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Whoa Means No For Many CES Products

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“Whoa” is the first word that you noticed in this year’s CES promos and on attendee badges.

And, if you are similar to me, it’s the first word that you utter across all show floors and exhibit halls in Vegas.

Like when you see a “smart” bathroom promising to test your urine (that’s actually dumb). Or when you come upon signage proclaiming a “robot revolution” (that one is my official hype winner in what was, as always, an extremely competitive category).

I’m no anthropologist but some of my best learnings come from taxi drivers on the way to and from the conference.

This year, on the road in from the airport, a middle-aged gentleman at the wheel scoffed at the need for voice-activated devices all throughout his home.

“I’ve got that on my phone with Google,” he said. “Anything I need to know, I can get it already.”

For the fourth year in a row, I asked the so-called Average Joe and Joanne whether they have interest in a “smart” refrigerator that could tell them when they are low on milk or beer, and even save a return trip to the market for an otherwise forgotten item.

The answer is always “no” with privacy being the main inhibitor.

So, I guess the urine-screening toilet isn’t making it into their houses – or yours or mine – anytime soon.

Just what was shown at CES that could have mass appeal?

Those products that had a personal touch.

For instance, the smartest watch is the one that is intelligent about you, not everyone else. Casio brought a meaningful group of apps to a previously released watch that now caters to individual taste.

For instance, Fishbrain is supposedly the world’s largest community-based fishing app, producing local fishing forecasts and the best spots to catch that big one. However, I haven’t fished since I caught a muskie 27 years ago (luck, not app), so the Pro Trek Android Wear model had to offer me something else. Choices are now in the categories of skiing, surfing, golfing, swimming, and hiking. That works for me.

And all the apps are included with purchase of the watch.

Elsewhere, there were apps that solved some of life’s challenges – cooling a house in summer before you arrive home, for example. New? Not so much. Appealing to folks like my cab driver? Definitely. Those apps have become more intuitive and valuable.

But for all of the products that sought to address a need, there were thousands of others that left me scratching my head.

Atop that list were the self-driving concept cars from Ford and Toyota that touted pizza delivery as an effective use case. Will the cost go down for the consumer? Will the human-less car put more pepperoni on the pie? Is there a cost-savings for the pizza companies?

If the answers to all of those questions are no, please tell me why someone would be willing to go outside in the snow and darkness, in pajamas and slippers, to use an unfamiliar keypad to unlock a pizza that costs the same or more and makes the consumer work more for it.

Customers won't pay more for a pizza just because it comes in an innovative way. If a carrier pigeon could get it there hot and quickly and cheaper, they’d happily say, “the heck with self-driving cars.”

And about those robots everywhere? For what?

My wife doesn’t want a lawn mowing robot. She’ll quickly tell you that she married one.

The lesson of it all?

Beware of shiny objects. Know that the 180,000 who attended CES almost surely misrepresent your customers and prospects.

Build upon what you know. Definitely make bets on innovation or you will be left behind. But don’t wager the house.

Much of what we saw was early-adopter models at best, ones that caused a ripple on Twitter but are not destined to do the same on Main Street. Or in taxis where the real deciders of product success or not make their livings and spend their money judiciously.

(article first appeared here - http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2018/01/12/beware-shiny-objects-ces-boasts-innovations-lack-mass-appeal)

 

Tagged with CES, CES2018.

January 13, 2018 by Jeff Hasen.
  • January 13, 2018
  • Jeff Hasen
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Smart Products Will Only Succeed With Smart Marketing Decisions

Smart refrigerator? Check.

Smart home? Check.

Smart lawn mower? Check.

Smart marketer? We’ll see.

At the recently concluded CES 2017, there were approximately 20,000 products, with at least 19,998 seemingly described in press releases as either “revolutionary,” “innovative” or both. The question is, how many caught the fancy of the modern marketing professional to the detriment of one’s senses and bottom lines?

