What Happened Amazon’s virtual assistant Alexa is getting new skills every day, but it hasn’t been very easy for users to find and activate the skills they want for their Echo devices. This pain point was largely alleviated as Amazon revamped the skills section of the Alexa mobile app, putting all skills into 20 browsable categories – including Connected Car, Smart Home, Shopping, and Travel & Transportation – and adding new search tools to make Alexa skills more discoverable. In addition, Amazon is allowing users to activate new Alexa skills by voice command. Users can now access their previously enabled skills via a new “Your Skills” section.
Since its low-key launch in November 2014, Amazon Echo has turned out to be a sleeper hit, ushering voice-based conversational interfaces into smart home devices. Early adopting brands such as Capital One, Domino’s, Kayak, and StubHub have already created branded Alexa skills to better serve customers at home. In fact, Amazon says now there are more than 1,400 skills available for Alexa users to explore.
Why Brands Should Care As the list of Alexa skills grows longer, it was getting increasingly difficult for branded skills to cut through the clutter and stand out, and this revamp brings some much-needed structure and search capabilities for Alexa skills. Therefore, it is important for brands to properly name and tag their Alexa skills, make sure their skills are filed under the right category, and keep a close eye on this development to ensure the discoverability of their Alexa skills.
What Happened Mondelez International has reportedly increased its investment in developing branded chatbots for Facebook’s messaging app. Mondelez, whose brand portfolio includes household names such as Oreo, Cadbury, and Trident, has renewed its global partnership with Facebook, specifically doubling down on creating Messenger bots and targeted ads using Facebook’s Audience Insights API. Though the company has yet to reveal which brands it is building chatbots for or when they will roll out, it did confirm that the chatbots in development will be designed to either support customer service or push for direct sales on Messenger.
What Brands Need To Do As more and more smartphone users turn to messaging apps, brands would be smart to follow suit and join them on those conversational platforms. In that context, chatbots can be a great tool for promoting fan engagement, handling simple customer service requests, or even serving as an ecommerce portal. Mondelez’s increased investment shows its confidence in the potential of Facebook chatbots and that it can leverage them to better serve its customers.
What Happened NBC has become the first broadcast network to develop a skill for Amazon’s virtual assistant service Alexa. According to an exclusive report by GeekWire, NBC’s Alexa skill aims to provide an alternative way for people to catch up on some popular NBC programs, such as Saturday Night Live, The Voice, andJimmy Fallon’s late night show. There is not much detail on exactly what types of content Alexa will dispense or how this skill works, but the network does share that a pre-recorded “flash briefing” segment was recorded during live episodes of The Voice for this Alexa skill. Previously, NBC News also created an Alexa skill to enable Echo users to ask Alexa for poll results and other news related to the election.
What Brands Need To Do At first glance, Alexa may seem to be a mismatch for visual media content given its voice-based conversational interface. But NBC’s example, along with the audio adventure game that Warner Bros. created for Alexa in March to promote Batman vs. Superman, shows that it is possible for entertainment brands to insert their content into Alexa and turn it into a voice-enabled promotional channel. For other brands looking for new channels to distribute branded content, developing an Alexa skill is certainly an option worth exploring.
What Happened If you ever wanted to receive sports updates via text but don’t know anyone who follows the same teams and loves texting, you are in luck. The Toronto-based sports media company theScore has created the first-ever sports chatbot on Facebook Messenger to keep fans in the loop. As it is, the chatbot is not exactly conversational; instead, it is designed to figure out which sports teams you would like to follow and then dispense news and updates about them to you via Messenger in a timely manner. The chatbot currently covers all teams in major U.S. sports leagues such as MLB or NFL, as well as most major European soccer leagues.
Why Sports Brands Should Care As more and more smartphone users turn to messaging apps, sports brands would be smart to follow the fans and engage them on the messaging platforms they are already on, and chatbots should come in handy as a tool for promoting fan engagement and communications. This is not only true for sports media companies, but also for sports franchises as well. In fact, The Sacramento Kings, an NBA team, is working with startup JiffyBots to create a team chatbot on Facebook to serve fans with game stats and digital content upon request. They also plan to add more commerce features to the chatbot, such as guiding fans to purchase tickets or upgrade their seats, something that most teams should consider to boost ticket and merchandise sales.
What Happened IBM is putting Watson’s cognitive power into a new audio ad product which allows consumers to ask questions and receive answers by voice. The company is leveraging Watson’s machine learning and natural language capabilities to provide accurate responses to consumers’ questions regarding the ad, which will prompt listeners to ask questions via text or voice. The ads will first appear across the digital properties of The Weather Company, which IBM acquired last October, and brands testing this novel ad product include Unilever, Campbell Soup, and GSK Consumer Healthcare.
What Brands Need To Do Conversational interfaces have been on the rise, led by Amazon’s sleeper hit Echo and virtual assistant Alexa. As Mary Meeker pointed out in her 2016 Internet Trends Report, voice-based interfaces are ramping quickly and creating a new paradigm for human-computer interaction thanks to its efficiency and convenience compared to typing. With consumers increasingly familiar with this type of interface, it is only natural that brand advertisers should follow suit. This IBM ad product provides a good way for brands to test voice-activated interactions and gain consumer insights.
