The future is here – it’s just not very evenly distributed
In this week’s Mobile Fix, Addictive! founder Simon Andrews takes a look at what the future holds for digital and tech – and how businesses will need to adapt.
The Google chief business officer Nikesh Arora has pointed out something we believe in too.
“The disruption has happened. The future is here. Now we need to invent what comes next. And it will take the collective imagination and creative energy of all of us to redefine the role of our industry, to rethink the way billions of people interact with the Web and, in turn, with the changing world around them.”
Like William Gibson, we think;
“The future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed.”
We don’t believe there is a lot of big new stuff coming down the line. Mobile will keep getting bigger. Social will keep getting deeper into our lives. And whilst we will see more hardware innovation, the cleverness will remain in the smartphone – aided by cheap connectivity like Chromecast.
So for business this means we need to make the most of what we have, and do it in a way that allows us to iterate and adapt as things evolve. But for all those people waiting for things to slow down before they get involved, the overall pace of change isn’t going to slow.
As Marc Andreessen says, software is eating the world and whatever business you are in, no matter how much digital and tech has disrupted your sector, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
Looking at marketing, Andreessen points out there is a lot to do, saying;
“I know two things for sure. One: I know for sure that most offline marketing spending is going to move online in the next five to 10 years. The reason I know that for sure is because most consumer attention is moving online, just look at how people are spending their time. Offline media consumption generally is dropping, certainly on a relative basis, and increasingly on an absolute basis. And so if the majority of people’s time and attention is going to be online, then you’re going to want to reach them online.
“Two: The other thing I know is that marketing spending hasn’t moved over yet, and it’s primarily my industry’s fault. The consumer Internet industry, really the consumer Internet media industry, has done a terrible job over the last 20 years at giving brands the marketing solutions that they need. Solutions that provide the level of trust – the provable metrics, audience segmentation, and targeting – and the assurance that if something goes wrong it’ll be made good: all the things that traditional advertising companies have been very good at providing.”
Of course the tools we do have – even the humble banner – do provide really useful tools and metrics, but adtech has a way to go. The CEO of AOL also argues that advertising is about to transform – suggesting the automation of media through programmatic or exchange buying will free up more time for creativity.
We would like to agree but the talent isn’t necessarily sitting in the right places, right now for this welcome transition to happen.
Bubble?
In the excellent Everything Store book on Amazon, we learn Jeff Bezos was looking for investment in 1995 and he forecast sales in 2000 of $74 million – and if things went really well they could get as high as $114 million.
Amazon sales in 2000 were actually $1.64 billion. So getting forecasts right isn’t that easy – even if you are as smart as Jeff Bezos.
Henry Blodgett takes a calm look at Snapchat and shows why a $3 billion valuation is actually quite reasonable – if they can get traction with advertisers. And we think it has as good a chance as Instagram.
New data this week supports this – Snapchat users share 400 million photos a day – more than Facebook.
The skepticism over Snapchat is a function of what we call Blackberry Myopia.
When we meet someone who is not that enthusiastic about mobile, social and content, we always ask what phone they use. So often we get told they use a Blackberry. And if you still use one of those it’s like it must have been watching TV in black & white when colour TV arrived.
If you don’t experience smartphones, Twitter, YouTube and so on, you just don’t get it. And you are not really qualified to advise your clients or colleagues.
Snapchat, WhatsApp and Line all suffer from this. Some brands are playing with Snapchat – probably for the PR buzz more than anything else – but we expect youth focused brands to experiment more.
Reinventing retail
Few sectors are feeling the effects of disruption more than retail. As the majority of shoppers now have smartphones and more and more realise the potential to improve shopping, showrooming becomes the norm. The word even made the shortlist for the OED Word of the Year, but lost out to ‘Selfie’.
The next big change is retailers using beacons to improve the shopping experience and the first people to do so are – unsurprisingly – Apple.
With some of the most profitable retail space in the world – and one of the worlds smartest retailers at the helm – everyone will be watching to see how Apple use its own technology.
One of the most successful US retail apps, ShopKick, is also trialling beacons and there seems to be some competition to get going before Apple. The ShopKick model relied on an audio signal from a box installed in each store and clearly they see beacons as an improvement. And they will have it working on Android too.
The ShopKick model is pretty sophisticated – rewarding users with offers as they enter a store. The system looks at previous stores visited and offers redeemed to determine what is the best offer for that store to make.
This is both the opportunity and the problem with retail and mobile. It’s easy to give away margin, but the art is knowing what is the best offer to make to motivate a sale and maximise the profit – just like the early days of Foursquare when stores used to give the mayor a free coffee.
The smart thing may be to give a buy one get one free so they bring a friend. Sales Promotion has never been that cool but it is now the sexiest market discipline and we should all be reading old school experts like Stan Rapp and Don Schultz
New techniques like smart shopping screens are getting more traction too, with eBay putting them in more and more places. And a new Nielsen study looks at what attributes drive loyalty in different markets.
Retail is going to keep evolving. Those who are testing and learning how mobile, social and tech affect them, have got a chance to evolve too.
This is an edited and abridged version of Mobile Fix – click here to read the full article on Addictive!’s website.