Category: innovation

PEOPLE TRUST PEOPLE: The Internet of Things isn’t even so much about things

March 15, 2018 · Leave a comment ·

What the Internet of Things is NOT about

It seems that if your company doesn’t have an IoT strategy nowadays, you might as well quit. But not just any strategy will do. Let’s look at some of the hot topics in IoT today that are unlikely to make a dent in market adoption. Here are some insights from our most recent publication, IoT Developer Megatrends – a short publication on the most important trends for IoT.

iot-megatrends-1

Here’s what everyone knows about the Internet of Things. It’s going to be enormous. We’ll have tens of billions of devices by the end of the decade. This is a multi-trillion dollar opportunity over the next years. All the major players in consumer electronics, mobile, cloud, factory automation, enterprise IT and more will be fiercely competing for a piece of that pie. All this information shouts: [tweetable]if your company doesn’t have an IoT strategy you might as well quit[/tweetable].

Not just any strategy, of course. The history of technology is littered with great concepts and engineering feats that never became mainstream products. It’s worth looking at some of the hot topics in IoT today that are unlikely to make a dent in market adoption.

What IoT is not

A lot of the buzz in the media and on industry forums is about the Internet of Things technology itself. Standards. Security. Privacy. Whether to use Bluetooth, Wifi, cellular or mesh networks. If history is any guide, all of these important questions will get solved over time, but none are an actual roadblock to market adoption. iOS and Android didn’t depend on app standards to revolutionize the smartphone industry, for example.

Meanwhile, product designers have discovered IoT and are adding connectivity (internet) and services to their products with blazing speed. Washing machines, socks, ovens, shoes, cars, door locks, toothbrushes and even flower pots are becoming “smart”. The problem with this “product with an app” approach is that all those disconnected, individual apps will soon become impossible for users to manage.

The Internet of Things isn’t even so much about things. For example, companies like Google-owned Waze achieve better traffic intelligence by crowdsourcing smartphone data rather than through an extensive network of road sensors, typical for a Smart City project. True smart cities have taken note, and are starting to use Waze’s data. Waze literally never shipped a thing.

Breaking Free of Internet and Things

Here’s an uncontroversial, but often forgotten truth. [tweetable]The value of IoT products doesn’t come from the technology or the internet or the things[/tweetable]. Value is created in IoT by making sense of data, turning it into knowledge and meaningful action. It’s not the parking sensor that matters, but finding a free parking spot quickly and without frustration.

This perspective on the Internet of Things has some interesting implications. We predict that the most interesting IoT applications in 2020 will use data that already exists today, rather than new sensors.

Why? Value is created by making sense of data, and many data will have more than one possible source (like in the Waze vs traffic sensor example). New devices will be more expensive to build, install and maintain than solutions that mine existing sources of data. When a solution can be found that doesn’t require new sensors or hardware, it will prevail. Already, companies like Cellint use data from mobile network operators to monitor traffic jams in cities.

Internet of Things is not about how to add a service to my product, but about making my product work with every other service. It’s about how all those sensors, devices, things and services can be integrated into the user’s digital lifestyle. IoT is breaking free from Internet and Things.

The number one projector manufacturer in the world is already on 3rd gen AR glasses @epson

February 2, 2018 · Leave a comment ·

Super happy to see our Buddies at Epson Moverio getting so much positive attention. We’ve seen this product evolve over the years and it just keeps getting better. This team is unstoppable.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2018/02/01/500k-people-have-used-these-augmented-reality-smartglasses-that-youve-never-heard-of/#4de2322e6a31

If you think about augmented reality beyond the smartphone, you’re probably thinking about something like Microsoft’s Hololens, or the Meta 2, or the much-hyped Magic Leap One. You might also think about smartglasses like Google Glass or the Vuzix Blade, or sports-focused products such as the Raptor, by Everysight.

You probably aren’t thinking of Epson.

Epson Moverio smartglasses

However, the company not only makes a smartglasses product, it has released functioning products that have been used by half a million people. And it’s set to vastly expand that number in the very near future.

“There are more people that visit museums in the U.S. than go to all sports events combined,” ARtGlass CEO Greg Werkheiser told me at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year. “It’s a huge and competitive market.”

