Hello and welcome to your weekly FWD. Mobile World Congress has been taking place in Barcelona this week. From IAB’s “personal prime time” research to Google AdWord’s mobile Speed Scorecard and Impact Calculator, OMD has been providing the latest news from the frontlines, including OMD UK’s Jess Roberts who has reported on the continued rise of mobile intelligence.
Now that the Winter Olympics are over, we look back at this American athlete’s multi-sport journey to Pyeongchang, and Intel going for gold with another live drone performance during the Closing Ceremony.
Ever wanted to design your own emoji, build a personal geofilter or create a GIF? You can now at www.madewithcode.com powered by Google!
We love it when you get involved…please share anything you find interesting using #OMDFWD!
HEADLINES
- A tweet wiped out $1.3 billion of Snapchat stock market value.
- An American went to the Olympics with Hungary, failed to qualify for the ski halfpipe finals finishing dead last but had a great time and got a medal. Moral of the story varies depending on your outlook on life.
- Vero, a social network that’s been around for years, is undergoing a revival owing to a recent influx of influencers and their subsequent championing of the “no ads, no algorithms” promise.
- Mobile World Congress is on, keep an eye out for lots of new toys and tech like the mobile Speed Scorecard and Impact Calculator Google’s AdWords released this morning.
INSIGHTS
COOL
- Yandex’s Alice is a Russian-speaking personal assistant that is “a bit politically incorrect and unsympathetic” and people love it.
- Design your own emoji, build a geofilter you can use on Snapchat, or make a gif, and more, all in your browser at madewithcode.com
- Would you like an ecommerce client competitor’s internal site-search data? (SFW [seriously])
DEEP READS
“The digital transformation is not a completed project with a clearly defined beginning or end”. So say the organisers of this year’s dmexco conference, whose 2017 motto “lightning the age of transformation” shines a light on the key area of focus for the delegates this year.
The path of transformation is often unpredictable – forking and diverging as new technologies, new platforms and new measurement capabilities come to market. Most importantly however, we must always bear in mind for whom and often by whom the transformation is occurring – the consumer.
This year’s the dmexco conference puts the consumer at the very heart of the hundreds of talks, seminars and debates open to its delegates. Before we, at OMD EMEA, make our way over to Cologne to determine and challenge what digital transformation means to some of the industry’s best and brightest, we have put pen to paper to predict the five areas which will be most important for the not-too-distant future.
GLOBAL DIGITISATION
dmexco kicks off the two-day event with one of the most pertinent questions that will shape the future of the digital transformation – what does digitisation mean to the world? What impact will digitisation have on us as human beings and as businesses? How do we upskill ourselves and our local markets for an unpredictable future? Rather than answer these questions, we will look into what kind of mind-set is needed in the future of a digitised world, to ensure a successful transformation pathway.
REAL-TIME MARKETING
A consumer’s expectation of appropriate (and successful) brand communication is an acutely personal aspect of the digital world we now live in. Personalisation through privately owned platforms (such as smart phones) is now being enhanced outside of the handheld into real-time data-powered DOOH executions and beyond. Not only can brands deliver an always-on marketing approach to consumers, they can do so in a hyper-personalised manner. We’ll be interrogating what it means to be reaching consumers on the move, and whether stationary and mobile media should be treated as two separate or connected worlds.
DATA ISN’T EVERYTHING…
…but everything is nothing without data. One of the key themes that will be running through many of the talks during dmexco is ‘courage’ – the courage to experiment and take risk to rapidly advance your own digital transformation. We will be looking into some of the largest global brands who have taken calculated data-driven risks to deliver significant growth for their businesses. Within the performance aspect of our business, we will be investigating what the Coalition for Better Ads means to viewability, ad-fraud and brand safety and how worried should we be about GDPR.
ASSISTANCE THROUGH AI
It’s no surprise to see many speakers keen to talk about ‘The Age of Assistance’ via artificial intelligence, but what does this mean to us as marketers? Beyond the in-home opportunities, we’ll be looking into how brands have powered their own innovation and creativity through the use of cognitive systems and the first steps towards a powerful tool in any marketer’s armoury – predictive advertising through AI.
CONSUMER CENTRICITY
As mentioned above, the consumer should always be the focus of every digital transformation pathway. Many of the talks and seminars at dmexco will place the consumer front and centre. Whether it’s Deutsche Telekom’s “Journey to Digital Customer Service Excellence” or McDonald’s “Move to Customer Centricity” – many global brands are tackling how to address customers individually through digital channels. We will interrogate how to manage and build brand equity in a world of tech-savvy individuals that spans multiple generations across the globe.
OMD EMEA will be tweeting throughout the event – just follow @OMD_EMEA and Stuart Morris and Georgina Williams-Gray at @SG_OMD on Twitter and Instagram for live updates.
OMD has completed a hugely successful launch for HTC Vive, the first complete virtual reality system. Engineered by OMD’s specialist service unit Fuse Sport + Entertainment, a collaboration between Noma Labs and HTC which, alongside production partner Bearded Kitten, resulted in the fully immersive theatre production, “Virtually Dead”. Live in London and Paris, both events were completely sold out, as enthusiasts flocked to see the very latest in VR technology and experience immersive theatre at its finest.
Combining previously unseen VR technology with interactive performance, “Virtually Dead” blurred the lines between what’s real and what’s not, giving the audience a completely new, thrilling and scary interactive experience. During the hour-long activity, ticketholders were guided by actors into designated VR areas containing 13 minutes of playable VR content. Instead of a static experience, Vive’s much anticipated “360° room-scale” technology allowed guests to move around and explore their new virtual world.
Following a sinister virus outbreak, which has wiped out millions of people in Arizona, ticketholders were invited to join the fight against the plague of Zombies that has taken over. The US Military swing into action and the entire state is quarantined. A special army is trained to deal with the potential overseas spread of the virus and recruits are put through their paces to be able to tackle the virus on the front line.
Olivia Rose, Account Director at Fuse said, “It was a thrill to be involved in creating something which is literally breaking new ground in terms of audience experience and engagement. Many entertainment events become fairly standard in terms of format and delivery, but this was something very original and special. Merging immersive theatre with virtual reality presented incredible opportunities and we were absolutely delighted with the success of the events in both London and Paris.”
Jon Goddard, Head of VR Marketing, EMEA at HTC commented, “Introducing our revolutionary 360° room–scale VR technology into an immersive theatre environment is an entirely new venture, and one we couldn’t wait for people to experience. We’re incredibly excited to have worked with Fuse and subsequently the creative teams at Noma Labs and believe Vive, the first complete virtual reality system, is the perfect VR partnership to deliver a truly spectacular production.”
The Results
- Tickets sound out in two weeks!
- 45+ press features
- Conversations around Virtually Dead reached 100+ million people worldwide
- 15m+ Virtually Dead video views
- 20 million data points used to target millennials in London and Paris
For more information, contact [email protected]