The workplace is rapidly changing, but workplace practices, norms, infrastructure and management is struggling to catch up. Digital transformation is estimated to be worth over $400 bn in 2021 and is projected to continue to grow by 25% year-on-year.
This rapid change has left businesses in disarray. Is their digital infrastructure prepared? Which employees are struggling to work digitally? Whose remit does this transformation fall under – the CHRO’s, the CIO’s, or the CEO’s?
Enter Actual Experience.
Luckily for all of us, the Actual Experience (AE) team saw this digital mega trend approaching a decade ago. Having built their business on 10 years’ worth of academic research, they’ve engineered a comprehensive patented algorithm which, minute-by-minute, captures and analyses the real-world, human perception of digital applications and services.
In other words, they help businesses ensure that the digital tools, systems and platforms they’ve invested millions in are actually making work easier for employees, and providing a better experience for their customers.
Currently, many businesses use tools such as employee and customer surveys to find out the answers to those questions. But there’s a problem: employee and customer surveys are subjective and are often inaccurate or inconclusive. But when used in conjunction with Actual Experience’s algorithm, it is possible to glean objective, actionable insights from survey data.
ActualExperience’s Human Experience score provides businesses with an objective analysis showing which specific employees are struggling, and with which specific aspects of their digital infrastructure, so they can focus their time and resources on these issues – and keep up with the ever-shifting digital curve.
So, following on from a successful Account-Based Marketing (ABM) campaign and digital brochure, AE were keen to put their money where their mouth is, and upgrade their own digital offering to reflect their progressive business.
The AE team approached us to upgrade their website from Hubspot to Webflow: a no-code flexible website solution that doesn’t require complicated set-ups.
Our first step was for Actual Experience to take us through a thorough wish list. Here, we put together a full feature list, created high-fidelity wireframes and new digital design styles using their updated brand guidelines.
This process meant that when we transitioned the website over to Webflow, both parties had a very clear picture of what it would look like and how it would function. So we could push for tight deadlines in line with AE’s objectives without having to go back and forth to check small details at every stage.
One of the highlights of the website is the design-led navigation that adapts seamlessly to different screen sizes including phone, tablet and various desktop sizes. This was quick and easy to build with Webflow’s online visual editor. This platform is the perfect application for creating visually stunning, easy to use designs that don’t require massive amounts of coding, which AE in this instance, didn’t.
The navigation is not only designed to draw the user in, but allows different audiences to access different content that suits them. For instance, a HR professional will seek different information to IT professionals.
In the end, we created a future-proofed, design-led website under a demanding timescale, migrating 200+ content types seamlessly from Hubspot to Webflow. Check out the full AE case study here, along with the all-important, client feedback.
To find out more about Webflow, and our other digital design services, get in touch with us today at [email protected].
Develop your narrative skills and write rich, engaging games.
A strong story is key to engaging and retaining players in video games. Held over 7 weeks, this online course teaches the story-structure essentials that will help you craft richer and more compelling games.
This is a professional development course for anyone who works – or aspires to work – in the gaming industry as well as writers and designers seeking to develop their interactive storytelling skills.
The course has been created by the UK’s foremost expert on narrative structure John Yorke and Caroline Marchal, founder of British studio INTERIOR/NIGHT and Lead Designer for Heavy Rain.
In this training course, you’ll investigate the relationship between player and protagonist, discover how to merge story and gameplay, and find ways to use those skills in a real-world development team. Working in a small group, you’ll receive weekly one-to-one feedback from the tutor team.
By the end of the course you’ll have written an industry-standard story treatment for an original game.
On successful completion of the course, you will receive a certificate of completion evidencing your learning and study hours. You will need to set aside 4-5 hours per week to complete the assignments.
Read a review of the course on Polygon.
Exclusive 25% discount on the £1,200 published course price. Just £900 to Bristol Creative Industries members for 35 hours of intensive learning.
MORE INFORMATION HERE or email [email protected]
In our previous blog, we explored a joint report from LinkedIn and the B2B Institute, ‘5 principles of Growth in B2B Marketing’ to find out how businesses make their purchasing decisions.
In the second part of this series, we’re exploring the case for brand memorability – or mental availability – and why you should consider a route to B2B fame.
Expanding your customer base
Acquiring new customers is expensive.
