MARVIN CHOW: Figuring out where to meet
that user need when they need it is really important.
And I think as technology evolves,
it really will start to fade in the background.
People won't think about channels or touch points
or which app or which technology we use.
They're just going to want to do what
they want to do at that moment.
NATALIE ZMUDA: In this episode of "The Update,"
we hear from Marvin Chow, VP of Consumer Apps
Marketing at Google about how brands
can put their customers first and deliver
great mobile experiences.
What does it mean to deliver a great user
experience at Google?
MARVIN CHOW: Google was founded as a user-first company.
I mean, you think about our first product with search.
I mean, back in a time where portals
dominated the landscape, what did Google come with?
A simple white page with a box in the middle.
You just type whatever you want in it, whether you
want to buy a fridge, whether you want to book a plane trip,
or you just want to know what the weather was,
any way you typed it, we strove to bring you
the answer that you needed.
And I think that's what really means
to deliver that human user-first experience.
It's fast.
It's simple, and it's relevant to what you did.
And since then, it's become a part of our DNA
across all our products, whether it's Gmail, Maps, Photos,
or the Google Assistant.
And all of it really comes back to those origins of search
in that mission to organize the world's information
and make it universally accessible and useful
for everyone.
NATALIE ZMUDA: How should marketers
think about what it means to deliver a really great
mobile experience specifically?
MARVIN CHOW: The impact that mobile
has had on culture, society, and brands has been tremendous.
But at the same time, brands have
to be careful in terms of how they're working
with the mobile ecosystem.
Because just like the last 10 years,
it's evolving tremendously.
And brands have to be thinking user first, not channel first.
You definitely need a mobile strategy.
But if you start to think about all the places
that you can be connecting with your consumers
through digital technologies, you have to think about all
of those channels, whether it's the mobile web, whether it's
apps, whether it's third party partners,
whether it's augmented reality apps that are identifying what
people see or digital voice assistance, the ability
for us to focus on mobile but expand out from there
to connect with consumers with really
relevant and helpful experiences is the biggest
opportunity we have.
NATALIE ZMUDA: So it makes sense that this is
a huge opportunity for brands.
But what about consumers?
How do they think about it?
MARVIN CHOW: Consumers don't think in touchpoint.
They think in value.
They think in outcomes.
They think about, well, I need to book a trip.
Or, I need to fill a prescription for something
or order some new lipstick.
And they think about I need to do that now.
And if I'm on the go, that's going
to happen on a mobile phone.
Or if I'm at work, it may happen at my desktop computer.
Or if I'm-- the new forms that are coming,
if I'm in my kitchen, it may happen through a voice digital
assistant.
It may happen by taking a picture of something you want
and using computer vision to identify that product
and buy it right there.
NATALIE ZMUDA: So everything you're
describing, that's a really frictionless experience.
I think for a lot of brands, most of the friction,
a lot of friction happens within their own organization.
Can you talk about that challenge a little bit?
MARVIN CHOW: Nobody wants to deliver a bad user experience.
Nobody wants to disappoint a user.
But so often it's so clear.
We end up with home page carousels with just an org
chart of things that are going by,
which everyone gets a say in, which is really not
best in class.
And I think all of us need to strive to
how do we get to internal alignment?
How do we get to a point where we are all
speaking from the same page, and in terms
of delivering what the user needs
and how it makes sense for a user?
NATALIE ZMUDA: What are some of the specific hurdles
that you see really standing in the way of getting rid
of all that friction?
MARVIN CHOW: I think first is senior, sea level, buy-in,
whatever you want to call it.
But at the highest levels of the company
deciding what is the thing that we
want to do, what is the objective,
how do we want to approach it, is
it a priority, that's really important at the highest levels
because they set the tone for the company.
The next piece is really about siloed teams.
Every company has, whether their functions,
whether they're business units, they have multiple people
with multiple agendas.
And how those teams communicate with each other, how
they use different data to make decisions,
that needs to be harmonized in some way.
So all those teams are not just working together,
but partnering to have reached that same goal or same outcome
together, which leads to come to the third point is inconsistent
KPI's.
If you have one group that has one goal and another group that
has another goal, and they're at odds with each other,
the odds of delivering the best user experience
is really, really hard.
So sub goals are really important.
But formalizing those north star KPIs
of where do we ultimately want to go, what do we ultimately
as a company want to deliver to a user, I think
is really, really important.
NATALIE ZMUDA: Do you have any examples
of some of those organizational challenges
that you've navigated at Google so that we can deliver
a really great user experience?
MARVIN CHOW: I think a couple that
come to mind in terms of that went well, I think most
recently, Google Maps, which is really one of the most
beloved products that we make, celebrated its 15 year
anniversary.
So this February with the 15 year anniversary,
we made one of the biggest changes to Maps
that we've made in a number of years.
And that is really thinking about Maps
as more than just navigation, but really thinking about it
as something that we call discovery,
helping users find restaurants or things to do
once they get to a location and once they're in a neighborhood.
And users have kept telling us that they want this.
They want to know what do I do when I get there.
Bringing those insights together,
understanding how to build that new product, what
the right UX would be, what the right narrative
would be involved a ton of people over a number of years
to make it come together in a moment where we were really
taking a step forward that was really not incremental,
but that was really revolutionary for how we want
people to start thinking about navigating
the world around them.
NATALIE ZMUDA: Tell me a little bit about the role
that marketing plays there when it comes to creating
that great user experience.
MARVIN CHOW: Our job is to champion the consumer.
Whatever their needs are, whatever their insights are,
our job is to bring that, package it, and share it
with other people so that they can do their job,
they do their job better.
At Google, product marketing is this function
that sits in the middle.
They help translate user insights and narratives.
But they really translate the technology and the engineering
side of the business to how does it
come to market in terms of narrative and storytelling.
And their job is to really make products and stories
relevant to consumers based on the strategic objectives
that we have.
NATALIE ZMUDA: So what do you think
marketers can do to help develop a culture that's
really centered and focused on creating better user
experiences?
MARVIN CHOW: We love data.
And we test everything.
It's almost nauseating how much we test.
I think for search in last year, we
ran over 460,000 experiments for search,
which created like 3,600 improvements, which is great
if you're a user because you want those 3,600 improvements.
Having a culture of test and iterate,
we think is really important.
Having a culture where you can bring data to the table,
and it doesn't necessarily drive the exact decision,
but it creates a shared data point for people
to make decisions.
And I think that's a really important theme
that Google does is having that data creates
a common language around, OK, comparing
x over y or before and after.
NATALIE ZMUDA: What role do you think COVID-19 plays just
in regards to consumer expectations
and the role of marketing?
MARVIN CHOW: More than ever, it's really important
that we understand what a consumer's expectations are
and take our hat off in terms of what's
important for our company or our strategy
and really focus on the user.
When you look back at this time, I
think the brands that fare well coming out of the pandemic
will have really done three things, they'll be human,
they'll be resourceful, and they'll
be in it for the long run.
Now, what does that mean?
Being human is about understanding the people
and what they're going through and how
you can uniquely help them.
Being resourceful, that's about understanding
how things are changing in human behavior,
but also how technology is changing
to meet the needs of those people
and what does that mean for your brand
and how you'll shape your user experience moving forward.
And the last thing is about being in it for the long run.
This pandemic is far from over.
And I think to be successful you have
to think of what do you uniquely bring to the table
over the long run because that's where people are really
going to value you.
So it's not going to be easy.
But I think if we step up to the challenge,
I think that there's a lot of value marketers
can be adding to how brands and companies think
about their strategy.
And how they're going to approach things
over the next 6, 12, and 18 months.