#from something initially simple and to impressively complex system of thinking and behaving and making assumptions and decisions

[keferon]

Just want to say, love your mimick au. I only found it like, an hour ago and I've devoured everything in the tag and I'm planning to do the same to the spellbound and monster hunter aus.

That said, in one of the mimick fanfics, Orion tells Prowl to leave him alone and to find a hobby, but a comic that (presumably) happens after this conversation when Orion meets Jazz, Orion seems to be back to working with Prowl. I thought the whole "leave me alone" order would go on infinitely because Orion didn't seem to have his goal locked down and he also never specified when to come back. So how did they return to working together? Did Orion find Prowl post-meltdown, or was it Prowl who just set an arbitrary amount of time before going back to Orion and going "so, how do you feel about defying god?" I just find Orion and Prowl's relationship so interesting in this au, simply because of how Orion doesn't seem to apply his morals about freedom and coexistence to Prowl despite the fact he's the one who points out that Prowl didn't include himself in his calculations, but at the same time, if he doesn't recognize Prowl's autonomy and only sees him as a tool (chatGPT style), he would have to accept that he's the one responsible for Prowl's actions because he's the one using him. But also also, Prowl encourages him to not take responsibility for all the immoral actions (like killing monsters to keep the Council's favor), which I think Orion does take up, but that would indirectly be accepting Prowl as a individual capable of making his own decisions, you know? It also the fact that Orion and Prowl both have different (and somewhat incompatible) ways of communicating. I was thinking when Orion asked Prowl to what he'd do to make the most amount of mechs happy, Prowl understood it literally: the majority of the population are non-monsters, so statistically, he'd focus on making non-monsters happy. But Orion doesn't want to make most mechs happy; he wants a diverse and equitable society, and that doesn't necessarily lead to happiness, especially in transition phases. Even in the academy, monsters are learning to compromise to live in a non-monster society; compromises are about restriction, which often aren't a source of happiness. But Orion equates that vision to happiness, and probably gets a bad impression of Prowl given "free reign" from his answer. It's great, it's so juicy.

And contrasts so well with how Prowl and Jazz interact and communicate with each other. Like how Prowl makes an attempt to learn hand language for Jazz in the same way he attempts to comfort Orion post-Shockwave demonification. But unlike Orion who has "Prowl is not alive" at the core of their dynamic, Jazz doesn't know and sees Prowl's attempt to learn as a genuine attempt to understand/communicate. You can argue that Prowl is just "programmed" to try and get more information and it's just efficient to ensure Jazz doesn't get carpal tunnel while working together, but you can also argue that we're all programmed to do that as well; small talk or bids for attention are behaviors/actions to build connection through information exchange that we are trained to do from formative years and general society. Which is to say, even if Prowl learns and tries to accommodate Jazz for mission purposes, it doesn't negate the fact that he is investing effort into communicating and building the foundation for a meaningful connection in the same way other people do. It's great, I'm having a blast with the whole AU.

Orion despite being afraid to continue his mission still has responsibilities in his Order so him and Prowl. Yeah hahah they just keep working together but purely on their usual legal tasks. I didn’t talk about the whole situation enough yet but basically Prowl never informed Orion about his new quest of suing God. Primarily because he knows that Orion definitely will try to stop him.

It’s kind of like. “What isn’t forbidden can automatically be considered allowed” mentality.

Also MY GOD YES. My favourite part of this au is reading asks like yours:0 Prowl exists in that thin line between being and not being a person capable of his own choices. Orion exists on the thin line between considering him being one of those options. He can’t see Prowl as a “real mech” because he knows for a fact it’s not true. But then seeing him as a tool means accepting that all questionable things he does are Orion’s responsibility.

At the end of the day Prowl is a metaphorical piece of fabric Orion uses to clean his consciousness. In his eyes Prowl isn’t alive enough to be fully blamed for all the bad things he does but he is also alive just enough for Orion to say “it was your fault. Not mine.”

Jazz doesn’t have that dilemma. Uh. Yet haha he will discover the truth eventually of course~. He thinks Prowl is obviously a real mech because in his world magic isn’t alive. It can create an illusion of a mech, sure, this is what all usual golems are, but it’s not smart or believable enough. It’s like one of those tests where all people think they can tell if they’re talking to an AI chat bot because “duh I would obviously know” and then fail to distinguish AI from a real person. Jazz is perceptive but he doesn’t know what to look for. All he knows is that Prowl is somehow doesn’t love anyone but seems to care about of things that aren’t people.