Many B2B companies believe increasing loyalty is the most profitable way to grow their businesses. Others focus on acquisition strategies, targeting new key accounts they want to penetrate.
The jointly commissioned report ‘5 Principles of Growth in B2B Marketing’ by LinkedIn and the B2B Institute shows that campaigns which talk to both new and existing customers – also known as reach strategies – are the most effective.
In fact, the report’s data reveals that those relying on a loyalty strategy alone showed a zero-success rate. Loyalty tends to be a side-effect of market share, and brands with a high penetration tend to have better loyalty rates.
Please see original article for picture: https://www.proctors.co.uk/knowledge-hub/b2b-marketing-masterclass-part-2
So that’s the science behind B2B decision making. But is it rational or emotional? The answer, according to psychologists, is that we’re all human. and our thought processes follow the same basic patterns.
One of these is our tendency to use mental shortcuts to reach a decision. NobelPrize winner, Daniel Kahneman, famously put it this way:
“Human beings are to independent thinking as cats are to swimming. They can do it, but they prefer not to. The brain is largely a machine for jumping to conclusions.”
Essentially, when presented with choices, or asked a question, we usually prefer to select the answer which comes to mind easiest. You may have experienced this yourself when put on the spot. Psychologists call this ‘mental availability’.
For brands, ‘mental availability’ has two levels.
The first level is awareness.
Your brand will have lodged in your customers’ memories, and they’ll recognise your name.
However, awareness will only get you so far, and the most you can expect is to be shortlisted from the long list of potential choices. To reach the top of your customer’s mental availability, your brand will need to level up.
The second level is fame.
Take IBM, for example.
Everyone knows their name, and I probably don’t need to remind you of their famous line: Nobody got fired for hiring IBM. This single creative line was repeated over and over again, forming an emotional connection that made it easy to make the choice. Long after they campaigned it, we still remember it, talk about it, share it.
And here’s the data which proves the point.
Please see original article for picture: https://www.proctors.co.uk/knowledge-hub/b2b-marketing-masterclass-part-2
Success isn’t a contest between lead generation and brand in B2B marketing. We can see that winning B2B companies apply both in their marketing mix. But if your Sales Director still isn’t convinced by the data, perhaps this story will help.
You’ve successfully launched your lead generation campaign. In fact, it’s been so successful that your sales team have followed up with an excellent meeting with Key Prospect Biz. Your salespeople do a great job of pitching the benefits of what you offer, and your brand makes it to the Key Prospect Biz’s shortlisting stage.
But now, your salespeople have left, and things go quiet. Key Prospect Biz’s decision goes to committee, and you’re not in the room to influence the conversation.
It’s been a while since your guys’ presentation, and human memory is short. This isn’t the final stage, but you know it’s more than likely they’ll use the easiest route to jump to their conclusions. This is where brand awareness will likely drive their mental availability and get you on the shortlist. Great news!
Now it’s a three-horse race. You’re each invited to pitch to a panel of C-suite decision-makers and the influencers who got you this far.
There may be an upstart challenger brand in the running for comparison, but the other two will be recognised brand names.
Now no-one doubts your abilities to work the room as a great salesperson. But it’s a fair bet that the famous brand amongst the pack will already have had an impact on the C-suite. In fact, they’ve probably already jumped to a conclusion before you enter the room.
So, which of the three would you rather be?
Ah yes, your Sales Director says, but our ABM campaigns have made sure that everyone in the room knows who we are and what we stand for.
True. ABM is by far the most effective B2B sales activation tool in your armoury, and a good campaign will have got you this far. But it won’t have made you famous.
Fame takes time to grow. The famous brand will have been imprinted in the minds of those executives consistently over and over again. Talked about with colleagues. Acknowledged as leaders in their sector. Collectively famous for what makes them great.
It will have made them the first name that springs to mind.
Your sales director still doesn’t buy it? OK, here’s a final question for them. Why is it that when successful salespeople move jobs, they’re usually tempted to work for bigger brands to advance their career?
If you’re still not getting anywhere, maybe it’s time you thought about moving jobs to a bigger brand yourself! (Only kidding.)
If you’d like to talk about supercharging your brand strategy with the latest industry data, or to discuss your creative marketing requirements, get in touch with us today at [email protected].
