The end of Google Wave

In this brave new world of fancy ideas and interesting ways to talk, it’s sometimes difficult to tell what will last and what won’t. When Google introduced Wave, the buzz was that Google had reinvented email. Just under a year later, it’s pretty clear it hasn’t. And in August, they announced its death. “Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked,” was the reason over on the official blog.

We covered Google Wave just as it crested (sorry) back in November 2009. We liked its premise: a combination of email, instant messaging and social networking. And when we looked at the impact Google Wave might have on the way we communicate, we were really excited about the prospects for chatting through the service using something like Skype.

But despite being open-source – anybody could develop ‘plug-ins’ that would make it do certain things – indifference has caused its demise. So what next?

It turns out Google Voice is what we were really looking forward to.

Google is the kind of company that learns from its mistakes. Taking bits and bobs from Wave, and applying them to their other products, means the technology isn’t completely lost. And with acquisitions including VoIP technology outfits, simple integration with Google’s flagship Gmail service, and a user-friendly interface, Google Voice is taking off already – with the company claiming in excess of 10,000,000 calls already made.

What is Google Voice?

Voice over IP technology has come a long way. It basically involves chatting to your mates over the internet, as opposed to fixed landlines, or on your mobile. And it’s cheap. Skype has defined the market, for the most part. It’s been going for a long time and it’s synonymous with cheap calls domestically and internationally.

Understandably, Google wants a slice of the cake. It’s now ploughing plenty into its Skype competitor – and it’s looking good for the future of affordable phone calls.

In terms of coverage, the difference has come through Gmail. More recently, it’s been easier to use voice and video chat through the Gmail site. And now that Voice has been integrated into Gmail, it’s now available to everybody using Gmail in the US.

It lets users send text messages and call phones throughout the US and Canada – and it does it from the contacts list. This convenience, coupled with its clean, clear sound quality, makes it really useful. And the best bit? It unifies all of a user’s numbers – a bonus for anybody, business or individual, used to juggling multiple phones.

There’s a downside, however. With calls to mobiles so expensive here in Europe, it’s unlikely that Google Voice will make an appearance in UK Gmail accounts for some time yet.

We can hope, however, that this new model for calling comes soon – because unlike Wave, Google Voice seems to have a defined, practical use, and a much larger market to serve.

Want to know more about Google Voice?

Follow the dedicated Twitter account: @googlevoice

Check out Google Voice online: click here.

cbmd@flickr

We spoke to two of PH Media Group’s talented Audio Producers – Mark Griffiths and Josh Cassell, about what it takes to create the right sound for a business. With a client-base encompassing some of the UK’s biggest brands, just how do they decide what sounds best?

How do you choose the music for clients? What factors do you consider most important?

M: It’s important to match the style of music to the client’s corporate image as closely as possible.  On-hold audio should be an extension of their existing advertising strategy. Working from the brief, the script and the choice of voiceover artist, we can work out what music track will best enhance the message the client wants to get across.

J: For me the two main factors are:

Tempo – depending what business sector the company is in determines the tempo of the track. For example a fast-moving logistics company would want something upbeat and fast paced, while in contrast, a hotel would have something slow and relaxing in line with, creating a restful guest ambience.

Texture – again if it’s a multi-faceted company with lots of sectors and a dynamic approach, then I’d use a track which has lots going on – percussion with a wide range of high and low-pitched instrumentation, fun melody and a steady rhythm would be perfect. At the opposite end of the scale, if the company has a relaxed, less corporate image then I’d use a simple track with nice chord changes and a flowing melody.

Is it ever appropriate to choose a track that’s unexpected?

M: It may be if it sounds interesting and keeps callers listening, but generally the music shouldn’t distract from the main point of the on-hold production, which is the script.

J: On occasion when a company sells a product that seems fairly common, and lots of other companies sell the same, you may automatically expect a generic ambient track. Using a jolly upbeat jingle and fun voiceovers could grab the customer’s attention and make them think that this company isn’t the same as all the others, it has something different and quirky about it.

What’s the most popular track?

M: Rule The World, at the moment, we think.  It’s the second one we’ve produced in the style of Coldplay.  Their stuff seems to have the right combination of style and unobtrusiveness.

J: At the moment I would have to say Rule the World too!

Can you tailor a track to client’s brief? How would you go about this?