Werkheiser is referencing museums because that’s one of the key places where Epson has been delivering its augmented reality hardware: the Moverio AR platform, now in its third generation.

“We are the number one projector manufacturer in the world,” Epson’s head of augmented reality, Anna Jen, told me. “There are two mini projectors in each side of our smart glasses, and we have patents from the mid-1980’s on projectors being used as wearable glasses.”

If you’ve flown a drone with DJI’s first-person-view glasses, you’ve used Epson’s projectors inches from your eyes. If you’ve gone to a museum in Europe with an augmented audio/video tour adding detail, color, and history to the artifacts, you’ve used the company’s projectors as well.

Now ARtGlass CEO Werkheiser is bringing the technology to the U.S.

“After more than 500,000 actual users — 500,000 more than anyone else — we’re announcing our first iconic sites in the U.S.,” he told me. “You’ll be able to go to George Washinton’s house, stand where he stood, and a hologram of George Washington will welcome you.”

86 million people have visited Washington’s home since 1860, a Mount Vernon representative said.

Few have had the luxury of “meeting” Washington personally, however.

I tried the Moverio third-gen platform personally and was impressed with the weight (or lack thereof), the comfort, and the quality of the images that the smartglasses project into your eyeballs. Most head-mounted AR solutions I’ve tried, including a few at this year’s CES, have weak, limited color, hard-to-focus images that the device attempts to overlay onto your field of vision, and an uncomfortable reading position in the corner of your field of view.

Monocular, or single eye versions like the Google Glass, were particularly challenging for me.

“Monocular solutions have all kinds of problems,” Epson’s Jen told me when I asked her about them. “Reverse imaging is one of them … and also, most people are either right eye or left eye dominant … so big headaches could be coming your way if it’s on the wrong eye.”

Reverse imaging is exactly the problem I had with one of the monocular sport-oriented smartglasses products at CES.

Using the products at museums is a smart way to introduce a product into the market and get feedback about its shortcomings as well as its successes, which is where ARtGlass comes in. It’s also good business for cultural sites, which have a new experience to offer.

“People are staying 100% longer at exhibits now,” says Werkheiser, who cover the cost of content creation for museums and then collects a percentage of the rental income. “It’s a competitive market … if you go in Washington, DC, and see the same thing again and again, the incentive to bring people back is low. So there’s an increase in demand for differentiators.”

The actual devices have a battery life of four to six hours, which is good for a light, head-mounted device, and a 23-degree field of view. That’s not huge, but it is enough to get a large, full-color, very clear video or image.

It’s a trade-off, Epson’s Jen explains, saying that a wider field of view requires heavier optics and more battery life. Epson retails them for $799, but a commercial version with more capabilities will run buyers $1,399.

The augmented reality tours begin today at Highland, the historic home of President James Monroe, while the George Washington AR tours will launch in the spring.

John Koetsier is a journalist, analyst, and speaker. He analyzes and forecasts mobile trends for TUNE. Follow him on Twitter or connect on LinkedIn.

Hey, Google “Did Alexa kill CES as we knew it?”

January 17, 2018January 17, 2018 · Leave a comment ·

Look closely. You will see in this image the epitome of CES 2018. Amazon Alexa, well positioned on the floor with a full year plus of partnerships and integration including CES 2017 where they dominated the strip, floor and discussion. Google, represented here (left, inside the booth), boxed in and relevant only to those who know where to look for it made incredible efforts to be recognized and part of the conversation at CES 2018. They succeeded as voice became the #1 topic at nearly all meetings and cocktail hours. Despite the showing, Alexa integrations and branding was on display 3 to 1.

Barking “Hey, Google “and “Alexa…” make not a CES. As I reflected on my annual drive back from Vegas, a trip I have been doing for 17 years, I realized the difference between then and now comes down to the value the products are bringing to consumers.

THEN: Back then (and up until about 3-4 years ago), CES was where new, vertical–forming innovation debuted, and where products that made us more productive where recognized. (VCR, CD player, flat panel tv, gaming, IP TV)

What’s interesting to me here is that, in between each of these innovations, we found a period of time where the vertical was evolving and refining. Flat panel TVs were over $10,000 when they first came out and now you can buy them at Costco for $400.