Using a content agency for your case studies can make your life a lot easier. If you get it right, this hard-working and authentic bit of comms will become a secret weapon for winning new customers. But no matter how eloquently expressed and beautifully packaged they are, a case study is nothing without customer buy-in. What could’ve been an invaluable marketing tool can become a resource-draining flop if you fail to get customer approval or ongoing engagement.
Here’s how engaging your customers could be the key to your case study success.
Hubspot calls the case study “one of the most powerful strategies for showcasing your marketing skills and attracting future customers”. However, an inauthentic case study that overstates your involvement isn’t going to do you any favours. Make sure you do your level best to capture the relationship accurately and use clever language to enhance its appeal, rather than overt exaggeration.
Remember – your clients need to be happy with what you’re saying about them. And if they’re not, it could sour your relationship and mean they’re not happy for you to use the case study to promote your brand.
Although you’re producing the case study as part of your marketing efforts, your customer could also benefit from its publication. That benefit could be more impressions on social media when you post the content or a quality backlink from your site for their SEO strategy. Emphasising these shared benefits could help win their buy-in. But it’s important to be honest about the benefits you’ll be getting, without trying to make it sound as you’re doing them a favour.
Don’t spring a case study on your customers. It’s important they know you’re planning to leverage the relationship you’ve built as a shining example of professional synergy. Or, in less pretentious terms, that you’d like them to say nice things about you that will make future customers want to do the same.
Being upfront and transparent about your intentions will stop your request from feeling opportunistic and cheeky.
There’s no exact science to it, but here are a few rules to keep in mind:
Do what you can to make the process as simple and effective as possible. For example, make sure you’ve identified the most relevant person to interview, provide clear questions beforehand and maintain control of the interview to keep it as concise and focused as possible. This is where drafting a third party like a content agency to conduct the interview and summarise your client relationship can make the process simpler and more efficient.
An expert interviewer and writer knows how to ask the right questions and extract relevant information without taking up hours of your client’s time. And once they’ve got it, they can produce a solid draft that’s easy and enjoyable for your client to review and approve.
Let’s imagine you’ve captured all the lovely feedback, shaped it into a glowing case study and polished it to within an inch of its life. Next comes the approval stage, where you get your client to sign off all the pleasant things they’ve said. Surprisingly, this stage can be the trickiest to get past, as it can feel like an endless wait to get the final sign-off from your busy client.
You might feel tempted to skip it altogether. After all, your client has agreed to produce a case study and chatted to you about what you’ve done well. Surely that means they’re happy, right?
Perhaps, but it’s a naïve and potentially costly assumption to make. Let your client know what process you’ll follow to get their input and approval, and make sure you stick to it.
It’s always sensible to make sure you haven’t misinterpreted any of the nuances of your conversation. For example, your contact may have been charmed by the interviewer (writers are a charming lot, after all) and admitted something that’s better kept off the record, meaning they’re no longer willing to stand by the published case study.
To make sure your hard work doesn’t end up unloved and unpublished due to delays in the final step, you need to stay focused on how you can speed the process. This is especially crucial if you’re in a fast-paced industry like tech, where it’s important to prove your credentials quickly.
To get your case study over the finishing line, you need to make it as easy as possible for your client. Simplify the review process with templated response forms so people can easily record feedback. You can also offer to take work off their plate by tidying up feedback left as tracked changes or utilising the services of a content agency to bring all parties’ thoughts together in a coherent, engaging way.
When we produce content for clients, we know our job isn’t over the second it’s signed off. We want our clients to win with words, and that can’t happen until they’ve been published in all the right places. So if you’re setting up a case study programme for the first time or feel like yours could do with a boost – get in touch.
In the first blog of this two-part series, we break down the findings of LinkedIn and the B2B Institute’s joint report, ‘5 principles of Growth in B2B Marketing’, and explore why it takes a balance of brand building and sales activation marketing to effectively grow their businesses.
People are emotional creatures. That’s why brand building works so well on consumers. People become invested in – and attached to – their favourite brands, from cereal, to phone networks, to operating systems.
But business buyers are rational. Right?
Wrong.
OK – maybe not completely wrong. Purchasing decisions are made rationally in any successful business. But you’re missing a trick if you think building a B2B brand doesn’t matter.