M: We can produce a bespoke music track to the client’s specifications if required, as an additional service. For example, our composer has produced exclusive tracks for TGI Friday’s and Audi. But we find that the very wide selection of music tracks in our current library means we can always find a great match for any client’s needs. We’re also on the cusp of a full music overhaul to ensure our library stays fresh and in tune with current trends, in terms of popular music and audio branding.

Can you think of examples of clients that have something a bit different that works well for them?

M: Many clients have their own jingles or corporate music tracks from radio and TV advertising and we can easily incorporate those into an on-hold production.

J: Coca-Cola’s on-hold production features their new song to tie-in with their TV and online audio branding. Essex Wildlife Trust use the birdsong of native species which works well with their script.

Hopefully this post has given a bit of an insight into the way our Audio Production team work, and the process behind matching great brands with great music. Keep checking the blog for more information about the ‘science of sound’ as we get technical in the coming weeks.

Having a bad day at work and tempted to tell callers exactly what’s on your mind? For many people, indulging in a spot of under-the-breath mumbling is enough to relieve tension, but for one school in Australia, their infuriation at pupil absences and lack of parental support was eloquently spat all over their answering machine. In fact, a whole auto attendant message was dedicated to making their feelings very clear!

Did I hear that correctly?

With no fewer than 10 auto attendant choices, parents were encouraged to press a number most suited to their enquiry – covering everything from lying about a child’s absence or inability to do their homework to swearing at staff and complaining about lunches. It certainly makes for an entertaining listen – check it out:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pwghabw4N80

Office on meltdown or just a clever hoax?

If this is a real recording, we’re led to believe that the message had disastrous consequences for the school.  Well, such a courageous (or stupid) message would! So make sure your day goes a little easier by keeping customers informed with clear, concise and direct On Hold Marketing and auto attendant messages. And if you’re feeling a little close to the edge, just write down an imaginary auto attendant list. It’ll make you feel better… and it’s much more amusing than counting to ten!

Business Voicemail is all part of the audio branding experience. It’s sometimes the first contact you’ll make with a customer, so it’s crucial you make the right impression every time.

Here at PH Audio, we’re passionate about getting it right for our customers, so we’ve put together a few tips on how to make the most of your Business Voicemail package.

No music, just message

Unlike your telephone On-Hold Marketing production, we advise that a Business Voicemail message shouldn’t have music in the background. The message on your voicemail production needs to have clarity and let the caller know why you can’t answer the phone. After all: they don’t want to listen to a voiceover production with music in the background — they just want to contact you personally.

Don’t use an answering machine

A caller can tell when they’re put through to an answering machine; the production quality isn’t anywhere near as good as a professionally recorded business voicemail greeting and the blandness of the message can put callers off. Much more can be done for you and your business with a personalised message.

Use a lasting message

It’s sometimes the case that employees want to show how organised they are by changing their message each day, and by displaying the date to their callers. But if you forget to change the message, it can easily have the opposite effect. We suggest you only change your message if it’s vital, i.e., if you’re away for a prolonged period of time or the message becomes outdated.

Keep it simple

If your callers struggle to get hold of you time and time again, there’s nothing worse than being caught up in long-winded voicemail greeting. Make it easy for your callers to leave a message and assure them you’ll contact them as soon as it’s convenient.

Keep on top of your mailbox

Don’t let your mailbox get full! Sounds obvious, but it does happen. Make sure you keep on top of the messages left in your inbox; mainly so there’s always room for someone to leave a message — you don’t want to miss any messages from clients.

Add a personal touch to your greeting

Callers are trying to contact you directly, so the likelihood that they know you is high. By adding a personal touch to your greeting, you can give your callers something to smile about and strengthen their views of you and your business. Add a greeting that says something about your character, and do it in a way that reflects well on your business.

Keep the greeting in line with both personal and company branding

Much like adding a personal touch to your greeting, it’s critical that you keep all communications in line with your personal and company branding. For example, corporate branding guidelines may state that you can only use a particular voiceover artist for your productions, or there might be certain words that have to be said when greeting callers.

Make use of a professional Voiceover Artist

Of course, there’s no reason why you can’t record the voicemail greeting yourself, but ask yourself: ‘What does that say about me and my company?’ More importantly, what does a professionally recorded greeting say about you and your company? A professionally produced and scripted greeting can have more impact on your callers and keep them happy even if they can’t get hold of you during your client meetings!

Be the master of your destiny

After planning your marketing approach for the year ahead, make sure you take the time to factor On-Hold Marketing into your strategy. OHM can help you reinforce important changes in your business calendar such as product launches, new services, special promotions and exciting company news, as well as support your marketing agenda.