What Happened After releasing an Alexa skill called KidsMD last month that dispenses healthcare advice for parents with sick kids, Boston Children’s Hospital is planning to further integrate the voice-activated virtual assistant into its daily operations. The hospital and its sibling facilities are working to “bring Alexa into patient rooms, help doctors take notes, read back charts, and more,” according to a spokesperson.
During a recent demo at its simulation center, the hospital staff set up three mocked-up rooms — an operating room, an intensive care unit, and a child’s bedroom — to demonstrate how Alexa may assist in medical and healthcare domains. While the demo session revealed some potential drawbacks of Alexa, as it occasionally misunderstood commands and frustrated doctors, it nevertheless offers a hopeful glimpse into the future of healthcare aided by voice-activated tools.
What Healthcare Brands Need To Do Hands-free interactions enabled by voice interfaces are a natural fit for hospitals, as doctors and healthcare practitioners would be relieved from some manual tasks in order to focus on their patients. For brands, however, this kind of interface presents new challenges in discovery as they only present limited options upon requests. Therefore, healthcare brands should be proactive in experimenting with voice-activated devices via deep integrations or partnerships.
The Lab currently has extensive experience working with brands to develop Alexa skills and incorporating them into brand strategies. So get in touch or schedule a visit to the Lab if you’d like to learn more about how to reach your audience via conversational interfaces. For more information on this topic, check out the Conversational Interfaces section in our Outlook 2016.
What Happened Foursquare is jumping on the chatbot bandwagon with a new app called Marsbot, which learns about a user’s preferences for restaurants and bars from their Foursquare location data and recommends new places that fit their tastes via a text interface. Unlike most existing chatbots, however, Marsbot does not need users to initiate the conversation. Instead, it is designed to send out contextually relevant recommendations to users unprompted and gather feedback to enhance its future suggestions. Foursquare released Marsbot on the App Store on Tuesday, and says the app is still in an “early testing stage” so users are instructed to sign up for a wait list.
Why Brands Should Care This new app from Foursquare provides an interesting example of a use case for chatbots as it reframes push notifications in a conversational interface. Unlike other local search and recommendation apps, the Marsbot app aims to capture user attention and engagement with relevant messages delivered via a text interface that most smartphone users are fond of. For brands vying for consumer attention on the increasingly crowded mobile space, it is important to create a touchpoint in environments that consumers are already familiar with.
What Happened To promote the upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, Paramount Pictures is jumping in on the chatbot craze with four bots on popular teen chat app Kik which allow users to chat with the four Ninja Turtles. Each chatbot has a personality based on their corresponding character, designed to reply with witty responses, fun GIFs, and, most importantly, links to the trailer for the new movie. Kik officially launched its chatbot store last month, attracting brands such as H&M, Sephora, and The Weather Channel to develop chatbots for its platform.
Your guide to tech-driven changes in the media landscape by IPG Media Lab. A fast read for you and a forward for your clients and team.
The Highlights
Google Instant Apps allows brands to enable immediate access to their apps with the native experience consumers expect, including frictionless payments
Google Assistant is a personification of Google search for both voice and text with hints at brand partnerships
Daydream is a new virtual reality platform, building on Cardboard with headsets customized to future high-end Android phones and giving brands an important new platform to engage consumers with immersive content
Firebase 2.0 is a new toolset for brands to create apps across Android, iOS, and the web on a budget with integrated analytics to understand customer interactions
What Google Announced Google’s annual developer conference started on Wednesday, and the company announced a series of products including a voice-controlled, smart home speaker; a rebranded and updated virtual assistant; a new Android Wearable OS; two new communications apps; and a new virtual reality platform. Wired has a great summary of all the announcements, but here’s what marketers need to know:
Google unveiled Android Instant Apps to enable fast, temporary access to Android apps with just one click. Similar to App Streaming, which was released last year, Instant Apps allows users to access native Android apps without installing them. Unlike App Streaming, Instant Apps requires that app development is modular, with parts that are quickly downloaded as needed. Importantly, Android Pay works with Instant Apps so that consumers can pay for products and services in two taps instead of filling in their payment and shipping information.
Google consolidated OK Google and Google Now voice search to the rebranded and expanded Google Assistant, a conversational virtual assistant that can process natural language and offer contextual answers and follow-up questions. Google Assistant will be available on all platforms eventually, but for now it will be the service powering the voice on Google Home, a connected speaker similar to the Amazon Echo, and via text in Allo, Google’s new smart messaging service. It will start with a limited number of partners including Uber and OpenTable.
Google also announced a new VR platform called Daydream, which will be a native part of the upcoming Android N. Google said it is working with major Android OEMs including Samsung, HTC, LG, Xiaomi, and Huawei to make Daydream-compatible smartphones with 4K screens. Daydream is effectively a much-more-advanced Cardboard platform, allowing Android handset manufacturers to create comfortable headsets that compete with Samsung’s Gear VR (a partnership with Facebook’s Oculus). Daydream compatible phones and headsets will then have access to shared VR content and a remote control-like input device designed by Google.