But sales activation or performance marketing is the most effective way to measurably grow a B2B business. Right?
Wrong again.
In fact, a jointly commissioned report by LinkedIn and the B2B Institute – ‘5 Principles of Growth in B2B Marketing’ – has the data to prove it. (And, by the way, so does our client’s data.)
So where do these entrenched views come from?
B2B companies tend to be driven by either product leaders, service leaders or sales leaders.
Product/service-led companies tend to view marketing as ‘the price you pay for an inferior product or service’. Sales-led companies are driven by short-term sales targets, and they want leads. Now.
So, whilst many B2B marketers recognise the commercial potential of longer-term brand building, they face an uphill internal struggle to make their case.
But the ‘5 Principles of Growth in B2B Marketing’ report empirically proves the business case for longer-term B2B brand building and its impact on growth, by demonstrating:
· B2B brand building increases ‘mental availability’ and ensures your brand is easily remembered in a buying situation
· Effective brand campaigns reach every buyer in your category
· Creative brand campaigns that capture attention at an emotional level are delivered consistently over time, growing significant sales in the future, not just in the short-term
· Increasing loyalty does not significantly add to growth, but customer acquisition does
B2B brands follow the same ‘share of voice’ rule as their B2C cousins. The report defines the rule as follows:
“There is a well-known relationship between a brand’s “share of voice” (typically defined as its share of all category advertising expenditure) and its rate of growth.
Brands that set their share of voice (SOV) above their share of market (SOM) tend to grow (all other factors being equal), and those that set SOV below SOM tend to shrink. The rate at which a brand grows or shrinks tends to be proportional to its “extra” share of voice (ESOV), defined as the difference between SOV and SOM.”
The research data shows a significant correlation between market share growth and ESOV for B2B brands, specifically, demonstrating that in B2B, 10% extra advertising share of voice causes 0.7% market share growth per annum.
The report shows that the best performing B2B brands have an optimal balance between long-term brand building and short-term sales activation/performance marketing.
In B2B, the optimal budget allocation is 46% for brand and 54% for sales activation.
Sales activation focuses on an immediate response, and is generally a rational sell, featuring a piece of informational content, an offeror a product/service feature capable of generating a cost-efficient response.
It’s tightly targeted at hot prospects who are in-market with an intent to purchase, and designed for simple, quick response. Sales activation is great for short-term lead generation and delivering directly measurable ROI, but, it’s unlikely to be memorable, so the effects are short-term and won’t contribute to long-term growth.
In contrast, brand building drives long-term growth, with its effects lasting longer and accumulating over time.
It uses creative impact at an emotional level to create a lasting memory that influences buying decisions long after the adverts run, with a reach that’s much broader than sales activation campaigns, targeting the whole of market, and its effectiveness relying on repeated exposure.
The time frame for any brand building to take significant effect and pass the sales activation peaks shown in this graph is typically 5-6 months.
Not convinced? We recently we decided to test this theory out for ourselves, using the website data of one of our clients. And the results were pretty impressive.
Not only did we find that brand traffic – both direct and brand search – built consistently over time in line with their brand building activity, but we also found that the conversion rates from website visit to meeting requests and paying clients was 50% higher than any other traffic source.
If that wasn’t enough, we also discovered that in territories where there is low brand awareness the conversion rates from lead generation campaigns increased over time as the effects of our brand building efforts kicked in.
Stay tuned for part two, where we’ll explore the case for making your brand famous.
In the meantime, if you’d like to discuss your brand strategy armed with the latest industry data, or to discuss your creative marketing requirements, get in touch with us today at [email protected].
Good news for businesses: you no longer need to depend on high-cost, high-resource development for your digital projects. Apps, websites, and software alike can all be developed using a visual-first approach, with zero in-depth coding necessary.
Since the invention and mass production of the very first personal computers, people have wanted to take more control of their devices. But, whereas tinkering with functionality was once the domain of the ‘geek’, the low-code/no-code trend has grown to become accessible to all.
Today, these solutions have developed into such complex, adaptable systems, that you could argue there’s a decreased need for developers. No matter how amateur your digital knowledge, if you have an idea, you can make it happen with minimal code intervention, starting a business or launching an app with just a few swipes or clicks.
