After the speaker of the afternoon Major Sadiq Khan had to understandably cancel his interview with ESi, I was very pleased to come across Ravleen Beeston from Microsoft exploring and debating the future of emotionally in tune technology.
Ravleen explored topics around, ‘Is technology in conflict with human emotions?’ or does it ‘unlock human potential?’ These discussions looked at advancements in voice, image and emotion recognition, and if they create new opportunities with personalisation and campaigns with people at the heart or more complexities and fragmentation in advertising.
We live in a world where there are more mobile phones than toothbrushes and the speed of technology adoption is fast and growing. For example to reach 100 millions users it took 38 years for TV’s, 3 years for the iPhone and 33 days for Pokemon Go. We are in a globally more connected place but with that can come a disconnection from real life and shared emotions.
From a marketers perspective, technology can help in understanding audience cognition from data created through using it to the adoption of it. Some brands have used this to their advantage and used important insights to create actions and campaigns. Spotify created a personalised outdoor campaign using user data to create relevant and engaging ads on the topic of Brexit and Uber have used smart technology to provide a better service and working conditions; facial recognition, to create a real-time ID for customers and drivers to help people feel safe.
As technology advances, modern brands have to stay focused on the consumer to stay relevant as their expectations are very high. The important thing for us to remember and be mindful of in our planning is to think about how we can touch on human connections, emotions and no doubt we will be successful if we listen to the consumer.
Realising The Human Potential: Technology’s Cognitive Capabilities from AdvertisingWeek on Vimeo.