Also it’s a bit unrelated but I find it soooo interesting playing with the usual concepts of magic and technology. Because usually magic is perceived as something more “coming from your heart” and “connected with emotions” while technology tends to be more “soulless” and “emotionless”. And then we have the entire world of robots who think they are alive and magic isn’t :)

[valkyrieelysia18]

RWBY Rewrite: Raven Branwen

Hey there everybody! You know, I was debating Raven and Adam for quite a bit until inspiration hit on the former teammate of Team STRQ and candidate for worst mother in the show. And you know how writers get when they’ve stumbled across something.

Still, Raven is definitely one of the more disappointing characters, having made a strong first impression for further appearances to take away the coolness. Most of the disappointment comes from her being set up as a third party to Oz vs Salem conflict, which could offer a unique perspective on both sides of the conflict. Unfortunately, she came off as selfish manipulate bitch that the main reason we cheered her on during the end of Volume 5 was because Cinder was much MUCH worse.

Now with these rewrites, I don’t intend to change fighting styles and weapons (mainly because I have no idea how to do that, unlike certain people I am fully capable of admitting when I am out of my depth and leave that to someone who knows what they’re talking about). As for personalities, I don’t think I’m massively rewriting them given how little some of these characters had been given, but you can correct me if I’m wrong. Raven will still be a strong bandit leader with a survival of the fittest mentality.

Now the first thing I would change is in regards to her semblance, albeit more along the lines of refining what was already established. Her portals lead to people she has bonded tp, but bonding is not so simple as it seems. The type of bonding needed for this would be someone she trusts wholeheartedly, someone she would willingly die for. These bonds of hers are both her strength and her weakness. When a bond is established, Raven is then attuned emotionally to them, always having a sense of them in the back of her mind and feeling their general mental state. Much like Qrow’s semblance, she can never truly turn it off. As such, she is fully aware of what Yang feels about her as well as being the first person to know about Summer’s death due to feeling it. Naturally, this a very emotional side effect and plays quite the role in her relationships with Yang and Summer.

The big changes would relate to her main relationships of the story: the Branwen Tribe, Team STRQ, Ozpin, and Yang.

Branwen Tribe

In the show, the Branwen Tribe was the Disposable Mook Group Number Thirteen with no real depth to them. Under this tag, I was originally going give an overview the Tribe’s history and culture, but it became too lengthy. I’ll have that as an additional separate post. Long story short, they are going to be much more dangerous and a lot more connected to the history and culture of Anima.

As to Raven’s relationship to the Tribe in general, it’s a lot more complex. Unlike Qrow who was always kind of an outcast, Raven was actually well regarded by the Tribe and was seen as a potential successor to the Chieftain of the time. While Raven knows the Tribe was brutal and unforgiving, it was her home and there were people she did care about there (though not as much Qrow). In fact, Vernal was the daughter of a late friend of hers that she took under her wing, basically her goddaughter. In addition, Raven never truly felt comfortable in the Kingdoms. Even as grew to care for her teammates and fell in to the lifestyle of a huntress, she could never conform completely to the system. At least part of the reason she did leave her teammates and Yang was because the Tribe was where she felt she belonged. Still selfish, but selfish for an understandable reason.

The one other thing to clarify in relation to the Branwen Tribe is the former Spring Maiden. For someone trying to keep a low profile, taking in one of the biggest targets on Salem’s list seems counterproductive. In this rewrite, Raven would take her in due to a sense of empathy, with the girl having discovered Leo’s treachery and was desperate to get as far away as she could. Her death by Raven’s hands would genuinely be an act of mercy, having been fatally injured during a raid and the only thing that could be done is make her death quick and less painful. As to inheriting the Maiden powers, Raven would not have known about the cutoff date for being Maiden and kind of assumed she was too old by that point (would have turned thirty in a week). This was because Ozpin wouldn’t have told her and the others every little detail about magic and his situation, though this time it was more to him viewing it as a trivial detail rather than actively trying to hide it.

