Tag: SIRI

What To Expect From Apple’s 2017 WWDC Event

Posted on by Lab Team

Apple is set to kick off this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) with a keynote presentation on Monday at the San Jose Convention Center. Historically, the WWDC events are typically dedicated to introducing software updates, covering iOS and macOS, as well as tvOS and watchOS in recent years. On this front, Apple is expected to unveil the next iteration of iOS, with enhanced security and productive features, along with a refreshed design. The other OS’es should receive their respective updates as well, although details have been scarce.

Notably, however, this may be the year when Apple announces a new hardware product at WWDC, as reports on Apple starting production for a Siri-enabled smart speakers started to emerge earlier this week. The Cupertino company has long been speculated to be working on an Amazon Echo competitor, and Monday could be the moment of truth for Apple to reveal its first conversational smart home product.

For now, the Echo lineup dominates the smart speaker market with an impressive 70.6% market share, according to an eMarketer study. Late to the market, Apple will have to produce a superior user experience and significantly improve Siri’s capabilities in order to catch up.

As always, the Lab team will be watching the event live on Monday and bringing you all the marketing-related implications coming out of Apple’s announcement. Follow us on Twitter @ipglab for our live updates, and remember to check back later this week for our in-depth analysis of all the things marketers need to know.

 

Source: The Verge & Bloomberg

 

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

What Apple’s Acquisition Of Workflow Means For Future Conversational Platforms

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Apple announced on Thursday that it has acquired Workflow, an iOS automation app that lets you sync up apps to create quick shortcuts and automated actions, such as uploading the pictures you posted on Instagram to your Dropbox, or sending an automated message to someone when you crossed something off your to-do list. Apple is not shutting down the app for now, and is instead making it free to download. But it seems safe to assume that sooner or later Apple will be integrating Workflow’s cloud-based app automation capabilities into IOS, therefore opening up a lot of new possibilities for users to set up customized automation integrated with the core iOS features such as Siri and screenshot.

What Brands Need To Do
Beyond improving the accessibility and user experience of iOS devices, this acquisition also hints at what the future of Apple’s strategy for Siri and home automation might be. By adding Siri support, Apple could vastly expand Siri’s capabilities and make it easier for users to customize their experiences. As major tech players rush to build out AI-powered, voice-enabled platforms, as Amazon is doing with Alexa, Google with Google Assistant, and Microsoft with Cortana, Workflow will give Apple a much-needed boost in creating a user-friendly entryway for customizable voice experiences.

For brands, this means two things. One, there are opportunities in creating automation recipes that help integrate your branded app or web-based services into the iOS ecosystem so as to expand your reach and provide users with extra value. In addition, brands also need to prepare for the rise of conversational interfaces and figure out an authentic brand voice to reach 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 Holland ([email protected]) to schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

Source: The Next Web

 

Siri Gains First Official Movie Tie-In, Sets Precedent For Paid Answers

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Apple sets a precedent for sponsored Siri answers today as Siri gains its first official movie tie-in with answers for the Universal Pictures-produced The Secret Life of Pets. To promote the iTunes store release of the movie, Apple collaborated with Universal Pictures to added 15 programmed responses to Siri for the question, “What do my Pets do when I’m not at home?” According to Apple, this move marks the first time “Apple has collaborated on a home entertainment title and the first time Siri has been programmed to interact with an iTunes movie title.”

What Brands Should Do
As voice-activated personal assistant services like Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant continue to gain momentum and infiltrate consumer’s daily lives, it is laying the groundwork for an emerging media channel that allows brands to talk to consumers directly, creating a new paradigm for human-computer interaction thanks to its efficiency and convenience. With consumers increasingly familiar with this type of interface, it is only natural that brand advertisers should follow suit. And Apple’s move to open up Siri for movie tie-ins seems to indicate more brand opportunities to come on iOS.

