean a creative brief needs to be dry! It’s meant to incite enthusiasm and possibilities.
Hayley Yates, Account Director at Fiasco Design, adds: “It’s valuable for us to know if a client’s been through a similar creative process before, or if this is their first time. It allows us to tailor our approach based on their level of understanding of the process, as the acronyms and jargon exist in our industry too!”
What should a creative brief include?
Whilst not an exhaustive list, including these key bits of information will help a creative agency to understand and work towards your project.
Although it might seem like a lot of information to convey in a relatively limited amount of space, a good creative brief stays focused and to the point. Pages and pages of additional information should be unnecessary. The more you are able to distill your thinking into clear and concise points, the clearer it will be to the creative agency you’re partnering with. The brief process in itself, might in fact help to refine exactly what you’re hoping to achieve.
Working at the intersection of brand and digital, we take our partners with us at every step of the creative journey. Our open and inclusive ethos helps us to create joined up work that sparks change. Looking to start a creative project? We’d love to hear from you: hello@fiasco.design.
Over the past few years, we’ve seen a departure from overtly sexist and misogynistic advertising.
The #MeToo movement and the rise of “fempowerment” are just some factors that have caused advertisers to look at their campaigns and adapt their content in order to show women in a more powerful and positive light.
That doesn’t mean sexist advertising has ceased to exist.
Today, far too many brands are using outdated, harmful, and offensive female representations in their advertising. And yes, while we need to acknowledge that misogynistic marketing has improved, forms of sexism still exist in the marketing world.
And there’s a new term for this form of subtle sexist advertising – sneaky sexism.
Jane Cunningham and Philippa Roberts – former members of the leadership teams at Ogilvy and DDB, London, and now founders of PrettyLittleHead (PLH) – coined the term.
In their book ‘Brandsplaining: Why Marketing is (Still) Sexist and How to Fix It’, they explain that sneaky sexism is a form of “brandsplaining”.
For those unfamiliar with this term, brandsplaining occurs when brands believe they are in the driver’s seat when it comes to the relationship between themselves and their customers.
Essentially, it’s when brands feel they are in control of their customers’ needs and desires.
When it comes to sneaky sexism, Cunningham and Roberts define it as a type of sexism that is subtly added to advertising in a way that avoids offense and backlash from their audience.
As the name suggests, sneaky sexism is more covert. For example, think back to when diet pills were first introduced.
You may think that these pills have been discontinued or fallen out of fashion due to the fact it pushed unhealthy ideals that women need to lose weight to be considered attractive. But these pills are still out there, but they’re now advertised as “wellness” products.
Another key example to keep an eye on is the way brands phrase the “fix it” narrative.
Back in the early 1930s, brands would suggest women need to change their physical appearance to adhere to society’s version of beauty. Today that narrative has changed, and women are now being instructed to change their characteristics.
Women are now told to be bold, confident, and love who they are. And while this may be a step in the right direction, this narrative still has negative connotations for women.
We are still telling women what they need to be like in order to be accepted by society. And if women don’t fit certain then they are still viewed as failures.
Until the 21st century, most advertising targeting women was created through what is known as the male gaze. In essence, women were mainly sexualised and/or portrayed as inferior to men.
In many cases, female advertising was created using the perfectionist narrative. At its core, this narrative would suggest that women are not good enough and need to improve their looks or how they run their household and look after their families.
The perfectionist narrative stuck around throughout the 20th century, but the idea of the perfect woman changed with the times and turned into the “good girl” phenomenon.
But what attributes does the “good girl” possess? Well, she would need to be subservient, skinny, pretty, and white, and women who featured in ads back in the 20th century would predominantly fit this mould.
You may think that we have moved past forcing this ideal onto women… but we haven’t. Today, 25% of ads that feature women are still sexualized, and 85% of these women adhere to the good girl phenomenon.
Unfortunately, sexism is still a pressing problem all over the world, including in marketing. Just look at the myriad examples of gender bias in AI…
Sexist advertising, in particular, can be incredibly impressionable and promotes harmful and misogynistic ideals for global audiences.