But before you go gung-ho and decide to handle your next digital launch in-house, there are a few caveats.
You’ll still need experience of best-practice UX, UI and user journeys to inform your design and ensure users can engage effectively with your app or website. Plus, you’ll need a knowledge of content and design hierarchy – not to mention branding expertise.
That means bringing in the experts. But low-code/no-code also means when you hire a professional agency to handle your digital build, you’ll save countless hours in back-end development time, and go to launch much faster too.
No-code digital design offers full flexibility when it comes to designing a webpage or app. In fact, a page’s layout is as simple as a simple ‘drag-and-drop’ to bring together development elements.
Low-code offers the agility to inject code into pre-developed templates, for enhanced functionality and a more customised offering.
Recently at P+S, we’ve been adopting more and more low-code/no-code digital solutions for both our clients and our own brand. Some examples include adapting TV for the digital world via a global Islamic community platform, and of course the design and relaunch of our very own Proctors website. Both are packed with stunning interactive elements and intuitive and accessible design, demonstrating just how flexible and professional these solutions can be.
Low-code/no-code solutions offer a huge return on investment, helping to develop SMEs or achieve optimisation for multi-nationals. The benefits are unlimited and inevitable, with the two stand out advantages being the creativity it can deliver, and the speed at which your project can be developed.
Put simply, you’ll have infinite scope for adaptive design when you choose a low-code/no-code solution. And the results are fully scalable across multiple platforms.
Not only can low-code/no-code save you reliance on internal developer resource, but it can also grow your knowledge of coding, providing even more exciting prospects for the future. The platforms involved often have great support systems which tend to be simple and well-resourced, helping to alleviate any worries you might have around back-end or hosting issues.
At P+S, we’ve created a team of award-winning specialists from across our Creative, Technology and Strategy divisions who are ahead of the game on all things low-code/no-code. Meaning we can provide integrated comprehensive solutions with little-to-no code intervention – but all the right design and strategy foundations.
Low-code/no-code is now part of our core offering, with our Creative team helping to pioneer this revolution with website development software like Webflow, who have arguably created one of the best low-code/no-code platforms available to date. (You can read more about some of the benefits of Webflow here.)
As a result, the time-efficient website solutions we create for you can be self-maintained and managed, kitted out with intuitive CMS and UI for quick and easy on-screen editing, and using predefined industry-focused templates that can be injected with code – so there’s no compromise on creativity.
At Proctors, we’re always trying to stay one step ahead ahead of the latest industry trends across our specialisms in Creative, Strategy and Technology. It’s one of the things that’s helped us stay at the forefront of our clients’ needs, and continue to grow our business over the years. And a low-code/no-code solution is one of those stepping stones.
We’re currently one of only two Webflow Enterprise-level Partners in the whole of Europe because of our teams’ commitment to this low-code/no-code methodology. It’s accessible, flexible and in the right hands, offers a cost-effective, future-fit web development solution for businesses of all sizes.
To find out more about building impactful, brand low-code/no-code solutions with Proctors, email us today.
Almost a decade and a half after the debut of the iPhone, does your brand actually need an app, when an excellent mobile website might do the same job?
I bought a foldable mobile last month (yes, I am that person). When it comes to tech, I’m a researcher. I covered a lot of ground to make sure I didn’t miss the best one. But, if I’d downloaded the app of every website that offered me one during the search, I’d have about 10 new apps clogging up my shiny foldable screen by now that I would have no regular use for.
Apps can provide a brilliant customer experience for users, and unrivaled behavioral and transactional data for brands. But it seems to have become almost a foregone conclusion that every business needs an app. If you’ve got a well-designed and user-focused website that works perfectly on any device or screen size, what are you actually adding to your customer’s journey or experience by offering them an app? I strongly believe that every app, and brand, has to work hard to earn a place on a user’s phone/tablet/watch/fridge.
An app can be a great core way to connect with your customers and can provide a brand with really fantastic data insights, especially when used in conjunction with other channels such as email, SMS, and social. This, in turn, is great for driving measurable and attributable ROI.
However, you should only commit your time and resources to developing an app if you’re offering something to me as a user that makes my life easier – a cool or slick customer experience that is elevating what I could get from your website – or you’ve already proven to me that your brand is one I trust and has become one of the main places I will always look for that service or product.
