Afternoon all,
Happy New Year and hopefully you are back in the working groove and enjoying the snow before the terror of the journey home.
The bulk of today’s note will be around CES, one week on what are the reactions, is it still a relevant event even?
But before that a quick congratulations that may have slipped through the gap about the great news from AOD and their Global first for cracking the code to enable us to target display advertising based on user search behaviour. A great leap forward and more info here
Well done to Marco and the team.
And now to Vegas. We have been fortunate to get the view from 3 figures who were there across the network and they have kindly put together a perspective for us all to share and experience.
Lisa Giacosa (formally of our London parish and now SVP Global Social Media Director based in Chicago)
I think CES has reverted to the traditional trade show. it seems that brands tend to have their own big wow launches year round without waiting for a big launch at CES.
There was some impressive evolution but not the innovation we have come to expect.
There was a time when even higher definition would have wooed us, I think its partly our expectations and partly a shift in what is happening at CES.
There were some great applications of technology in the health space (not new but evolved), from Polar, Garmin and fitbug.
There was lots of hype around the fork that stops you from eating too fast which even got a CNET awards
Interesting to see Polaroid at CES having evolved their business to all intents and purposes to a printing service marketed as turning "your Favorite Photos into Art" - I think largely driven by the growth of instagram check out Polaroid fotobar
The hit for me - was not the show but the meetings that we had alongside the event, Publicis had a delegation of 650 people (including clients) from all over the world.
The theme was "Bright Lights, Big Ideas" you can see detail here
The syfy session was really interesting showing true innovation and usefulness for consumers.
A football that charges based on the kinetic energy when its kicked - good video here, my personal favorite was a camera ball that could be tossed into any situation to avoid putting humans in danger
and water graffiti that was cool but not sure what it would be used for except art!
Also worth a trawl of #bigideas on twitter.
Richard Hartell (Also a former Whitfield St alumni and now President, Human Experience Strategy based in New York).
What did i learn?
You can read about all the new stuff - Razer Edge, Ultra HDs, Samsung's 4K Easel TVs (nice), 4K OLED TV from Sony, Fitbit Flex, Pebble - so i won't go into them.
So themes:
It was not a great year. Nothing really stood out. Mainly just incremental rather than a big leap forward.
Mobile was all just incremental. Nothing really new there. Some bigger (little tablets) some smaller (smaller phones).
TV was mainly just sharper with lots of content flipping / second screen interaction being shown. social tv, cloud tv.
Samsung still showing smart fridges. Connected homes stuff still feels like a 1970's imagination realised rather than anything really interesting.
Cars. Cars feel like they are starting to get it. Lots of connected cars - Honda & Subaru doing deals with Aha, Ford with i-heartradio. lots of radio and internet services content feeding into. Lots of stuff on cars being connected - find my stolen car, cars that alert you when your son has driven it too far from the safe zone/too late at night. And driverless cars - Audi and Toyota. Cars have always felt like a bit of an untouched frontier in entertainment/information tech. seems like that's starting to change. when you put all the car stuff together you can start to imagine driverless cars that just become mobile offices/entertainment centres/family cinemas in the future / maybe contextual to where you are or where you are going. going on holiday - you get all the content related to where your are going on the way. coming back - you get to edit all your photos, facebook posts on the way back and post them out. change the way people work etc. cars could get interesting.
That's what i took out of it all.
Marco Bertozzi, Executive Managing Director/ EVP, EMEA, VivaKi Nerve Center
Was also there and has put a good post together which you can read in full on his blog
Below is the opening which gives a good summary:
CES never ceases to astound, not least because the sheer scale is incredible. Over 150,000 people gathered this year to see the onslaught of new gadgets and software, with over 20,000 new products being launched. However this year I was less surprised by the products being launched.
Yes there were bigger TV’s, thinner TV’s, TV’s with the most incredible picture quality, more tablets, more phones, more games and even fridges that talk to you. Loads of great stuff. But not loads of surprises. The focus as far as I could see was in making all of these things talk, connect and share with each other.
It struck me at CES just how much technology enables a seamless, frictionless ecosystem for us and our consumption of content. There were some fascinating examples on the show floor that all point to the consumer being able to do exactly what they want to do, when they want to do it. I can guarantee that our children will be demanding a completely open proposition when it comes to media consumption. They will want and expect it in a non- linear fashion as well.
Have a great w/e.
Oli.