To prove the damaging impact of sexist advertising, Cunningham and Roberts spent 15 years researching and surveying 14,000 women in 14 countries across four continents to understand their thoughts on women in advertising.
And the results were telling…
While we may have left the worst of overtly sexist marketing in the past, sexism still exists, and we need to do something about it.
As consumers become far more aware of overtly unethical and discriminatory practices in advertising and marketing, poor behaviour is quickly retreating to the verges, where it often continues to thrive. Just look at the persistence of “Rainbow-Washing” around Pride Month.
We need to create ads that women want, and ads that truly represent who they are on the inside. Now is the time to ditch this outdated depiction of women once and for all.
GYDA is thrilled to announce its repositioning as a Mastermind-centred business. The relaunch which happened in June 2022, sees GYDA increase its focus from being a business consultancy who helped agency leaders through traditional consultancy methods, to one that focuses on peer-to-peer Mastermind groups for agencies leaders all over the world.
The relaunch was the culmination of a six month project initiated by the managing partners Robert Craven and Janusz Stabik.
Robert said:
‘Our experience of running Mastermind programs spans back over seven years and includes the renowned Google Elevator program. It made sense to pivot the business to focus on the tools that work for agency leaders. We continue to support our clients with additional 1-2-1 coaching and growth centered consulting.’
The project included an in-depth strategy phase where GYDA collaborated with their growth experts and agency clients. Followed by a rebrand project with TinyBrand.
Janusz said:
‘We were so excited to work with Jemma at Tiny Brand again. Helping us to solidify and refine our brand strategy, they went on to create a new visual identity and collateral for GYDA. We are over the moon with the results. Our beautiful new brand fits perfectly with our audience and confirms GYDA’s position as market leader for mastermind programs.’
Visit GYDA.co to learn more about GYDA Mastermind
Visit Tiny Brand
This month’s Women in Business episode features an interview with Sue Turner OBE, founder of AI Governance Ltd, and one of the first people to be certified as an Artificial Intelligence auditor by the For Humanity organisation. Sue sits down with Sophie Harris, Head of Marketing and New Business to discuss the power of AI for businesses and how to utilise Artificial Intelligence ethically.
Women in Business Artificial Intelligence special – Episode 12: Sue Turner, AI Governance Ltd. video here.
AI is becoming pervasive across all levels of business activity, from HR to enterprise planning and decision making. And it’s widely accepted that most company boards are ill-equipped to understand the implications it has for their business, let alone create a governance framework for its use. Sue is at the forefront of raising AI ethical awareness and helping boards to navigate the governance minefield.
What role does AI play in marketing?
As marketing professionals, we’re trained to attract and convert customers with the right message, at the right time, in the right place. We analyse, we strategise, we plan, we create and we optimise to achieve commercial growth.
AI does this at scale – analysing, optimising and making autonomous decisions at speed. Autonomy is the key word here. AI learns as it goes, analysing huge datasets, testing multiple creative variants across a vast network of interconnected digital profiles. Its prime objective is acquiring and retaining the right customers as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible – across the entire customer journey. It does whatever is needed to meet the objective it’s programmed to fulfil, and it does so in real time.
The upside
The results can be impressive. Here are just a few examples. But bear in mind that these case studies have been written to promote the use of AI. In reality, we believe there’s still a considerable amount of human intervention and management involved, as brands are understandably cautious and AI is still finding its feet.
Vanguard Institutional, one of the world’s largest investment companies, used the Persado AI language platform across their LinkedIn marketing activity. The platform identified the phrases that resonated with customers and delivered messages with the right formatting, tone and call to action to increase conversion rates by 15%.
The American Marketing Association used the rasa.io natural language AI system to automate the curation, placement and subject lines of articles, to create personalised newsletters for their 100,000 subscribers. This drove a significant increase in traffic to their website, and an engagement rate for their newsletter of 42%.