Team STRQ

Her relationships with her teammates are equal parts love and care with anger and frustration. Before Beacon, Qrow was the only bondmate she had. Summer and Tai she took a while to warm up to, but grew close to them despite trying not to do so because she felt nothing could ever truly come of it. And in this Rewrite, she’s not the sole reason Team STRQ falls apart; none of them are completely blameless. 

Qrow was the first bond she ever forged and is arguably the strongest bond she has. Part of the reason she wanted the position of Chieftain was so that she could make things better for her brother in the Tribe. While heading to Beacon led them to new experiences and new bonds, it also led to a distance growing between as Qrow took to the Kingdoms and everything in them. This would lead to Raven feeling somewhat lonely and jealous, in how her brother was so much happier then when it had just been them. This distance only grows as they get involved with Ozpin and the bigger conflict. The more Raven sees, the more concerned she gets and brings up her doubts about Ozpin to Qrow as well as mentioning that they should probably return to the Tribe soon. Qrow at first brushes her off, getting more irritated as she continues with it. This would culminate in an argument in which Qrow tells his sister off for being so distrusting of the man who’s trying to save humanity and that the Tribe should rot for all the things they’ve done; he’d rather die than go back. It’s at this point Raven realizes that her brother won’t listen to her anymore. These bittersweet feelings influence her relationship with her brother to this day; as much as she cares about him, she can’t save him. This will also play a part in her relationship with Ozpin.

Her relationship with Tai didn’t start off with the best first impressions (she definitely had to restrain from strangling him during the Initiation and almost did during the first week of classes), but eventual grew very strong. Unfortunately, the relationship while passionate, was between two people who are not suited for long term romantic relationships. Raven has her obvious issues and I’ll get Tai’s in his post(believe me, there will quite a bit to discuss). Not to mention they’re two people with vastly different goals and expectations out of a relationship. Tai was happy in teaching and in Vale, there was no way she could have convinced him to throw it all away for the bandit life style. Raven does still have some fond feelings for him, but she does get even more frustrated with Tai than Qrow as she feels he could have tried to talk the girls out of becoming huntresses or at least told them the whole truth of things before they went off to Beacon.

Last but not least we have Summer. Raven didn’t really like Summer at first because she really didn’t seem like leadership material, much like Weiss and Ruby at the beginning. It isn’t until Raven gets a demonstration of “Good is Not Nice” from her leader that she really began to respect her. The relationship grew and by the time Raven was leaving for the Tribe, Summer was the only positive relationship she had at that point. In fact, she actually tried to convince Summer to come with her, but Summer declined as she had reasons of her own for fighting for Ozpin along with their other teammates to watch over. Summer also shared quite a bit with Raven, including the price behind the Silver Eye powers which is a lot more costly than in the canon. Raven’s respect was so great that she asked Summer to be the mother Yang needed and explain things to the girl when she was old enough to understand. This plan is naturally torn apart by Summer’s death. Due to their bondmate connection, Raven fully felt Summer’s death and to this day, it is something she has not gotten over(whether these feelings are platonic, sisterly, or romantic, I leave that to fan speculation). Half of her blames herself for not going to her side, at the time she was helping her people in the midst of a natural disaster. The other half blames Ozpin. 

Ozpin

Oh boy, Ozpin may not be her strongest relationship, but it is perhaps the one that had the most impact on her life. Raven’s first impressions of Ozpin was someone to respect, but not trust as it seemed he was keeping a close eye on her and Qrow. It would take a while for her to realize he was keeping a close eye on Team STRQ as a whole and wouldn’t fully get the answers to that until Ozpin filled them in on the greater conflict. Long story short, Tai decides not to get in any further but the other three are brought into the inner circle. Raven is driven by the need to know more, but ultimately finding the truth to be more horrible than she imagined.

It starts with the bird magic. Unlike the canon, the bird transformation does have significant issues with it. On the minor side, the two will behave a bit more like birds such as having cravings for seeds, being drawn to shiny objects, etc. On the major side though, the magic also amplifies their fight/flight instincts and it gets stronger the longer they stay in bird form to the point where if they stay transformed long enough they will slowly forget their humanity (which is why they will transform for an hour at most). Now, to Ozpin’s defense, this was not something he deliberately kept from them, these were unintended side effects. Raven, however, is pissed that he didn’t consider how the magic might have affected them and could have warned them after Qrow and her stay transform for a little too long with Summer snapping them back to themselves. And that’s not the only problem she has with Ozpin.