So, where are we right now? Well, I think it is safe to say that 2018 was a year of convenience rather than transformation.

Convenience is what happens when the value proposition is not based on newness or major leaps forward but rather on evolution of the customer experience.

Hey, Google… Ask Alexa what is CES?

2017: CES: Consumer Electronics Show

2018: CES: Customer Experience Show

Products that were not part of the consumer electronics category before are, by nature of adding sensors or voice assistants, smart and now part of the conversation. The low(ish) cost to add tech to products means an onslaught of newcomers to CES which in-turn pushes the already crowded market into the streets, literally. App makers and artificial intelligence SAAS providers took over restaurants for the week and managed to create buzz alongside their clients, the manufacturers. If you didn’t already see it, a beauty company made quite the splash at CES this year.

Thursday morning, after several days of meetings, walking the floor, and demonstration after demonstration, I joined about 100 game changers at the Future Proof event co-hosted by MemBrain and Wunderman (Thank you to Jennifer Sullivan for the invitation). As attendees barely had their first sip of coffee, Cheddar Founder Jon Steinberg wasted no time and started off by posing a profound question about salience. While getting to a different question, Jon addressed the open room asking ‘in a world where 80% of a brand/product’s marketing dollars are spent on Facebook and Google, have we tipped over into a duopoly where a product has limited access to find saliency’?

Just 12 hours later, Facebook made what could prove to be the most important announcement on this topic, addressing the way their algorithm promotes a brand or publisher’s quest for saliency in our personal news feed. This move will bring Facebook closer to its roots and create opportunities for brands and publishers to uncover new angles and platforms in the quest for saliency. Consumers have grown to become addicted to checking facebook (and other apps) enabling a behavior across demographics that is promoting data/information consumption at all times.

This attention to the word saliency really struck a chord and the irony was not lost on me as we sat in this room at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) marking for many the end of a long-product development cycle. The efforts of the makers transfers to the marketers and here we were, talking about how challenging it is to find prominence on a social platform against headwinds of record breaking exhibitors and attendees fighting for a moment of their target audiences’ attention. Now put yourself in the shoes of the connected consumer, bombarded by content, clips and facts.

For a second year in a row, I heard, “it all looks the same” and “there is not anything new”. As I commented last year, the innovation is not on the surface friends. We are entering a time where the show looks the same but what you see is not what’s new.

The ultimate challenge is to demonstrate the value within to the target customer and that challenge requires understanding and empathy and to do so with clarity. Too many “compatible with” statements may sound great, but the consumer experience gets cluttered and confusing pretty quick.

The new value of customer experience is predicated on our ability to provide and extract data. That’s scary, right? No, it’s only scary to give over data when you are not getting value back. In a world where time is perceived to be the ultimate currency, convenience is the ultimate value.

Amazon and Google have a major role in the future of CES and, frankly, a responsibility to give back to the product makers who have embraced them and put them front and center on the floor. Long-live the spirit of innovation and the future of CES as the expo focused on convenience, experience AND innovation. Change is a good thing and I am excited to see how CES evolves again next year.

Prediction: AR with informed interaction
becomes the key driver to upgrade our phones (and glasses)

CNET captured a great list of notables worthy of sharing here: https://www.cnet.com/pictures/all-the-cool-new-gadgets-at-ces-2018/

Now, a few of my highlights where customer experience created value and where products inspired as seen by @DOTLOT and @THEBUDDYGROUP

Western Digital and SanDisk have cracked the code for backing up images and videos from your phone or device while on the go, a feature that has become synonymous with the connected consumer, prosumer and mom-a-ratzi.

@SharperImage is a favorite of mine. I can’t seem to walk through an airport without stopping and spending 20 minutes trying the latest gadgets. Be on the lookout for this smart roller complete with vibration mode. I may have cried a bit while trying this out.

Yamaha showed off a self correcting motorcycle concept that not only looked amazing, promised to allow you to get to your destination safely.

The most talked about item at CES this year, the folding machine powered by AI and controlled by voice.