That’s it. Follow those rules and, for a brand, there is loads to be gained.
Take fast-food ordering, for example. If a customer orders in person or over the phone then you get the money but no personal insights. If they order on your app then you get usable first-party, transactional data plus behavioral data. So it’s super tempting to dive into developing an app.
For the user, the experience of using the app to complete a transaction has to have tangible benefits; quick access to their favorites, contact-free payment, order history, Apple or Google Pay, or loyalty rewards.
It’s got to be really great because you’re asking the user to accept less choice and, instead, come straight to you. Conversely, if I Google something, I have an immediate set of results from multiple brands and I can compare and find the offering that matches my full set of criteria.
It’s those tangible benefits that are key. If all an app is doing is taking a mobile website and putting it on your home screen, that’s not a worthwhile investment.
Think of a retailer that sells one thing, such as electronics. What benefit is it to have that app on my home screen?
How about a 10% discount if I download it? If you’re offering that alone, it’s a one-hit-wonder in the making. It’s not the intangible benefit that persuades me to download the app. There’s no point in offering unrelated discounts or perks and not actually looking at customer behaviors. That could be done with emails or flyers. If it’s a bribe, it’s snackable value and not meaningful in the long term.
Your app must be easier to open than the website. Offer your user a slick experience and ensure they get more out of it than they are putting in. Value can be added in the form of easy access to customer service through video calls or chat; push notifications that provide useful info, not just more marketing messages; or being able to use your camera to scan products or your biometrics to log in, for example.
First, ask yourself, is the website utterly amazing? Apps aren’t there to make up for shortcomings with your website. Ensure it’s nice to use, that it’s easy to find everything you want and that users feel serviced. Are you adding to brand equity every time someone’s in your world?
Next, ask how an app is going to elevate that. What’s better for the user about using your app? Through consistently good brand experience – in-store, on social media, CRM – prove to your users that they are valuable and that they will get out more than they put in.
If you’ve done your app well, it becomes that key touchpoint of the relationship between you and your users. An app has to build upon the amazing service you already provide and be used more than once. An app for app’s sake will only frustrate.
By Rob Pellow, Innovation Director. Originally featured by The Drum, June 2021.
What’s the one thing Siri, Alexa, Cortana, and Google Assistant have in common?
In short, they’re all female.
At first, this may seem a harmless coincidence, but if we scratch the surface, the domination of the female voice in AI is far more problematic than it may appear.
Today, almost 3 billion people are currently using voice automated software to assist with daily tasks such as setting alarms, checking the weather, or even texting a friend. And the number of people opting to use voice assistants is not expected to decrease.
Yes, we all know this form of AI is beneficial for our ever-evolving digital world, but are these voice assistants causing more harm than we realise?
A greater number of consumers are starting to question the gender bias in voice automation, as they are starting to understand that opting for a female voice can reaffirm the social ideals that women are obedient, should do as they’re told, and most importantly, are here to serve the needs of others.
And because of these observations, many AI creators are now facing criticism for opting for female voices.
With all this in mind, we were intrigued as to why so many companies opt for female voices. Throughout this article, we uncover why there is such a strong gender bias in AI and map out the key steps we can take toward changing this bias.
The lack of male data is the most common reason most programmers opt for female voice when creating voice automated AI, and this is a problem that has been building for some time.
To create voice automation, you need to have a rich set of voice recordings within your text-to-speech system, and most text-to-speech systems have been trained using female recordings. Therefore, it’s much easier and cheaper to create female voice assistants.
So, why do we have so many recordings of female voices available to use?
Up until 1878 telephone operators used to be a solely male-dominated workforce, but they were often heavily criticised for being rude, abrupt, and unhelpful. In response to this Alexander Graham Bell suggested hiring a woman to see if her voice was better received.
Emma Nutt made history and became the first woman to be a telephone operator. Customers responded so well to her voice that she sparked an industry-wide overhaul, and by the end of the 1880s telephone operators were exclusively female.
It’s because of this industry-changing decision we now have hundreds of years of tried-and-tested female audio recordings available to us to create new forms of voice automated AI.
And this leads us on nicely to our next point…
This is probably the most contentious reason why AI programmers opt for female voices – we prefer the sound of female voices.