As mentioned earlier, she did grow concerned with what she had learned and getting the whole truth about Salem and Ozpin as well as the lengths Ozpin has gone to defeat her, Raven’s doubts come to a head and she tries to get her brother to understand her point of view and get out. By this point, Qrow is fully committed to Ozpin’s brotherhood and views her actions and mindset as being unreasonable and selfish. While their relationship wasn’t as close as they were before, this confrontation was an utter shock to Raven. From there on, she blames Ozpin for “stealing” her brother and “blinding” him to the reality of the conflict.

But what really cements her hatred of Ozpin and giving up the fight with Salem is Summer’s death. Summer died at Salem’s hands, on a mission for Ozpin, and Raven was emotionally connected to her when she died. In response, Raven would make her way to Ozpin to confront him, which is also how he and others get the news. While Ozpin is genuinely grieved by Summer’s death, his first reaction to Raven’s words is frustration and despair that not even Summer using her eyes could stop Salem. THIS is Raven’s breaking point, the realization that Ozpin will use anything and anyone for his war Salem, even people he does significantly care about. After everything that Summer had done for him.... She actually attacks him for this, only to beaten down by Ozpin. He lets her go, but warns her to never return to Beacon and he won’t be so lenient if she tries this again.

In other words, this is where Sacrifice comes from.

Yang 

Out of all her relationships, Raven’s feelings for her daughter are the most complicated. For starters, I don’t think Yang was a planned pregnancy (neither was Ruby in my opinion). Tai was the over moon about it, but Raven wasn’t as thrilled. Partly because her doubt with Ozpin had had her seriously consider returning to the Tribe and the pregnancy was a delay in that, but also because Raven had absolutely no idea how to be a mom and didn’t have much in terms of maternal instinct. Contrary to popular belief, not all women have a natural inclination and understanding of children and babies (myself included). Ultimately, it wasn’t Yang’s fault she left, she had planned on going back to the Tribe from the beginning and she will tell Yang all this when she asks for answers.

She did consider taking Yang with her back to the Tribe, but realized that she couldn’t take care of a baby like that and Yang would be better off growing up inside one of the kingdoms. Like I said, she did entrust Summer to be the mother she couldn’t be and to tell Yang the truth when she was old enough. After Summer died, she really wasn’t in a state to come back even if she wanted to return. After sometime, she did resolve to pop back and check up on Yang from time to time. It does hurt her a bit that Yang has such obviously negative feelings towards her, but she accepts it and is fully okay with her daughter viewing Summer as her mother figure. She, in no way, regrets her choice.

And if there is one thing she is impressed by it’s how protective Yang is of Ruby because it reminds her how protective she got with Qrow when they were younger. Raven’s feelings on Ruby are complicated (she’s perfectly okay with Tai moving on, but the timing is rather questionable), but her respect for Summer and love for Yang does make Ruby fall under her one save rule as well as something else. On the journey to Mistral, Team RNJR and Qrow come close to perishing and are saved by Raven’s timely intervention. Tense atmosphere aside, she points them in the right direction and gives Ruby a warning both about the conflict she was walking straight into and not to use her Silver Eye powers unless she wants to follow her mother and grandfather’s path into an early grave.

Her role in the story would still be that of a third party and she will be both enemy and ally to the group during different points in the story. I do plan on her dying to help them as well as Qrow and Tai get away to safety, after finding out that there is a way to bring the conflict to an end and realizing that Summer fought not because she wanted to save the world, but because she wanted to protect those she cared about. In the end, she would die with her mind at peace and her last thoughts would be of either Yang or Ruby, passing on the Spring Maiden powers.

Oh boy, this post got long. And the next one’s going to be on Branwen Tribe history and culture. Maybe after that, I’ll get to Adam or Pyrrha. Hope you guys are up for that!

[nathandgibsca]

Cookies To Humans: Implications Of Identity Systems On Incentives!

A story where data is the hero, followed by two mind-challenging business-shifting ideas.

