When it comes to traditional paid advertising, Voice is a walled garden militantly policed by Amazon and Google. Their position on conventional ads is clear: Adverts are annoying. They compromise the user experience. Ads are not welcome here.

But the walls of this garden have not always been so tall. This article covers three true stories that shine some light on how we got here and what the future holds for brands wanting to be part of the next big thing.

In the beginning.

An Alexa sits on the shelf in an average home somewhere in America. Like 11 million others she has been the gift that keeps on giving. Beyond just skipping your music, she also provides a near constant source of fascination to children. “Go play with Alexa, grownups are talking”; a phrase echoed in households across the land. Little Jane scurries off to play with her new best friend.

Two weeks later a confused parent is stood on the doorstep signing for five identical doll houses totalling over $2000. During playtime, little Jane had asked Alexa multiple times to “play doll’s house and get me a doll’s house?” Alexa, an unquestioning servant, had dutifully ordered the items, charging them to the linked account.

Quietly, the soft, delicate hands of unseen developers were slapped as the unquestioning nature of our new assistants were restricted and logic improved. An assistant needs to know who its master is. The first brick is laid.

One hit wonder.

A creative team at advertising agency David Miami sit, probably stroking hipster beards, as they attempt to break the office Google Home. Asking a string of progressively more obscure questions they noticed something. For inquiries outside of a preprogrammed response, the answer returned was sourced from the ‘internet-truth-factory’ – Wikipedia. Behind their collective beard, a plan started to form.

A client, Burger King, had the standard big-brand brief; do something innovative and fresh that goes viral. The chaps at David Miami smiled. Forcing the intern into a Burger King uniform, they start to film. Looking straight to the camera the intern says, “OK Google, what is the Whopper burger?” The four coloured lights on the nearby Google Home began to spin.

When the ad aired, 6 million Google Homes sprang to life returning a description of the brand’s signature burger and a list of delicious ingredients. With a Cannes Lion on the shelf and free burgers for life, David Miami was the first to break into voice’s walled garden.

Solutions were rapidly sought. Although not quick enough to stop some from editing the Wiki page and filming the resulting list of ingredients that now included babies and cyanide. This was far from OK Google, who responded by switching off this type of response until a solution had been found.

The highest form of flattery.

With the Wiki-exploit mostly plugged you would be forgiven for thinking that the party was over. Not quite. Aside from turning off the light, voice assistants also have a growing number of talents called skills (Alexa) and Actions (Google). While more general functions had been fortified against misappropriation skills were mostly unguarded.

Exploiting the unguarded for the amusement of others is exactly what Matt and Trey do best. Although embarrassing to be featured by the satirists behind, South Park and Book of Mormon should be considered the highest form of flattery.   

Leveraging the show, the foul-mouthed-cartoon-kids repeatedly ask Alexa to add a variety of items (big hairy balls, scrotum bags and titty-chips to name but a few) to the shopping list. This phrase instructs Alexa to repeat the items requested and confirm that they have been added to your list. In houses across the land, Alexa began repeating profanities to the delight of everyone under 14, and a good many over that age. 

This represents the last major breach to the walled garden. In the intervening months, Amazon and Google have reported significant advances in both voice recognition and voice filtering, further guarding against unwanted penetration (in the spirit of Matt and Trey – “that’s what she said”).

With the adoption of smart speakers outpacing smartphones, this is a medium that brands can’t afford to ignore. The most explicit message from the above is that traditional adverts are not tolerated on this consumer driven, UX focused medium.

Campbell’s is currently the best example. Their skill, Campbell’s Kitchen, provides voice assistance with recipes and related content, all without a bowl of soup in sight. What they are offering is something relevant, useful, free and without a hard sell. Campbell’s have set the benchmark for what consumers expect, and in the process, they are developing an identity and presence that will extend well beyond the kitchen assistant.

For brands to be part of the voice revolution, they must forget about buying their way in and play by a new set of rules. They will be expected to provide utility, content and relevance before users will be willing to invite them into their lives. When it comes to voice, content, it would seem, is still king.

The results are in – Morgan Freeman is the celebrity voice of choice for Voice Assistants (VAs) according to the findings of our 2019 Datafication Project.

World-famous for his narrating ingenuity, the first movie carrying Freeman’s voice was The Shawshank Redemption. The film and the famous Freeman line “Andy Dufresne who crawled through a river of sh*t and came out clean on the other side” is nearly 25 years old.