Want this guy teaching your kid? Someone invested a lot of money to prepare for that to be a reality.

Finally, having worked with Moverio (EPSON) for years, I had to check out Vuzix Blade in person. Where Moverio’s presence was primarily focused on the use of the glasses to maximize the drone flight experience, Vuzix integration of Alexa made the proposition of smart glasses interesting but proof is in the…frames. I am encouraged by Vuzix and hopeful others in the category step up their game to enable unique use cases and provide value to a market hungry for a new way to learn, engage and share.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank may amazing team for all the great efforts to launch @DOTLOT at CES this year. DOTLOT is the only content company engineered for products that evolve. The response has been overwhelming and we are excited to help companies connect the dots between their products and people. www.dotlot.com and jeff@dotlot.com for more information.

Google Lens is far from perfect. But it’s much much better than Google Goggles ever was!

December 7, 2017 · Leave a comment ·

Google Lens has gone live or is about to on Pixel phones in the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, India and Singapore (in English). Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been using it extensively and have had mostly positive results — though not always.

Currently, Lens can read text (e.g., business cards), identify buildings and landmarks (sometimes), provide information on artwork, books and movies (from a poster) and scan barcodes. It can also identify products (much of the time) and capture and keep (in Google Keep) handwritten notes, though it doesn’t turn them into text.

To use Lens, you tap the icon in the lower right of the screen when Google Assistant is invoked. Then you tap the image or object or part of an object you want to scan.

As a barcode scanner, it works nearly every time. In that regard, it’s worthy and a more versatile substitute for Amazon’s app and just as fast or faster in many cases. If there’s no available barcode, it can often correctly identify products from their packaging or labels. It also does very well identifying famous works of art and books.

Google Lens struggled most with buildings and with products that didn’t have any labeling on them. For example (below), it was rather embarrassingly unable to identify an Apple laptop as a computer, and it misidentified Google Home as “aluminum foil.”

When Lens gets it wrong it asks you to let it know. And when it’s uncertain but you affirm its guess, you can get good information.

I tried Lens on numerous well-known buildings in New York, and it was rarely able to identify them. For example, the three buildings below (left to right) are New York City Hall, the World Trade Center and the Oculus transportation hub. (In the first case, if you’re thinking, he tapped the tree and not the building, I took multiple pictures from different angles, and it didn’t get one right.)

I also took lots of pictures of random objects (articles of clothing, shoes, money) and those searches were a bit hit-and-miss, though often, when it missed it was a near-miss.

As these results indicate, Google Lens is far from perfect. But it’s much much better than Google Goggles ever was, and it will improve over time. Google will also add capabilities that expand use cases.

It’s best right now for very specific uses, which Google tries to point out in its blog post. One of the absolute best uses is capturing business cards and turning them into contacts on your phone.

Assuming that Google is committed to Lens and continues investing in it, over time it could become a widely adopted alternative to traditional mobile and voice search. It might eventually also drive considerable mobile commerce.

VOICE is the newest DRIVER of branded experiences

August 8, 2017August 8, 2017 · Leave a comment ·

As new platforms go, voice is making itself heard. Loudly. Voice-enabled units are projected to be in 45 million homes by end of 2017. So the question for brands now, is: if you’re not speaking for your brand, who is?

For brands in the entertainment space and beyond, having a voice strategy and the content to feed it must be a top marketing priority. Voice, like other emerging platforms — Snap, VR, etc. — is itself an entertainment platform that plays the music we want to hear, catches us up on celebrity news, and lets us listen to interviews, podcasts, audio books, etc.

As entertainment properties seek to develop and evolve their voice platforms, it is helpful to keep in mind how best to build your brand’s voice. Here’s a few ideas specific to the Amazon Alexa Voice Assistant platform:

Voice is a Utility

The voice platform offers studios and networks a variety of new ways to support their brand by building an offering that adds a meaningful service to the consumer.

Voice connected to your home entertainment system will replace the remote control — and with it the complexity for many to actually being able to find what they want to watch. Voice will quickly become the new interface, enabling a much easier way to search, discover and get detailed information on your choice of entertainment. Where is your movie playing? What is the Rotten Tomatoes score? Who is the title actor? You get the idea.

