Author: Lab Team

Amazon Invites Social Influencers To Curate Collections And Earn Money

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Amazon has launched a new initiative that aims to entice more social influencers to plug for sales on its platform. Similar to the existing Amazon Affiliate program, which allows anyone to sign up to create links and shopping ads for their own website or blog to get a referral cut of the sales, this new Amazon Influencer Program exclusively offers social influencers a chance to curate product collections on Amazon.com and generate income through affiliate sales. This makes for a more browseable shopping experience and let the influencers recommend a set of products to their fans at once.

What Brands Need To Do
With Amazon dominating online sales in the US, some brands and manufacturers have forgone e-commerce on their sites entirely, opting instead for sales and fulfillment operations managed by Amazon. This new program enables the ecommerce giant to leverage social influencers’ popularity to facilitate product discovery.

At a time when influencer marketing is becoming an essential business strategy for many marketers to reach new audiences and raise brand awareness, this is undoubtedly a smart move for Amazon to stay competitive in the ecommerce arena. More brands, especially fashion and CPG brands, should consider similar initiatives so as to leverage the personalized and authentic content created by influencers to garner social buzz and encourage customer loyalty.

 

Source: TechCrunch

How Peroni And Mountain Dew Used VR To Spice Up Branded Events

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Two beverage brands are using virtual reality to create unique on-site experiences and spice up their respective promotional events. Peroni is opening an experimental pop-up bar in London, where the Italian lager brewers invited attendees to try drawing in 3-dimension with Google’s VR app Tilt Brush after a drink or two. Similarly, Mountain Dew is putting together a free, two-day music festival called “Label Motel” in the Musicland Hotel in Palm Springs next week to promote its new Mtn Dew products. The event includes a VR experience that puts participants in a lounge party on an airplane, who will then be dropped out of the VR plane “as the beat drops.”

What Brands Need To Do
Those two brands are the latest examples in the growing list of brands that are starting to incorporate it into the production of branded content and events to deliver engaging and immersive customer experiences. As more mainstream tech and media companies rush into VR to capitalize on the booming popularity of the emerging medium, brands that wish to stay ahead of the curve should start developing VR content that truly enhances brand messaging and contributes to the campaign objectives.

How We Can Help
Our dedicated team of VR experts is here to guide marketers through the distribution landscape. We work closely with brands to develop sustainable VR content strategies to promote branded VR and 360 video content across various apps and platforms. With our proprietary technology stack powered by a combination of best-in-class VR partners and backed by the media fire-power of IPG Mediabrands, we offer customized solutions for distributing and measuring branded VR content that truly enhance brand messaging and contribute to the campaign objectives.

The Lab currently has several VR headsets, including a PlayStation VR, an Oculus Rift, an HTC Vive, and a Google Daydream, all ready for demos. Virtual reality is something that has to be experienced to be understood, so come by the Lab and ask for a VR demo to get a hands-on experience and figure out how your brand can use it to excite and engage with consumers.

 

Source: Marketing Dive & PSFK

Header image courtesy of  Mountain Dew’s YouTube

Mode.ai’s Messenger Bot Can Suggest Similar-Looking Fashion Items That You Can Buy

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
On Friday, retail recommendation engine and chatbot maker Mode.ai launches a bot on Facebook Messenger that can find similar-looking fashion apparel items for users based on photos they submit. Mode.ai trained the bot’s AI engine with millions of pictures of products from online retailers, and if you like what it suggests, the bot also lets you shop directly from a number of fashion retailers like Levi’s, Louis Vuitton, Ann Taylor, as well as Amazon. In addition to its own bot, Mode.ai plans to offer computer vision services to several retailers and fashion publishers to be announced during F8, the upcoming annual conference for Facebook developers.

What Brands Need To Do
This new Mode.ai bot is a good example of how product discovery may work in the near future where AI-powered smart assistants are able to use the camera of your mobile devices to see what you are seeing. The surging prominence of visual input is set to bring a new set of opportunities and challenges that brands will need to learn to navigate in order to adapt to the shifting consumer behaviors. As computer vision technology continues to mature, it opens up new use cases for brands to create new user experiences supercharged by cognitive ecommerce engines like Mode.ai.

How We Can Help
The Lab has extensive experience in building Alexa Skills and chatbots to reach consumers on conversational interfaces. So much so that we’ve built a dedicated conversational practice called Dialogue. The NiroBot we built in collaboration with Ansible for Kia is a good example of how Dialogue can help brands build a conversational customer experience, supercharged by our stack of technology partners with best-in-class solutions and an insights engine that extracts business intelligence from conversational data.

If you’d like to learn more about how to effectively reach consumers on conversational interfaces, or to leverage the Lab’s expertise to take on related client opportunities within the IPG Mediabrands, please contact our Client Services Director Samantha Barrett ([email protected]) to schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

Source: VentureBeat

 

Starbucks Tests New Concept Store That Only Takes Mobile Orders

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Starbucks is reportedly planning to open a concept store at its Seattle headquarters as it tests how to best serve mobile-oriented customers. This new Reserve store will be dedicated to mobile orders, meaning customers will place their orders and pay in advance via the Starbucks app and then pick up their purchases at the store. A second Reserve store is set to open in Chicago later this year.