At a previous employer customer service on the phone was a huge part of the operation. Qualitative surveys were giving the company a read that customers were unhappy with the service being provided. As bad customer service is a massive long-term cost – and short-term pain –, it was decided that the company would undertake a serious re-training effort for all the customer service reps and with that problems would get solved faster. To ensure customer delight was delivered in a timely manner, it was also decided that Average Call Time (ACT) would now be The success metric. It would even be tied to a customer service rep’s compensation creating an overlap between their personal success and the company’s success.

What do you think happened?

There is such a thing as employees that don’t really give a frek about their job or company, they just come to work. You’ll be surprised how small that number is. (Likewise, the number of employees that go well above the call of duty, look to constantly push personal and company boundaries is also quite small.) Most employees work diligently to deliver against set expectations.

Reflecting that, in our story, most customer service reps, re-trained, took the phone calls with the goal of driving down Average Call Time. They worked as quick as they could to resolve issues. But, pretty quickly customers with painful problems became a personally painful problem for an individual customer service rep. They hurt ACT, and comp. Solution? If the rep felt the call was going too long, self-preservation kicked in and they would hang up on the customer. Another issue. If towards the end of the week/month your ACT was going to look terrible on your Manager’s dashboard, calls were picked up and hung up right away.

Result?

The success metric, ACT, did go down. The qualitative surveys measuring unhappiness went down even more than before. Likelihood to repurchase, took a painful hit.

What you deem as success creates an incentive for an individual employee, the group/division, your company’s partners, to behave in a certain way. When you choose unwisely, the long-term consequences can be dramatic.

Epilogue: There were lots of reasons for the fiasco above. ACT goals were set imprecisely. Too much emphasis was on Averages (remember averages suck, distributions are better). Reporting/dashboards were terribly created (CDPs anyone?).  That ACT was an activity metric was terrible – if you have a The success metric, it should always be an outcome metric. The closed loop with customer was too slow and loopy resulting in a slower understanding of impact. And, you can’t discount a contribution the quality of leaders. Company did recover, their stock is doing fine. Now.

Humans are pavlovian. Incentives matter. Metrics matter. A Key Performance Indicator (KPI), our industry’s lingo for what becomes The metric, has massive influence.

Let me share a real-world story with you about this phenomenon, how I end up simply framing the problem above, and the solution for my clients.

An amazing blessing of my professional life is the opportunity to work with influential companies around the world. At one such recent opportunity, I wanted to communicate two simple but powerful elements.

1. You are what you measure.

Set better incentives for the org, see above life-lesson. Additionally, I passionately believe that optimal metrics help solve for more than an individual’s behavior. They help incentivize the elimination of siloed thinking amongst teams/divisions, politics, and self-serving execution that naturally creeps into every organization of every size.

If you pick the right metric, you can get people to care about the goals of their neighboring team/division. You can even get them to care about the long-term interests of the company.

2. Obsess about individual humans.

Zeroing in on digital specifically I wanted to create an north-star for brilliance to emanate through solving of tough problems over time.

My solution was two fold: Bring two lovely things into the equation: Profit & Humans!

I encouraged a ladder of awesomeness type shift from third-party cookies to first-party cookies to browser based persistent-id systems (in place today) to cross-device digital ids to a unified online and offline id (I call it nonline id) to finally a named human id pan-all-existences. Truly omg coolness.

Identity is key because currently targeting capabilities far out-strip any organization's ability to take advantage of it. Throw in Machine Learning and I weep at how many glorious sales, marketing, deep relationships initiatives are impossible because companies have not solved identity. (You, I’m talking about you!)

It is not easy. But, it is solvable. See where you are, go up one step. Then one more, then one more. Obsess about identity.

Great ideas are nice. Being able to communicate them simply is hard. As you’ve read in the Forbes article, I love storytelling.

I attempted to communicate the complexity above in a single picture.

Here's what came out of my doodling with crayons…

Like perhaps most large organizations, this one was a bit more focused on Cost. While not optimal, it was understandable given the evolutionary stage they were at.

I tried to incorporate their reality, and my picture starts with the metric they used to measure success and quickly moves to the right to metrics I believe are more impactful to the one on the very right that is an impossible dream at the moment (the north star).

Here are the definitions…

Cost Per Impression. An almost, if not entirely, useless metric no matter where it is applied. No one should use this for anything ever. World peace will be hastened by a millennia.

Click-Thru Rate. A little more interesting. Helps shine a light on the ability to do clever targeting, the content in the messages/ads, and smartness in bidding strategies. Good tactical wholesomeness.