When it comes to the Alexa family of devices, entertainment brands have the benefit of information feeds from IMDb and Wikipedia. But those search tools are only as useful as the data they get.

Tip 1: For all brands in the voice-enabled age it’s important that their Wikipedia pages have up-to-the-minute information. For entertainment brands, it’s never been more important that both their Wikipedia and IMDb pages speak for them. * Extra points if you’re a property who’s promoting the enabling of your Alexa skill via your Wikipedia page!Voice is the Future

Each time your Alexa Skill is enabled and accessed in a consumer’s home, you are connecting and tracking an incredibly personal and organic form of communication.

One could say it’s the purest form of A/B testing your brand could receive, because its the consumer who starts the engagement and is in control of asking, requesting and wanting to direct the conversation.

This brings us to Tip 2: Your brand voice motto, like the Boy Scouts, needs to always be prepared. No matter what you build as a utility or entertainment proposition, your brand voice should always be listening and able to answer any number of possible queries the consumer has, as they are the ones in control.

As voice continues to grow in consumer adoption and brands continue to adapt and refresh their voice skills, casting a wider net of possible requests to both answer and track will give you better guidance on what and how you refresh next.

The Promotional Marketing Opportunities are Endless

Voice is about starting a conversation. Consumers are looking to engage with brands in the voice space but the style of engagement is very different than visually based communications. With voice, they are listening to what you have to say as they search for answers. This leads to many different ways to share and expand your content.

Jeopardy gives consumers a mini-game to play daily. Alexa will tell you a joke if you ask.

Tip 3: Don’t forget to leverage your most important assets; the voices of your stars and talent can support and promote a new film or series with a more personal and connected advantage over brands who do not already have a “voice.”

Gartner predicts that by 2020, voice will represent 30% of web-browsing activity. It’s time for all brands to find theirs.

As seen on Medipost https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/305478/why-voice-will-make-your-brand-heard.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=readmore&utm_campaign=104592&hashid=GDUskglhnvDLb35PkVj_E8-yz3s

Missing my favorite event of the year assembled by @dherman76

July 9, 2017July 9, 2017 · Leave a comment ·

As I sit here thinking about the week ahead, I find myself truly disappointed to not be joining my friends and colleagues at this year’s Silicon Alley Sports event. On one hand, I’m appreciative of the opportunity to be busy with amazing client growth plans. On the other, I am sorry that I won’t see Darren’s vision take form in what will no doubt be another great year.

From performance to brand building and several tech offerings in between, Darren’s event is one of the best places to meet up with those who make moves in the media and connected marketing landscape.

Those of you interested in attending next year, let me know via DM. It’s an invite only event but I will be happy to bring a plus one next year if the fit is right 😉

I’ll be looking for photos and recaps from those of you going.
http://www.siliconalleysports.com/new-page-1/

Disruptors in 2017: What’s on the Horizon for Marketing Technology | MarTech Advisor

February 3, 2017 · Leave a comment ·

If 2016 is any indication for 2017, it will be the year of the customer experience. Jamie Anderson, Senior Vice President & CMO at SAP Hybris explains how with the surge of new technology and, with it, the increase in the number of different channels available to connect with consumers, customer experience has taken on an entirely new meaning. There are more ways than ever for the customer to touch the enterprise

In order to be successful in the coming year, CMOs must understand the technology that works behind the scenes to create a seamless customer experience. Recent research from the CMO Council and SAP Hybris showed that 39 percent of marketers believe their technology investments have met expectations in areas such as measurement and customer interaction, but they appear to be falling short when it comes to connecting content, commerce, conversation, and campaigns with back-end operational realities, supply chain logistics, and organizational capabilities that will ultimately impact the customer experience.

This year, marketers must advance their pools of intelligence from being largely marketing-focused into those that are entirely customer-focused. This demands that the entire organization – from HR to operations and the supply chain – be digitally connected and aligned around a live view of the customer as an individual – a view that takes the past, present, and future state of that individual into context in real-time.

