Voice first sneaker drop with Nike and bridging the voice and social gap with Unilever with Nick Rovisa and Matt Lang

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Kane Simms

About this episode

We’re capping off RAIN week in style by diving deep into two epic case studies from Nike and Unilever, as well as developing some new thinking on viral voice, with Nick Rovisa and Matt Lang.

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In this episode

In part 2 of RAIN week, we’re joined by Nick Rovisa, Director, Business Development, and Matt Lang, Strategy Director. The guys share their learnings on the voice industry, including how different clients perceive price i.e. how much should a voice project cost, as well as whether to think about voice from a content or app perspective.

We dive deep into the work the team did with Nike in using Google Assistant to launch a new pair of sneakers at the half time interval during a televised Celtics v Lakers basketball game. We look at how the project came about, the lead times, the technical necessities of handling substantial transient traffic and the results of the project on sales.

We discuss how through working with Unilever and a selection of influencers, RAIN were able to achieve a 10% conversion rate of newsletter sign ups via the Alexa skill they built. The Unilever project was a 7 week pilot with a selection of influencers in an attempt to bridge the social and voice landscape. We discuss how this new medium caused confusion with influencer licensing and how to get around that, as well as the results of the pilot and what it takes to sustain a content heavy voice experience.

We discuss how to measure success and how, for some, starting to gather data to develop understanding is a better option than setting KPIs. We cover how to sell, without selling or being too overly salesy (that’s a word).

Finally, we chat about what’s missing in voice: virality (that’s another word). This includes developing our thinking on how to make experiences spread and whether to plumb voice into the mobile and social ecosystem in order to help discoverability.

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Things we discussed

Adoption, growth and in-skill purchases with Nick Schwab

Everything is a remix by Kirby Ferguson

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Kane Simms

A strategic AI advisor who, for the past decade, has helped business leaders and product owners transform customer experience using conversational and generative AI.

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