DDB Influences 03.17
March Edition.
Our March Edition is all about examining the status quo of the biggest tech-developments recently: Virtual Reality (VR) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Enjoy the read to learn how real Virtual Reality is in 2017 and if Artificial Intelligence is already smart enough to go mainstream.
IS THERE MORE TO THE VR HYPE? CHECKING IN ON VIRTUAL REALITY 2017
Writer: Michelle Grossheim
Yoda communicated with Holograms, Tron set a whole movie on Virtual Reality: VR/AR is hyped since decades and finally catches up with the vision of the past years — not only for Sci-Fi Fans and Tech-Experts, but for the masses. But how close is VR really to become a mass medium?
With the launch of the Oculus Rift one year ago, the industry expected one of the VR hardware flagships to finally smooth the way for the masses into the VR experience.
And consumers couldn’t wait for the hype to finally hit them, getting their hands on a real Science Fiction piece that can brings entertainment and communication to the next level.
That’s how in the past months we saw first market strategies being implemented, first brands communicating, first business models being developed using VR/AR.
However, the talk leaves us skeptical about its success, even though we can still feel and see the hype around us — more than ever.
What happened?
In the beginning of 2016 the VR industry experienced a humble start: shipping problems of the newest headsets, cancellations, and bundle price confusions. Nevertheless sales started to take off: One research firm, SuperData Research, estimates there were 243,000 Oculus Rift headsets and 420,000 HTC Vive headsets sold by the end of last year. In contrast, during the iPhone’s first three months on the market in 2007, nearly 1.4 million units were sold, and it is considered to be among the most successful technology products of all time.
In the end of 2016 we saw a growing VR industry (VR industry est. $1 billion at the end of 2016). The lion’s share, around $700 million, coming from hardware sales, the rest coming from content. Key driver: the Gaming Industry. But where games were manifold, the number of high-quality games, of game top sellers, was few.
The result: the lifeblood of the VR experience — games, ambience — is not living up to the hardware developed. And the experience becomes less immersive for the consumer, as opposed to the expectations in 2016: “The idea is that virtual reality puts people first. It’s all about who you’re with. Once you’re in there, you can do anything you want together — travel to Mars, play games, fight with swords, watch movies or teleport home to see your family. You have an environment where you can experience anything.” (Mark Zuckerberg at the VR live demo)
The reality is: limited high-quality content, motion-sickness from usage, and a clear lack of multiplayer options. Another downside: the hardware price, which is the dominant factor for making a VR purchase decision, is fairly high for state of the art glasses (an Oculus Rift for €699, HTC Vive for €899 in Germany). Since consumers did not yet become an authentic part of the experience, the VR industry could not sucessfully increase desirability for the mass market in 2016.
What’s the influence?
VR managed to get into the heads of the consumers. At the beginning of 2017, almost half of the American internet users were aware of the new technology. However, the uptake is low with 16% using VR at least once, making the tech a “billion dollar niche”.
Even though VR appears not to be a medium for the masses, the technology can become a brand shaper for an image transferred to the masses. Research shows that using VR as a brand has positive impact on image, making the brands seem “forward-thinking and modern”.
As far as influences are concerned, relevance of content will be key. This way, VR can offer a viable opportunity to tell your brand story.
How to make VR relevant for your target audience?
Add value.
VR will be a fertile soil for using value added services. It gives brands the opportunity to engage in sponsorships, giving tutorials, and letting consumers compare products, prices, etc. Just like Ikea did in 2016 by enabling their kitchens to be visualized with VR glasses. Similarly, the German public TV Station ARD, which used first person VR and behind the scenes material parallel to its TV airings of the Winter Sports World Championship. Or collaboration spaces created by California-based startup Bigscreen, that gives people from around the world the opportunity to work, play, and hangout together.
Be entertaining.
Gamification will still be a key driver of the hype. And that gives brands the opportunity to give access to a narrative that surrounds the brand in an entertaining way — making people actually want to get in touch with you. Brands already are involved in real world retail gamification, offering discounts and gift cards for consumers using the branded VR environment. Like McDonalds did at last years SXSW, letting attendees paint their own Happy Meal boxes.
And GE, which has always strived to bring science and entertainment together, launched a branded virtual reality series about science.
With both, value and entertaining content, VR will be an opportunity to gather consumer data, to increase engagement with the brand and to ultimately modify the brand image.
Conclusion
We see that VR made its way into the mainstream mind in 2016, but not yet into mainstream behaviour. But the hype will stick around in 2017, attracting brands to come to grips with the medium, and consumers to engage with relevant content. All in all the biggest benefit that brands derive from the VR technology will be the image transfer, since VR acts as a brand shaper for an innovative and forward-thinking brand.
By:
Michelle Grossheim // Strategist // DDB Düsseldorf
AI FOR THE MASSES? ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ON THE RISE TO MAINSTREAM.
Writer: Matthias Rech
Artificial Intelligence is supposed to be the next technological revolution that will first change everything and then take over the world. Until then, it can be a useful tool to create better customer experiences, build new services or finally bring to live your company’s data graveyard.
What used to be perceived as an occult science, mastered only by big tech companies like Google, Facebook or IBM, is now becoming mainstream. More and more tools for non-experts are emerging and one key ingredient to this dissemination of AI capabilities is the cloud. If you want to implement AI capabilities into your company, you don’t have to hire machine-learning specialists anymore. The new providers of AI services pursue a plug-and-play style business model, allowing users to connect with their systems over the Internet.
To better understand how this works, let’s have a look at some of the most advanced AI applications.
Clarifai
The company has created an image-recognition system. It’s trained to identify more than ten thousand different image classes, such as room, window, or furniture. But as we’re talking about machine learning, users can train the machine to get even more specific.
Clarifai is used by online services like Trivago to determine if a photo depicts a room, a pool or a beach. BuzzFeed relies on Clarifai to tag photos so editors can find footage for their articles more easily.
IBM Watson
Watson has proven to be a fantastic PR machine for IBM. But now it’s promising to create real business results for everyone.
“Watson Analytics” allows business clients to upload data, such as sales figures, and kick off an AI analytic process. IBM also has a module that pulls your social media user stats to evaluate what people might be planning to buy.
Amazon KI
Amazon is offering a broad range of KI applications though it Amazon Web Services. Want to build your own chatbot? Try Amazon Lex. It’s the technology behind the company’s proprietary Alexa system and provides developers with automatic speed recognition and natural language understanding. As usual, all Amazon KI solutions are scalable and come as managed services, offering its customers maximum freedom with minimum risk.
TrademarkVision
Finding the right logo for your company can be a tough job. But making sure that your logo doesn’t infringe on other trademarks is a mission impossible. That’s where TrademarkVision’s machine learning-powered technology comes into play. It uses image-recognition tools to speed up the process of determining whether a new logo is acceptable and of identifying logos that may violate existing trademarks.
Conclusion
AI is not one of those short-lived tech trends coming from the valley — it’s the next evolutionary step in computing. In just a few years, we’ll see machine-learning technologies in every digital device, application or service we’re using. The digital transformation has just begun.
By:
Matthias Rech // Senior Strategist // DDB Berlin
