Lab Weekly — 10/18/2019

Highlights from Google’s hardware event; new Floor 9 episode; plus a roundup of the latest news and stats

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Lab Originals

Google Pixel 4 Event Recap

On Tuesday, Google hosted its annual “Made by Google” hardware event in New York City to introduce to the world a slew of new products, including a new Pixel phone, a new lineup of Google Nest (née Google Home) speakers, and a pair of wireless earbuds. In this recap, we’ll focus on the four highlights that truly matter for brands — things that every innovation-minded marketer needs to know.

In case you missed it…

The Unfulfilled Potential of the Sharing Economy

The challenges that WeWork and Uber are facing, and what they mean for the future of the sharing economy

Social Gaming and The Future of VR

How Facebook and Fortnite are building the “metaverses” of tomorrow, and what their efforts say about the future of VR and social networks

Amazon Wants Alexa to Leave Home and Learn to Forget

A deep-dive into the key trends from Amazon’s Echo event and what they say about the state of voice technology.

Floor 9 Podcast

Episode 49: The State of VR & The Metaverse Future

In this week’s episode, Scott and Adam discuss the state of virtual reality technology and why VR adoption has stalled. Then, Christina joins the group to talk about a potential future “metaverse” where people will create, socialize, and even do business in, as well as dissecting the different approaches Facebook and Fortnite is taking to get us there. For anyone that is curious about the future of immersive media and gaming, this episode should be a thought-provoking one. Listen and download here.

News Analysis

Disney Tweets Every Single Movie Coming To Disney+ At Launch [Vanity Fair]

This was a well-executed stunt by Disney to generate online buzz for the impending launch of its direct-to-consumer streaming service. The initial tweet has grabbed 18K retweets with the short video found in the tweet having nearly 6M views. More importantly, it reminded everyone just how deep the Disney content vault goes, with many obscure and forgotten titles from the 1980s and 1990s that will surely evoke a sense of nostalgia among the older Millennial audience. This social media blitz also provided content for Disney fans to riff on their childhood obsessions, encouraging people to retweet or quote retweet the tweets that contained their favorite movies with memes and jokes. Increasingly we are seeing more social media-savvy brands start tapping into this type of remix culture providing fuels for fans to generate more content to be spread even further than the branded content could’ve gotten on their own.

Related: Apple launched its own Apple TV+ press page [Apple]; Snapchat users can share Reddit posts directly with their friends [Engadget]; Apple TV app has been added to Roku devices [BGR]; HBO Max beats Disney to acquire exclusive streaming rights for Studio Ghibli movies [The Verge]

Fortnite Launches Chapter 2 After A Two-Day Outage Stunt [The Verge]

As the report notes, Chapter 2 introduced new gameplay features, including fishing, swimming, and new vehicles to utilize, including new multiplayer emotes that let you coordinate dances with friends. All these new features point to a more robust virtual universe where people can freely explore and easily socialize in a fun way, therefore laying the foundation for building a future metaverse.

It is also worth noting that the way that Fortnite introduced the new chapter by essentially shutting down the game for nearly two days starting Sunday afternoon is a clever stunt that whipped fans into a frenzy. The outrage itself turned out to be the game’s most popular event of the year, drawing millions to tune in on Twitch, Twitter, and YouTube to watch what was essentially a livestream of a black hole and inspiring countless memes across social channels that dominated a big part of the cultural conversation this week. In the end, it seems that fathoming the depths of the unknown is more entertaining than actual Fortnite gameplay, as the launch of Chapter 2 fell short of the audience drawn by the “black hole” in terms of concurrent viewers

Related: Giphy Arcade lets you play, create, and share mini-games on the web as if they were GIFs [The Verge]; 7 of the most epic Fortnite events: Black hole, giant mech and rockets [CNET]

Facebook-Led Libra Forms Governing Council After Big-Name Departures [CoinDesk]

As we noted in last week’s newsletter regarding the news that PayPal decided to pull out of the Libra Consortium, Facebook’s deteriorating reputation among consumers and lawmakers is pushing many of the Libra partners to reconsider their alliances with Facebook on this controversial project that is already under regulatory scrutiny in many countries. This week, the situation exacerbated as even more companies, including Booking Holdings, eBay, Visa, Mastercard, and Stripe, pulled their support and left the joint venture. Nevertheless, Facebook is soldiering on, for the time being, as it officially formed the consortium’s executive team following a meeting in Geneva, Switzerland. But without the support of a strong partner network, Libra could end up severely limited in its use case and thus struggling to take off as a “global digital currency” like Facebook envisioned. For more of our thoughts on the Libra project, check out this in-depth analysis we wrote.

Related: Facebook’s libra cryptocurrency coalition is falling apart as eBay, Visa, Mastercard and Stripe jump ship [CNBC]; Chinese banking giant CCB expands blockchain platform as volume breaks $53 billion [CoinDesk]; Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten launches crypto exchange for trading in bitcoin via an Android app [CoinDesk]

Alcohol Delivery Startup Drizly Dispatches Branded AR Experiences Via DrinkAR App [Next Reality]

This is a cool joint effort from Drizly and its partners to leverage the interactivity that mobile AR experience provides to drive orders for on-demand delivery. One standout experience comes from Frontera, which uses an AR experience triggered by scanning the labels that virtually guides users through the process of making a specialty cocktail drink using 3D objects. As mobile AR continues to rack up mainstream adoption, we expect to see more brands tapping into this as an engagement tool to drive online sales, thus shortening the purchase funnel.

Related: Disney’s ‘Maleficent’ brings magic to YouTube with AR make-up experience [Mobile Marketer]; Target teams up with Snapchat for Halloween-themed AR experience [Next Reality]; Snapchat’s first swipeable lens is an AR partnership with Tinder [Engadget]; Sony is launching an AR ‘Ghostbusters’ experience in Japan [Engadget]

Stats To Know:

• Self-identified ad avoiders were 22% more engaged, emotionally involved and likely to remember brands mentioned in a podcast compared to TV ads, according to a new study from the BBC.
• The number of U.S. broadband households subscribing to two or more OTT services has more than doubled since 2014, according to a new study by research firm Parks Associates. 46% of all broadband homes now have multiple OTT subscriptions, up from 33% in 2017, the study found, while nearly three-quarters of all broadband homes have at least one streaming subscription.
• On Wednesday, Netflix reported its Q3 2018 earnings. The streaming giant hit revenue of $5.25 billion, up 31% YoY, as it adds 6.8 million paid subscribers globally, up 21% YoY from 6.1M but below the 7M company forecast. The streaming service also said that 64 million households watched the third season of the hit series Stranger Things within the first 4 weeks of its July 4th premiere.