The brief
The Drum magazine is a monthly publication aimed at marketing professionals. It’s distributed across Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific, with over 10,000 readers and an average of 1 million unique users flocking to their website every month.
Their entire July issue centred around voice technology – and they wanted to bring it to life. They’d also just rebranded.
They wanted an Alexa skill to complement their new brand, while enhancing their credentials as a cutting-edge marketing publication.
What we did
We got under the skin of their requirements. We met with The Drum team to hear what they wanted their audience to get out of the skill – and to understand the art of the possible.
The first part was easy – they wanted to deliver their major news stories to their audience who are active on Alexa-enabled devices. But we were both looking for something more compelling – something to capture the quirky nature of The Drum’s new brand.
So we created two skills. The first, a flash briefing, delivered the latest news to Alexa-users via an RSS feed.
The second was more unique – a skill that was a voice technology version of “bonus DVD material.” Readers of the magazine could learn about voice through printed articles, but the Alexa skill gave them more insight and created a bridge between old and new content.
By using pre-recorded answers to a set of questions, users of the skill were able to initiate an ongoing conversation about voice technology with The Drum’s Editor, Gordon Young and hear him explain more in his distinct Scottish brogue.
The results
The skills were launched by The Drum as part of their Cannes event in June.
You can now enable both the flash briefing skill and The Drum Voice over on the Amazon skills store, or first, check out Gordon using the skills himself in the videos below…