Cost Per Lead. An outcome! Yes. In this case this was technically a micro-outcome in this case (conversion is offline). Still, very nice.

Cost Per Human. See the pivot? Per Human. In my definition, this is also online to offline, offline to online or whatever the heck to whatever the heck. It is very hard to do, you have to solve so many tough problems. It also has massively delicious implications in your data, acquisition and retention strategies (ignoring the sweet, heavenly, implications on your customers).

I realize that between CPL and CPH you go from crawling to flying. But, that is what north stars are all about.

Profit Per Human. What every company and non-profit really, really, really need. Why care about something as lame as cost? The only thing that matters is profit. Per. Human.

[Bonus: Remember, you can measure profit everyday in Google Analytics!]

An incredibly complex story, with implications up and down the organization, with smarter tactical and strategic choices, and a long-term hard problem to solve, all wrapped into one simple slide. When you communicate, that is all you need, after all you are the story and not the thing on the screen.

I of course built the story out piece-by-piece, when I was done, this is how it looked…

Imagine for a moment the behavior of your Acquisition team (call it Sales, call it Marketing, call it Tony), if you measure them based on CPM or CPL. Each incentivizes such a different behavior, right?

Applying it to digital advertising…

Shove ads up people’s faces like crazy, who cares if there are 300 words of content surrounded by 18 ads? CPM baby! These Marketers write articles and give conference keynotes that obsess about “viewable above-the-fold ads.” A heartbreaking obsession, but remember it is what they are being incentivized to care about.

Or, worry a ton about the three ad levers you can pull, Content, Targeting, Bids, to ensure you are optimizing for the max leads you can get. Will this marketer give two hoots about “viewable above-the-fold ads”? Only to the extent that their three levers might be influencing less clicks. Instead, they shift that problem to the ad-network (yes!). Let them ensure the ads are showing up in non-crappy-more-relevant sites/apps where the Content and Targeting results in a click to a lead. Good behavior shift.

Extend the above incentive purification and imagine the day-to-day behavior of your Acquisition team if you measure them based on CPH. Or… PPH. See, how dramatically different their execution strategy, their obsessions will be?

Can you imagine why I say team and organization and online-offline silos will be broken as you go further to the right? No one person can succeed without active collaboration, and empathy, with rest of the teams!

That's what you want for yourself or teams that you lead. PPH.

One more thing.

Taking this out of the confines that define the reality of the client, you know that I don’t obsess about Cost this much. It tends to have other unintended consequences (especially lower down in organizations).

Hence.. Here’s an important switch to one of the five metrics to better reflect my worldview…

Revenue Per Human.

Subtle change. But, you want people to obsess about Revenue and not Cost. Else people do frustratingly short-sighted things. This is real, from last week: "Our 2017 goal is to reduce the cost of your display campaigns by 20%."

I wanted to die.

Who gives a small kiwi if costs are down by 20% or up by 40%? Are you making more money every day? Are you taking advantage of the complete opportunity to win in the market? Is your competition stealing share by the bucket load while you obsess about cost?

If 10xing your revenue requires that you quadruple your costs, what's the problem?

Remember, we still have PPH to ensure that the revenue we are driving is driving a positive influence on the bottom-line of the company.

Yet, most senior executives in the world incentivize their organizations to solve for cost. Then, they are surprised that they are losing market share or a new competitor crushes them. Hey, costs are lower this year! #winning #not 

But wait, there’s more!

Since I’m now solving for all of you, one more critical evolution to bring this baby home.

If you have read anything I've ever written, you know that I obsess about ensuring every view I have, every portfolio of segments I have, every dashboard I create, every incentive-structure conversation I lead, every business strategy I help craft has to have the three elements that form an end-to-end view: Acquisition, Behavior, Outcomes.

In the picture above, you'll notice I have Acquisition metrics, Outcome metrics, but no behavior metrics.

Not nice. Let's fix that.

There are many candidates, I wanted to have something that _flows_ with the story I was trying to tell… Something that would still incentivize optimal behavior… Something a little unorthodox to push your thinking… Here's my recommendation…

Cost Per (unique) Page View.

