Category: General Content

How Brands Can Promote Their Messenger Bot Via The Upcoming Discover Tab

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Facebook launched Messenger Platform 2.0 at last week’s F8 developer conference, and one major focus of the update is to improve bot discovery on the popular messaging app. A big part of this is a dedicated Discover tab that works similarly to an app store, showcasing popular and recommended bots by categories such as news, lifestyle, and health and fitness. The tab will start rolling out to U.S. users next week and a global roll-out is scheduled to follow in the next few months.

What Brands Need To Do
In order to be featured in this upcoming tab, brands with their own Facebook chatbots need to fill out the Discover submission form located in Page settings on Facebook. The form will require you to clarify which category that your bot should appear in and the languages it supports, along with a brief description of your bot. If your bot is not associated with a Facebook page, Facebook says it will use “existing categorization and page metadata to determine which category” your bot will appear inside Messenger. If your brand has made a Messenger bot, this is something you will want to get done soon to maximize the visibility of your bot and drive conversations.

The Lab has extensive experience in building Alexa Skills and chatbots to reach consumers on conversational interfaces. The NiroBot we built in collaboration with Ansible for Kia is a good showcase of our expertise. If you’d like to learn more about how to effectively reach consumers on conversational interfaces, please contact Samantha Holland ([email protected]) to schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

Source: VentureBeat

This New Medical Wearable Comes With Alexa And Uber Integrations

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Wearable devices dedicated to healthcare and medical purposes are nothing new, but a new wearable device for senior healthcare, created by startup Elements of Genius and backed by Mission Pharmacal, will be the first to integrate with Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa. For their upcoming flagship product Wellnest, the company will allow users to use Alexa to conveniently place refill orders for their prescriptions. Moreover, the device will also be integrated with Uber so that senior citizens can easily request a ride or an UberRush to assist with medication delivery.

What Brands Need To Do
By integrating with Alexa, this wearable device not only gains a valuable ecommerce feature that provides real convenience for users, it also opens the door for future expansion of digital voice assistants as caretaking assistants on wearables. With over 11 million Amazon Echo devices sold since launch, Alexa is entering millions of home and leading the charge in familiarizing mainstream consumers with smart voice assistants and the unique conversational experiences they enable. Therefore, brands seeking to stay ahead of the adoption curve will need to start thinking about how to leverage the rise of voice assistants to better serve their customers.

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 Barrett ([email protected]) to schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

Source: Yahoo Finance (press release)

Images courtesy of Mission Pharmacal’s press release

 

Moët Champagne To Sponsor Vogue’s 360-Degree Livestream Of The Met Gala

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
The Met Gala, one of the biggest annual events in the fashion industry, is scheduled for next Monday, and Vogue magazine will be hosting a 360-degree livestream on Facebook this year to offer all fashion enthusiasts a front-row view of the red carpet. This will be the first 360-degree broadcast of the Met Gala, and it will be exclusively sponsored by champagne brand Moët & Chandon. During the broadcast, Moët-branded bubbles will appear periodically as interstitial ads between footage.

What Brands Need To Do
Live streaming has been quickly gaining momentum across social platforms, especially on Facebook. Earlier this month, Facebook reported that one in five videos shared on its network is now a Live video, with the daily watch time for Live broadcasting quadrupled in the past year. The rise of live streaming gives marketers a valuable channel to engage with viewers in real time, with brands such as Bud Light and Tiffany’s successfully leveraging live streaming to congregate an online fan base and spread their brand messages. More brands should start exploring live videos by finding the on-brand events to sponsor, as Moët did here, or simply hosting your own live events, as Popeyes has done recently.

 

Source: AdWeek

Amazon Adds Computer Vision To Alexa With New Echo Look Device

Posted on by Richard Yao

What Happened
On Wednesday, Amazon unveiled a new Echo device, and it is a big departure from the smart speakers introduced in the Echo lineup so far. Named Echo Look, the newest hardware product from Amazon looks more like a desktop security camera than a connected speaker. But Amazon is actually positioning the device as a hand-free selfie camera and style assistant that can help you take selfies hands-free. Equipped with built-in LED lighting and a computer vision-based background blur feature, it promised to capture the best full-length pictures and videos of you in different outfits for review, comparisons, and style recommendations.

Echo Look comes with a companion app that has a Style Check feature to compare two outfits and rate which is better based on machine learning algorithms. The feature was first added to the iOS Amazon app last month as Outfit Compare and does not require an Echo Look to work. And because it is powered by Alexa, you can ask Echo Look to read you news, play music, or access any of the over ten thousands third-party Alexa skills, just like you would with all the other Echo speakers. This product is available by invitation only for now, and Amazon did not announce it will become widely available.

