Background & Approach

The Nike Adapt BB is the most innovative shoe to hit the market in years. Instead of laces, the Adapt BB automatically adjusts to the contours of your feet with the touch of a button. To introduce this shoe to the world, Nike partnered with RAIN and R/GA to coordinate the world’s first live sneaker “drop” done exclusively through voice.

During TNT’s live telecast of the Lakers/Celtics game, voice prompts supplemented the live game. Viewers could ask Google questions about the product and explore the Adapt’s rich history. During halftime, users could even buy the shoe through Google Assistant while Charles Barkley talked about the shoe in real time. Product placement for the win!

What We Learned

For deeper insights about this project and others, do be in touch.

Background & Approach

We’ve all been there. Blurry-eyed and in need of coffee, we enter our neighborhood Starbucks only to be greeted by a line that’s busting out the back. Beyond being an annoyance, it’s also a huge business problem. During peak times, Starbucks loses significant sales simply because the line’s too long. Not ideal.

To help combat this problem, RAIN developed a voice-first ecosystem that encourages users to preorder easier than ever before. By looking through existing behaviors, we uncovered a cornerstone insight: 73% of users order the same thing every visit.

Rather than force users to go through a multi-screen process, users could simply say “order my regular.” That required helping them re-architect their product APIs to better support conversational experiences, laying the foundation for the most transformative future touchpoint: voice in the car.

What We Learned

Users who purchased through voice had a 16% higher monthly cart-size than non-voice shoppers.

For deeper insights about this project and others, do be in touch.

Background & Approach

With everything beeping, blinking and booping for our attention, the need for mediation anytime, anywhere has never been more important. Headspace approached RAIN to help integrate voice into their ecosystem. Though their platform is loved by millions, the glowing screen of a smartphone isn’t exactly the best way to deliver a moment of zen. Voice became a natural fit.

RAIN reimagined the mediation experience across three voice-driven platforms — Google, Alexa and Cortana. By connecting all voice platforms to each other, and then connecting those experiences to the larger ecosystem, Headspace is providing users a seamless and personalized experience across all touch points...

What We Learned

In just two months, Headspace reached the same number of monthly active users via voice as it took to amass on mobile in over 40 months. Nearly 90% of users returned for another session via voice.

For deeper insights about this project and others, do be in touch.

Background & Approach

Managing $6 trillion (!!!) of retirement assets, BackRock is one of the most important and innovative financial organizations in business today. BlackRock engaged RAIN to define and execute their short, near and long-term strategy for voice and conversational AI.

Through this engagement, RAIN identified several opportunities — voice search, retirement planning tools, and weekly voice news briefings. Though these workstreams are showing real results, using voice to create operational efficiencies has the potential to transform not only BlackRock, but the entire financial industry.

What We Learned

For investors, having access to timely data and insights is critical. A second could mean the difference between winning big or going broke. Everyday, hundreds of thousands of financial advisors use BlackRock’s various technologies (Aladdin (an enterprise risk assessment tool), BlackRock Investment Institute, the site etc.) to run their businesses.

Many tasks (like retrieving simple reports) took as long as seven minutes to complete, but voice can shave minutes off of these interactions. When most organizations talk about voice, it’s in a B2C context, but the operational efficiencies gained through voice will improve productivity and increase capacity profoundly.

Due to the proprietary and confidential nature of this work, we’re only able to share high level findings for this client at this time. For deeper insights about this project and others, do be in touch.

Background & Approach

Tide, every family’s favorite no-nonsense detergent and purveyors of all things stain-removal, approached RAIN to imagine a voice experience that could extend their brand authority to the emerging world of voice.

From a business perspective, through various Datalogix and IRI studies, Tide has known for years that providing stain-removal expertise to consumers increased LTV and drove preference. Not surprisingly, our work built on this truth, providing users with “recipes” for 200+ everyday stains.

The Outcome

Though Tide has been in the stain-removal game for decades, voice uncovered a profound insight: many of the stain requests were for things that Tide doesn’t currently have products for (i.e. sneaker cleaning tips). Though they don’t yet have sneaker products, Tide has the mindshare for these occasions. In this way, voice is fueling innovation, and uncovering unrealized brand equity.

For deeper insights about this project and others, do be in touch.

Background & Approach

Amazon and our fine furry friends at Sesame Street approached RAIN to help launch Alexa for Kids, an entirely new way for children to interact with technology using voice. Instead of barking orders to your “assistant” (“Alexa! weather!! NOW!!!”), Alexa for Kids reinforces polite interactions so we don’t raise a generation of entitled jerks. Srsly.

Working directly with early childhood professionals, our Skill balanced critical variables like repetition, grammar and language to ensure age-appropriate interactions. Within the experience, kids spoke directly to Elmo and the gang where they chose from a series of games, quizzes and activities. They were informed. They were entertained. That’s right. They were infotained. Take that, kids.

What We Learned

Kids love Alexa. Not surprisingly, they took to our experience deeply, with average session times of over five minutes and 60% re-engagement. Perhaps most importantly, though, we found that kids anthropomorphize voice technology. Instead of simply seeing Elmo as a canned voice, they often asked if he was hungry, what his favorite color is, and lots of questions about poop. Lots.

For deeper insights about this project and others, do be in touch.

Background & Approach

Nothing says “I love you” (and here’s half my stuff) quite like a Tiffany engagement ring. More than just a jewelry shop, Tiffany is the first truly American luxury house, and have defined what it means to live well for over a century. Tiffany & Co. engaged RAIN to help define their near, mid and long-term strategies for voice and conversational AI.

Through this work, RAIN uncovered some foundational insights. Though the vast majority of sales happen in their physical stores, most of these consumers started on the site, most of which came through organic search. With over 30% of mobile search being done through voice, optimizing for voice search became a critical business driver.

What We Learned

In traditional search, engines like Google show users pages of results, but voice search tends to only provide one or two possible answers. When users asked things like “Does Tiffany use blood diamonds?” or “How do you tell if a Tiffany & Co. piece is authentic?” the answer was almost always provided by a source not directly affiliated with Tiffany & Co. This leaves room for misguided information and misstated fact – obviously a problem. To address this conundrum, RAIN identified the top 50 business-critical voice queries, created an optimization playbook for the internal Tiffany & Co. team, and outlined tech optimizations all working toward the goal of reclaiming the conversation.

Due to the proprietary and confidential nature of this work, we’re only able to share high level findings for this client at this time. For deeper insights about this project and others, do be in touch.