I do have something else to say about the product launches and business models that stretched our imagination. That message is: brand marketers, beware.

I’m not anti-innovation. Quite the contrary, in fact. I’m in tech as much for the unknown as the known, but let’s concentrate on the known for a minute. The nearly 180,000 in attendance at CES are not the norm.

What we saw at the Las Vegas Convention Center were early-adopter models that may cause a ripple on Twitter but not on Main Street. Specifically, the following caught my eye:

·      Multiple refrigerators with internet connections on the doors, enabling access to nutritional information, product reviews and purchasing options

·      Cylinders and other form factors created to respond to voice prompts

·      Drones, which created more buzz than the great majority of products

·      Large video displays in automobiles designed to keep inhabitants connected, entertained and informed

However, each of these products came with as many questions as answers:

·      Will greedy brands force advertising onto fridge doors and spook owners by how much they know about consumption? (“You drink four beers a night, so here’s a way to keep the supply on hand.”)

·      Will consumers have to listen to ads before they get responses to their voice prompts?

·      Will drones buzz by houses and disturb the quiet so many seek? Will they be carrying ads alongside milk and bread?

·      Will we see a proliferation of ads in cars, causing drivers and passengers to feel like the technology offers brands yet another screen to deliver unwanted content? When does all of this become a distraction that causes peril on the roads?

So, what is a modern marketing professional to do? The smartest ones are relying on a mix of products and services that aren’t necessarily aimed at early adopters. Ford is pioneering in many areas, but it also employs a variety of proven mobile strategies and tactics that lead to sales and loyalty.

An example of this is a text call-to-action in a Ford newspaper ad that produced a 15.4 percent lead conversion. An influencer on Twitter described the program as “meat and potatoes.” As a CMO who hasn’t touched beef in decades, I’ll dine on “meat and potatoes” all day and all night for such lead success.

There likely will be a time to spend brand dollars against many of the concepts introduced in Las Vegas. Just not in the hours after CES — or even the months ahead.

-

article first appeared at http://mobilebusinessinsights.com/2017/01/smart-products-will-only-succeed-with-smart-modern-marketing-decisions/

Tagged with CES2017, CES.

January 12, 2017 by Jeff Hasen.
  • January 12, 2017
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Was CES 2016 An "Exercise In Wishful Thinking"?

More than 170,000 attended CES last week, yet the only one that matters was nowhere to be found among more than 2.5 million square feet of packed aisles and shiny objects.

The consumer doesn’t qualify for entry to the businessperson-only show. And while we would hope that all products – from robots to drones to smart appliances and more – were built based on solid end-user insights, that notion is as likely as 95 percent of what was shown becoming runaway hits.

The most astute comment of the week came from David Pogue, longtime consumer electronics pundit, who said, “CES is not a store; it's an exercise in wishful thinking.”

So what wins?

“The consumer is going to decide,” Sean Lyons, U.S. President of R/GA, told me in an interview for my The Art of Mobile Persuasion book (www.artofmobilepersuasion.com). “I think a lot of these early thoughts about how things will be used are wrong often. And it's not because people aren't intelligent. It's because we haven't really found what the behaviors are yet.”

Said Target CMO Jeff Jones on Facebook:

“The consumer will win with choice for sure…but as of now, people will have to choose a “platform” or an “ecosystem” that they buy into for all of their products. We’ve been here many times…Beta vs VHS, iOS vs Android, Mac vs PC, etc.”

Here are more of my thoughts on what I found in Las Vegas:

Samsung has advanced the concept of a refrigerator with the introduction of the

"Family Hub" unit that enables users to gauge supply and order from a screen in the door that also offers up recipes. There is even a corresponding smartphone app that gives owners in a supermarket or elsewhere a real-time view of what’s on the shelves and what is absent. But the expected $5,000 price tag puts all but the top one-percent or so out in the cold.

