Say hi to your new friend Oli
Today we saw a version of the future of transport at the IBM Watson session. We were introduced to Oli, a 3D-printed bus (for 12 people) aimed squarely at campus areas and areas that require “internal” transportation, such as retirement homes, beaches in Florida etc. Oli is completely autonomous and contains no driving equipment as per a normal bus. However, unlike a boring robotic bus, through the use of advanced AI, Oli can sense and understand each and every person, “seeing them” and adapting to them based on age.
Oli can therefore provide different routes and experiences based on the demographic makeup of the people he is picking up, adding new routes, adapting its driving speed, and giving “human-like” advice on popular restaurants, bars, sights and so on.
What should brands do next? Brands will be able to use AI agents like Oli to tailor personalised brand experiences, and passively learn from users’ appearance and unconscious signals as well as their active input – giving them different experiences according to their mood, for example.
Ben Lukawski, Group Planning Director
The future of programmatic is a new creative process
I attended a Campaign lunch with a range of experts from different disciplines, all of whom had been invited to share their point of view on where programmatic would go next. I was expecting this to be a hard core deep dive into brand safety, viewability and lots of deep technical stuff. What we got was closer to reimaging the model for the industry based upon ‘programmatic’ sitting at the heart of consumer-experience planning.
There was real consensus that the creative process and creative brief need to change urgently so programmatic can move from tactical conversion activities and be exploited to its full ROI potential. Clients in the room were expressing their frustration that creative teams ‘refuse’ to get programmatic and there was broad agreement that a new collaborative process is needed for briefing and new teams (maybe the media agency) to execute it.
What should brands do next? Brands now need to focus on programmatic marketing as a new form of storytelling, in addition the current focus on getting the technical stuff right. So get ready for the opportunity to shape the story!
Sean Healy, Global Head of Strategy & Product
Don’t think mainstream v web culture, think pop culture
This afternoon I attended “The Changing Face of Original Content”, hosted by YouTube. It was provocative and raised many questions about how we should think about content in 2017. YouTube argued that today, there is no division between mainstream and web culture, everyone now needs to think about the new connected world of popular culture, built by individuals, expressing themselves on YouTube.
Personal, often niche experiences now reach global scale like no content built for the linear world, and these are authentic, not orchestrated by traditional media brands using research to second-guess what mass audiences are likely to want to consume. The new world is millions of strands of community driving content at scale – and at what scale! Over one billion hours of YouTube content is consumed globally every day.
What should brands do next? Brands need to think hard how they can benefit from this new connected avenue of popular culture. To do this, they need YouTube to provide more data to reveal the true power of this content beyond pure reach, and help brands to add real utility to YouTube users around the world.
Martyn Stokes, Group Planning Director
The Lean Business Canvas Model: Simplicity combined with speed of development
During “The Brands Without Borders” session at Lions Innovation, members from the Founders Factory, supported by L’Oreal and Aviva, made the brave attempt of running a live workshop on building an idea using a business-opportunity framework known as the Lean Business Canvas model.
Structured around four key areas (Trends, Factors, Players and Value), it reminds you of how simple your approach can be when it comes to delivering new comms models or ROI value propositions.
What should brands do next? Brands should understand the value of innovating in short measurable sprints. Build it quickly, see how a sample of potential customers reacts, and develop it fully if it shows promise.
Benoit Cacheux, Global Head of Digital & Innovation
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