I said orthodox, did I not. :)

Measure what it cost you to drive every page view (unique). It gives you a sense for content consumption. It will include all the bounced sessions (pain). It will get you to dive deeper into what site/app sections people visit, what they are not reading, what they do read, how many unique page views does it take to get a Lead, what about freshness of content, anything about layout and experimentation, so on and so forth.

Not quite perfect, but an unorthodox start to demonstrate the creativity you can bring to this.

Regardless of the version of the story you use, it is important to create an end-to-end picture for your own company, your own work.

You will matter more to your company as you personally shoot for the right side of the picture. It will be simply because you are solving for a KPI that actually matters when it comes to the fundamental existence of your company.

Got PPH?

Inspiration: The Identity Spectrum, Ideal Solution.

So much of my solution for your huge success (imagine that being said as: yuge success ;) is dependent on identity. That last bit I added above, Human, has meant many different things over the evolution of the web. There are so many different identity mechanisms out there.

To help you traverse through them, and to get you to Human as in an individual warm body, here’s the identity spectrum we have access to today…

Cookies 3rd.

Most advertising networks use third-party cookies (cookies they set inside mobile and desktop browsers on your behalf – but not as you). These cookies tend to be fragile as they are not accepted in many browsers and are more often deleted – by choice or default. In the past they were roughly equivalent to a person as we all had one computer with one browser. They are not the most primitive form of any measurement (though if you only rely on your ad-network for success metrics of any type then you don’t have a choice, you are stuck with this fragile thing, and I offer a heartfelt sorry that your world is sad).

Here’s one metric you might have heard of that relies on 3rd party cookies: View-Thru Conversions. (Cue sad music.)

What can yo do with third-party cookies? Hold yourself, your ad networks, accountable in a narrow silo.

Cookies 1st.

These are set by existences you own. You’ll recognize these most commonly as being set by Adobe or Google Analytics on your site to better track metrics like Sessions and Users. They tend to be a lot less fragile because most personalization and authorizations except this capability. There is still a decay, if you want to get a sense for it checkout the Recency reports in your analytics tool. They are terrible at identity now as we all use multiple browsers on the same machine, and of course we use laptops, desktops, tablets, and phones (sometimes all at the same time with the same digital company!). It is imperative that you get off it as soon as you can.

Pretty much every metric in your Google Analytics reports uses first-party cookies as the identity mechanism. Conversion Rate. Bounce Rate. Visits to Purchase. Pageviews Per User.

What can you do with first-party cookies? Create better experiences in individual browser (as in Chrome) silos. Leverage advertising solutions like RLSA.

Login-ID 1st.

I’m a paying subscriber to my beloved New Yorker magazine. I’m logged into it’s site on my desktop, laptop, tablet, and phone. I’m logged into the browsers and the mobile application. This empowers the people at Condé Nast to dump cookies and use any digital analytics platform to rely on my login-id as identity to stitch my experiences and truly understand my Acquisition, Behavior and Outcome touch-points.

Login-ID is not fragile (for me the site/apps won’t even work without it). For The New Yorker they can easily tie to my name, address, credit card and a more. I know Condé Nast does not  leverage any of this because none of their platforms show any level of personalization, none of their offers for upping the subscription, none of their ads I see anywhere around the web, etc. show any intelligence related to me as a person. Sad. But. At least the possibility exists, and hope that Condé Nast will wakeup one day to the deeper loyalty and delight they could create using this identity.

For most of you, Login-ID might just be an account someone created on the web or a email address that someone used to sign up for your mailing list. In these cases of Login-ID you don’t have the tie to a human like above, but it is still better than cookies! Switch to 1. using an identity system that relies on Login-ID and 2. create meaningful incentives for people to login to their account.

Cookies as an identity are now only for those who don’t care about their digital business. Login-ID (the New Yorker variety or the signed up for an account) should be default.

For the most glamorous amongst you (I of course mean all of you!), you can stitch the third-party and first-party cookies littered around for your individual Login-IDs and paint an even more robust picture. I recommend this not as the default (because it is a lot of work), but rather as something you can do when *all* other business problems have been solved.

[Bonus: Here’s how to use Universal Analytics to implement Login-ID identity on your digital existences.]

What can you do with Login-ID identity? See above New Yorker example. Summary:  Personalized experiences via intent inferred from expressed behavior. Smarter Search, Display. More interesting understanding of Profitability (it will blow what you do with default first-party cookies with Adobe/Analytics out of the water on day one!).