Drones and Virtual Reality caught the eye of many show goers. What grabbed my attention was the prediction by the International Robotics Federation of 35 million units of “service robots” to be sold in the next three years.

“Robots are going to be as popular as cars, machines and airplanes,” predicted Alibaba Group Chairman Jack Ma.

Rather than more employing a robot to clean a floor, for instance, the growth is expected to be driven in large part by the introduction of products to provide assistance for the elderly and handicapped.

According to a story published by the Consumer Technology Association, a recent Georgia Institute of Technology study found that a “surprising number” of seniors (aged 63 to 93 years) would prefer to have a robotic assistant for household tasks rather than a human helper.

As expected, there were lots of exercise trackers. But how many not only gauge movement and rates, but provide context on what the numbers mean? None that I saw.

Speaking of trackers, there seemingly every kind of tracker imaginable, but not one that can tell the Browns where Johnny Manziel is - and whether he is in beard and wig.

-

(article first published on imediaconnection.com - http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2016/01/11/with-the-consumer-absent-much-of-ces2016-was-exercise-in-wishful-thinking/)

Tagged with CES, CES2016, The Art of Mobile Persuasion, Target, David Pogue.

January 11, 2016 by Jeff Hasen.
  • January 11, 2016
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  • CES2016
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One Undeniable Truth In Two-Million Square Feet of CES 2016

Be it the Internet of Things, the smart home, virtual reality or something else, change is coming.

A year ago, I walked the Las Vegas Convention Center with 150,000 of my closest friends attending the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show. Televisions were impressive, but incremental in benefit to the viewer. Automobiles were not just tricked out with sound, but with connectivity like never before. Smart home hardware was plentiful.

Whether they were solving consumer problems – alerting us that there is a leak under our sink or that our beer supply in the fridge is low – is another question.

I’m heading back to the desert this week to see where innovation has taken us since last year’s show.

Previews of the 2016 show point to the increased availability of smart products, including light bulbs, automobiles, appliances, regulators like the Nest thermostat, and an increasingly present wearable category.

The Consumer Electronics Association says that the wearable tech industry is projected to grow 64 percent over the next three years, reaching $25 billion in 2019 when more than 245 million devices are expected to ship.

The build-out of the wearable market will be in the spotlight on the CES 2016 show floor where the Wearables Marketplace and related lifestyle exhibit areas have more than tripled in size since 2015.

What, if anything, wins?

“The consumer is going to decide,” Sean Lyons, U.S. President of R/GA of Havas, told me in an interview for my The Art of Mobile Persuasion book (www.artofmobilepersuasion.com). “I think a lot of these early thoughts about how things will be used are wrong often. And it's not because people aren't intelligent. It's because we haven't really found what the behaviors are yet.

“Just think about how long it took for something like the video phone call which was introduced in the ‘60s to actually come into use. Even now, we're Skyping (and only using a voice capability). Other people might be doing FaceTime. But it's not main method of communication. What's envisioned is often not what happens. To me that's the fun part, especially for brands. Once you realize that you are not going to be expected to have the answer, and you just kind of feel your way through it, the better that you will be. That's going to allow you to not have the pressure of solving the problem and actually observing.”

How important is the show?

CES 2016 will feature more than 3,600 exhibitors and an impressive list of potential buyers.

In 2015, 82 percent of the Fortune 500 and 83 percent of the top retailers attended what is the largest conference in Las Vegas. Reports this year indicate that level of participation will continue this time around.

One certainty is that there will be an overabundance of hype. Adoption of even the “winning” technologies happens over a period of time.

“The reality is these things don't happen cleanly,” Curtis Kopf, Vice President of Customer Experience for Premera Blue Cross, said to me in an interview for The Art of Mobile Persuasion. “It's not like all of a sudden smartphones are here and everyone has them on day one. It's messy. Emerging technology exists for a long time with existing technologies.”

