Alexa is listening: Why adland needs to learn how to market to robots
The rise of voice controlled smart assistants mean marketers must start preparing for the era of hyper-responsive, always-listening, artificially intelligent machines. Tom Geekie, Jaywing’s managing director, explains how to market to a robot.
Google is making a big marketing push with its Google Home device, and the implications for brands wanting to reach consumers are significant.
In order for Google Home to respond to your every whim, it spends its time listening to everything you say, even from quite far away, waiting for you to engage it with the “OK Google” command.
Wynn hotels announced last December that it was placing an Amazon Echo in every hotel bedroom in Las Vegas. Unsurprisingly, this sparked some privacy concerns and there are plenty of articles and commentators raising concerns about the rise of the machines and the impact artificial intelligence may have.
I was an early adopter of google home, grey importing one to Australia last year. The overwhelming majority of my uses are non-commercial. “What’s the weather” “play this song”, use as a timer, or general trivia.
While this is to some extent because of the lack of commercial integrations – I would love to say “add eggs to my grocery order” and integrate that with my Woolworths Online order, even then it’s about direct integrations. I’m not going to research car insurance. Google Home is very much a retention play via integration. The best analogy would be a mobile app targeted at existing customers.