Author: Lab Team

Mercedes Launches In-Car Wellness Initiative With Wearable Data

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Mercedes-Benz is looking to improve the driving experience with a new health and wellness initiative that taps wearable data to improve a driver’s mood and comfort level. After setting up a Mercedes Me profile, Mercedes drivers can adjust climate control, lighting, seat massagers, entertainment systems in their vehicles. If they wear a fitness tracker, they can connect it to the profile and receive automatic adjustments on the in-car environments according to their stress level and other physiological stats. For example, if the system detects a driver is sleepy, it will play some energizing tunes to keep the driver alert. Moreover, drivers will also receive personalized health and fitness tips from Mercedes’  Fit and Healthy Coach, even when they stepped out of the vehicle. Mercedes says these features will be released “in the near future.”

What Brands Need To Do
This serves as the latest example of how brands may incorporate fitness and biometric data into AI-powered digital experiences and provide added value to their customers. By launching this wellness initiative, Mercedes is adding a new dimension to its driving experience and, because the initiative can reach drivers even when they’re not in the car, establish a holistic brand presence in customers’ daily lives. More brands can benefit from this approach and expand their services by leveraging those customer data to power new services and brand experiences.

 

Source: PSFK

Header image courtesy of Mercedes-Benz’s press release

 

Lyft Provides Businesses With White-Label Ride-Hailing Service

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Lyft has launched a dispatch developer program to let brands and businesses integrate its ride-hailing service into their own services. By providing a white-labelled ride-hailing service, Lyft allows service brands to provide their customers with rides operated and controlled by brands themselves independent of Lyft. According to Lyft, this program aims to provide brands with greater flexibility by offering “the ability to request on-demand and scheduled rides without the need for a smartphone or Lyft account.” One Call Care Management and Logisticare, two businesses specializing in health care transportation, is already using this dispatch program to help patients get around.

What Brands Need To Do
Developers have long had the option to integrate Lyft’s service into third-party apps, but this new program will give them control over the supply side of the ride-hailing service and own the entire experience from billing to notifications, thus controlling the whole customer experience instead of relying on Lyft or other third-party ride-hailing services. Brands can use this to drive traffic to their local stores or events, but the bigger opportunity lies the possibility of integrating this on-demand service into connected devices to bring seamless, automated ride-hailing into new areas.

For example, a hotel brand can use this to set up a system where rides are automatically requested when the guests lock the door of their room. As more and more devices comes online, brands need to figure out how to leverage programs like this Lyft one to provide an optimized customer experience.

 

Source: VentureBeat

Shazam Adds AR Capabilities To Its Music Recognition App

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Shazam has launched an augmented reality (AR) platform to its eponymous music recognition app, allowing users to unlock 3D animations and product visualizations by scanning Shazam codes in the app. The company first branched out to visual recognition in 2015, letting users scan a mini-Shazam code (think QR-codes) to unlock extra digital content on their smartphones. Shazam’s new AR code-scanning technology will be powered by Zappar, a London-based AR startup, and will be available for users and brands worldwide.

What Brands Need To Do
While the AR technology that Shazam is integrating is not exactly new, what it does bring to the table is the massive global reach of its app, which recently surpassed the milestone of one billion downloads. By launching this AR platform, Shazam effectively gave tens of millions of smartphone users a quick and easy way to unlock AR content on their mobile devices. Brands should take advantage of this new platform to experiment with AR content and add fun, interactive experiences to their posters and packagings.  

If you’d like to get some help to figure out how augmented reality can enhance your customer experience and drive new opportunities for your brand, or simply to try out the HoloLens demo we have to experience the transformative power of AR, please contact our Client Services Director Samantha Holland ([email protected]) to schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

Source: Business Wire

Header image courtesy of Shazam’s press release

Facebook Updates Messenger Platform To Enable Menu-Guided Chatbots

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Facebook has updated its Messenger platform to allow chatbot developers to disable the natural text input in bot conversations, instead relying on a pre-configured menu of topics and replies to guide users to discover the information they need or perform a certain task. Facebook Messenger first introduced Quick Reply buttons to speed up conversations, and has since expanded it to guide more parts of consumer-bot conversations. With the latest update, now brands can devise a chatbot experience that feels less like chatting to a friend and more akin to navigating a barebone mobile app.  

