2 of 13

Google Assistant�Market

Launch

There was no Google Assistant in the Turkish market.

Demand was strong, and android penetration was high

We had to launch…

Categories, questions and answers were needed in their

thousands along with jokes, easter eggs, songs and…

Well a ‘personality’.

3 of 13

Stats

83%

ANDROID

56% (US)

80.8M

POPULATION

325.7M (US)

74%

URBAN POP

82% (US)

4 of 13

Intention

Google wanted to launch as part of a global strategic expansion.

But my own target was to make Google Assistant the most loved of all the voice platforms in the market.

Just to get people using the platform wasn’t enough for me.

I wanted to start a conversation that went beyond the platform.

5 of 13

Work

Creating and curating content for the Google Assistant

Personality in local market

Social media listening and analysis, conducting in-market media

research to help determine sentiment and usage patterns

User experience analysis in order to act on user feedback

Evaluating data both quantitatively and qualitatively, and

determining key metrics from that

6 of 13

Analytics

Reporting on market matrix for reach, growth and user satisfaction

Market analysis for usage of personality in market, identifying

trends & gaps and proposing approaches for improvement

Analysing product needs and working with cross-functional

stakeholders such as PR, Marketing, Legal, Policy, Localisation,

Linguistics, Partnerships and Engineering in order to launch

product, features and campaign

7 of 13

Research and Roll out

Held focus groups with different target audiences to understand emerging vernacular and cultural nuances and expectations, prior to content creation.

Used an internal test environment of 2000 test Googlers. Then beta testing to iterate the product.

Resolved text to speech problems, grammar problems, and following the beta test carried out social media listening exercise to determine sentiment and preference.

Delivered seasonal campaigns: Valentine’s Day, International Women’s Day, and of course New Year, Children’s Day, etc.

Fixed a lot of Personality bugs 😱

Created thousands of chat responses, curated content for different categories such as ‘jokes’, ‘easter eggs’, tongue twisters’, ‘riddles’, ‘quotations’ etc.

8 of 13

Tweaking content

For instance:

A passage is where we used to keep all the utterances and responses for one single intent.

In all categories, there was a main passage that triggers the content passage and none of the locals used to have an introduction in their main passage.

Soon after launching our product, even though the stats were higher than the other countries dashboards, the “Joke” category like amounts were low.

I came up with an idea based on a psychological fact. The fact that being self deprecating always creates a better response. So I talked to my manager and the engineers to find out if presenting an introduction before a joke was possible. Bingo! It was.

I created a few different introduction phrases and people loved these phrases more than the jokes themselves 😁

9 of 13

Statistical Impact

10 of 13

JOKES

NO SURPRISE

#1 CATEGORY

80.3%

SONGS

MUSIC & LYRICS OF ALL SONGS

86.5 RANK 6

11 of 13

ALTSHIFTDELETE

YouTube - 800K subs

�

'I could use the Google Assistant every day just

for a quote!'

�LOCAL URBAN DICTIONARY/REDDIT In the top 15 most visited

'Her songs make me smile. Ask her to sing a song'�‘Siri is an 55 year old aunt who works as an accountant, Google Assistant is 19 year old university student, a beautiful girl’.

'Engaging and sympathetic’. ‘Try to ask ‘Taktik maktik yok’ (easter egg)'

HURRIYET

EQUIVALENT TO ‘THE TIMES’

'The Google Assistant

is entertaining

It can speak fluently, can have a conversation. Its content is tailor made for Turkish and Turkey.

Siri is experienced

The first assistant in Turkish. Understands and answers faster than the competitors.'

#3 NEWS TV CHANNEL

& NEWSPAPER

Article + web video

'She can sing songs, read poems, tell riddles

and even make jokes!'

Cultural impact

12 of 13

USER TWEET

1.5K followers

'I had a 10 minutes chat with Google Assistant and the quality was higher than

a conversation with a relative.'

USER TWEET�1.4K followers�

'The Google Assistant

is our new entertainment'

USER TWEET�6.5K followers�

'Having a whale of a time with the Google Assistant’

(caught an easter egg)

USER TWEET�3.4K followers�

'Even if it’s an AI, it knows how to make me happy’