Category: General Content

AT&T Plans Nationwide Debut Of IoT Network By Mid-2017

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
AT&T is planning to roll out LTE-M, an IoT network aimed at linking sensors and other small connected devices online without saddling them with full-scale cellular radios, nationwide by the middle of this year. This debut set to bring widespread IoT connectivity into reality, unleashing a host of opportunities for marketers seeking to tap into the marketing potential of connected IoT devices. Verizon is reportedly also working to launch its own LTE-M network.

What Brands Need To Do
As we witnessed at CES this year, a number of connected home devices are already integrated with Alexa and other voice-based virtual assistant to interact with users. With a highly connected IoT network becoming an immediate reality thanks to AT&T’s plan, more sensors and devices will come online and become able to adopt voice assistant services as their conversational interfaces. This means that brand marketers need to develop a conversational marketing strategy and figure out the right brand voice and tactics to deliver relevant messages and interactive experiences through consumers’ connected devices.

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

Ford Wants To Take You On A VR Ride Through Paris

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Ford is set to remake a 1976 short film “C’etait un Rendez-Vous” into a VR experience. Working with Claude Lelouch, the noted French filmmaker who helmed the original cult classic, Ford will transport the eight-minute early morning drive through Paris into virtual reality featuring a Ford Mustang. The auto brand plans to release the VR experience this month on YouTube and Facebook in the 360-degree video format. Viewers will also be able to strap on a VR headset and experience the ride in virtual reality.

What Brands Need To Do
While this is a VR concept that is both exciting and on-brand for an automaker like Ford, the distribution strategy leaves much to be desired. The mainstream adoption of VR headsets is still fairly low, and for most viewers that will only get to this VR experience merely as a 360-degree video, the visceral impact of a virtual joyride through the City of Lights will be considerably lessened. More often than not, we are seeing more and more brands making the efforts to create a piece of cool VR content, only to botch it with lazy distribution strategies. In order to truly drum up consumer interest with VR content, brands need to step up their campaign game surrounding the launch of branded VR experiences and put them in front of the right audience.

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.

If you’d like to learn more about how the Lab can help you tap into the immersive power of VR content to engage with customers, please contact our Client Services Director Samantha Holland ([email protected]) to schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

Source: Digital Trends

Header image courtesy of Ford’s YouTube

 

Oreo To Sponsor IMDb’s Oscars Live Streaming Party

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Oreo is teaming up with IMDb to tap into the buzziest event of the movie industry with a livestreaming campaign. To promote its new Chocolate Candy Bar, the Mondelēz-owned cookie brand has signed up as the official sponsor for the Oscars viewing party hosted by IMDb, which will be live streamed on Twitter, Twitch, as well as IMDb’s own website this Sunday. Over 300 Hollywood insiders will be invited to attend this event at Neuehouse in L.A., which will feature an Oreo Chocolate Candy Bar sampling station for the guests to try one during the broadcast.

What Brands Need To Do
Brand marketers looking to enter the livestreaming arena should take a cue from this partnership and learn to maximize their reach by piggybacking on a buzzy media event. Branded live streams during big media events offer brands a great shortcut to get their content in front of a mobile audience in real time. Previously brands such as GE and Toyota have leveraged live-streamed events to amplify their sponsorships. Therefore, brands that wish to stay connected to today’s mobile-first consumers would be wise to start working with content creators and exploring the vast potential this fast-growing media platform holds today.

 

Source: Business Wire

1-800 Flowers Tests Concierge Chatbot Powered By IBM’s Watson

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
1-800 Flowers has jumped into the world of conversational commerce with a concierge service that recommends flowers based on user input. Dubbed “Gwyn,” which stands for “gifts when you need,” the service is powered by IBM’s Watson cloud computing services, which allows it to understand natural languages and respond accordingly.

