AMC Net Content/Chicago

Say something — Creating an authentic voice for your content

When

Tuesday, May 28, 2002

Net Content/Chicago invites you to an evening of discussion on three topics facing content people today:

Raising Your Voice (Nancy Gershman): Not all clients (internal or external) understand Voice – especially if there is no brand identity to begin with. Extending the online voice to offline media or vice versa can get very political. Sometimes you want to carry tone and language through an entire site (and e-CRM), but sometimes you don’t. Who knows best? You tell us.

Selling Voice Up the Ladder (Brian Jones): What happens in a very vertical company when you’ve been successful selling the Voice from the brand manager on up, but there’s an impasse with upper management who suddenly spin around and say, “This isn’t our brand!”? Let’s explore the most common scenarios with agency-based vs. in-house corporate web teams.

Selling Brand/Voice from the CEO Down (Paul Bryant): Conversely, when the CEO/Founder is the brand, how do you make sure the Voice of the web site is an honest expression of the founder’s original vision and persona, even if that requires challenging management’s own concept of mission? Not easy, but let’s find out how it’s been done!

Discussion leaders

Nancy Gershman, Content Developer. Nancy has found interviews in the field to be invaluable for creating Voice -- listening not only to what’s said, but what's left unsaid by customers and clients. As a Senior Writer at www.agency.com, this approach led to a “liberating” Web site for a B2B transportation exchange (www.routemaster.com); a new grassroots movement from PwC (www.unifi.com); and a monthly lifestyle magazine generating product ideas fom real-time polls (www.sargento.com). Nancy’s Web-writing classic, "Cyrano Sets the Tone,” is legendary today in CRM circles, introducing non-writers to the proper courtship of customers on the Web.

Brian Jones, Content Developer, Giant Step Communications (http://www.giantstep.com). A former journalist and music critic, interpreter (explaining technology to creatives), and now translator (taking brands offline to online), Brian has been using both lobes for nearly two decades. His content development work with clients like Disney, Oldsmobile, Lexis/Nexis, Purina and others has taught him many things, but most of all: “Urgency and brevity still are the two most powerful ways to compel a user to action.” When he isn’t reading and listening to music obsessively, Brian is working on a book about rock musicians as totems.

Paul Bryant, Creative/Marketing Leader <http://www.creativedaddy.com>. A creative at heart and a business-person by experience, Paul has led an award-winning creative team at Abbott Labs, worked as Chief Creative Officer at iXL and most recently, as Director of User Experience and Creative Discipline Lead at Sapient. In addition to building and leading organizations, his expertise is in coaching companies, groups and individuals on outcome-driven approaches to creative process. For more than 17 years his teams have delivered results for clients such as Pfizer, General Electric, Allstate, Peapod and Kimberly-Clark.

Materials

Meeting notes (Word document)

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