CES 2020 — Learnings for an advertising agency planner
It hasn’t been long since Toyota announced at CES 2020 its endeavor to build “Woven City”– a town run by AI and self-driving cars. Shuhei Yasunaga from Momentum Japan visited CES representing McCANN MILLENNIALS and reported back on how we as a leading advertising company should interpret these trends seen at this festival of innovative consumer technology and what can be applied to our daily work.
CES is the world’s largest convention of new products and technologies in the consumer electronics industry which attracts a crowd of more than 170,000 visitors from around the globe every year. Technology powerhouses such as Samsung and LG display their latest products in massive booths and from Japan, companies such as TOYOTA and SONY are major participants.
1．TECH TREND TOPICS
The CES organizers predicted that IoT, 5G and TRANCE-PORTATION to be the technology trends for this year.
Amongst these, AI captured much attention as the technology that will impact human life most. The use of AI has expanded over the years — it recommends products and services to us identified from our online purchases or streaming service history on a daily basis. McDonalds in Silicon Valley has already adopted AI to automate their drive-through services. It is not hard to assume that AI will shortly be an embedded and integral part of our lives.
In robotics, rather than robots which are designed specially to serve a particular function, companion robots that can become man’s best friend have seemed to become increasingly popular.
Finally in healthcare, the latest trends were in technology focusing on sleep or baby care, while there was also strong anticipation for the development of technologies that will improve remote medicine.
Let’s look in a little more detail regarding consumer-based technologies seen at CES.
2．MEANINGFUL TECHNOLOGY
Meet Ballie, a robot that resembles BB-8 from Star Wars, developed by Samsung.
Ballie is an adorable companion robot that supports everyday life. It rolls around observing human and pet behavior, opening curtains in the morning or signaling robot cleaners to start vacuuming when the pet messes the room. All its functionalities are things we have seen before, but its behavior reminds us of the dream companion seen in Sci-Fi, and has the potential to change the role split between human and robots.
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Climate 360° Smart Bed from Sleep number showed the potential of technology changing every day sleep.
Albeit being an essential part of human life, let it be the heat in summer or cold in winter or even tossing and turning for no apparent reason, everyone has experienced some form of problem with sleep. As a fact, data indicates that 80% of Americans have had problems with sleep due to some form of temperature issue. There are many products already in the market that helps control sleeping temperatures to improve sleep quality, such as sheets using cool-touch fabric or electric blankets, but this is the first bed that entirely controls the temperature environment surrounding the user inside the bed. It detects the optimal temperature for sleep by monitoring body temperature and pulse, then heats or cools the bed accordingly to help sustain the best quality sleep.
This is a technology developed based truly on consumer insight and it has potential to dramatically improve the quality of (sleeping) life.
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In the healthcare category, health tracking technologies continued to trend. Costly and troublesome health monitoring that required hospital visits can now be done easily at home. For example, Binah.ai enabled technology to monitor vital signs from videos. Glutrac offered diabetes patients a dream-come-true — a prick-free, continuous blood glucose levels tracker which looks no different to a smartwatch.
In another part of the venue, an IoT nappy that may resolve all new parent’s problems was introduced. Lumi by Pampers is a nappy that changes the entire game of parenting by informing parents on how much the baby has slept, monitors the temperature and humidity inside the nappy to notify nappy change timings.
Conventional parenting lifestyle and methodologies may be revolutionized, considering that this product was commercialized by P&G, a major player in the category.
3．SUMMARY AS AN ADVERTISING AGENCY
How do these trends seen at CES 2020 impact our business in adverting?
Shuhei stated,
“All these technologies actually resolve hard, human-based problems. It was amazing to see these technology companies not developing services with technology-first, but focused on the human.
Of course, cutting-edge TV monitors or futuristic smart homes were also seen in some parts of the venue, but the technology that attracted most attention were the ones that answered to real-life problems. That is why this event is event is so significant, because electronic manufacturers who have historically made home appliances are there presenting technology they have developed for a purpose.
By standing in the consumer’s shoes, technology can contribute further to building a better world and this is a meaningful step forward for all of us.
Identifying the truth from deep understanding of consumer insights and analyzing that together with data — this is what we do on a daily basis in advertising. There is still enough opportunity for us to identify a new insight or issue, and propose the co-development of products and services to manufacturers.
If we can be involved in not only in expanding the reach of a product as the advertising agency, but be involved in the product development from the uncovering of insights and issues to resolve unmet needs, we have the potential to change the way our business operates.
This event focused on electrical appliances, but this kind of thinking can be, and must be expanded into other industries such as food and finances, so we can work with our clients to develop products and services that can truly resolve consumer’s real-life problems.
McCANN MILLENNIALS is keen to continue to seek product development and new business opportunities which exceed the boundaries of conventional advertising.