The e-retailer first started testing Gwyn last May with a limited beta test, and has since updated the service to make the interface more conversational and user-friendly before rolling it out on its website to all customers to try. The company also launched a Facebook chatbot last April, which was mostly manned by human customer reps but has since graduated to handling some basic customer service tasks on its own.

What Brands Need To Do
This is the latest in an ongoing trend of brands tapping machine learning and AI services such as IBM’s Watson to enhance customer experience. Previously, Sony Pictures launched an AI-powered chatbot to promote its new Residential Evil flick while P&G tested a smart shelf that uses machine learning to monitor and analyze shopper behaviors. As consumers continue to embrace messaging apps and chatbot services, brands need to consider developing useful bots powered by AI services to engage customers.

How We Can Help
Based on our extensive experience in building branded chatbots to reach consumers, the Lab has developed 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 chatbot 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’re interested in learning more about this or have a client opportunity, please reach out to our Client Services Director Samantha Holland ([email protected]) to schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

Source: Digiday

Snapchat Spectacles Now Widely Available Via Online Shop

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
After several months of using pop-up vending machines to sell its first hardware product, Snap Inc. has made its camera-integrated sunglasses Spectacles widely available for purchase via Spectacle.com. All three colors are available for $130 a pair – keeping with the retail pricing of the pop-up vending machines – with an estimated delivery time of 2 to 4 weeks. Snap also says the elusive vending machines will return in a series new locations after a brief break.

What Brands Need To Do
In its filing for IPO, Snap indicated its intention to broaden the roll-out of Spectacles. Making it available via a dedicated ecommerce site is certainly a big step in that direction. Spectacles presents an interesting new tool for brands to create Snapchat-native video content, which brands such as Toyota and L’Oreal have started doing as part of their social influencer strategies. More brands need to align their branded content production with the ongoing trend towards mobile-native, camera-first media creation and consumption habits. When the consumers are just as likely to point their camera at things they find interesting and take a video of it to share on social channels, brands need to find an authentic way to take advantage of this trend to generate share-worthy content and engage with selfie-happy customers.

If you have yet to experience the magic that is Snapchat Spectacles, the Lab has a couple of pairs that you can try on yourself to gain a hands-on understanding of the great “un-bundling” happening in the mobile space.

 

Source: AdWeek

Facebook Brings Snapchat Stories Clone To WhatsApp

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Facebook continues its quest to curb Snapchat’s growth as it updated WhatsApp on Tuesday to launch a new Status feature that let users post gifs, photos, and videos that disappears after 24 hours. With an interface similar to Snapchat and Instagram Stories, multiple Status updates within a day will be stringed together as a loop of content. WhatsApp plans to roll out this feature to all global users throughout this week.  

What Brands Need To Do
If recent reports claiming that Instagram Stories has been successful in slowing Snapchat’s growth were to believe, this will no doubt be another blow to Snapchat courtesy of Facebook. Given WhatsApp’s over 1.2 billion monthly active users worldwide, this new feature is set to particularly curb Snapchat’s international growth.

While this could be an interesting gateway for Facebook to introduce media content and ads into WhatsApp, so far the messaging app has remained ad-free as it carefully mulls over plans for monetization. However, there have been brands, such as lingerie brand Agent Provocateur, that leveraged WhatsApp’s one-on-one chat to intimately connect with customers and offer product recommendations. The launch of Status introduces a new tool for brands looking to share content with fans in an exclusive, private manner.

 

Source: TechCrunch

 

U.K. Hospital Creates VR Experience To Prepare Kids For MRI Scans

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
To help patients, especially children, to prepare for their first MRI scans, the Kings College Hospital in London has created a “My MRI” VR experience that is designed to familiarize first-time patients of the procedure. The hospital made an app for Google Cardboard that contains a 360-degree video to guide viewers through the process from arrival to sliding inside the MRI scanner.

What Brands Need To Do
This is an interesting use case of VR content in healthcare, as it leverages the immersive power of virtual reality to put patients at ease and prepare them for the real procedure. VR has long been a promising training tool in the medical field for simulated scenarios or virtual surgeries, but this new app shows that healthcare and medical brands can employ VR for patient-facing, informative initiatives as well.

