For marketers, the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) provides a glimpse of new technologies that will impact how we talk to our audiences. This year emotive robots, gesture-based interfaces, virtual reality, holographic computing and once again wearables are being touted as the technologies for our industry to watch. Andreas Pouros, COO and co-founder at Greenlight, looks at which trends offer the best investment opportunity.
Looking at this year’s crowd-pleasers, emotive robotics open up new possibilities for delivering highly contextual content and gesture-based interfaces provide an entertaining mechanism for marketers to connect physical and digital worlds.
However, both of these technologies are still in their infancy and, without proven results, many marketers will be discouraged from investing.
Investing in virtual and augmented reality is far more appealing as it begins to prove is worth, having grown its CES presence by 68% this year.
With Facebook’s Oculus VR and Sony Electronics showing us how to co-create content to embed products in immersive experiences that align with a brand, the savviest marketers will be imagining their own ways to make this medium a commercial success.
While innovative new practices are exciting, marketers must be careful not to rush into anything blindly. Our advice is to question whether new tools and services will really impact your business and how much value investment in these areas will deliver – follow your business needs, rather than a curious crowd.
by Andreas Pouros
COO and co-founder
Greenlight