‘The industry needs to be educated’: How voice experience agencies will finally go mainstream
UX, CX, and now VX… it can be hard to keep up. But now that voice experience has well and truly landed in Australia, Mumbrella’s Josie Tutty talks to award-winning VX agency Versa about how to sell a product that Australia hasn’t quite got its head around. Yet.
In 2007, Steve Jobs stepped onto the stage at MacWorld and introduced the audience to a product that would change the world. At that time, no one had ever heard of an iPhone, let alone understand the concept of an app.
In the same year, Kath Blackham was working at realestate.com.au, heading up the global product team. She didn’t think apps were going to be a thing. In a world where smartphones were just a few months old, it was a concept she just couldn’t get her head around. Why would anyone go onto a phone and download an app?
“I wasn’t quick off the mark and I paid for it,” explains Blackham, who these days is the founder of Australia’s first enterprise-level voice experience agency, Versa. The agency recently won Emerging Agency of the Year at this year’s Mumbrella Awards, and she’s explaining why second time around, she knew she had to bite the bullet and take a punt on the new kid on the block: voice. And that’s exactly what she did.
Well thank goodness for 2007.
Before that we had no apps (we used to call them programs) and no iPhones (we used to call them telephones), and for voice we’d chat with friends, listen to radio, listen to music, go to the cinema or theatre, make a telephone call, watch some television, etc.
Gosh it was just simply awful before 2007.
The first step brands need to take is at a brand level to define what they sound like, it’s as important if not more important than visual guidelines. Without rigour applied to guidelines it will become a subjective mess of personal opinions. Versa are doing an amazing job, agree that education is 90% of the battle, but encourage brands to think guidelines to inform the voice experience.