Hope, trust, and web accessibility
Thoughts on Meaningful Brands 2020 report, 2021 Global Marketing Trends and why web accessibility is important for brands and nonprofits
Hello reader,
My morning has been foggy. Temperatures rotating around 21-23 degrees. And Bangalore is having rains during mid-October.
How’s the weather at your end?
Okay!! 🙈🙊
My friend Rumi says, “Never lose hope, my dear heart miracles dwell in the invisible.”
The word for me is HOPE.
Sorry for stressing in capital letters. It has nothing to do with the ongoing pandemic. The pandemic is just a medium to shake us up.
My hope is not connected with any materialistic wishes related to love, money, success, or all those things. It is just a sweet feeling that makes my heart slightly humane.
I stay in North Jalahalli, Bangalore. In a locality that was once for HMT. Now it is a place of ruins and museums. It is a delight for someone who loves nature but it also reminds you of how dreams were killed. I wish HMT would have been saved like Air India.
Nonetheless, the place still has a working HMT shop, some colonial-style old bungalows, a sizeable amount of abandoned staff quarters, and dense trees for monkeys and snakes.
I stay right next to the HMT Museum. It’s been two years and I am yet to step inside it. 😔
Even though I am a proud collector of two rare HMT Janta watches.
Almost every other evening I will run for my cup of filter coffee near the HMT shop. Yesterday while coming back I saw the panipuri bhaiya is back.
I walked half a kilometer I witnessed an old lassi and snacks shop has opened up for the first time after March. While the faces sitting in the shop had a different tale to tell. But I felt happy.
I am happy to see the crowd on signals. I feel happy when I see people wanting to go to restaurants with masks on. I feel happy when I see a couple getting ready for a weekend in their own way. I feel happy when I see shops opening up and doing business.
I understand the new normal.
But somewhere the hope is alive 🙌
According to a recent report India has been identified as one of the most optimistic countries in APAC, with 53.3% of consumers showing overwhelming optimism towards the country’s economic growth.
These findings are part of Havas Group India’s latest report Meaningful Brands 2020: COVID edition that lists down the steps brands can take to further their meaningful connection with consumers in the post lockdown world.
The 2020 COVID edition of the study was conducted across 5 markets – India, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines & South Korea, with a total sample size of 2,900 respondents.
Transparent and honest
58% of consumers want brands to become more transparent & honest about their processes and products.
“Consumers expect nothing less than the highest standards of safety & hygiene from the brands in the time of Covid-19. They want brands to reassure and ignite confidence in them regarding the safety standards they follow by being transparent and honest.”
P.S.You can download the Meaningful Brands 2020 report from Rana Barua’s LinkedIn post.
Economists world-over expect the global economy to shrink in the first quarter of 2020, a first since the 2008 financial crisis. The Travel & Tourism Sector across the globe is undoubtedly the biggest casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to the World Travel and Tourism Council, the COVID-19 pandemic could slash 50 million jobs worldwide in the travel and tourism industry, reflecting a 12-14% reduction in jobs.
Hospitality unicorn OYO Hotels & Homes has been no exception of the effects of the ongoing pandemic. However OYO has decided to fight with the virus and to do so it has roped the man who has been a savior for millions of migrants in India.
Real-life hero Sonu Sood is the face for its latest campaign “Sanitised Before Your Eyes.” The video ad is okay but Sonu lits the mood with his smile and confidence.
The copy of the below ad delivers more bang 👏👏
I would say this is much better than the likes of Raymond which has launched an anti-viral range of fabrics called Virasafe. Raymond says that the antiviral treatment/finishes on textiles can significantly reduce the risk of transmission and contamination and curbing the spread of viruses.
Micromax’s co-founder’s Rahul Sharma’s honest appeal of Micromax coming back again is slightly better. I was sold to his candid story, how Micromax achieved things and lost to the Chinese invasion. However, the end equating with the border thing was a bit far fetched.
Nonetheless, these days everyone is a soldier waiting to go to the border and give life for the motherland. 😏
Amen!
Trust
Trust can mean many things within organizations. But for consumers, it’s essentially whether brands deliver on their promises. The marketer’s job? Making sure messages match the moment—and what their customers value.
In April, Deloitte for its study 2021 Global Marketing Trends surveyed 2,447 people across eight countries to better understand how people perceived—and responded to—brands during the early days of COVID-19.
“As may be expected, people were highly attuned to the negative actions brands took during the pandemic, with 66% being able to recall when brands acted in their own self-interest (e.g., raising prices on essential items). Perhaps, though, the biggest loser was the bottom line as more than one-in-four respondents strongly agreed that such actions spurred them to walk away from the brand in question.”
Citing the example of Delta Air Lines the study states that the airlines created an entirely new Global Cleanliness division within its Customer Experience organization to reimagine its cleanliness standards.
Air Vistara came up with an in-flight safety video. A complete game-changer in the category and refreshing. I know the idea isn’t unique but the execution is. I am sold when you showcase incredible India starting with Ladakh. Even if it is an ad.
Storytelling at its peak.
Human Experience
Deloitte in its study highlights the human experience as one of the emerging marketing trends of 2021.
“In the rush to become more efficient in their digital solutions, many organizations have left human experience as an afterthought. But when COVID-19 swept the globe and technology became the primary conduit for interaction during lockdowns, people increasingly craved human connection. As a result, consumers moved toward companies that elevated human-centric experiences.”
More than 70% agreed that they valued the digital innovations that deepened their connection with others during COVID-19.
According to Deloitte, human experience starts with our core values:
Do you think Deloitte is saying something new? 🧐
Our parents, teachers, books, scriptures, etc. have been saying the same. Deep down we all know that trust is the underlying foundation of any human relationship or in the marketing world human experience.
