Friday Five: Mindset and culture are key to cultivating customer relationships
Zone’s Florence Buswell handpicks and shares the five best new stories on digital trends, experiences and technologies…
1. Mindset and culture are key to cultivating customer relationships
Customer-centricity is no longer just about understanding the customer through data or joining up channels. Mindset and culture now rule supreme if you want to build a trusting and fruitful relationship with your customers, and your chosen success metrics must fall in line too. This is according to marketing bigwigs at our recent DX Summit, in partnership with the Festival of Marketing.
So what are the ways that keep customers engaged? Part of it is about treating customers as individuals, say Paul Latham and Kate Dalton — head of audience development and head of brand strategy, respectively, at Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant Formula 1 team. Emotional connection and listening to what your employees are telling you is also key, stresses MINI UK’s Colette Healy. What is your brand story saying?
2. Elon Musk is now Twitter’s biggest shareholder
Twitter shares soared by more than 27% in New York trading on Monday. And it’s all down to Elon Musk. According to a US securities filing, the Tesla chief executive has now taken a 9.2% stake, making him the largest shareholder in the company, with more than four times the 2.25% holding of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey.
Elon Musk regularly uses Twitter to update his 80 million followers, sharing updates, memes and controversy. Last year he tweeted in response to a claim, made by the head of the UN World Food Programme (WFP), that just 2% of Mr Musk’s wealth could help to solve world hunger. Mr Musk said he would sell $6bn in Tesla stock and donate it to the WFP, provided it could describe ‘exactly how $6bn will solve world hunger’.
3. 3D printing robots take over Selfridges
Selfridges newest pop-up store will feature 3D printing robots. Not a sentence I expect to write — but according to the department store, the pop-up, called Supermarket, will have the robots creating everything from “juicy plant-based steaks to lightweight handbags and recycled plastic furniture on demand.”
Customers will be able to watch 3D printing in real-time, see some mind-bending fashion (Jean Paul Gaultier 3D printed shoes anyone?) and meet a 2.3m tall robot focused on using 3D printing to transform plastic pollution into items including homeware, clothing and sunglasses. And if you fancy taking something home, Supermarket will also include exclusive NFT digital artworks, available to purchase in-store.
4. One in five UK adults own cryptocurrency
Do you own crypto? A new report by cryptocurrency platform Gemini, the 2022 Global State of Crypto Report, claims nearly one in five of us in the UK do, with our ownership levels now jostling with the likes of other European countries, such as Germany and Ireland. The pandemic is a likely lever, with almost half (45%) buying it in the last year. And if you’re wondering who these crypto owners are — the report found the average cryptocurrency investor was aged 36, with London holding the highest crypto ownership at 23%.
But is it the future? Interestingly, although 80% are buying it for the long-term gains, only 20% of respondents view cryptocurrency as the future of money.
5. TikTok giving agencies chance to become TikTok experts
TikTok is difficult to ignore these days — but how can your agency cut through the noise? Wonder no more, as TikTok have announced the launch of a new Creative Agency Partnerships (CAP) University program, to help creative agencies become TikTok experts.
The five-week program, beginning on April 19th, will teach companies what they need to know about getting started on TikTok and how they can guide their clients to creative success. In a blog post after the announcement, TikTok said ‘after completing the program, enrolees will be able to lead conversations with their clients, concept and create for the platform, and continue driving their clients’ business forward. Most importantly, enrolees will have a newfound understanding of the creative possibilities on and off the platform.”