Many studies have suggested that our preference for the female voice begins when we are in the womb, as these sounds would soothe us even as a fetus.
Another reason why some researchers argue this preference exists is that women tend to articulate vowel sounds more clearly, making female voices easier to hear and understand than male voices.
An example of this can be seen as far back as World War II. Female voice recordings were used in aeroplane cockpits as they were easier to hear over the male pilots.
Up until now, this idea that female voices offer more clarity than a male voices remained unchallenged. Today, many researchers heavily dispute this claim and have found that the many studies that claim female voices are easier to hear when using small speakers or over background noise are simply not true.
There’s even more evidence to show that many people criticise women for their vocal ticks. For example, if you type into Google search “women’s voices are” the top suggested search will finish this sentence with the word “annoying” …
Clearly, AI programmers currently face a difficult challenge when asked to create male voice automation, and Google is a prime example.
Google Assistant was first launched in 2016, and many people were wondering why this AI product was not assigned a gendered name. The reason behind this choice was because Google wanted to launch its new voice assistant with both a male and female voice.
Unfortunately, Google’s text-to-speech system is what ended Google’s desire to launch a virtual assistant with a male and female voice.
Google’s initial text-to-speech system worked by joining segments of audio together from recordings, by using a speech recognition algorithm. It would add markers in different places in sentences to teach the system where certain sounds would begin and end.
As the text-to-speech system was trained using female data, Google Assistant performed better with female voices.
The global engineering manager for text-to-speech at Google, Brant Ward, explained why it was so hard to create a male voice for Google Assistant.
He said that the markers used in their text-to-speech system were not placed accurately for male voice recordings, this meant that it was more challenging to create a male voice assistant of the same quality as the female counterpart.
As it would have taken over a year to create a male voice for Google Assistant, the team at Google decided to run its Google Assistant with only a female voice.
As you can now see, the gender bias in voice automation has become an unshakeable paradigm because of a lack of data and societal acceptance over the preference of the female voice.
When a whole industry is stuck in its ways, even the notion of creating male voice automation can feel like an uphill battle.
It’s time we changed our approach to male voice automation, and there are some simple things we can do as an industry to eliminate the gender bias in voice automation and throughout the AI industry.
1. Inclusivity Is Key
Perhaps it’s obvious to say, but this is an issue that needs to be highlighted. Full stop.
Currently, “women make up an estimated 26% of workers in data and AI roles globally, which drops to only 22% in the UK”. And this percentage drops even further when you look at the number of people in AI who are transgender or non-binary…
It’s disappointing stats like these that show we need to do much more to encourage people of all genders to pursue a career in AI. We want our AI development teams to be more diverse, and this won’t happen if we don’t act.
Once we have a more diverse workforce, we will be able to pinpoint and resolve complex gender issues before and during the production stages of new AI products. Now, in order to attract more diversity, we need to start looking at ways to encourage all genders to follow a career path in AI in higher education.
This can be easily achieved by creating a strong educational foundation, with multiple learning channels available to all students, no matter their gender orientation.
We also need to encourage people of all genders to take an active role in the development of AI course materials. When students see they are being represented in courses they are studying, they are more likely to continue in further education.
2. Develop New Machine Learning Technology
Machine learning technology has come on leaps and bounds in the past few years, and there are now new text-to-speech systems available that create naturalistic male and female voices for AI.
After Google struggled to create a male voice for its virtual assistant, the tech giant joined forces with AI specialists DeepMind to develop a more advanced text-to-speech algorithm that significantly reduced the volume of recordings needed to simulate human voices.
Now known as WaveNet, this algorithm allowed Google to create a more naturalistic voice for all genders, which were then added to Google Assistant in 2017.
Today, America’s version of Google Assistant comes programmed with 11 different voices, and new users are assigned one of two basic voices – one male and one female – at random.
3. Industry-Wide AI Standards Need to Be Made
The domination of AI is not expected to slow down any time soon. In fact, the global market value of AI is expected to reach $267 billion by 2027!
When you think about how AI is becoming an integral part of our society in one way or another, it is shocking to think that there are still no standards in place concerning the humanization of AI.
To this day, most tech companies develop virtual automated systems with a female voice, and this can still enforce the stereotype that women are “assistants”. In order to combat this, we need to have AI standards in place to ensure our products are far more inclusive.