What Brands Need To Do
The move away from conversational replies, whether already formatted or freely typed, diminishes the magic of chatbots by limiting the conversations to pre-set topics. At the moment, it is too early to tell whether this update marks a shift in Facebook’s strategy in building its chatbot platform, or whether a significant amount of brands will take the easy way out and opt for a less native and conversational experience. Nevertheless, this update reveals two important trends in branded chatbot – one being that brands are having difficulties to craft a natural conversation flow to adequately serve customers, and another being that most AI powering the chatbots not mature enough to handle a freestyle conversation in natural languages.

At the end of the day, this is a symptom of growing pains in the development of conversational services, and Facebook’s update will serve as a temporary fix for brands wishing to establish the presence on Messenger but don’t necessary have the resources or technological capability to build a full-blown chatbot.

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: Marketing Land

Header image courtesy of Facebook’s Messenger blog

Highway Billboards In Moscow Is Targeting Drivers Based On Which Cars They Drive

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Synaps Labs, a startup that focuses on dynamic digital out-of-home ads, has started testing its digital billboard along the highways in Moscow, enabling the billboards to change ads to target drivers passing by based on the models of their vehicles. By combining high-speed cameras and a proprietary machine-learning system that can recognize car models, its digital billboard is plugged into a bidding system then selects the appropriate ads to display as the targeted cars drive by. The company has planned tests for this digital highway billboards in the U.S. for this summer.

What Brands Need To Do
This digital billboard serves as the latest example of how AI-powered digital billboards may transform the OOH ads. Similarly, Smart data storage company Cloudian and Japanese advertising firm Dentsu has started testing similar billboards in Japan that can recognize the car models driving by and serve up targeted ads accordingly. According to a recent research from PQ Media, global OOH advertising revenue grew 6.2% in 2016 to $49.23 billion, with DOOH claiming most of the revenue growth. More brands should look for new ways to bring some interactivity and customizations to digital outdoor ads.

 

Source: MIT Tech Review

Ford Partners With Slingbox To Bring Live TV Into 2018 Expedition Model

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Ford is revamping its in-car infotainment system by integrating traditional TV service into its vehicles, starting with the 2018 Expedition model. To support cable streaming capabilities, the auto company struck a partnership with Slingbox, an OTT streaming set-top device manufacturer. Screens will be built into the back of the Expedition’s headrests, providing non-stop live TV entertainment to passengers on the road.

What Brands Need To Do
The development of connected cars is quickly turning cars into media hubs on wheels. According to market research firm Gartner Inc., there will be a quarter billion connected vehicles on the road by 2020. This not only represents a huge growth area for media companies and entertainment brands, but also opens up a new marketing channel for brands to reach more consumers.

The development in driverless cars is an important market trend that The Lab cares about, primarily because of the incredible amount of new media time it can potentially free up. The average daily commute time in the States is currently about 50 minutes. If and when driverless cars are adopted by mainstream car-owners, it would make it possible for media owners and advertisers to visually connect with consumers on the go through in-car media such as digital video and video gaming.

 

Source: TechCrunch

Pizza Hut Created A Pair Of Connected Sneakers That You Can Order Pizza With

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Pizza hut has taken the one-click ordering concept to new territories with a pair of bluetooth-enabled sneakers that you can order pizza from. Dubbed Pie Tops, the shoe essentially has an Amazon Dash-like button hidden on the tongue, which people can click to initiate the default order that they have configured with their Pizza Hut mobile app.

What Brands Need To Do
While this is clearly a marketing stunt, Pizza Hut’s pizza-ordering sneakers demonstrate how IoT technologies have made it possible to expand customer touchpoint beyond screens. It points to a future where billions of connected devices, be it your home appliances or the public amenities, will become capable of such ecommerce features. In fact, Visa has already struck a partnership with IBM to fast track the development of the so-called “IoT commerce,” i.e. the kind of automated digital transactions initiated by connected devices according to preset, contextual triggers. For brands, this means it is time to start considering developing an IoT strategy and figure out how connected devices can expand your sales or distribution channel.