What Brands Need To Do
By introducing computer vision into the Echo lineup, Amazon is making a strong push to enhance Alexa’s capabilities. Positioning this new device as a “hands-free camera and style assistant,” as Amazon’s product page reads, is a strong reformation of Amazon’s ambition in conquering the fashion industry. Echo Look will help Amazon gain access to millions of its customer’s wardrobes, thus allowing it to glean a huge amount of data from the user-generated pictures to gain great insights on what its customers like to wear and would most likely buy.

Besides, it seems safe to assume that this is merely the first step in Alexa’s evolution. By adding cameras to Alexa-powered devices, the voice assistant now has “eyes” and no longer has to solely rely on voice command for input. Using camera as an input source and combined with machine learning and object recognition, Alexa will grow much more powerful in time.

Wait until Amazon start allowing developers using Alexa Voice Service (AVS) to incorporate visual input into their Alexa-powered products, the new kind of smart home devices will become available as a result present an exciting opportunity that brands will be able to leverage to engage with customers. For example, when a smart fridge can see that you’re about to run out of milk and triggers Alexa to remind you that, it would mean that CPG brands and food retailers will have to rethink their marketing strategies and product design to accommodate this type of conversational smart home devices and new shopper behaviors they engender.

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: Amazon

Images courtesy of Amazon’s product demo video

 

You Can Play Music From “Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2” With New Doritos Bags

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
In a cool case of brand tie-ups, new bags of Doritos will come with a limited-run packaging that will play you the music from the upcoming Marvel movie “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.” The bags, equipped with a digital player interface that emulates a cassette tape deck as well as rechargeable batteries for repeat listening, will start to roll out this Friday via Amazon and Doritos.com to promote the movie’s premiere on May 5. Besides, Doritos has also launched a Guardians-themed reward program in which consumers can redeem various prizes by using the codes included on the packages.

What Brands Need To Do
Advances in packaging technologies have made it possible for CPG brands to incorporate new kinds of interactive experiences to their product packages. The first Guardians of the Galaxy was a surprise hit in 2015, and Doritos is smart to capitalize on the cultural relevance of the movie and excite fans with unique tie-in products. More CPG brands should take notes and experiment with packagings to engage with customers.

Last year, we worked with haptics tech startup Novalia to create a limited-edition “Remixer” package to promote Hershey’s TAKE5 snack bar. The special packages allow customers play DJ and create their own unique tracks with no apps required. If you’d like to talk more about bringing innovation to your packaging design, please contact our Client Services Director Samantha Barrett ([email protected]) to schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

Source: Billboard

Header image courtesy of Doritos

Burger King Recruits Top Gamers To Sell Burgers Via Video Games

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Following its controversial Google Home-triggering TV ads, Burger King turns its attention to eSports for its next stunt marketing campaign. As Mashable reports:

Over the next few weekends, Burger King will be operating a “command center” (a.k.a. a restaurant) as it injects itself into your online matches with PlayStation’s permission, according to the company’s press release sent via email. If you sign up with Burger Clan online, someone who works for Burger King will try to play with you and be ready to put in your Whopper order while somehow being an asset to your team.

This campaign is limited to the Spain market and the recruited players will be playing and taking orders out of a Burger King restaurant in Madrid. The company is supposedly hiring “nine professional gamers, champions of the most popular [PlayStation] games,” according to a press release.

What Brands Need To Do
This is an interesting way to leverage eSports influencers to reach the millions of video game enthusiasts, as it mobilizes the online gaming platforms as a new, temporary sales channel. While hiring social influencers to hawk products is nothing new, to do so within online video games is quite an novel idea. For brands looking for new ways to reach younger audiences across the global markets, eSports provide a fertile platform to explore.

For more in-depth analysis how brands can leverage global mega-channels and niche micro-channels to effectively reach key audiences, check out the Global Culture section of our Outlook 2017.

 

Source: Mashable

Madison Reed Creates An SMS Chatbot That Gives Hair-Coloring Advice

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Hair-coloring brand Madison Reed has created a chatbot named Madi that will use AI smarts to give out hair-coloring suggestions via text. Interested customers seeking consultations can text the Madi bot at 34757, send a close-up of their hair from roots to ends in natural lighting, and answer a few hair-care questions. The bot will then recommend which color they may consider dyeing their hair by analyzing the photo with color-recognition technology and taking all their answers and preferences into account. 