Understanding this underlying technology will become even more critical once virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and general machine learning become a standard practice within marketing technology – something I believe will come to fruition this year. VR and AR have the potential to completely transform the way that consumers interact with technology and, therefore, a brand. This year we saw furniture companies implement VR to allow consumers to visualize what a piece of furniture would look like in their home and retail brands use smart changing rooms to more easily connect the consumer with sales associates. These are two examples of how the shopping experience can be augmented by virtual reality to enhance the customer experience and help retailers make smarter merchandising decisions. With this technology at the core, machine learning will begin to drive customer engagement.

Which brings me to my next prediction: in 2017, physical and digital retail will merge entirely to create one consistent shopping experience. It’s become clear that consumers expect to interact with a single brand, while jumping across in-store and online touchpoints to research and make purchases. Therefore, retailers shouldn’t think in terms of individual channels. For a truly connected retail experience, they must embrace technologies that bridge the physical and digital divide.

For example, in-store sales associates should have access to customer data, including past behaviors and preferences to help personalize the shopping experience. Taking it one step further, brands can offer online ordering for in-store pick-up and vice versa. Consumer shopping behaviors are drastically changing year after year and retailers must keep up with this evolution. With approaches available to help blend the retail experience, shoppers will be able to more easily control their experience, pursuing a variety of tools and channels to complete a purchase. It is the duty of the brand to make this journey as easy and seamless as possible.

This type of connectivity of back-end systems requires a marketing automation system that uses current, relevant data to drive engagement – something all companies will need in order to compete. If their data is out of date, marketing automation is a waste of time. This year, marketers must learn to use automation systems to apply intelligent algorithms to the context of the consumer interaction that has taken place. It’s not about mass outreach – instead, automation can be used to touch each individual customer based on their past behavior and general propensity to buy. AI and machine learning will play a big part in the success of marketing automation systems next year.

Lastly, microservices will be a major disruptor in 2017. At a base level, microservice is a new software that will fundamentally change the agility with which businesses can operate. In the short term, microservices will be most prevalent at the front-end of the business (i.e., the way that brands interact with customers). Microservices can easily be integrated into organizations’ existing technology stacks to create an end-to-end solution that will set a higher bar for engagement between brands and consumers.

If there’s one key area that marketers should focus on in 2017, it is leading the digital innovation that drives change. Once businesses are fully acclimatized to operating in the digital world, they will learn to use it to use it to their advantage – by following consumer journeys from beginning to end, determining what engages a target audience, making predictions about what’s on the mind of customers – and ultimately using this information to form deeper relationships.

https://www.martechadvisor.com/articles/customer-experience/disruptors-in-2017-whats-on-the-horizon-for-marketing-technology/

The rise of the chief marketing technologist | CIO

February 3, 2017 · Leave a comment ·

Whenever we hear the word “digitalization”, we must understand that it is the sound of inevitability and irreversibility. The digital economy isn′t on the horizon anymore, it′s here and it is here to stay. It’s no longer a secret that the digital economy is changing the world at an unprecedented rate. Companies that are looking to succeed in this fast emerging new economy must transform themselves by reinventing their business models, strategies, processes, and practices, and that impacts on the roles of all of its employees, as well as bringing departments to work together, once everyone is more and more dependent of technology to function.

It’s no surprise that marketing is rapidly becoming one of the most technology-dependent functions across all businesses. Gartner has predicted that by 2017, a company’s chief marketing officer (CMO) would be spending more on technology than its CIO, and that is becoming more credible every day, as many CMOs have adopted technology in their everyday activities, showing that technology became the core of marketing nowadays. Every year, CMOs are globally directing their budgets to the usage of technology or software in many different marketing areas. The chart below shows in which areas CMOs are planning to use technology in 2017:

In addition to those numbers, IDC Research has also released a few predictions on how marketing will strategically use technology to accelerate client acquisition, brand awareness, to gather and analyze market and customer information and even to optimize its operational efficiency in order to generate more revenue for companies and be more accurate when directing resources, mainly by enhancing customer experience. Below follows a list with the main predictions from 2017 to 2020 on this subject:

1. In 2017, CMOs will spend more on content marketing assets than on product marketing assets: For decades, the product launch has reigned as the kingpin content event. With a “bill of materials” stretching through multiple Excel pages, product marketing assets suck up a major portion of the marketing budget – and much of that content is wasted. The days of product content dominance are numbered. Product content will remain important, but it will take its place behind the content marketing assets matched to decision-journey stages.

