Molecular Q&A: An Interview with Joseph Ventura, Senior Manager, Corporate & Internet Communications, Nikon, Inc.
More and more companies are recognizing that to capture the hearts and minds of consumers, they need to understand how their customers currently experience their products and services and use those insights to make improvements. Nikon is one of those companies. With a clear goal of making it easier to do business with Nikon, the company engaged Molecular to help them formulate an online vision, develop a new brand strategy and redesign NikonUSA.com. Nikon’s Senior Manager of Corporate & Internet Communications, Joseph Ventura, talks about the initiative.
MOL: What do you see as the role of interactive in the media mix?
JV: For Nikon, the Web is the channel that we use to create a dialog with the consumer – both passive and active. Not only are we pulling information on consumer behavior as they move through the site, but we’re literally having that dialog with them. With the Web, we’re able to pull all of our communications together, drive customers to a single point, and see how we can advance the dialog to meet the needs and expectations of the consumer. So to us, the dialog is really the most critical element of our interactive strategy.
MOL: How does your interactive strategy differ from competitors like Canon, and how are you using the Web to gain an edge on the competition?
JV: We don’t spend a lot of time studying our competitors, but from what I’ve seen the biggest difference seems to be our approach. We’re focusing on what a consumer needs and wants from their relationship with the company and the brand, rather than on just what we want to say. We follow the philosophy that if we take care of the consumer, everything else should take care of itself. Whether or not our competitors are doing that, I can’t really say. While we do some cursory competitive analysis, it’s not our main focus. We do more analysis of what consumers want and need, what they’re not currently getting from us, and where the opportunities are. In fact, we’ve built a three year strategic plan that’s going to help us meet those consumer needs from a fundamental level, as well as give us the flexibility to adapt as things change.
MOL: NikonUSA.com has evolved from being a product centric web site to one emphasizing the needs of the consumer. How were you able to implement this more consumer-centric approach online?
JV: The best decision we made was to not try to do everything all at once. Our research and dialog with consumers helped us understand what their needs are, and with the help of Molecular, we’ve laid out a plan to meet those needs over time. So for instance, the first release of the new NikonUSA.com allowed us to provide a more engaging experience and a better navigation to and from information on the site, but there are plans to bring in more elements over time. By not biting off more than we can chew, we’ll be able to do a rolling release of features and functionality. There’s more to come, but knowing that people’s needs and behaviors change over time, we haven’t locked ourselves into certain features and functionality either. We’ve given ourselves the flexibility to change. We’ve also built more mechanisms that allow us to listen to the consumer. Where before we’d spend a lot of time talking about what we think we should do or what we wanted to say, now we’re stepping back and listening to what’s going on so we can read the market and respond quickly.
MOL: With the launch of the new site, Nikon also launched a blog called “Your Shot” that encourages users to comment and share their ideas to improve the Web site’s design, interface and content. This seems like a smart utilization of social media to engage with your customers. How successful has it been?
JV: The blog was Nikon’s first foray into a corporate blog experience, and the learning from it is probably the most successful part. We've gotten some really good ideas that we’re currently implementing. For example, we received a comment from a customer that they really liked the presentation of the lenses on the old site because it enabled them to see all the lenses on one page. So now we’re working on building the flexibility for consumers to have alternative views of the product listings for lenses. That’s the type of really good feedback and suggestions that we’re getting from consumers.
We’ve also learned a lot about what our consumers want out of the dialog. We’ve heard from consumers that it’s a great forum and a great step by Nikon in terms of reaching out to the marketplace, but instead of focusing on the site, what they really want to talk about is the products. So it’s given us some insight into how we as a company might want to move forward with other types of blogs or consumer interaction that are focused on different, broader topics like products and technology rather than just the Web.
Lastly, it’s given us great insight from an internal perspective about the type of commitment we need to make to support a more direct dialog, and into the different Web 2.0 platforms that can achieve the same objective but might be more manageable based on our business resources. It’s really been enlightening in terms of what Web 2.0 formats may or may not work for the company.
MOL: Without giving too much away, could you give us a glimpse of what’s coming in future iterations of the site?
JV: Sure. There’s going to be some small things that will come up, like the lens example I gave, but we’re also looking to optimize the home page experience to make it more engaging. There’s a whole ‘Learn and Explore’ area that’s currently linking to existing content, so we’re looking to make that section more robust and link it to the home page experience so that the imagery you can navigate on the home page has more education and editorial content tied to it. Overall, we look at the site as a flow from products, to demonstrations of product technology, to education about how to use them, to editorial that inspires consumers to go out and shoot more, and then an engagement piece that lets consumers show us what they’ve got. Right now we’ve got great product content and imagery on the site, and what you’re going to see over time is a stronger, more tangible bridge between the products and the end-result images that are on the site. The idea is that consumers will be able to see how these products work and apply them to get to that type of an end-result image. It’s this education, editorial and engagement piece that you’ll be seeing most.
