Voice Boxes: Branding Conversational Commerce

Tk

Voice Boxes: Branding Conversational Commerce

Tk

Best Example: The first Virgin America safety video. Took a standard script, which never varied from airline to airline, and rewrote it to fit the brand voice. It was laid back, casual, and lightly comedic. (Let us never speak of it’s safety video successor, easily the worst aspect of flying Virgin America) With its success others followed suit. America’s was trying a bit hard but still the stiffly corporate. The script was the copywriting equivalent to khakis and a cornflower blue tie. Delta’s found a nice voice: higher production values, friendly, slightly funny, but inclusive.

Voice Box as an Application

  • An API: A system which takes in a phrase and outputs the same phrase in the brand’s voice. Such an API could power off the shelf chat bots and more.
  • An App: An application which helps people working for the brand communicate on voice. This could be a custom keyboard which recommends a phrase with the same intent but better voice. Or a desktop app which helps customer support representatives  

Axes of Voice

  • Variable/
  • Variable/Strength: Humor and personality in applications usually falls flat (Clippy, Siri, MovieFone). Repetition breaks our suspension of disbelieve. Cute isn’t cute the 15th time. The veil falls when we get stuck in loops. “I’m sorry I just can’t do that, Dave.” But this should account for context. An ever present brand should be present but not overbearing. A luxury brand should offer something unique. [GIF of HAL]
  • Context/Regionality: Your voice should fit the region it represents. For some brands, this should be vary by locality. For others, it should be fixed. Fashion brands should generally be exotic, not familiar. Convenience restaurants should be familiar, not foreign. (Speaking your native tongue is the linguistic equivilent of knowing your usual order)
  • Context/Role: Are you building a voice for customer support (when the customer is frustrated) or for selling or for use in advertising? A strongly branded voice would grate on the support line.

Input Dictionaries & Phrasebooks

  • I’m still wrestling with this question: if we train a model or algorithm with copy-written material and use it to generate text, is it an infraction?
  • David Cope and music

Challenges