If you have renewals included in your package, you can easily plan changes in to your production without any disruption to your existing message, which will continue to play on your system until the new production is ready to go live.

And if you don’t already have On-Hold Messaging, have you thought about how you will handle the surge of customer calls following a marketing campaign? After spending a great deal of time and money on raising the portfolio of your business, it wouldn’t be effective to place them on hold to silence or beeps — especially as 60% of customers faced with such an impersonal greeting will hang up in a matter of seconds.

Pocket pleasing marketing

On-Hold Marketing is a fantastic way to make a great first impression. Messages are bespoke to your business, they’re interesting and informative, and they’re a superb way to psychologically reduce hold time. And when you consider that 20% of callers make a purchasing decision based on the information they hear when they’re on hold, it’s one marketing approach you don’t want to miss out on.

Writing for voiceovers

Something we wrestle with on the PH Media copywriting team is how things are said. Not so much pronounced – although the odd company name might throw us – but written to be said. We write scripts for our professional voiceovers to read aloud, which means thinking about more than the rhythm of speech and the balance of a sentence.

And, because the difference between what’s on paper and what’s spoken can often be larger than we realise, we know a few things about what works – and what doesn’t.

Say what?

In practice, the considerations are simple. The first one is exactly that. If we keep it simple, the message is easily understood. Keep it snappy, and we keep it sharp. Ramble away, and the message is garbled; the audience is lost.

Every prompt carries its own message – information about an aspect of a business or the sales line for a product. So are you more likely to read a prompt that wings its way around the point – or one that’s on the button?

Here’s one we made earlier

Here’s an example. I’ve invented a company. They’re called Gumguardian, they’ve made a new kind of dental floss product and they want PH Audio to deliver a targeted music on hold service that ties in with their print advertising campaign. They’ve briefed us about the product, so we know what it does, and now they want their on-hold messaging to reflect their printed message.

Here’s what we could say:

Utilising the latest innovations in dental technology, Gumguardian has been developing a revolution in dental flossing – Gum-champ!

Sounds quite impressive, doesn’t it?

Now read it aloud.

When did you last utilise anything? Maybe in an essay. You’d certainly never say you were off to utilise the toilet. And that bit about Gumguardian doing something in the past – it’s almost old news; it doesn’t sound fresh.

This is where simplicity wins through. Utilise means use, which has only one syllable, so it’s simply written and simpler to say. And, by putting things in the active, present tense, the sentence develops an urgency you can’t help but listen to.

Here’s the same message with these things considered:

Choose Gum-Champ from Gumguardian – the revolutionary dental floss you can actually use.

Direct, to-the-point, effective.

Next time, we’ll have a look at the importance of correct punctuation in an audio script – and how something as little as a misplaced comma can be disastrous when read aloud.

Viral marketing for success

Think of a few cheaply-made yet wildly successful films. The compelling Blair Witch Project springs to mind as an early example, followed more recently by Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, and last month, the critically-acclaimed sci-fi actioner, District 9. But a compelling story is only half the battle – not least because exposure is everything in a saturated industry – and on the ground, it’s been clever marketing that’s driven ticket sales.

The film

Set in an alternate Johannesburg, South Africa, Neil Blomkamp’s District 9 deals with the tensions between humans and a race of aliens who arrive and stay for twenty years, leaving a massive spaceship hanging over the city like a bad cloud. As an allegory, it’s pretty clear it’s about segregation and the apartheid: the aliens are kept in a settlement, isolated, and are gradually resented and scape-goated by the locals for serious crimes in and around the city. But as an action film, it’s very solid too – well-paced and shot in a mockumentary style that captivates and adds a realistic edge to even the daftest alien weapons.

Using phone messaging innovatively

It’s this theme that inspired a great marketing campaign, complete with fake notices marking benches and phone boxes for ‘HUMANS ONLY’, and a phone line urging citizens to report alien sightings and ‘non-human activity’ across America and the UK. On calling this phone line (part of a wider marketing campaign conceived and set up by London-based digital agency, Spinnaker), people are prompted to leave messages – in the spirit of McCarthyism – to advise a fictional agency about suspicious ET activity. This brings the content and tone of the film into the real world, providing a real-life talking point that’s complemented with online viral adverts and interactive content shared across MySpace and Facebook.

Who were you going to call?