To create these industry-wide standards we must include people of different genders, sexual orientations, races, and ethnicities in the decision-making stages.
With a more diverse group of individuals, we can work together to define what “female,” “male,” “gender-neutral” and “non-binary” human voices sound like and when it’s appropriate to use such voices.
These industry standards should also include a basic set of protocols. Companies would then need to adhere to these rules when creating text-to-speech algorithms to ensure AI products are unbiased and sensitive to potentially harmful gender stereotypes.
It looks like voice assistants will be a part of our lives for the foreseeable future, and because of this, we need to address the gender bias surrounding this type of AI technology now.
Just by opening a discussion about gender representation in voice automation, we can actively begin to create a future of AI that’s more inclusive for all.
Cytel, the world’s largest provider of statistical software and advanced analytics for clinical trial design, has appointed AgencyUK to lead the strategy and roll-out of Solara, the next generation in statistical and predictive trial design and selection software. This trial strategy platform combines massive cloud computing with Cytel algorithms to dramatically expand available design options for confident selection of the optimal design. Unifying statistical design and clinical strategy to improve clinical development productivity, Solara helps teams control uncertainty by simulating millions of design options in minutes; minimizes costs by ensuring teams find opportunities to shorten trial duration; accelerates speed to market (10-20% faster) and benefits the patients sooner.
The technology is such an advancement for the sector, that the Cytel board are investing heavily in its rollout, which includes a significant marketing effort led by Rebecca Grimm (Vice President, Marketing), Cytel and the team at AgencyUK.
“Solara is a real first for our industry, and we’re already active with live customers and their case studies which are starting to emerge. We appointed AgencyUK based on their sector experience, proven test and learn methodology as well as their passionately creative team. In partnership with AgencyUK, we’re looking forward to seeing the rollout expand globally over the coming months” says Rebecca Grimm, VP Marketing, Cytel.
“Our team has been working with pharma, biotech and clinical research organisations since 2008, and it’s always exciting to be at the forefront of new technology that can change how an industry operates forever. We’ve been developing the Solara brand and proposition alongside the go-to-market strategy. Digital media plays a vital role in its successful adoption by big pharma teams and biotech leaders alike, and we’re looking forward to its global roll-out over the coming months” says Sammy Mansourpour, Managing Director, AgencyUK.
With the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, the Healthtech sector has continued to rapidly grow. Sector providers and developers can now capitalise off this tech infrastructure acceleration and bolster the operational inefficiencies previously driving up costs, creating exponential improvement in digital healthcare.
Technology can optimise processes, deliver apps, products and services to combat other pre-existing health factors linked to the pre-Covid health crisis such as the aging population, chronic diseases (e.g. obesity) and the ever-growing drug development costs. This has been recognised by regulators and legislators who have responded to the growing health crisis by lifting regulatory red tape.
This huge shift across digital healthcare, and the society as a whole, has created huge opportunities for start-ups, unicorns, decacorns, hectocorns as well as more established firms to create solutions for both B2B and B2C end users across the healthtech sector; including patients, professionals, hospitals and biopharma.
In 2020, the UK attracted record levels of investment maintaining its leadership in European digital healthtech research. In terms of global growth, digital health is set to double in the next five years, reaching $350 BN. All of the demand, investment and adoption are driving both B2B and B2C to grow quickly however B2B is scaling faster as B2B takes the longest to unlock.
Healthtech – a thriving sector
Throughout the pandemic, professionals and patients have become accustomed to new digital healthcare systems, platforms and processes. In the UK, online medical appointments soared from 2% in early March to 80% in April. Furthermore, 9 out of 10 GP prescriptions are dispensed electronically. This together with App-based Covid reporting and check-in systems are good examples of how things pivoted online driving the digital user experience.
Going forward, innovation will continue to flourish at the consumer interface level, linking to a variety of sub-sectors including digital therapeutics, femtech, remote care, remote appointments and monitoring services.
Check out our article on the top five healthtech companies to watch here. Or you may be interested in our Five Organic Marketing Activities to Kickstart Your Startup.
You need to load content from reCAPTCHA to submit the form. Please note that doing so will share data with third-party providers.
More Information