LAS VEGAS — The Consumer Electronics Show gets bigger and bigger each year – and it changes, too. Once a mecca simply for new gadget fans, now the show attracts marketers and advertisers eager to understand the new technologies that will represent the consumer engagement platforms of tomorrow.
But that places a responsibility on advertisers to take advantage of the technology responsibly, says one executive from a leading ad agency.
In this video interview with Beet.TV at CES, OMD chief digital and innovation officer Doug Rozen says he is trying to help brands offer customers opportunities for “immersion”.
“There’s 200,000 people here,” Rozen says. “What it’s all about this year is immersive marketing.
“In the past, … we would just drive awareness one way. Then we got to ‘interactive’ in the last 20 years. Now it’s about immersive – it can be much more free-flowing, much more autonomous. That’s where virtual reality, AI and bots come in.”
VR and AR have surfaced in recent years as opportunities for both publishers and advertisers like. For some, appetite appears to have diminished in the last year. But Rozen says OMD is helping brands make 360-degree video experiences and “fully-immersive, ‘take me to a new world’ experiences”.
Now artificial intelligence, voice-controlled smart assistants and chat-controlled AI bots are being touted as the next wave of consumer interaction technologies that brands simply must embrace.
But OMD’s Rozen urges an excited caution. “My hope and desire is, we find the simplest way to celebrate the technology,” he says.
“A lot of times innovation is about just chasing shiny objects. One of the most important things not to lose sight of at CES is, while there’s a lot of gadget and a lot of flash, we have to find what’s going to be the simplest way to get a consumer to do something and drive business value.”
This video was produced as part Beet.TV’s coverage of CES 2017 presented by 605. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.