Adobe generated an extra $10 million in revenue by using the Drift AI chatbot to guide website visitors through their content and hand off conversations to a human in a call centre.
Dutch online retailer Wehkamp, used the natural language AI of Wordsmith to convert the structured datasets of their 400,000 product lines into search engine optimised product descriptions in their own brand tone of voice. This enabled the company’s copywriters and editors to shift their focus to creating advertising and content to attract new customers.
The barriers
So, with the promise of results like these, why isn’t every business jumping on board?
The answer is simply human nature. Business people are cautious. We like certainty. We like data to support our own decision making. With AI, we don’t know for sure what will happen until we try it, and we’re devolving the decision making to the machine.
We may dip our toes into one part of the process. Programmatic display advertising, for example, or predictive big-data analytics. But applying AI across the whole marketing process seems a way off.
It’s the same caution that drives our relationship with autonomous cars (pun intended). We’re relatively comfortable with automated cruise and lane control yet giving complete control of the car still seems scary – even though we know that pilots regularly do this on the planes that carry us through the skies.
The problem of bias
So are we right to be cautious? In short, yes. Hence the need for AI governance to address the concerns around, for instance, bias and privacy.
AI governance audits are encouraging the disclosure of differences in the data a system has been trained with and the data it finds when it’s working. A diverse universe of training data is advised to eradicate bias in practice across all dimensions: gender, race, politics, location etc.
On the face of it this sounds like common sense. But the case of OpenAI’s natural language processor GPT-3 exposes the flaw in this thinking.
The downside
Backed by funders including Elon Musk and Microsoft, the GPT-3 API is already used by companies like IBM, Cisco and Intel, and the engine is embedded into solutions like Pencil who already have over 100 customers including Unilever.
Backed by tech giants and increasingly used by large global brands, GPT-3’s learning dataset has been the whole of the internet. It’s powerful. And yet there are already a growing number of ethical concerns about it.
Despite its power and huge internet-wide learning dataset, tests have shown it still fails some simple common-sense reasoning tests. It also has a problem of bias. A recent research paper from Stanford found that in 60% of cases GTP-3 described Muslims as violent, and wrote about Black people in a negative way.
These problems don’t seem to be isolated to GPT-3 either. A research paper from the Allen Institute for AI found that they applied to nearly every popular AI language model, including Facebook’s RoBERTa software.
The moral dilemma for brands
Clearly, there are many bigger brains working on these ethical problems than mine. But it has led me to ponder some very real ethical dilemmas for us as marketers.
On the one hand, we’re deploying fast-learning machines with the objective to grow our businesses. They do this by testing and learning from the behavioural data they encounter. They’re pragmatic. They’re not programmed to change the world, but to exploit what it finds to be true.
On the other hand, we’re driven by the objective of our western sensibilities to change attitudes and behaviours by portraying our brands as inclusive and accepting of diversity.
The dilemma for our governance of AI machines in the service of global brands is how to direct them when these two objectives come into conflict.
Do we instruct them to show diverse imagery and use inclusive language in regions, cultures or segments of our communities where they don’t resonate with the audience or deliver commercial results? Or do we let them pragmatically deliver an ever-evolving hyper-personalised version of the brand with a core purpose, tailored to the sensibilities of whoever it encounters?
The future
I don’t have the answer to these questions. But it’s important our industry and the practice of AI governance addresses them now, in these early stages of evolution. Even now, we can see AI engines being embedded and replicated in other systems, and applications being swiftly adopted.
The danger is that any bias or ethical conflicts programmed into the DNA of these early engines may be hard to stamp out as they replicate and grow into interconnected ecosystems.
If we think things are moving quickly now, this is nothing to where the experts predict it will go next. Imagine an AI system designed by another AI system with the objective of being better than itself. Science fiction? It’s already happening. The DeepMind project has developed AlphaGo, an AI-powered machine, to play the game ‘Go’ – thought to be one of the most challenging board games in the world. Not satisfied with beating the world’s top players, they used AI to create a version that beat itself.