Since then, Morgan Freeman has become a part of our cultural zeitgeist. Mark Zuckerberg’s AI smart home system Jarvis (named after the faithful assistant from Iron Man) communicates with the voice of Morgan Freeman. His voice is ever- present on YouTube, in our advertising and beyond. The webcomic XKCD illustrates the fictitious auditory hallucination, Freeman Paracusia, causing the sufferer to read everything in a Morgan Freeman voice.

In film, Freeman is omnipresent. He skilfully narrates the opening of the 2005 War of the Worlds and the 2006 Academy Award Winner, March of the Penguins. He plays Vitruvius in The Lego Movie, stars as Mandela in the Eastwood biopic Invictus, and appears in Olympus has Fallen to mention but a few. Freeman’s voice-over work includes introducing the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric and he hosts and narrates the Discovery Channel’s, Through the Wormhole.

A recent survey* in the UK revealed 1 in 6 Brits choose Freeman as their VA voice of choice. It’s Morgan Freeman they want telling them to pack their brolly or play them their favourite song. *We might have a better stat to use from our own Datafication study?

According to Time magazine, Science helps explain the popularity of the voice of Morgan Freeman with people favouring the sound of low-pitched voices in males. The appeal of deep-voiced men is explored further in a control study by the Evolution and Human Behaviour journal. It reveals how voice pitch influences how we elect our leaders. People with lower-pitched voices are more likely to be elected. However, reassuringly or alarmingly (depending on how you look at it) lower-pitched voice does not signal leadership ability. Generally, a deeper voice carries positive connotations of competence, integrity and physical power. It’s no surprise then that Morgan Freeman was cast as the voice of God in Bruce Almighty.

In Time Magazine, Pamela Rutledge, director of the Media Psychology Research Center explains that in film we’ve watched Freeman play the good guy over and over again, and those years of positive associations add up. His deep tones have nudged people to demand his voice through the long-term creation of an unconscious bias for this now famous narrating voice.

For the last 8 years we have gone rogue with data analysis to identify insights that often the tech and social media platforms don’t want you to focus on. The research series is called Datafication (www.datafication.com.au) and this year we have done a deep dive into the good, the bad and the ugly of voice interfaces.

For Datafication 2019 we asked Australian Smart Speaker users how many times they have to repeat themselves to their Assistants. We have called this metric ‘The Repeat Rate’ and is a simple way to monitor the accuracy and training success of Natural Language Processing (NLP). As you can see from the graphic below ‘The Repeat Rate’ is too high, on average consumers we surveyed had to say their command 2.1 times.

Interestingly ‘The Repeat Rate’ varied dramatically based on the Assistant used, with Google Assistant delivering the lowest non ‘Repeat Rate’ of 35%, followed closely by Amazon Alexa with a similar non ‘Repeat Rate’ of 34%. Siri is much worse with 49% requiring at least one repetition. The poorest performer in the data is Samsung Bixby with 30% of people having to repeat a command two or more times.

‘The Repeat Rate’ is critical as it is a forward indicator on the tipping point of mainstream use of voice. When we reach the tipping point (in theory, when Assistants accurately understand the intent of the majority of commands first time), certain changes in the market will be triggered. The use cases for voice based activity can get more sophisticated than the current simplistic use cases (Hey Google what’s the weather?) to a world where the majority of search engine activity is voice based, where ecommerce using voice and screen explodes and where IoT smart devices in the home are frequently controlled by voice.

We hope to regularly publish ‘The Repeat Rate’ to measure how well NLP in Assistants is being trained and improved so we can set benchmarks to understand the progress of human interfaces in our lives.

The human voice will fundamentally change the way consumers engage with brands as almost seven in ten people are now using their voice to interact with Assistants and Smart Speakers, the largest study into how Australians are using voice assisted technology has revealed.

The use of Assistants and Smart Speakers is booming with 11.3 million people or 69 percent of Australians having used their voice to interact with one or more devices, according to ‘The Voice of Us’ research. Smartphones are the most popular device to use Assistants, with 61 percent of respondents having used them to make voice related interactions, followed by tablets (17%) laptops (14%) and smart speakers (12%).

