Computers are Useless, They Only Give You Answers

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David ‘Shingy’ Shing’s unique ability has led to an enviable career that sees him travelling the globe to predict what’s next. As Oath’s in-house ‘Digital Prophet’ he meets with brands frequently and pieces together commonalities to conjure predictions. Occasionally on drunken plane journeys he’ll create logos.

At Advertising Week Asia in Tokyo, he stood in front of a packed hall of marketers and advertisers to share some of his findings. He opened by explaining everything is either culture or code, and that when digital products are created without a consideration of both, they fall flat.

An example of what he means is this:

Shingy gets asked a lot of questions. Questions about VR, AR, MR and disruption.

How do you want to disrupt? Shingy responds.

With technology! They say.

Shingy then rolls his eyes because he has heard this answer many times before and this is the point.

Too many believe technology is the be all and end all, and instead don’t consider how ‘technology’ will disrupt business models.

This is not culture and code, this is just code.

His first slide displayed a Picasso quote that read “Computers Are Useless They Can Only Give You Answers.”

Perhaps there is some truth in that.

The Internet of Emotion  

“The experience of your brand is way better than any digital experience we put in front of it, and part of those experiences is the Internet of Things (IOT)”

According to Cisco this is going to be a $1tn market by 2025, there’s going to be 34 bn connected devices which “means this is no longer the Internet of Things, but the Internet of emotion.”

Brands are utilizing the unique combination of technology, experiences and emotion, like the clip from his talk of a campaign by automotive brand, Jaguar, where a woman in a VR headset is being driven around a track at break neck speed. She thinks the feelings are from the headset, but instead it is the car itself. Genius.

Haptic & wearables

Shingy explained that publishers are trying to get in on the Internet of Emotion too.

Fox Australia built a shirt that enhances the experience of watching Ozzy rules football on television. When a player gets tackled, you feel it through haptic feedback. When a player gets nervous because they are about to take an important kick, you feel that too. You are able to experience 5D from your home.

“Everything has built in intelligence. You are able to target when, where, what, why and how. If the wearable world does take off, we have different screens and different devices with which to connect to others, this will be quite an incredible opportunity for creatives. We started with cinema, television, smartphone and television. The opportunities moving forward for reaching people are amazing.”

Indeed, Shingy believes that we are in the business of sight, sound, motion and emotion.

75% of purchases are made emotionally. “We think with our hearts and justify it to our heads.”

Platforms, pedigrees, partnerships and performance

If you have a marketing degree you will have grown up studying the four P’s. Shingy believes these are no longer relevant. Consumer behavior has changed, and so has business behavior.

“Consumers today are no longer consuming content passively. You have to deal with a creator, curator and critic of experience. The audiences you are now amassing in term have their own audiences.”

These platform changes mean that everything to some degree requires redefining, in particular advertising, which Shingy believes is going to be ‘old’ soon and replaced as the ‘content business’.

“If you are in the content business you aren’t just competing with brands inside your category but instead you’re dealing with everybody. This is a new way of thinking. You aren’t doing the purchase funnel,” but perhaps more critically, you are “persuading people to change their behaviors.”

Shingy’s full talk is available to watch through the AWReplay site here– Just scroll down.


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