To learn more about the ethics of AI, be sure to check out the latest episode of Women in Business.
In the past 3 years, eCommerce businesses have experienced the impact of a number of global crises.
Right now, we’re still living through the aftermath of a global pandemic, rising inflation, and the war in Ukraine. And these global events have shaken even the most successful eCommerce brands.
Over the past 6 months, retail brands have started losing some confidence in marketing spend amid worries of a bleak future. However, knee-jerk reactions can do more damage than you think.
There are opportunities for those brands willing to invest. And to help you through these turbulent times, we have released a new guide – Global Issues: The Threats Affecting eCommerce.
You can download it free here. Or scroll down to find out more about everything included in the guide before you make up your mind.
In our latest guide, we take a closer look at the global crises impacting eCommerce brands, how brands can react and excel in these uncertain times, as well as the top 5 trends defining the eCommerce landscape in 2022.
It covers…
Digital advertising revenue reached $189 billion in 2021, jumping 35% – the highest increase since 2006.
But as we’re sure you’re aware, the picture is not rosy for many retail brands. Inflation, war, pandemics, and supply chain shortages have all created a difficult terrain for brands to flourish.
Consumers have responded to these crises by cutting back on their spending. The less people are willing to spend, the less people will be actively clicking on your ads.
The future eCommerce landscape looks tough. But there are still opportunities out there if you focus on the marketing trends that are emerging. It’s these trends that will help you succeed in 2022 and beyond.
You can get a free copy of the guide here. And if you have any questions, feel free to drop us a message.
The founders of The Big Plastic Count – Greenpeace UK and Everyday Plastic – appointed purpose-driven creative agency, Enviral, to create its latest national campaign, which has lifted the lid on the country’s recycling rates and exposed that the government is talking trash about our plastic problem.
Through their launch video, The Big Plastic Count and Enviral encouraged 31 MPs and 97,948 households to take part in counting their plastic for a week in May, which equates to 1 in every 262 households in the UK. This was the biggest ever investigation into UK household plastics and the data uncovered will be crucial in convincing the government, big brands and supermarkets to take ambitious action on reducing plastic packaging.
Throughout the investigation, participants counted over 96 billion pieces of plastic and uncovered that only 12% of our plastic waste is actually recycled with 17% exported abroad, 25% sent to landfill and 46% incinerated.
Working in close partnership with the The Big Plastic Count team, Enviral developed the creative, the narrative and oversaw the shoot productions to create three hard-hitting films; a launch film, a how-to film and a shocking results film which puts pressure on the government to act.
Chris Thorne, Plastics Campaigner at Greenpeace UK said: “The plastic crisis is out of control but if the government acts we can get a grip on the problem. That’s why The Big Plastic Count is so important. Getting the narrative right on a campaign like this can be make or break. Through Envirals understanding of our needs and their collaborative approach they’ve helped us create assets we know the public will connect with and will lead to more and more people pushing the government to take ambitious action to end the plastic waste problem.
Joss Ford, Enviral Founder, comments: “We’ve been consistently beating the drum around the role of creatives in fighting the climate crisis and in connecting hearts and minds. So being able to partner with such an impactful organisation like Greenpeace UK really is a huge moment for our team and one which we hope brings real impact and holds those in power to account.”
This project embodies Greenpeace UK’s wider mission to defend the natural world from destruction, with a vision for a greener, healthier and more peaceful planet that can sustain life for future generations to come. The campaign evolved out of The Everyday Plastic Survey, pioneered by Everyday Plastic, a research-led non-profit focused on evidence-based education and campaigns. With the aim of mobilising and inspiring the UK population to help lift the lid on our recycling, it’s hoped this campaign will hold the government to account and bring real, positive change.
Enviral was awarded the contract after a competitive pitch process. With previous agency nominations including The Drum’s Best Use Of Video For Digital Advertising, Enviral is a full-service ethical brand communications agency based in Bristol that leverages the power of storytelling to effect real change for future generations.
Watch the launch video in full here.
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