Among the developer tools that Google announced today, Firebase 2.0 stands out as a great tool for brands to create and test their apps. It allows simultaneous development for Android and iOS and includes advanced analytics, secure storage, and targeted notifications. Its main competitor is Microsoft’s Xamarin, another cross-platform mobile development toolset.
What Brands Need To Do Google Instant Apps gives users the power of native apps with instant loading and without the usual commitment of download time and storage space. The feature works with 95% of Android phones — back to Jelly Bean — and can help brands by overcoming the initial app installation hurdle and dramatically reducing payment friction; however, users might not fully install an app and keep the app icon on their home screen as a reminder to come back later. Also, links from messaging, social media, or elsewhere could lead to a native app experience on Android, instead of just a website. Because Google Instant Apps works with Android Pay, it supports frictionless payments and checkouts that will help retailers boost conversions. Brands could use Instant Apps in many ways. An auto brand could use this feature to drive potential buyers to a build-your-own feature that works better natively than as a website, and an entertainment brand could leverage this feature to reach more users with their in-app content. Therefore, brands need to work with developers to break their branded apps into appropriate modules to enable this feature. Look for ways to convert Instant Apps users into habitual app users.
With Google Assistant and Google Home, Google is trying to catch up to the success of Amazon’s Alexa and Echo by leveraging Android, their industry-leading machine learning expertise, and strong developer ecosystem. While we are skeptical that Google’s new messaging app Allo will ever have a meaningful audience for marketers, it might be a great way to test integrations with Google Assistant before it rolls out to other platforms (if Google opens the API soon as expected). For brands, this is another push toward a meaningful presence on conversational media channels and to optimize their content and partnerships. There are new rules of SEO in conversation that are much closer to winner-take-all, because unlike Google Search there’s no second page of results and there’s often only one recommendation per request. Not every brand is a good fit for this ecosystem but there are lots of opportunities. For example, travel brand may integrate their service with Google Assistant to enable personalized recommendations, booking reservations, or checking itineraries. On messaging services like Allo, those services could extend to integrations with all participants’ calendars.
Google Home is an Amazon Echo competitor
Daydream, the new VR platform built into Android N, will offer brands a new channel for immersive content that approaches the reach of all Android users like Cardboard but with more power and headsets comfortable enough to use for more than a few minutes. As the audience for VR content continues to grow, brands can follow the good examples set by early adopters like Marriott Hotels and JCPenney and start developing branded VR content. Google also mentioned it is partnering with a number of media companies including The Wall Street Journal, CNN, and USA Today to create VR apps for Daydream, and users will also be able to watch content from YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, HBO, and Major League Baseball. So brands can also team up with one of those media partners to create or sponsor VR content.
Firebase 2.0 is a great toolset for brands developing their own apps. Production cost is kept low by developing once and then Firebase does the work of making the app work on Android, iOS, and even the web. Other features particularly appealing for brands include an integrated social referral system to easily convert your most loyal users into advocates, automatic App Indexing so that in-app content is shown in Google Search, customizable and segmentable push notifications, and powerful analytics that even syncs with AdWords campaigns to aid in customer acquisition and lifetime value analysis. All of these features are free with paid add-ons for hosting and database storage.
Market Impact Google’s announcements this year are mostly about playing catch-up with its competitors. While the new products and features enrich the Android ecosystem, they will not necessarily pull users away from iOS. Google Home, however, will put pressure on Amazon, particularly with Home’s ability to push content to TV screens. Whether or not consumers will be more willing to trust Google or Amazon to keep an open ear inside their homes remains to be seen. Google Assistant gives Facebook’s M a significant threat and the competition should make both better, faster. We don’t expect Android Wear to catch on based on the 2.0 updates but Firebase 2.0 is a real threat to Microsoft’s Xamarin with a full suite of tools and an active community.
How We Can Help The Lab has extensive experience in developing text-based Messenger bots, voice-based apps as Alexa skills, and VR content. We can help our clients assess market trends and figure out how to apply emerging media technologies in marketing strategy. Please contact Client Services Director Samantha Holland ([email protected]) if you would like more detail or to schedule a visit to the Lab to discuss how Google-powered and other solutions can help you better reach and serve your customers.
For previous editions of Fast Forward, please visit ipglab.com. Please send any constructive criticism or feedback. We want these to be as useful as possible for you and your clients, and your input will help us immensely.
Pictures featured here are promotional images courtesy of Google.
What Happened Quick service chain KFC has partnered with Baidu, China’s leading company in search and AI technology, to create a new concept store in Shanghai that uses conversational robots as servers. Billed as “the world’s first human-free fast food restaurant,” the new KFC store Original+ replaces human cashiers with small robots named Du Mi, which can take orders and process payments. The pear-shaped robots are designed to be cordial and engaging, ushering customers through their ordering process.
Why Brands Should Care This innovative store by KFC offers a new example for how brands, especially those operating physical storefronts, can partner with tech providers to incorporate emerging technology – such as voice-activated conversational interfaces in this case – into their in-store experience. As consumers continue to seek out new experiences, brands need to be mindful of the new technologies that can help modernize the customer experience.
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