Category: Emerging Trends

WestJet Flight Light

Over the last year or so, I have seen more and more brands from different industries actively experimenting with new ways to move beyond selling their products and providing their consumers with “convenience services” that eventually drive repeat usage / purchase of the product.

In this latest example, WestJet wanted to give their business travelers the ability to pursue opportunities, without losing connection with their loved ones at home. So, they created WestJet Flight Light, a nightlight that used live flight data to project a WestJet flight path onto a child’s bedroom ceiling. This simple device made the countdown of the hours and minutes to the parents return even more fun and interactive for the children waiting at home.

The prototype of the Flight Light is going to be in beta-testing throughout this summer. To stay updated visit the Flight Light homepage for more information.

Robomart

Only a tiny fraction of the $1 trillion grocery market has moved online. On-demand delivery is prohibitively expensive for retailers and it is extremely important for consumers to pick their own foods. For decades consumers have had the convenience of their local greengrocer, milkman, and ice-cream vendor coming door to door, yet it never made economic sense to scale – until now, by leveraging driverless technology.

This spring, Robomart, a California-based company is teaming up with grocery chain Stop & Shop for a trial run of their world’s first driverless grocery store service in Boston, Massachusetts. All the users of this service need to do is summon the mobile grocery store using a mobile app. When the store turns up outside their door, they can simply tap in a code on the vehicle to unlock its doors, grab what they like from the selection of everyday items and meal kits, and that’s it.

In summer 2018, Nuro, a tech startup, teamed up with supermarket giant Kroger for an autonomous grocery delivery service to customers in Scottsdale, Arizona. To use the service, customers had to place an order with Kroger via a smartphone app. Back at the depot, the staff loaded up the autonomous pod’s secure lockers with the customer order and sent it on its way. When the “R1” autonomous delivery pod arrived at the scheduled stop, the customer simply tapped in a code to open the locker and access their groceries.

Read along with Google Home Mini and Disney’s Little Golden Books

A new Google and Disney partnership has brought Disney Storybooks to life. The next time you read out loud select Disney Little Golden Books, your Google Home will add sound effects and soundtracks to accompany the story as it is read aloud.

This new feature uses voice recognition to be able to tell when a reader has skipped ahead or gone back, and adjusts the sound effects accordingly. If the user pauses reading, ambient music will play until the user begins reading again. This feature works on Google Home, Home Mini, and Home Max speakers in the US. To activate the action, just say, “Hey Google, let’s read along with Disney.”

During the story, unlike with other typical commands, the smart speaker’s microphone will stay on so the device can follow along and add sound effects. To address privacy concerns, Google says it does not store the audio data after the story has been completed.

H&M Home Gift Guide enables Voice Shopping

Voice computing is opening new possibilities for the retail industry, especially to inspire and interact with customers. So, this holiday season (2018), H&M decided to take the lead when it comes to shaping the voice commerce of the future and to have their customers be part of the journey.

H&M in USA launched the H&M HOME Gift Guide – an easy to use voice application filled with inspiration and ideas for different holiday gifts for anyone’s home available via the Google Assistant on all smartphones and Google Home smart devices. To activate the H&M HOME Gift Guide, users had to simply ask for H&M HOME from their Google Assistant and then easily browse through the H&M assortment to find the most suitable gift. The voice application also offered easy payment through voice.

H&M HOME initially announced the creation of a voice application, called H&M HOME Stylist, in June 2018. At that time, H&M said the voice stylist offered personal styling suggestions, mood boards and inspiration for every room in the home.

Hence the H&M Home Gift Guide is just a revamped version of H&M Stylist, prepped with Holiday themed products.

Mercedes-Benz Yes A.I. Do

For the world premiere of their new Mercedes-Benz ECQ at CES 2019 in Las Vegas, Mercedes transformed their new model into a wedding carriage. Four lucky couples were invited to test drive the new Mercedes-Benz ECQ on the roads of Las Vegas and experience its special A.I. features first hand.

Feel the View

Ford in Italy along with their agency GTB Rome have teamed up with Aedo, a local start-up that creates devices for people with visual impairments. Together they have designed a new innovative device, that when applied on a car window can decode a landscape seen from the car, allowing visually impaired people to experience it with the tip of their fingers.

The device can transform a flat surface of a car window into a tactile display. The prototype captures and transforms the photos taken by the integrated camera into haptic sensory stimuli, not visible, but perceptible through touch and hearing.

I-VIE the Watson Assistant from IBM

The war of the digital assistants just got a new entrant. IBM has recently revealed the Watson Assistant, that is designed for enterprises to use with their customer-facing applications. The video below shows some of the use cases that make the Watson Assistant I-VIE seem like an enhanced version of Alexa and Google Assistant put together, that eventually hopes to be more like J.A.R.V.I.S. from Iron Man.

What this reinforces is that while Alexa and Google Assistant have momentum with consumer use cases, enterprises have strong interest in having more control over the customer experience and data. So it comes as no surprise that Amazon introduced Alexa for Business in December 2017 and set its sights beyond the kitchens and bedrooms.

The battle for enterprise assistant market share is shaping up to be every bit as competitive as the current war for consumer voice assistant users.

Dolce & Gabbana fly drones down the catwalk

Marketing is one of the most creative and toughest industries in the world. Each day, companies are seeking new ways to attract attention and to mesmerize possible clients into becoming loyal customers. At Milan Fashion Week on Sunday, Dolce & Gabbana stunned the watching crowd with a memorable opener that replaced human fashion models with drones.

The drones were made to carry Dolce & Gabbana’s latest range of “Devotion” leather handbags as part of its fall and winter collection. Around seven copters hovered along the runway, each with a Dolce & Gabbana handbag dangling beneath it.

The Kentucky Flying Object

In its latest marketing effort to appear hip and tech savvy, India’s Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) created the “Kentucky Flying Object” a.k.a. “KPO” that could be created from select boxes of the chain’s newly announced Smoky Grilled Wings.

The limited edition boxes are available in ten selected cities from today 25th January to tomorrow 26th January. Every customer who orders the Smoky Grilled Wings, will not only get their spicy chicken wings, but also a fully functioning mini-drone.

Lucky customers who receive the special boxes can look up the instructions to assemble the drone at www.kfodrone.com.

The Nike NBA Connected Jersey

To provide a radical new fan experience, Nike and the NBA have unveiled the Nike NBA Connected Jersey, that via an iOS NikeConnect app provides the wearer an all-access pass into the world of their favorite team and players.

To enable this new exprience each adult-sized Nike NBA Connected Jersey will now come with an embedded NFC chip that will launch real-time team and player content such as pregame arrival footage, highlight packages and top players favorite music playlists – all on the jersey owner’s mobile device. Additionally during the season, a wealth of exclusive offers and experiences will also bring fans closer to the game they love.