‘The Voice of Us’ is the latest study in the Datafication series which examines how Australians are adopting and using new social technologies. It was commissioned by creative agency The Works, part of RXP Group, in conjunction with Dr. Suresh Sood from the University of Technology Sydney. Online responses from a representative sample of more than 2,000 people aged 15+ were analysed and overlaid with census data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics to gauge how Australians are using voice technology and what it means for marketers and brands.

Almost three million Australians (2.9 million) now have a Smart Speaker in their home or office, making us one of the fastest adopters of the technology on a per capita basis. More than half, 56 percent, own a Google device such as Google Home Hub. Amazon’s range of Smart Speakers are the next most popular at 13 percent, with Apple’s HomePod coming in third at 8 percent.

Douglas Nicol, creative partner at The Works and leader of the Datafication project said: “The way we interact with technology has moved from clicking, to swiping and now we’re increasingly using our voices to make requests using Assistants and Smart Speakers. This has major implications for business and advertisers, as it’s fundamentally changing the rules for how brands are discovered by consumers in the digital world – and many marketers are not ready for this evolution.”

When asked what industries they would consider using human voice interfaces to interact with, almost six in ten (58%) said to get the latest news, followed by entertainment inquiries (53%); events (40%); transport information (37%); restaurants (34%); health (31%); travel (30%) and retail (29%).

However, while voice enabled technology has been embraced by Australians, more than nine in ten (91%) have concerns with using it. Being hacked was the major issue for 32 percent of respondents closely followed by 31 percent who had worries their conversations were being recorded or saved.

While marketers have invested heavily in search engine optimisation to ensure they rank at the top of text-based searches, the growth in the use of Assistants and Smart Speakers poses significant new challenges, Nicol says. “Human voice interfaces are here to stay and this will inevitably force changes in the search, content and loyalty strategies of advertisers. With voice, users are only typically getting just one answer to their query, which means having a coherent and robust voice search optimisation (VSO) strategy will become more important than ever. Appearing in Google’s position zero, also called the featured snippet, which shows web pages above the first search results is vital as it’s what Google uses to respond to voice searches. While some larger organisations are now actively building capabilities in this area, the majority are not and this has the potential to impact on future revenue growth.”

‘The Voice of Us’ also asked respondents which celebrity they would prefer to be the voice of their Assistants. The soothing southern drawl of actor Morgan Freeman topped the list for both men and women, with Ocean’s Eleven star George Clooney coming in second and the Scottish brogue of former James Bond actor Sean Connery third. Nicole Kidman – the only woman to make the top ten – ranked as the fourth most popular voice, with the dulcet tones of global treasure and environmentalist David Attenborough at five and Samuel L. Jackson at six. While he may attract considerable controversy amongst some, the voice of US President Donald Trump was rated as the seventh most popular with Aussie heartthrob Chris Hemsworth coming in at eight. John Cleese and The King, Elvis Presley, rounded out the list at ninth and tenth respectively.

The voice of the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, is a turn off when it comes to which celebrities Aussies would choose as their Assistant. Former PM Malcom Turnbull was the second least favoured, Kardashian star Kylie Jenner (3rd), convicted sex offender Bill Cosby (4th) and British footballer turned model David Beckham (5th).

June 2017 – We have just published Datafication 7 and for the first time we are able to make some interesting new observations about messaging app use in Australia. Hopefully, useful input for your own plans.

1. Messaging App uptake has grown 13% in the last 12 months
The total number of messaging app users in AU has increased by 13%, from 10.5 million in 2016 to 11.9 million in 2017. These figures are for people aged 15+ only. This has been a quiet revolution that should make us all think about where our audiences, and their attention, are headed. Brands now need to crack the code of using this very personal channel in a constructive way that provides real utility and service, or run the risk of not being part of the conversation.

2. Uptake is growing fastest amongst Gen X
It’s often thought that messaging apps are mainly used by teenagers – how wrong we’ve been. People aged 20-24 are the fastest growing group in Australia with a 17% YOY growth, followed by Gen X with a 13% YOY growth, people aged 55+ are not far behind. It’s having an impact on the communication habits of the majority of adult Australians.

3. 38% of messaging app users now see messaging app as their primary communications device
This primary use number is important, as it reflects deep adoption of the messaging app into peoples’ lives. This primary use number has increased from 33% to 38% in the last 12 months, with the fastest growing age group being Generation Z (rising from 54% to 65%). Email, voice calls and traditional social media are all paying the price with significant decreases measured across these groups.

