This week, we’re speaking to RAIN agency’s Will Hall and Jason Herndon about how their three pillars of: strategy, creativity and technology, are leading the world's biggest brands to voice first success.

In this episode: voice strategy, creative prowess and technological genius

In this episode, RAIN’s Executive Creative Director, Will Hall, and VP, Engineering, Jason Herndon guide us through the practicalities of how they shape voice strategies and implement voice first solutions for the world's biggest brands.

Whether you're a brand, a designer or developer, this episode will help you understand how and where to start.

It’ll give you things to consider and help you align voice first initiatives with core business drivers.

It’ll show you what you can expect from working with (or at) a voice first agency and give you some examples of how industry-leading brands are approaching voice.

It’ll also present some of the challenges you’ll face and maybe even challenge your own thinking on whether your organisation is set-up for success, including showing you why 'systems thinking' is so important.

You'll understand how to hone-in on use cases that provide value.

You’ll learn how to structure a voice first project; the skills and resources you’ll need and who needs to be involved, as well as the process of going from nothing to implementing a world-leading voice experience.

It’ll show you tools that you can use for design and development, as well as guide you on the value of testing early.

It’ll also give you some ideas on how far ahead you should plan your roadmap and cover why a crawl, walk, run approach is most appropriate.

As ever, we go deep into all of the above and more - this episode is a longer one than usual, and it’s densely packed with nothing but insights.

Our guests

Will Hall is the Executive Creative Director at RAIN. Will has worked on countless projects for global brands and blends the strategy and creative sides of projects together, making sure that the strategic aims of clients are brought to fruition with the appropriate creative.

Jason Herndon, VP, Engineering at RAIN, has worked with the world's largest brands on technical architecture and development and, at RAIN, is responsible for turning big ideas into reality.

About RAIN

RAIN has worked with some of the world’s biggest brands on some of the most headline grabbing Alexa Skills.

Campbells Kitchen and Tide were two of the first branded Alexa Skills and are still cited today as pioneering examples of how valuable voice can be for brands.

The Warner Brothers’ Dunkirk interactive story, which we discussed in our episode on voice games with Florian Hollandt, pushed the boundaries on what’s possible on the Alexa platform and brought movie-like sound design and scripting to the voice first world.

RAIN help brands big and small figure out the strategic value in bringing voice to your business and guide brands through the creation, implementation, promotion and development of voice first experiences.

Where to listen

• iTunes/Apple podcasts
• Spotify
• Stitcher
• TuneIn
• iHeartRadio
• Pippa
• YouTube
• Any other podcast player you use or ask Any Pod to play VUX World on Alexa

Links

• Visit the RAIN.agency website (the newsletter link is at the top on the home page)
• Check out RAIN's development framework, Voxa
• Get in touch with RAIN or require about a project: hello@rain.agency

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