(article first published on imediaconnection.com - http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2016/01/02/one-undeniable-truth-in-two-million-square-feet-of-ces-2016/)

Tagged with CES, Curtis Kopf, Sean Lyons, The Art of Mobile Persuasion.

January 3, 2016 by Jeff Hasen.
  • January 3, 2016
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Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - From Coins To Bitcoin For NYC Meters

New York City is weighing bitcoin and Apple Pay for parking meters. I grew up there needing quarters to fill ‘em so I could put my dimes in the Zerox machine in the library. Despite what you see from my pretty website picture, I'm as old as dirt.

Facebook is now operating at a $10 billion revenue run rate from mobile, per industry analyst Chetan Sharma. Twitter and Yahoo also exceeded $1 billion in mobile revenue for 2014.

Also from Sharma, Amazon led in mobile commerce with over $15 billion in revenues from mobile.

Holiday SMS promotions by major retailers dramatically plummeted year over year, BDO said. One third of marketers asked went the text message route in 2013. Only 7 percent said they would do so in the just concluded shopping season.

Kodak is reportedly back at CES with a cell phone. Given how late it is entering the game, Kodak isn’t likely to even be in the picture by the end of 2015.

After a long break, I resumed using Twitterific recently. Since, I’ve been getting daily short-lived “connection errors” on my Mac. At that point, it loses its “ificness”.

Tweet of the week - @helpareporter was “looking for burlesque stars to give ‘regular’ women tips on performing their own private dances”. Two comments: that story again? And how does one define a regular woman?

According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, cellphones are involved in 1.6 million auto crashes each year.

In 2014, U.S adults spent 23% more time on #mobile during an average day than in 2013, says eMarketer.

Ericsson: "90% of the global population over 6 years old will own a mobile phone by 2020.

Companies that allow users to submit expenses via mobile have 28% shorter cycle times: Concur.

Jerry Jones, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, is worth $3 billion and he still uses a flip phone, reports Business Insider. So does Indianapolis quarterback Andrew Luck.

Tagged with bitcoin, Apple Pay, CES, Kodak, Facebook, twitter.

January 4, 2015 by Jeff Hasen.
  • January 4, 2015
  • Jeff Hasen
  • bitcoin
  • Apple Pay
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Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - The Pre-CES Edition

As I head to CES, I wonder whether 2013 be the year of "reinvented" TV or was that 2012 with second-screen adoption?

Consumer Reports calls the iPhone 5 the worst of the top smartphones. I don't know many unhappy users. Do you?

Next-generation LTE chips are said to reduce power consumption by 50 percent. Will that lead to 50 percent more activity and the status quo?

The dumbphone may be added to Oxford English Dictionary – but not by marketers. We would never call users dumb, right?

Facebook mobile user counts revealed: 192 million Android, 147 million iPhone, 48 million iPad, 56 million Messenger.

In 2012, mobile search and display advertising was up 220 percent in the U.S. alone, according to eMarketer. Google had a 56.6 percent share of the overall US mobile advertising market. The nearest competitor, Facebook, had an 8.8 percent share.

Texting activity went up and game playing went down on mobile in the latest comScore look.

Want an easy way to lose me? Run a headline that says a company "may" do something. I may move to Tahiti. Maybe not.

Apple stock was up 31 percent in 2012. Failure?

We couldn't end 2012 without another "gadget caught fire" story. Historically, many are hoaxes that media chase anyway.

There will be more and faster Internet connections on planes if the Federal Communications Commission gets its way. With an option, many of us will go-go from Gogo.

New York introduced real-time arrival times for subway trains via mobile apps. It can handle 5,000 queries per second.

Smartphone activations typically outpace tablets by four to one, yet more tablets were activated on Christmasm according to Flurry.

 

Tagged with Apple, CES, Gogo, Google, LTE, facebook, iphone.

January 6, 2013 by Jeff Hasen.
  • January 6, 2013
  • Jeff Hasen
  • Apple
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  • Gogo
  • Google
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Jeff Hasen

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