Connected homes could unlock the door to social housing

This year’s CES showcased some great opportunities for brands looking to use the Internet of Things to connect with consumers – but can they also help transform the UK’s social housing? ISBA’s Mario Yiannacou has a nifty idea…

Whether an iPad-controlled vibrator was in Kevin Ashton’s mind when he coined the phrase the Internet of Things in 2009 is doubtful, but reports back from glamorous Vegas demonstrate that technology is getting bigger, better and, frankly, weirder. Familiar technology such as the voice and gesture controlled LGTV (still a bit clumsy, but full marks for trying), got wheeled out again.

But according to pundits the CES also showcased some impressive steps forward: super HD 85-inch TVs (expect Botox use among newscasters to rocket!); curved TVs (great tech, but not sure how the experience translates if you aren’t positioned right in the middle of the screen), and; a discreet ‘personal massager‘ which can be hooked up to an iPad and synced to one’s favourite playlist (should make the daily commute fly by!).

But the key theme of the conference, for advertisers at least, was the ‘Internet of Things’, or rather how can brands become part of the connected home of the future.

As Jason Harrison of Maxus has said, the IoT “has the potential to be the most transformational development in the world of consumer technology for several years”. Undoubtedly, potential tie-ins with tech companies would be a game changer; imagine a fridge which would let you know you’re running low on milk and add an extra pint to your shopping list, or prompt you to pick up desert for your anniversary dinner that evening.

It remains to be seen quite how many consumers would welcome text messages from their washing machine telling them the cycle is about to finish – but what seems bizarre now won’t seem half so odd when we are all doing it.

So, what’s stopping us then? Well, as Decipher’s Nigel Walley said: “We just can’t be arsed”. For Walley this techno-loaded, slick ‘Tomorrow’s World’ vision of the future so tantalisingly presented in a modern Las Vegas conference centre, is harder to realise in a country where a great many of us live in houses built over a century ago. The requirement to ‘retro fit’, he says, simply isn’t appealing enough to apathetic consumers.

He’s right. But there may be an answer, as plain as a wrinkle on a super HD 85-inch curve screen…

It is widely reported that the Mayor of London is well behind on his target of building new houses in the Capital. Fair enough, it’s not his fault the recession happened. But the need for new housing, the rise of the hidden homeless, and so on, means he has a problem (the pledge he made in 2008 to build 50,000 affordable homes by 2011 has slipped considerably).

First-time buyers still desperate to get on the bottom rung of the UK’s most overly used metaphor are being squeezed by rising rental prices, which are also a consequence of a housing shortage. London’s paucity of housing creating a poor city of housing.

Simultaneously, there are wealthy tech companies out there, hungrier than ever for data and, presumably, frustrated at being unable to unlock the potential marketing benefits that connected living represents.

Couple this with the lack of investment in new, affordable housing and… Well, you can see where I’m going. But is it too much of a stretch to imagine a housing estate with built in connectivity sponsored by a major technology provider? After all, it is not that dissimilar to the sponsorship model that funded the ‘Boris bike’, except instead of just brand promotion, the investment would afford the sponsor a range and depth of data hitherto unattainable to them.

What would the house buyers themselves think? Would they reject such a crass invasion of their privacy? Probably not. Studies suggest that younger generations are more relaxed about relinquishing personal, behavioral data if it is in exchange for a product, than older generations.

And if that product was a flat loaded with an army of connected household gadgets, maybe that would be seen as a pretty sweet deal.

And let’s not forget that the target audience here are the late 20s early 30 somethings, whose identities can be found pretty easily with the use of a search engine, a credit reference agency and a social media site or three. They literally have nothing to lose.

So, how about it Boris? Take a step closer to sorting out the social housing crisis and while you are at it bring connected living – and the manifold benefits it brings to advertisers and consumers alike – to the UK. It can’t be more ambitious than an artificial island airport.

Mario Yiannacou is the ‎media and advertising manager at ISBA