Emerging tech in 2017 part one: Staying on-trend and ‘New Realities’
Sam Battams, Head of Technology Innovation at Manning Gottlieb OMD introduces a fortnightly, two-part deep dive into the emerging tech trends in 2017, and what they mean for agencies and brands.
Staying on-trend
2017’s tech trends look the same as 2016’s, and that’s ok
Aside from struggling with early mornings, wrestling with public transport (or the lack thereof), and re-acquainting yourself with your gym trainers, you may have spent some of your first working weeks of 2017 skimming through the shiny, new tech trends for the coming year. But perhaps, like me, you had a slight feeling of déjà vu. Didn’t I read these last year? Virtual Reality; Augmented Reality; artificial intelligence; social video; messaging; a new term for instant gratification; some other new term for streaming content. All in all, all the same.
Some trendsters have called the coming year one of ‘incremental change’. Others say that it’s the obvious consequence of the Gartner Hype Cycle. Both valid points. To bring back a 2009 phrase (sorry, so passé) — ‘everything’s now in beta’. The world’s biggest tech companies (many of which are now the world’s biggest companies full-stop) continue to release products into market that are far from the finished article. Many of them don’t have a ‘killer app’ (very 2011 that one, sorry again) attached to them. The Apple Watch was infamously meant to be for erm, kinda everything, until based on actual user behaviour of those that had bought one, Apple recognised that fitness was probably the application to shout about.
For technologies like Virtual and Augmented Reality, content is being developed in tandem with, and in response to, the constant improvements to the technology available. We now live in an environment where the tech companies are all looking to lead consumer behaviour rather than respond to it, so it should come as no surprise that the dominant technology trends and platforms aren’t changing each calendar year; consumers are still becoming accustomed to, and providing feedback on, the new possibilities and functionality that the tech companies have been nudging them towards over the last few years.
There is no new ‘smartphone’ on the horizon. I would hazard a guess that there won’t be a new piece of technology at this scale in our lifetime — 2.5 billion smartphones globally now — in particular if you consider the breadth and depth of it’s impact on humanity, just 10 years after the first iPhone was announced. So unfathomably powerful is this device — potentially humanity’s most behaviour-changing product ever — that I believe that any technology that gains the reach of even 10% of the smartphone user base is indeed likely to be an accessory to, or at least powered by, the smartphone itself.
Many of the technology trends that we’ll continue to talk about this year are vast in scope and have a long way to go, in terms of both the technology improving and brands experimenting with them. So I’m perfectly happy with ‘incremental change’, even if it doesn’t sound that whizz-bang on face value. I’d argue that the current technology available to us (the hardware, the software, the networks) is more than enough to transform any business or disrupt any sector, and keep us busy for a generation. Or at least the year ahead.
So where are we at with technologies’ prevailing themes? What’s possible now and where can agencies find immediate opportunity for their clients? And what are the challenges and watch-outs?
We can divide this into three broad themes: New Realities, Smart Systems and Connected Objects. First up I’ll discuss New Realities, before looking at Smart Systems and Connected Objects in the second part of the series.
New Realities
How can brands make use of Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality?
More so than any other trend this feels like an area where the groundwork has been laid for creators — whether that’s publishers, brands, or the wider creative community — to experiment with what is now available to them. Last year saw VR hardware releases from significant players such as Oculus, HTC, and PlayStation. Of course, technical improvements will continue at a pace — in particular the pursuit of untethered headsets and remote positional tracking — but the technology is already available to create powerful VR experiences where users can move and interact in a manner that is impossible in any other medium. HTC have already quashed rumours of a ‘Vive 2’ being released this year — though plenty of new accessories are on the horizon. So it’s over to the many creatives already in this space, and those getting on-board, to develop content that makes use of VR’s unique properties as a medium.
It seems that VR entered, or perhaps re-entered, the public consciousness last year on some level. In terms of how many people own a VR headset of any kind, estimates suggest there are around 500,000 people with a high-end HTC Vive and 400,000 with an Oculus Rift. Sony say that “hundreds of thousands” of PlayStation owners have already bought PlayStation VR, and Samsung reported it had reached one million users for its Samsung Gear headsets earlier last year, well before it was heavily promoted by Samsung in the run up to Christmas. We await numbers regarding one of the newest smartphone-accessory headsets in the market, Google’s Daydream, but some reports suggest the reach of Google’s basic Cardboard headset has been as high as 80 million (of course, unlike the other headsets, it is hard to know how many have kept these rather than used them once).
The question of ‘how many people have a headset?’ — often the first one asked to an agency suggesting a VR solution — is perhaps misjudged. There are certainly only a finite number of people who will own a VR headset ever, even when the VR content available improves. This is an immersive and intense medium to be dipped into for ‘one-off’ experiences, analogous perhaps to cinema (how many people have one of those at home?) It fits for VR to be found in a store to aid a magical retail experience, or indeed in cinemas to view entertainment content in a new form, and these site-specific VR experiences provides a rich opportunity for many brands. In London we have already seen a VR Zombie chase, Björk’s VR-only exhibition, and more recently the Royal Academy’s VR pop-up — all of which were ticketed events that sold out.
Beyond VR, the narrative from some publishers is that 2016 was actually the breakout year for Augmented Reality, because of the mega-hit that was Pokémon Go. This doesn’t ring true for me to the extent that it is touted as AR’s breakthrough moment. On a basic level because some research showed that ‘only’ 33% of users had the AR functionality turned on ‘most of the time’ or ‘always’ whilst playing the game, and more significantly because the success of Pokémon Go wasn’t down to the AR, but a multitude of factors (many of which were cultural) that I will spare you from debating again here. For me, Snapchat Lenses remain a far stronger example for AR. Something used by millions daily that certainly is about the fun and delight of the AR experience (even if the users don’t know or care to know that this tech is part of something called Augmented Reality).
Facial overlays seem to be the most prevalent successful use of AR technology, perhaps because of a mixture of the technology being pretty impressive and the phenomenon turned established behaviour of the selfie. This is neat for makeup brands or spectacles sellers, but obviously has limited uses. It’s the augmentation of objects into the real world in front of you that feels like the opportunity for a broader array of uses, but one that has been touted for some time. Perhaps this year we’ll see brands really crack this opportunity through some hit applications. Markerless technology (a potential barrier to a slick experience) continues to improve and the digital recreation of assets for an AR world (perhaps the biggest cost here) may be something that a brand bites the bullet on or finds a more efficient way of doing, which could lead to a significant AR success story with business-changing returns.
Microsoft’s HoloLens, available for developers but not for the public (which isn’t necessarily a problem — see my point on VR adoption) currently exists as a unique outlier. AR via a headset rather through a phone, combined with the possibility of interaction and scalability of augmented objects that pushes this into the realm of ‘Mixed Reality’. This is ‘where it’s all going’, as future-gazers like to say, and it’s true to say that Mixed Reality experiences, like AR experiences, point to a potential for mass adoption far beyond VR because of the nature of the experience. The availability of the HoloLens platform, perhaps years before this technology truly develops on a larger scale, stands out as an obvious opportunity for agencies to help their clients gain first-mover advantage and take a leadership position with a tech-powered experience for their customers.
What should agencies do this year?
● Help clients to develop amazing customer experiences brought to life through these technologies. Applications can be practical or fantastical and relevant for brands across multiple sectors; VR should be about more than shocking people, AR more than masks.
● Work with production experts who are pushing the boundaries with what is possible. Look out for select content publishers with compelling, well-supported VR offerings.
● Consider building platforms for VR or AR experiences that allow for updating and repeat usage over time, rather than purely one-off, short-lived ideas.