 

Source: Engadget

Header image courtesy of Pizza Hut’s YouTube

MWC 2017: Discovery Plans To Partner With Local Mobile Carriers For Olympics Content

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Discovery Communications is taking a mobile-centric approach to producing and localizing the Olympics content, which it owns the exclusive TV and multimedia rights to in 50 European markets. At a press event at the Mobile World Congress, the company revealed it is planning to team up with local mobile providers, who will serve as the official mobile broadcasters of the Summer and Winter Olympics games. Discovery believes this will enable it to provide viewers with the most relevant content and access a “personalized, direct link” with consumers. It also provides Discovery with more data on local interests and media habits, particularly on mobile, that can further inform its ad operations.

What Brands Need To Do
This is an interesting approach that many international brands can adopt to creating and distributing localized content at a global scale. The proliferation of mobile access has given rise to several global mega-channels, such as YouTube and Twitch, that can reach audiences worldwide in ways that traditional media channels can’t. They offer brands new platforms to reach global consumers, but brands still need to localize their messaging and content to engage with customers in each regional market. Therefore, whether for distributing owned content or advertisements, globally-minded brands need to choose partners who can leverage their scale and local expertise to effectively reach consumers.

 

Source:  AdWeek

Google Enters OTT Streaming Market With YouTube TV

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
On Tuesday, Google unveiled its long-rumored over-the-top TV streaming service, officially taking on the likes of Dish’s Sling TV and Sony’s PlayStation Vue to conquer the shifting TV market.

The service, dubbed YouTube TV, is essentially a “skinny bundle” that covers live TV programming from all four major U.S. broadcasting networks —  ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC — and their affiliated cable channels such as ESPN and Bravo. The inclusion of Missing from the lineup are channels owned by cable pay TV networks such as Viacom and Time Warner.

YouTube Live will cost $35 per month for up to six accounts, and it also comes with an unlimited cloud DVR feature as well as a content recommendation system powered by Google’s AI engine. In addition, subscribers will also have access to YouTube’s original content. Google says it will roll out the service in the U.S. in the coming months.

What Brands Need To Do
This announcement marks another high-profile entry of a tech giant into the OTT streaming market, as the battle for retaining TV subscribers and, more importantly, selling TV packages to cord-cutters and cord-nevers, continues to heat up. It also shows the remarkable journey that YouTube has been on since its founding in 2005 as a website where people upload their home videos. Now, viewers worldwide are watching more than 1 billion hours of video content on YouTube every day, growing at a pace that easily eclipses U.S. television viewership.

As for brands, this means another channel to reach the audience that has abandoned linear TV viewing in favor of time-shifted viewing, as YouTube TV will carry all the live TV ads. Taking the vast user data and the sophisticated ad operations that Google owns into account, it seems likely that the search giant will be offering some ad tech integrations with the streaming service and allow brands to target audience in a more granular, personalized manner.

 

Source: ReCode

Header image courtesy of YouTube TV

MWC 2017: Coca-Cola Wants To Plug AI Into Ad Creation

Posted on by Lab Team

What HappenedIn an AdWeek interview at the Mobile World Congress, Mariano Bosaz, global senior digital director of Coca-Cola, said that he’s partly in Barcelona to check out the latest development in artificial intelligence and see if it can help with ad creations. According to him, Coke is interested in using artificial intelligence to improve content, media, and commerce, especially in streamlining the ad creation process and experimenting with automated narratives.

What Brands Need To DoAs artificial intelligence technology continue to advance, more and more brands are starting to incorporate AI solutions into their marketing and business practices. In January, Toyota launched a campaign that is partially generated by IBM’s machine learning program Watson, and last month, H&R Block integrated Watson into its tax filing system to helping people maximize their tax returns. So it makes perfect sense that Coca-Cola would want to jump on the bandwagon as well. The kind of personalized user experience and product recommendations that AI can offer based on data and user input is valuable for brands. Therefore, brand marketers need to consider how they can use their customer data to provide personalized experiences with the help of an AI engine.

 

Source: AdWeek