When FRSH CEO Doug Robinson wasn’t speaking at his two AdWeek New York panels,Screenless Marketing When Voice Is King and Can You Hear Me Now: The Future of Voice, he was attending the many other AdWeek events to gain insights into what other brands and agencies are doing to meet evolving demands of consumers. Here are FRSH’s key takeaways from AdWeek.
- We need to think about the future.
Difficulty to engage consumers is increasing, so marketing will play a larger role for brands in the future than ever before. Marla Kaplowitz, CEO and president at 4A, reflected on her AdWeek experience, noting that one of the biggest themes of the week is the needs of consumers, and how brands and agencies must create the experience of the future today. An answer to this discussion is people-based marketing; we should constantly be thinking about what the consumer wants and not just about the device delivering the message.
At FRSH, we believe voice is the answer. According to CEO Doug Robinson “voice should be the glue to your multichannel strategy.” We see voice command becoming the future standard for media control, and it will be the driving force into a new world of commerce, forcing brands to adapt their strategies to a new user interface.
- AI is the future.
In MediaIQ’s review of AdWeek, they noted that 25% or more of the sessions were about artificial intelligence. FRSH’s use of AI in our development of voice skills is aimed at creating customized experiences for users at every touchpoint. We think of artificial intelligence as augmenting human intelligence; it is up to the brand or agency to develop the human-machine relationship.
In the words of Vivian Rosenthal of Snaps during AdWeek, “We want to understand how to better build funnels from point A to B for brands & create the best experience for users.” Moving forward, we see the quality of these “funnels” as defining feature defining the difference between good and bad virtual assistants. The winners will be the ones who learn how to best cultivate the aforementioned human-machine relationship.
As an Amazon Alexa, Google Home & Microsoft Cortana preferred partner, FRSH is always gathering insights into the future of the tech industry. We believe that defining the future of consumer engagement today is the key to successful marketing, and we were happy to gain new insights from the talented speakers at AdWeek NY 2017.