When users click on one of the hair color suggested, they will be redirected to the brand’s website, where they can see more information and make purchases. In order to train the A.I. engine powering the bot, the team at Madison Reed leveraged social media content and images from product testing and model programs to provide enough imagery data for the bot.

What Brands Need To Do
With the incorporation of color-recognition technology, this chatbot is a noteworthy addition to the fast-growing list of branded chatbots offering automated customer services and support. Facebook Messenger alone now has over 100,000 chatbots on its platform. As more and more brands start to utilize chatbots to reach consumers on various popular messaging and social apps, it is paramount that brands need to devise a conversational experience that can provide value to customers. In order to do so, brands should start with developing a mobile messaging strategy and identifying the customer data it can use to train the chatbots with.

How We Can Help
The Lab has extensive experience in building chatbots to reach consumers on messaging 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 Holland ([email protected]) to schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

Source: Digiday

Header image courtesy of Madison Reed’s YouTube Video

IBM Watson Upgrades Cloud Marketing Service By Adding Video & Behavioral Analysis

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
IBM continues to expand the marketing capabilities of its cognitive computing service Watson as it announced two new features this week. First, the new Watson Marketing Insights feature can analyze customer behaviors and offer insights on how they may affect businesses. For example, this new feature can be applied to analyze the possible correlation between shopping cart abandonment and brand loyalty, according to IBM’s press release.

Moreover, IBM will also be applying Watson’s cognitive smarts to analyze video for information such as keywords, main concepts, visual imagery, tone, and emotional context. This feature, set to launch later this year, aims to help media and entertainment companies make sense of unstructured data and extrapolate audience insights so as to deliver more relevant content to viewers.

What Brands Need To Do
These upgrades for Watson’s marketing services come at a time when early-adopting companies are beginning to experiment with AI-powered solutions in their business and marketing practices. For example, H&R Block integrated Watson into its tax filing system to helping people maximize their tax returns. As AI and machine learning technologies continue to develop at a fast pace, brands need to explore the kind of personalized user experience and product recommendations that AI-powered CRM solutions enable based on data and user input.

For more information on how brands may tap into the transformative power it will bring to marketing, please check out the Augmented Intelligence section of our Outlook 2017.

 

Source: PressWire & NewsFactor  

 

Netflix Inks Licensing Deal With iQiyi, One Of China’s Top Streaming Services

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Netflix announced on Tuesday that it has signed a content licensing deal with IQiyi, one of China’s biggest OTT streaming services and a subsidiary of the country’s search giant Baidu. Details of the agreement are still scarce at the moment, but it seems most likely that Netflix’s original content will be able to get into the Chinese market as a result.

This announcement practically indicates that Netflix has officially given up on entering the Chinese market directly as a service provider. This deal will allow it to bypass China’s regulatory roadblocks while also allow it to open up a new revenue stream. It is worth noting that iQiyi itself is in the midst of transitioning from an ad-supported video platform to a subscription model similar to Netflix.

What Brands Need To Know
The open nature of the internet has made it possible for content platforms to reach customers across national borders, and the proliferation of smartphones has granted internet access for more customers than broadband ever did. These new digital mega channels, led by Netflix, the self-proclaimed first global TV network, reflect an increasingly globally homogenizing consumer culture and interconnected communities.

This allows brands to reach customers across the globe that have more in common in terms of their interests and media habits than their geography. Although Netflix is an ad-free subscription service, it does allow product placement in its original shows such as House of Cards. Plus, there are several other smaller yet global-reaching platforms such as musical.ly and Twitch that are much more open to brands.

For more in-depth analysis how brands can leverage global mega-channels and niche micro-channels to effectively reach key audiences, check out the Global Culture section of our Outlook 2017.

 

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

London Bar Offers VR Tour Of Distillery To Accompany Your Drink

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
The Lobby Bar at the One Aldwych Hotel in London is using virtual reality to enhance how its patrons experience one particular drink. The bar’s special whiskey-based “Origin” cocktail comes with a virtual reality headset that transports you to the Scottish distillery where the whiskey is made. The drink is made with 12-year-old Dalmore whisky, and the accompanying virtual reality experience aims to showcase the origin of its ingredients, as well as the beautiful scenery of the Scottish Highlands where the distillery is located at.  

What Brands Need To Do
This is a pretty cool on-site activation for a spirit brand to leverage VR technology to showcase their brand identity and enhance the product experience in bars. Other brands should start to explore similar ways to use VR for this type of experiential marketing that truly engages with your target audiences through the immersive storytelling that VR content provides.

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 Barrett ([email protected]) to schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

Source: Quartz