4. We use messaging apps overwhelmingly for one-to-one conversations rather than group chat
84% of messaging apps users choose to talk to one person at a time, with the figure rising to 94% for Gen X people aged 35-54. This underlines the highly personal and private nature of messaging chat. Overall we tend to have between 1-5 conversations active at any one time.

5. 9.9 million Australians have left their messaging app notifications ON
Given the strong daily engagement with friends and family on messaging apps, we leave the notification setting on more than any other app on our mobiles. Men are less likely to leave them on than women. Importantly, people who leave their notifications on access their messaging app an average 23 times a day versus just 14 for times a day for people who have notifications turned off.

6. Messaging app chatbots are most appealing to Gen Y (people aged 20-34)
Although most people don’t understand what a chatbot is (84% of messaging app users), when shown a range of chatbot conversations, they get pretty excited. We found that use cases in food ordering, checking your data balance, finding gifts and checking out entertainment had particularly strong appeal across all age groups, except Baby Boomers and Gen Z. Gen Y males win hands down across the board with 57% liking a wide range of chatbot use cases. Overall, we estimate 5.2 million people are interested in using the range of chatbots that we tested.

Love to get your feedback, theories, data queries and ideas on this, so please message us

June 2017 – Why we are deleting the original Facebook App and moving onto Facebook Messenger?

Our latest Datafication work has highlighted a trend towards people deleting the original Facebook App. 1.2 million Australians claim they already have become Deleters and another 2.7 million Aussies are seriously considering becoming Deleters. This makes for a significant new evolution not just when it comes to social media, but also how we communicate as humans.

First of all, what do Deleters, and those who are considering to delete, look like? They are present in most demographics, but more likely to be in their late 30’s. They have often plateaued in their use of social, but have an addiction to messaging apps, in that they use a messaging app throughout each day, even on the toilet (58% vs non deleters at 45%). Interestingly, Deleters are more likely to have their social media notifications turned off – 45% compared to 30% of those sticking with the Facebook app. They are also more tech savvy, with 20% of Deleters, or those those who are seriously considering deleting, knowing what a chatbot is and does. Overall, after a demonstration of chatbot capabilities, 46% would use a chatbot to complete an everyday task, such as checking their mobile data balance or ordering food.

So why are we deleting?

Because we want to jettison the unnecessary bits of social media and return to real conversations. We are returning to real in 3 distinct ways:

1. We are redefining what a ‘FRIEND’ is
In the early days of Facebook, we boasted about how many friends we have on Facebook – it was a social status symbol that mattered. Today, we are looking at our newsfeeds and wonder who the hell some of these ‘Friends’ are? The first stage of dealing with this is editing down your ‘Friends’ to a smaller group, the second stage is to go full deletion. This is because you are talking to your real friends on messaging apps, one-to-one or one-to-some, in a place where you can be authentic and honest.

2. We are tiring of the algorithm
Some Australians are suspicious of what Facebook does to free thought and democratic debate. If we live in an echo chamber of our own views do we stop thinking? Stop resassessing our own prejudices? Worse still, we don’t always know what is fake and what is real news, so why read it at all when we can go to more reputable sources.

3. We are not in love with our data being pimped
I don’t know many people who enjoy the interruption model of advertising on social, but the truth is it works for many marketers who are acquiring and retaining customers. However some Australians are tired of being targeted with paid ads in their news feed, no matter how relevant the targeting. Some consumers prefer the uncluttered, and as of yet, paid media free environment of a messaging app.

We are witnessing the start of something very interesting, which puts pressure on all of us in marketing to work harder to crack the code with consumers in new ways in the new environments, where consumers want to be.

June 2017 – We’re tired of faking it. Hundreds of Facebook friends don’t make us happier. A connection is not a relationship. And fake news is just propaganda.

The truth has finally dawned and it’s heralding the rise of the messaging app. Why? Because less is more. We’re starting to delete the establishment social apps and move to real conversations with the people that really matter in our lives.

This Datafication project reveals insights into how messaging apps are redefining not just our method of communication but also our friendships and values. It was created in collaboration with Suresh Sood, UTS Advanced Analytics Institute.

Messaging apps offer an escape route. They liberate us from the shackles of an unreal world so we can return to real one to one human connectivity.

Go to Datafication 2017 now