Login-ID 3rd.

For people who can’t do above sometimes tend to rent an identity system from a third-party. This would be you implementing the Facebook identity system on your site, or one from Google or someone else who currently has most of the internet as it’s User.

So, people can log into your website using the Facebook identity system. With it comes the reduction of the pain of getting people to signup, and also additional behavioral data that the identity platform (say Facebook) would like to share. With it also come limitations related to how much of the customer data and relationship with the customer you own, as well as how much of this can you tie to your online, offline systems.

If you simply can’t do Login-ID on your own for any reason, this is a compromise is less worse than simply relying on cookies.

Nonline Customer-ID.

An improved variation of Login-ID 1st strategy. Most companies (think any retailer for example) still operate their identities in a silo. There is one for online (the one above), there will be another when you call on the phone (it might be your registered phone number), there will be a different one for when you walk into the store, and depending on if they own the store or if it is a channel for them, there might be one more.

Nonline Customer-ID is an identity platform that allows you to tie all of the above experiences down to one.

It could very well be my phone number. If I’m on your website, mobile app, call your phone center, walk into your store, or anything else, you use my phone number to know it is an individual. In this case, you come very, very close to Human.

Soon it could also be a BLE device implanted in my body that, in close quarters only, allows you to identify me when I am on your site (using a reader on my laptop), in your app (reader on the phone), in your store (readers in your ceilings) and so on and so forth.

It could be other things. I’m not opining on the pros and cons of doing this, I’m leaving out how you feel about this. That is for governments, companies and you to decide.

What can you do with Nonline Customer-ID identity? The ultimate deep level of understanding of customer behavior (as in customer), effectiveness of your marketing and service strategies, profitability, and everything else. If you want to imagine how insightful this can be, close your eyes, think of your business, imagine you have a Nonline Customer-ID platform, think of your current marketing data-driven attribution report. You realize how much this current holy grail sucks, right? That’s what I mean. Times 1000.

Nonline Customer-Id is an identity system will finally allow you to behave as one company and understand one person. B2B. B2C. A2P. DJT.

Nonline Customer-Name-ID.

This won’t apply to all companies, but as I’m deeply passionate about delighting every single individual human I wanted to share this purer version of Nonline Customer-ID.

Let’s take the most famous example: Amazon.

Today, Amazon is as close to Nonline Customer-ID as an identity system as you can get. Every touch point from site experience to mobile app to chat to phone (yes, they have that!) etc. play off the same identity.

But, in my family, like perhaps yours, my spouse and I both use the same identity (and both buy and ship things under my name to our home).

Amazon does not understand us individually though. From the recommendations it gives us to greeting her with my name everywhere, it is stuck with just Nonline Customer-ID identity.

But. Amazon has cookies. It has access to device-ids for mobile. It has access to pages viewed. It has access to products shopped from various browser IDs. And more.

They can easily use two or more of those to assign a Nonline Customer-Name-ID to my wife and to me. In one amazing instant, it would understand us individually and be able uniquely deliver deeper personalization, offers, support, and more.

It won’t be perfect. Perhaps it is off by 5%. But, it would be exponentially better than what exists today (which honestly is already better than 90% of the companies on the planet). And, Amazon needs it’s customers to do nothing new.

Additionally, Amazon could understand Home and understand Avinash and Jennie. Imagine all the possibilities that that unlocks.

What can Nonline Customer-Name-ID do for you? Cross-device intent customized smarter experiences that power relationships and not just shopping. Nirvana.

Now you know what it takes to truly get to Human. To real PPH. The only metric that matters (even for a non-profit). And, we’re not just talking about digital.

Got Human?

As always, it is your turn now.

Considering our metrics incentive spectrum pictures above, where is your company in terms of incentives for it’s employees? Are your little team, or your giant division, solving for the global maxima? If you are a leader, what incentives have you created for people who work for you? What element represents your company’s current identity system? What roadblocks do you see in front of you to get to Nonline Customer-Name-ID?

Please share your ideas, struggles, criticism of my ideas, worries and joy via comments below. I’ll be most grateful for the conversation.

Thank you.

Cookies To Humans: Implications Of Identity Systems On Incentives! is a post from: Occam's Razor by Avinash Kaushik

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