What Brands Need To Do
This new store concept makes perfect sense for Starbucks given the success of its mobile app. In 2016, an average 7 million Starbucks customers ordered through the mobile app every month. Its massive popularity can be largely attributed to the seamless integration of Starbucks loyalty program in the mobile order and payment app. This new store format should help alleviate the long queues at certain stores at peak hours by routing the mobile orders to a Reserve pickup station nearby, therefore serving the convenience-focused customers without compromising the in-store experience. More QSR and retail brands need to learn a thing or two from this Starbucks initiative and consider how to design a mobile-first store experience.

 

Source: TechCrunch

Facebook Expands Branded Content And Marks Them As “Paid”

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
On Thursday Facebook updated several policies regarding branded content on its platform, enabling more pages to share it and updating its branded content tag to include the word “paid.” The social network first started allowing verified Pages to publish branded content last April, before adding branded content options to its Instant Articles last June. Now, non-verified pages can submit applications for access to the branded content tool, which will be available on iOS apps and the web, with Android support to come in the coming weeks. In addition, Facebook now also allows logos, watermarks and graphical overlays to persist throughout a video to help brands and publishers to distinguish their content.

What Brands Need To Do
This update marks Facebook’s latest efforts to make its platform more brand-friendly by facilitating brands to serve their content to Facebook’s billions of users worldwide. At a time when an increasing number of consumers are turning on ad-blockers and opting for ad-free subscription services to actively avoid ads, branded content provides an un-blockable way to organically reach customers and influence their purchase intent. For brands looking to leverage branded content to engage customers, Facebook’s update should come as a welcome addition as it allows more influencers to post branded or sponsored content.

 

Source: Marketing Land

Facebook Starts Developing Chatbots For Group Chat

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Facebook is reportedly ready to introduce some new chatbots at its upcoming F8 developer conference that will appear in group chats on Messenger. These group bots are not intended to be part of the conversation, but to keep users informed about real-time news such as a sports game’s progress, e-commerce deliveries and more. Previously, Facebook had a similar vision for its virtual assistant M to pop up in group Messenger chats whenever it’s needed. But these new bots seem to be more specialized in their functionalities.

What Brands Need To Do
According to eMarketer’s forecast, the number of messaging app users worldwide will reach 2 billion by 2018, which will be 80% of smartphone users. A significant portion of today’s mobile communications happen on messaging apps, yet many brands are missing out on this so-called “dark social” channel. This new group chat bot initiative underscores Facebook’s commitment to building out its Messenger bot platform, giving brands an opportunities to reach more mobile customers by providing useful services in group chats.

The Lab has extensive knowledge about reaching consumers on mobile messaging apps and building branded chatbots. The new NiroBot we build in collaboration with Ansible for Kia delivers comprehensive product information about the all-new Niro model via friendly chats. If you’re interested in reaching your audience on messaging apps and better serving them with a chatbot, please contact our Client Services Director Samantha Barrett ([email protected]) for more information or to schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

Source: TechCrunch

Marriott Hands Influencers Snapchat Spectacles To Create Authentic Branded Content

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Marriott is the latest brand to leverage Snapchat’s video-recording Spectacles sunglasses to produce branded content for social campaigns. The hotel chain gave four social influencers a pair of Spectacles, who will use it to create 10-second vertical video clips for its Rewards loyalty program that will run as ads on Snapchat. The influencers will take over the brand’s Snapchat account about once a month to share their one-week stays at Marriott properties in Berlin, New York, Dubai, and Seoul, leveraging their social stardom to attract some followers for the brand. The campaign is scheduled to run from now through June.

What Brands Need To Do
Snapchat only started selling Spectacles last November, and despite its limited availability, it has been quickly adopted by brand marketers to create authentic, off-the-cuff short videos that are perfect for online and social campaigns. Previously, Hyatt also handed out some Spectacles to some of its employees to share their daily activities at Hyatt properties around the world. This Marriott campaign takes it one step further by mixing in social influencers and paid ads to attract a wider audience on Snapchat.

Perhaps more intriguingly, Snapchat has been testing some AR-enabled filters that may be activated by Spectacles, which would allow brands to add digital activations to their physical marketing materials such as billboards and posters. As Snap continues to bring augmented reality technology to the mass market with its camera-centric products, brands will need to start to think about how AR may add value to their products, services, and marketing efforts.

 

Source: AdWeek

 

Adidas Launches Fitness App To Stay Connected With Customers

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Adidas is finally entering the connected health scene with its first branded fitness app All Day. Available now on iOS and Android, the app aims to provide a holistic approach to help users stay fit and healthy with a wide range of tutorial content covering topics from yoga moves to healthy recipes. The app can also be used to track your data in a series of health aspects such as movement, nutrition, and sleep.