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.

If you’d like to learn more about how the Lab can help you tap into the immersive power of VR content to engage with customers, please contact our Client Services Director Samantha Holland ([email protected]) to schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

Source: TechCrunch

Facebook Messenger Updates Platform Policies To Allow Unprompted Messages

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Facebook has updated its Messenger Platform policies to offer brands more agency in their efforts to reach customers on the chat app. Customers still need to be the one of initiate the contact, but now brands have a 24-hour window since the customer’s last message to send unprompted messages. Facebook has also removed a previous restriction on promotional content for this type of standard messaging, allowing brands to send customers an ad or a value offer within a day of their chat.

Moreover, a new subscription messaging is now in being tested to allow communication with a user outside of the 24-hour window. It specifically disallows all promotional content and only open to limited use cases such as news and productivities. Notably, these two updates seem to be inspired by WeChat, which divides all commercial accounts into subscription accounts and service accounts so as to differentiate their use cases and limit how many messages a brand can send users within a month.

What Brands Need To Do
As Facebook loosens its policies for brands to reach Messenger users with promotional and unpromoted messages, it would be smart for brands to adopt a responsible approach and develop a communication strategy for reaching customers on Messenger. The promotional message allowed within the 24-hour window is particularly important for re-engaging them. If the use cases fit, brands with a repertoire of non-promotional content should also consider using subscription messaging to create a consistent brand presence on Messenger app.

How We Can Help
Based on our extensive experience in building branded chatbots to reach consumers, the Lab has developed 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 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’re interested in learning more about this or have a client opportunity, please reach out to our Client Services Director Samantha Holland ([email protected]) to schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

Source: Facebook Developer News

 

YouTube To End 30-Second Unskippable Ads Next Year

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Google has announced that it will stop supporting 30-second-long unskippable pre-roll ads on YouTube in 2018, as it aims to provide a better ad experience for viewers. Instead, it will focus on “formats that work well for both users and advertisers,” including the 6-second unskippable “bumper” ads. 15-second and 20-second unskippable pre-roll units are also here to stay for the time being.

What Brands Need To Do
Google’s announcement is a tacit acknowledgment of the annoyingness of unskippable ads, which often plays out against at viewers’ vexation. Fortunately for brand marketers, our recent media trial with Magna shows that even skipped ads have considerable impact on persuasion metrics and brand attributes. Plus, our study also found that attention to pre-roll ads is typically high regardless of ad length.

For more information on how brands can get ready for a skippable future, check out our media trial report Turbocharge Your Skippable Pre-Roll Campaign.

Source: The Verge

Google Home Adds Shopping Capabilities To Take On Amazon’s Alexa

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
The competition between virtual assistants heats up again as Google adds ecommerce functions to Google Home, allowing users to buy products via voice from select Google Express partners, which includes Costco, Whole Foods, Bed Bath & Beyond, Fry’s, and Walgreens. This move signals Google’s intention to further challenge Amazon’s Alexa, which had enjoyed a high degree of integration with Amazon’s ecommerce infrastructure. Delivery fees start at $4.99 unless you have a Google Express membership that costs $95/year (or $10/month).

What Brands Need To Do
While it is unlikely that Google will be able to truly compete with Amazon in the conversational commerce space, considering Amazon’s strong advantage in this arena, this still marks an important addition to Google Home as Google continues to buff up its functions to hold its ground against Amazon’s Echo lineup. Earlier this week, reports indicate that both Amazon and Google are working on turning their connected speaker products into landline phone replacements. As smart speakers gain more functions and new selling points, more mainstream consumers would be sold on their increasing use cases and therefore become addressable via conversational interfaces. So, it is time for brands to either seek out similar partnerships with Google and Amazon or explore other ways to reach customers via voice-based interfaces, such as with a branded Alexa skill.

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: TechCrunch