Engaging more with your audience and listening to what they want can actually allow you to either change your purpose a little bit more, or at least define that, but actually then change the story you are telling them.
Vicky Lalwani is the General Manager of Adrenalin Media, an innovative full-service digital agency based in Sydney that specializes in customer experience, digital strategy, visual design, and enterprise web and mobile platform development. He has been with Adrenalin since 2010 and held several positions including operations and client services director.
In this episode of Velocitize Talks, Lalwani discusses digital innovation, customer experience and Adrenalin’s agency success.
Culture Club (1:21)
We’ve taken the sort of attitude that it’s not [just] about people skills, but it’s about their willingness to learn and willingness to challenge themselves. By creating this culture of constantly creating excellence, we found that our team tried to constantly push the status quo.
Over the course of Adrenalin Media’s existence, they have expanded their offerings and focused on pushing their creativity. They enjoy working with clients who are willing to take risks. Their company culture of constantly challenging has ended up creating award-winning work and a roster of like-minded clients. Just in the past two years, in fact, Adrenalin has been awarded Webby, AMY, W3 and B&T awards.
Growth flip (6:35)
We realized that effectively our growth was held ransom by their [clients] briefs. Why don’t we put the conversation the other way around and say, ‘tell us what your business challenges are.’
The agency has invested in a separate innovation lab space called AdrenalinX, a collaboration studio where marketing, IT, and agency staff can work together. This indie agency has grown to 50 full-time creative professionals. It also provides clients with creative solutions to engage their customers with niche and disruptive technologies.
AdrenalinX has offered their clients no-risk experiences with new technologies. It’s currently developing a branded VR platform to deliver an immersive and engaging experience for users. Additionally, the project is leveraging Unity to test apps and 360 degree experiential activations on Oculus Rift and Samsung Gear.
It’s about time (8:58)
I look at AI as a way to actually give people more time back and actually allow us to spread our intelligence and do other more meaningful things.
Lalwani realizes that people are frightened that AI will replace their jobs and they will be made redundant by robots. However he likes to flip that perspective by thinking of AI as a technology that will be of service to people in making their lives easier.
From making the process of ordering groceries online simpler, watching movies more aligned with our personal tastes, and listening to a weekly curated list of new music, based on the music you already love, AI makes our lives easier. A study by Gartner states that this year AI will create 2.3 million jobs reaching 2 million net-new jobs in 2025. Additionally in 2021, AI augmentation—a combination of human and artificial intelligence—will recover 6.2 billion hours of worker productivity.
Saving private data (13:52)
It’s up to brands to be able to build comfort in individuals to say, this is the only thing we do with [data].
Personalization has become a hot topic in the worldwide digital privacy conversation. People have become increasingly aware of the information they are giving away; this may result in a reduction on what they are willing to share. As a result, this leaves the responsibility on marketers to be explicit in the ways they are using a customer’s data.
According to a study by WP Engine: Most consumers are happy to share information for a better experience. AI allows brands to be more accurate with personalization, but there’s a catch: the experience should only feel personalized in certain contexts, or else it will start to feel creepy.
Getting to know you (14:42)
Some of our clients are in the retail space or they own retail property. So we’ve been looking at working with them around using things like iBeacons to connect the physical and digital world.
Beacons can help businesses learn more about their customers and engage with them in a different way. The global beacon technology market is predicted to grow from $1.17 billion in 2018 to $10.2 billion in 2024. Adrenalin Media worked with a car manufacturer to create an app that used beacons in their retail locations in order to enrich the car shopping experience. They did this by educating a buyer on the cost thereby decreasing the friction at the end of sale.
To learn more about Adrenalin Media, visit their website and follow them on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.