It’s not the first time a big film’s audio marketing campaign has breached the fourth wall. When Ghostbusters (1984) was first released, its director Ivan Reitman ran a mock TV advertisement as a trailer, complete with a 1-800 number for viewers to call. According to the Internet Movie Database, callers heard a recorded message by Peter Venkman (Bill Murray) and Ray Stantz (Dan Ackroyd) saying, ‘Hi, we’re out catching ghosts right now.’ Apparently, they got 1,000 calls per hour, round the clock, for six weeks.

The wider picture

The mock phone line is a great example of how innovative audio marketing can be used to enhance and cement a wider campaign. Its interactivity makes it a talking point, and fosters discussion around the themes the film explores. It also shows that continuity across different media makes for a much stronger message – that an integrated, consistent message is more powerful than a fragmented approach.

The bottom line

District 9 has so far taken $103,968,663 worldwide in less than a month – not bad for a film with a $30million budget.

You can have a listen to the District 9 phone message and auto attendant by MNU (the film’s dodgy human security firm) by clicking here.

Photo: alexkerhead

“Call quietly or there will be… trouble.”

On the 1st of September 2009, the Federal Trade Commission of America banned automated sales calls.

An amendment to their Telemarket Sales Rules requires telemarketers to obtain written permission from American consumers to receive Robocalls.

If you’ve ever received a Fonejacker-style cold-call claiming you have won a holiday on a cruise ship, you’re probably received a Robocall at home before.

Don’t worry though, this form of direct marketing is already illegal in the UK if the calls are made without the implicit consent of consumers.

What are your thoughts on this use of audio technology?

Image credit: Gruntzooki @ Flickr

The rise and rise of free stuff

You’d be hard-pressed to miss the rise of free media content. In general, we’re expecting more for less – reading more free news online, downloading more free music online, enjoying more texts, more call-time minutes, watching telly on the internet, and getting the latest news through our phones. There are so many ways we can get so much stuff — and we’re not really paying for any of it.

But what we are doing is watching, seeing, hearing and consuming a lot more advertising.

Medium as messenger

Like it or loathe it, the business model is as simple as it is ubiquitous. It’s a bit like a local newspaper – it’s free in the local area and it’s paid for by local businesses advertising their cars, flowers or legal services. It’s the way commercial radio and commercial television work. It’s also a model that’s powered the internet’s growth.

Recently, we’ve also seen the idea applied to Spotify’s basic accounts. It’s fine to listen to any music, just as long as you don’t mind the odd advert every few songs. And now, it’s something that looks set to expand into the telecommunications market.

Ringing in the changes

Ringback Tone Advertising reflects the rise, if nothing else, of its platform. In basic terms, it replaces the normal dial tone for their callers with an advert, so that if you call somebody, you’ll hear an advert for a big firm instead of a ring-ring. But even if that sounds a little distasteful, it’s not the whole story. Existing subscribers using Ringback Tone Advertising in Turkey (with Turkcell) receive benefits including free call time and text messages as incentives to subscribe to the service. This isn’t unique, either, as something similar’s going on in India, where OnMobile has monetised its subscriber base with Ad RingBack Tones, or AdRBT.

But the benefits for businesses can’t be ignored. For the companies doing the advertising, there’s no disruption – the adverts are direct and the caller’s almost certainly going to listen to them. What’s more, the possibilities for interactivity with other mediums are numerous.
It also creates revenue for carriers and firms alike – and it’s being seen as a new kind of income for Google, whose innovative approach to advertising has so far managed to sidestep criticism.

The bigger question: is it coming here?

Google has filed a patent under ‘Ringback Advertising’ in the US – which means it will be a new kind of income for the search giant, using the same methods it uses to monetise websites with Google Ads. So, while we can expect it will be integrated with Google Voice (a service that lets you communicate seamlessly across multiple devices, currently accessible by invitation only) when it’s released, what we don’t yet know is how it will work. Google Voice will be free – but will its users accept and tolerate the idea of ringtone adverts played at them when they’re calling their pals? And since Google already knows a lot about how we search online, will they also start tailoring these audio adverts to our calling habits, locations and age demographic?

So it’s back to us – the consumers. Consumers who really like free stuff, and who are increasingly picky about what, and how, we consume. If we end up paying for a service that still plays adverts to us, we probably won’t be impressed. And that’s before issues with advert length, and whether or not the advert stops when we’re connected. It also leads to questions about Google – and whether or not they’re in danger of losing fans with this one.