2. By 2020, 50 percent of companies will use cognitive computing to automate marketing and sales interactions with customers: A few leads go right to sales. But the majority need further qualification and extended nurturing. Companies will increasingly turn to smart systems that automatically assess and respond to buyers at the point of need. IBM recently added Watson to its marketing cloud offerings. The question is not when cognitive marketing will become mainstream – but rather, will anyone notice?

3. In 2017, 20 percent of large enterprise CMOs will consolidate their marketing technology infrastructure: Marketing has been absorbing marketing technology a bite at a time for more than a decade. Many organizations now manage dozens (if not hundreds) of point solutions. Just as marketing environments are hitting the wall of this operational complexity, marketing tech vendors are building solid integrated platforms – tailorable through a partner eco-system. A fortuitous convergence of supply and demand.

4. By 2018, predictive analytics will be a standard tool for marketers, but only a third will get optimal benefit: Early adopters of predictive analytics for buyer behavior report amazing results. The benefits come from the ability to discover hidden segments that have a high propensity to buy. Marketers can also better serve these segments with behavioral targeting. However, the majority of marketers face big challenges to achieving the benefits. Chief inhibitors? Lack of statistical skills, stubborn organizational silos that won’t integrate data, and a culture that resists truth when it goes against tradition.

5. By 2018, 50 percent of CMOs will make significant structural changes to their “intelligence” operations and organizations: “Intelligence” as a capability is growing in importance in modern marketing organizations. Intelligence includes market intelligence (MI), business intelligence (BI), competitive intelligence (CI), and social intelligence (SI). In the past, these four functions were spread around the enterprise. Now, IDC sees more companies consolidating into a larger, single, intelligence group – often combining with intelligence functions from other areas like sales. The elimination of silos in this important area is a positive sign.

http://www.cio.com/article/3159677/consumer-electronics/the-rise-of-the-chief-marketing-technologist.html

What does the future of Passenger Experience look like?

January 24, 2017 · Leave a comment ·

It is found within the culture of Zodiac Inflight Innovations. It’s no surprise that on-demand entertainment has become such a cornerstone of our culture. It’s personal. And it’s available anytime … Continue reading What does the future of Passenger Experience look like?

Mozilla’s new logo: An example of the power of the community for which they serve

January 23, 2017January 23, 2017 · Leave a comment ·

Disclosure: Mozilla is a partner of The Buddy Group. We proudly support certain internal product, communication and creative opportunities as needed. Proud to support the mission and ethos for which it stands.

Mozilla has changed. So have we, the user. One thing that has not changed however is the respect they show their users in everything they do.

Last year Mozilla embarked on the most unique, eye-brow raising, risk/reward endeavor I have ever seen a brand take. Not only were they going to re-brand Mozilla for the next generation of innovation but they were going to tackle it in a way only Mozilla could tackle– open, honest and ready for feedback. They opened the process to the community and through the process earned our respect for taking a road less (if not ever) traveled on this scale.

We, as a company, with all our spirit and gusto to be mavericks and push clients outside of their comfort zone, remained glued to our social streams waiting for what would be next.

What came out of it is fascinating, right and admirable.

Rather than recap every step myself, I turn it over to Adweek and Mozilla’s own voice which did a great job of keeping a running log of the process.

Enjoy and let me know what you think!

As written in ADWEEK: For the last six months, Mozilla has been working on a brand identity upgrade, and it’s kept a running log of this process. But it also took it one step further, releasing open-source guidelines for anyone who wanted to jump in and help compose a new logo and visual cues.

“Rather than conduct a brand refresh behind closed doors, we just thought maybe there’s a better or different way to do this,” Mozilla creative director Tim Murray said in August.

http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/mozilla-open-sourced-parts-its-new-brand-identity-heres-how-went-175636

Pete Deutschman

a collection of things that matter to me