Interestingly, Adidas says right now the app is designed to focus on the female customers, since its data suggest they are the key users in the wellness space, although the company says there will be additional content geared toward men later on.

What Brands Need To Do
The launch of this app marks a much-needed change of strategy for Adidas, who announced at SXSW festivals earlier this month that it is looking to create a new open ecosystem for its digital fitness products. As connected consumers increasingly expect brands to provide a digital component to their products and services, Adidas makes the right move to catch up with more tech-savvy rival brands Nike and Under Armour in terms of developing a digital fitness ecosystem that complements its products and foster an online community that helps build brand affinity.

 

Source: SportTechie

Header image courtesy of Adidas’ promotional image

Samsung’s Bixby Assistant Comes With A Cool Image Search Feature

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Samsung officially unveiled its digital assistant service Bixby on Wednesday with the launch of the Galaxy S8 flagship handsets at its Unpacked 2017 event (check out this VentureBeat article on all Samsung’s announcements today). Positioned as the Siri for Samsung phones, Bixby is designed to facilitate hands-free interactions in Samsung apps via voice command. At launch, Bixby only supports a handful of apps, including Samsung’s native services, but Samsung plans to release an SDK soon for developers to integrate Bixby into their apps.

That said, Bixby does come with a cool feature that few other digital assistants in market is capable of – the ability to recognize objects via the phone’s camera and surface similar images via search. When users are taking a picture with a new Galaxy S8 phone, they can tap on a small button on the camera app to evoke Bixby’s visual search feature, which leverages image recognition technology developed by Pinterest to discern the physical objects in sight and presents either similar images of the objects or information about those objects found via search. Samsung is also planning to add a shopping angle to this feature, allowing Bixby to present search results of the objects among online retail sites. This feature essentially creates a mobile-based augmented reality experience where users can point their camera at certain things to learn more about them.

What Brands Need To Do
As digital assistant get smarter, they become a gateway to introduce mainstream consumers to some advanced AI-powered solutions such as visual search and computer vision. Earlier this year, Pinterest launched a similar computer vision feature that allows users to use their phone to identify objects and search for similar images. It will also present promoted Pins in the results if the object matches with what users are looking for.

This visual search feature of Bixby enables Samsung users to quickly access digital information about physical objects in front of them via an AR-like experience, which unlocks a new way for brand marketers to serve mobile customers with tailored messages. Imagine pointing your phone’s camera at a restaurant sign and immediately find out its Yelp rating, business hours, and signature dishes. Or pointing your camera at a snack bar and let Bixby tell you about its nutrition facts and where you can buy more of it. The possibilities to bridge the physical and the digital world are endless. Therefore, brand seeking to stay ahead of the innovational curve will need to pay attention to the development of artificial intelligence and experiment with the new marketing solutions it enables.

 

Source: The Verge

Header image courtesy of Samsung

 

Apple Makes Siri More Competent With Latest iOS Update

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Apple upgraded Siri with some noteworthy new features in its latest iOS update, making it more competitive with rival digital assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant that are quickly gaining grounds thanks to their comprehensive features and growing popularity of smart speakers. With Apple’s full rollout of its iOS 10.3 update on Tuesday, Siri now supports a wider range of app actions, including paying and checking bills via payment apps, booking rides from ride-hailing apps, checking car fuel, turning on connected lights, and several features for controlling connected devices.

What Brands Need To Do
We are merely at the beginning of a long battle where major tech companies race against each other to push their own digital assistant service as the default choice for customers so as to secure the user base, which will become particularly crucial once we move past the mobile era and enter the IoT era where most of our digital interactions happen on screenless connected devices that rely on voice-based conversational interfaces.

For brands, the new developments in voice-based assistants herald an impending sea change in customer-brand interactions, which brands will have to start preparing for today by figuring out a conversational strategy and find a way to integrate their brands into conversational platforms. For example, last week, Marriott reportedly started testing both Siri and Alexa to figure out which digital assistant is more competent to control the smart devices in its hotel rooms. Whichever one of two the hotel chain eventually decides on, the real winner will be the Marriott customers that get enjoy a modernized hotel experience.

How We Can Help
The Lab has extensive experience in building Alexa Skills and chatbots to reach consumers on conversational interfaces. So much so that we’ve built a dedicated conversational practice called Dialogue. The “Miller Time” Alexa Skill we developed with Drizly for Miller Lite is a good example of how Dialogue can help brands build a conversational customer experience, supercharged by our stack of technology partners with best-in-class solutions and an insights engine that extracts business intelligence from conversational data.

If you’d like to learn more about how to effectively reach consumers on conversational interfaces, or to leverage the Lab’s expertise to take on related client opportunities within the IPG Mediabrands, please contact our Client Services Director Samantha Holland ([email protected]) to schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

Source: GeoMarketing