For more information on how brands can take advantage of the rise of conversational interfaces, please check out the Conversational Interfaces section in our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: 9to5Mac

PayPal Integrates With Siri To Let You Send Money Via Voice

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
PayPal has integrated with Siri to let iOS users send and receive payments via voice command. The feature is available for PayPal app users in 30 countries starting Nov. 10 and supports a variety of languages. This capability is made possible thanks to Apple’s recently launched SiriKit, which allows developers to integrate Siri with their apps in iOS 10. Payment is one of the six types of functions that SiriKit currently supports, which also includes messaging, photo, and restaurant reservations. Other third-party apps that have integrated with Siri so far include Lyft, LinkedIn, and PayPal subsidiary Venmo.

What Brands Should Do
This update continues the trend of conversational interfaces that has been proliferating consumer tech devices. As more brands embrace digital assistants and chatbots in order to better serve their customers, brands that wish to stay ahead of the curve should start working with developers to figure out how to improve the customer experience with hands-free, voice-based interactions.

For additional information on how brands can effectively reach consumers on conversational interfaces, please check out the first section of our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: VentureBeat

Header image courtesy of PayPal’s YouTube

You Can Now Ask Siri To Lock Your Door (With New August Smart Locks)

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Soon you won’t need to bother getting up from your coach after binge-watching Netflix to lock your front door – you can just ask Siri to do it for you. August, maker of the first iPhone-controlled locks, recently announced a second-gen smart lock that is Apple HomeKit enabled through a new Broadcom chip, allowing iOS users to use Siri to lock and unlock the door remotely. Moreover, the San Francisco-based company also unveiled a new doorbell equipped with a video camera.

What Brands Need To Do
This new Siri-enabled smart lock is one of the new  examples of integrating voice command into connected home devices. Starting with Amazon’s smart speaker Echo launched last year, to Apple’s updated Apple TV with support for Siri, voice-activated command is quickly being integrated into everyday consumer products. This changes the way brands typically gets their messages delivered via visuals. Therefore, brands should consider developing a communication strategy for the audio-only platforms and explore building voice-powered experiences to reach consumers at home in the near future.

 

Source: Engadget

Siri, Cortana, and Google Now: Who Is The Smartest?

Posted on by Lab Team

Source: ReadWrite

Google Now, Siri, and Cortana were each given 3,000 voice queries in a new study to compare the capability of these three major voice-activated AIs. Google Now emerged as the clear champion with 88% of the questions handled correctly. Siri took the second-place with a 53% success rate, while Microsoft’s newly introduced Cortana finished with a mere 40%. Looks like both Siri and Cortana still have a lot of room for improvement.

Google Now’s Grammy Ad Takes Shot At Siri

Posted on by Lab Team

Google Now took direct aim at Siri last night during the Grammy’s with an advertisement that showed users around the world making use of the new service. Google Now is a response to Siri, but instead of taking on the voice-recognition features directly Google Now focuses on providing useful information instantaneously in one place. It works through the power of Google’s massive database; it analyzes everything Google knows about where you are, your schedule, who you’re with at that time, etc., and feeds back relevant information based on these variables. For instance, if there’s traffic on the highway I use to commute to work, Google Now will let me know to leave a few minutes early. 

Though there’s no direct mention of voice-activated interaction in the advertisement, Google Now ostensibly does precisely what Siri is advertised to do, only more effectively and though a slicker interface. Whereas Google Now can keep your day on track by giving you transit updates and the best time to leave based on this information, Siri can, at best, direct you to the app store to buy a good transportation apps. In brief, this is a developing battle, and the heartfelt ad that aired during the Grammy’s took direct aim at Siri’s functionality. And if it’s anything to go by, this will be a large part of the ongoing back and forth between iOS and Android devices for the foreseeable future. 

Chevy Integrates Siri In 2013

Posted on by Lab Team

Voice controls and connected cars go together like peas and carrots, so it’s not surprising Chevrolet is integrating Siri into new models starting with the 2013 Chevy Spark. The speech system will operate the MyLink infotainment systems for calls, navigation, and media after pairing your iOS device via bluetooth. While other car companies have created more robust media platforms, the introduction of Siri seems like an easy win for Chevy.