Digital Living - what cultural differences can teach the communications industry

In the consumer technology world, there is a real love/hate relationship with devices. We love them, but we find them frustrating. We have high expectations of them and sometimes they let us down. Looking into that tension can help manufacturers understand why people feel the way they do, and what drives adoption vs. rejection. In turn, having this insight is extremely valuable when formulating PR campaigns.

The just released Digital Living Index research www.digitallivingpr.com looks at how people use and think about consumer technology, what attracts them, their aspirations and how these intersect with values of the human experience. Unusually the research takes an anthropological approach, ensuring qualitative research to show how cultural phenomena affect the adoption of technology and its impact on PR communications. This, coupled with a six-country quantitative Ipsos survey of 6,000 participants, reveals a few considerations that PR professionals need to consider in their communications plans.

The elephant in the room

Rather counter-intuitively the main finding of the research showed that what people most want is simplification. The majority (50%) chose this over other experiences, like connecting with others or getting information quickly. The reason this seems counter-intuitive is that the belief in this industry is that “technology sells itself” i.e., if you keep offering more and more features and functions, people will love your products more. It’s the elephant in the room. But clearly, what consumers want most is that the product is easier to use and that it makes their life easier. That’s an important concept in this study – it’s not just ease of use, which is still fairly focused on features, it’s streamlining the experience I want to get to. So if I want to host a dinner party and then share the experience with the guests afterwards, I expect my devices to make it easy for me to invite people, to research menus, to post pictures of my creations online afterwards and so on.

Interestingly, the Digital Living Index showed that simplification also showed the greatest gap - this is the area that was very important to consumers, but where they were least satisfied. 76% of consumers said they are not very satisfied with technology’s ability to make their life simpler.In simple terms it’s the expectation gap. The second major finding goes back to this question of our love/hate relationship. The index found that overwhelmingly around the world, people feel very positive about technology (96% like or love), but more people like it than love it. This reveals a big opportunity for manufacturers to move consumers from like to love and build brand loyalty for their particular brand – the ultimate task every PR agency gets briefed to do!

What technology manufacturers and PR agencies need to acknowledge is that what people want most from personal technology today is simplicity. Strange then that technology is often promoted as being bigger or better or faster when what people really want is to understand how their devices can get them to their desired experience more easily.

Island culture

Cultural differences are important, especially in multi-country PR programmes, and building this knowledge into campaigns can maximise the impact of PR. Take the UK for example; we are unquestionably quite different in our adoption of consumer technology. For Brits, perhaps because we’re an island, when it comes to information, we rely heavily on consumer technology to stay in touch with the world. In this study, Britain has the highest satisfaction (94% of respondents) with technology because it helps us stay informed about the latest trends and news (94%) and the second highest because it allows us to get the information you want when you want it (95% and US slightly ahead with 96%). Staying in touch is in our cultural DNA. The long history of the UK media, with London as the capital of European financial news and being the entry point for American businesses into Europe, could have an influence on this.

The British public love their TVs, and Britain comes top in the survey with a staggering 97% of consumers saying it’s the technology they like most, which is more than any other country in the study, including multi-tv-channel US. Our love affair with TV is as vibrant as ever, with the advent of reality TV, catch up TV (iplayers) and VideoOnDemand (VoD) all having a great influence on the weekly 28 hours of TV Brits watch.

Interestingly, this love affair does not extend to other consumer technologies. Unlike the survey results for China, the UK is still to fall “in love” with their smart phone. The UK uses smartphones predominantly for information (40%), with only 17% of Brits using a smartphone for entertainment purposes.  Brits have experienced continuous smart phone upgrades and as a result we have gradually embraced new uses/experiences on smartphones, but perhaps not totally embraced this powerful consumer technology like the Chinese have. Mobile phone use in the UK is predominantly for information purposes, and unlike the Chinese, Britain still relies on the TV experience, for example, in their front room rather than on a mobile device.

Considerations

Technology manufacturers that embrace these aforementioned ethnographic nuances, cultural traits and in-country differences have lots to gain. The Ketchum Digital Living Index findings have important implications for technology PR and communications professionals; here are a few PR considerations:

1. Focus on the experience, not just the object
By linking product features and capabilities with the experience each type of consumer wants, companies will show that they understand the consumer’s real needs and drive greater product adoption.

2. Take a page from consumer packaged goods companies
Consumer brands have been integrated into the human conversation far longer than technology brands. Technology brands, on the other hand, tend to compare one micro-innovation to another, instead of integrating their product communications into the conversations of everyday life.

3. Don’t ignore the elephant in the room – simplification
All signs in this study point to simplification as an unmet need. Life today is complicated, and the study data says that personal technology is falling short of expectations as a helpmate in navigating all this complexity.

4. Understand the cultural DNA
Communications and marketing professionals that make the effort to understand the prevailing cultural framework for the audiences they are targeting and then develop culturally relevant communications will have greater success.

For further information and findings: www.digitallivingpr.com

To view an infographic of the findings, click here

David Vindel, Managing Director, European Technology, Ketchum
 

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