InMoment-Attributes-Creative-Guidelines
- 1. We are uncomplicated, streamlined, clean, and uncluttered. Everything we do has a purpose—there is no need for excess. Focus on your purpose. Simple & Elegant is our keystone value. Without it Bold could become arrogant or inappropriate and Human could become goofy. It provides Invested and Innovative the proper focus. Use photography, illustration, or typography to achieve a polished, refined, and deliberate result. Simple & Elegant Design Persona: Kristi Knight Fundamentals Simple & Elegant means always pushing to be more purposeful and more functional in content. It means isolating the key message of a given piece and showcasing its distinct story within the big picture. Simple & Elegant is a result of forethought and planning. To communicate simply and elegantly takes upfront collaboration. It takes stated focus and disciplined resistance to tangents. Simple & Elegant never tries to do too much. Key Writing Disciplines • Lists & Outline Style Example 5 Steps to Embed Customers in Your Culture • Define your customers generously • Listen to your customers authentically • Act on feedback consistently • Communicate with customers clearly • Reward & recognize sustainably Voice
- 2. Challenge incumbent thought. We are not afraid to stand out, to be different, to challenge the status quo. We are courageous in our approach. “The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon.” – Brandon Sanderson Bold is not loud for its own sake. The focus should be clear, not shrouded in too much metaphor. Bold Design Persona: Erich Dietz Fundamentals Bold is speaking truth plainly. It is deliberately stating opinion as opinion and fact as fact—and both as absolutes. Bold has a passion for the here and the now, the black and the white. It challenges antiquated notions with current results. Bold requires experience and confidence. It understands the real problems faced by the audience, the real solutions available, and it connects them in straightforward terms. InMoment Bold directs its strongest words toward ideas, not individuals. Key Writing Disciplines • Active Voice Example No One Has Better Credentials Than Your Customers You are who your customers say you are. Social media channels and online review sites have made them the final word on your reputation—and the money follows. Voice
- 3. Surprise with unexpected arrangements. We believe in doing things better and in making things better. We are constantly looking for ways to improve. “If you aren’t experiencing failure, then you are making a far worse mistake.” – Ed Catmull Innovative is an area where we can be unexpected and look strategically to push the boundaries of our status quo and highlight our technology. Innovative Design Voice Persona: Kurt Williams Fundamentals Innovative looks beyond the here and the now. It goes deeper than the black and the white. Driven by the joy of discovery, Innovative views a topic from every imaginable and imaginative angle. It sees everything and assumes nothing. Pulling from a diverse pool of observations, Innovative arranges the seemingly mundane into novel forms. It pushes the right buttons on broad cliches to pull out precise visuals. It bridges dissimilar worlds—bicycles & computers, architecture & software—with principle-based parallels. Innovative is different for the sake of being better. Key Writing Disciplines • Wit & Cleverness Example It’s been raining outside, but the storm appears to have let up. A woman turns to her husband as they prepare to leave the house. She asks, “Should we bring an umbrella?” The man says, “Better safe than soggy.” The woman pauses and gives her husband a look before saying, “I see what you did there.”
- 4. Empathize with the emotional audience. We believe business is personal, and our people-centric approach sets us apart. Human connection is at the heart of who we are and what we do. Human is the why of what we do. Everything is about the connection between people. Human puts a heavy emphasis on photography capturing genuine moments of interaction. Human Design Voice Persona: Lonnie Mayne Fundamentals Human considers business a personal pursuit, a way to reach people and improve their lives. Human values sincerity over scripting, authenticity over acting. It shows. It feels. It rarely just tells. Human forges a connection through familiar speech and builds a relationship through shared experiences. Its tone and vocabulary are common and conversational. Human borrows from what it hears, it quotes from its audience, and it speaks from the first person perspective. Key Writing Disciplines • First Person Perspective Example In a late ’60s locker room, I stand with my father—nearly 300 pounds of man wrapped in wrestling spandex from the waist down. His broad bare torso topped by the head of a gentle yeti. He reaches down, puts his big hand around mine, and squares our shoulders up to the moment. Hand in hand we walk toward two closed doors. Light and noise pour through the cracks, carrying the energy of a sold-out stadium to my little heart. We take our unevenly matched steps until we are standing just a few feet away from the thin, movable barriers.
- 5. Account to others for your actions. We take pride in what we do; in not only finishing what we start but also in exceeding expectations. We are part of our clients’ success. Invested can be more academic and less graphic, but should never feel stale. It is the area for professionalism, research, structure, and credibility. It is also an area where we can highlight our technology. Invested Design Persona: Dr. Paul Warner Fundamentals Invested is collaborative and accountable. It takes pride in what it does. It pays attention to detail out of respect to itself and its readers. Invested is aware of its audience and their expectations. It takes care of its grammar and punctuation as a show of good faith. It cites its sources and encourages collaborators to dig deeper. It has a reputation to uphold, a service to provide, and a legacy to leave. It knows it is involved in a great work and no mile should be considered “extra.” Key Writing Disciplines • Documentation & Citation • Grammar & Punctuation Example Substantial research has already proven the link between the customer experience and critical outcomes, including customer loyalty1 and a customer’s willingness to pay. These outcomes are achievable only as retailers successfully compete for a shrinking share of consumers’ wallets. 1. Haumann, T., Quaiser, B., Wieseke, J., & Rese, M. (2014). Footprints in the Sands of Time: A Comparative Analysis of the Effectiveness of Customer Satisfaction and Customer-Company Identification over Time. Journal Of Marketing, 78(6), 78-102. Voice Invested As online shopping accounts for more and more retail purchases, the “ease of business” metric will continue to carry weight, which isn’t to say that “ease” is only valued in online retail—nor is it to say that brands aren’t exploring ways to deepen the human connection of an online interaction. 2. The deeper emotional self Primary Interaction: Human-Human In a world made increasingly transparent by the Internet, shoppers are also taking opportunity to remove their consumer masks and approach brands as they would approach a person, setting emotional marks such as “empathy” and “caring” as standards for satisfaction. In this more complex, more meaningful relationship, informed consumers factor in human characteristics alongside “behind the scenes” business practices when making a decision to allow a brand into their life. From this viewpoint, personalization means evidence of distinctly human responses and characteristics in a consumer’s brand interaction. In this study, one consumer compared an IVR phone tree to human phone operator contextualized a company’s phone tree is to the surface consumer persona, it will never be personalized in the same way that an empathetic human is. This type of human-human interaction has become the face of today’s customer experience, because the human relationship is the ultimate loyal connection. In the words of another participant: “I enjoy the ease of ecommerce, but I also like knowing there is someone I can talk to or a store I can go into for a personalized experience.” “Personalized experience can come across as fake.” Transactional vs. Transformational Interaction: Transactional • Price-based value • Immediacy needs • Commodity-based • Direct exchange of goods for services/products • Dehumanization Transformational • Fulfills emotional needs • Creates brand advocacy • Long-term loyalty vs. short-term satisfaction • Customers and Brands invest in each other (reciprocity) “If you can make us feel less like a mass of unknown faces and help us to feel like we are really important to the company we might be able to bring back brand loyalty.”