Yaanai Mark Nei Mittai Kadai - a sweet shop in Trichy, Tamil Nadu follows a 105-year-old tradition. The shop offers its large-sized sweet boondi wrapped in newspaper and placed inside a bamboo basket. The shop sources light-weight and eco-friendly baskets from locals. Customers are not charged for the bamboo baskets but are charged if they ask for plastic boxes.
Isn’t that lovely? A business that has been environmentally friendly for more than a century without charging customers.
On the contrary, we have Apple the world’s most valuably publicly-traded company that has decided to not ship a charger or headphones with iPhone 12. The company says that it is doing for the environment.
Giving out fewer “free” accessories with every phone means using fewer materials, the company claims and also makes for smaller boxes that can be shipped more efficiently.
Verge says chargers might make up a relatively small proportion of total e-waste, as Wired notes, but on a global basis, that’s still tens of thousands of metric tons annually.
I don’t buy the whole environment BS.
Meanwhile, Samsung has a point 😝😜
Web accessibility
When we say “Human Experience” are we considering everyone or working on a set of profiles?
The web is a part of life and experience is incomplete if we are ignoring it. I won’t understand the struggles of a disabled human being but she is as much human as I am. So the question that we need to ask are we providing the desired human experience for all.
In 2016, the Supreme Court in the US was petitioned to hear Domino’s v. Robles.
California resident Guillermo Robles tried to order a custom pizza online. Robles, who is blind, sued because he was unable to utilize the pizza chain’s website and mobile app through his screen reader, a device that reads web pages aloud, but only when the pages meet certain code standards.
Domino’s has been unable to win the case and unwilling to settle, staking its reputation—and perhaps the future of digital equality—on the outcome.
Is the web accessible for everyone?
The most recent WebAIM research report confirmed that, through February 2020, violations were still rampant: 98.1% of the top 1,000,000 websites’ home pages had detectable WCAG 2.0 failures.
“This report is particularly scary if you consider that only 25% to 35% of possible WCAG conformance failures can be detected automatically using software,” said Adam Akinyemi is the creator of Whois Accessible.
David Luhr is a UX Development Manager at DockYardinforms says that the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 has a thorough overview of industry standards on this front and can serve as a guide to compliance.
According to him making a website accessible involves many considerations, including:
Ensuring content is well-structured, semantic, and simple, so assistive technologies and keyboards can navigate it easily
Using legible typography and colors with sufficient color contrast
Using animation responsibly to avoid triggering balance disorders or seizures
Providing text alternatives for various media, such as transcripts, captioning, and image descriptions.
A Forrester Research Economic Impact Study found that — when integrated into existing/ongoing development cycles — accessibility can contribute to cost savings, including for maintenance and service.
Web accessibility and Nonprofits
In a recent guest post “Nonprofit web design in a COVId-19 world”, Ira Horowitz stressed about “Web accessibility and compliance.” He informs that for most websites, ensuring accessibility can be done with smart design and a focus on regulatory compliance.
“Regulatory compliance is the process of taking the steps to comply with relevant laws, policies, and regulations that may apply to your organization. For nonprofits websites, the American’s With Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are extremely important.”
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) helps to prohibit discrimination against individuals with disabilities. The ADA applies to any organization with 15 or more employees or is considered a “public accommodation.”
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are a set of usability standards developed by the World Wide Web Consortium. These guidelines are often used to determine ADA compliance. While nonprofit websites are not required to comply with the WCAG, it’s definitely a worthwhile effort if you’re trying to improve and increase your online fundraising efforts.
Marion Ravier, Founder & CEO at AdaptMyWeb in an interview, shared some of the things digital teams should keep in mind when designing for accessibility?
includes ALT tags on images
make sure each image has a descriptive title and is contextualized
make sure you have good contrast
structure headings for accessibility
By the way, AdaptMyWeb was recently acquired by Contentsquare
Ignoring the part “Why Nonprofits should care about Web Accessibility?”. If nonprofit organizations don’t care about equality then we are doomed.
Testing website accessibility
Tools such as WAVE can scan your website for any obvious WCAG offenses and then offer solutions.
Another alternative by Classy:
Try clicking on buttons or filling out form fields using only your keyboard.
Use a vision impairment simulator such as NoCoffee to ensure that your interface is not relying on colors alone to convey meaning and that your color contrast ratio is high enough.
Use a screen reader like VoiceOver (comes standard on Macs) or Jaws (available for PCs), and test what the voice output of your page is as you navigate it.
Or just drop your URL into the World Wide Web Consortium’s HTML validation tool to test the code on your website for elements that go against best practices.
Chrome extensions like aXe accessibility test and WebAIM’s WAVE accessibility test have been recommended by the folks at Wiredimpact.
And how can anyone end a discussion about the web without mentioning Google? Here is what the search giant is doing about Web Accessibility.
As an entrepreneur who ran an online publishing company for seven years, I never encouraged accessibility features on my website.
Pretty miserable job. I wasn’t mindful.
Hopefully, the next time when I am consulting a nonprofit “Web Accessibility” will stand out.
Before I end my conversation let me connect to what I started with - Hope.
In my last post - “The virus of discrimination” I wrote about my playlist and love for music.
A month ago I discovered the beautiful voice of Ani Choying Drolma - the rockstar monk with a mesmerising voice. With her voice, she has been taking the Buddhist Chants to the youth. This is her video performing at the Ho Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford.
Her voice, her smile, and humility melts my heart. Her voice lives and gives hope ♥️
Whenever you have time give it a watch 🙏
One day I wish to meet her and listen to this:
Om Tare Tuttare Ture Soha...
Peace be with you,
PN.