Want to win the Internet of things, then forget the myriad of devices in consumers' hands and focus on how content will be translated on to every single one, innovation specialist Erik Hallander has advised.
Speaking at The Future of Design, Creativity and Technology hosted by the digital industry association AIMIA, Isobar mobile and innovation director Hallander said that the fact the industry still discusses the mobile web seven years after the iPhone came out shows how behind it is.
“The iPhone didn't come out and everyone said oh no that's out of control,” he said. “We all knew it was coming, we knew people were buying them, analyst's were saying it was going up but we waited and waited and waited until it was big enough and that's all going to be broken again.”
He explained that the release of products such as the smartwatch, and in turn the growth of the Internet of Things, is going to put the industry in exactly the same predicament as it was seven years ago.
“We've been in this exact position before and we didn't handle it very well, we handled it badly and now's our chance to atone for that,” he said.
Hallander said the only way to atone for the sins of the technological past is to start thinking now about how advertising attacks the challenge of fragmentation.
“Fragmentation is going to explode and we're going to have serious issues,” he said. “If we start thinking about how our content can possibly work on a smartwatch or a car on a toaster, it doesn't matter if you act on it, but you need to start thinking about how am I going to deal with that.”
“It's not a technological challenge, it's a content based challenge, it's about how am I going to translate this content onto the noise of stuff, it starts with a good content strategy.”
Hallander said the question is no longer if the shift towards the internet of things will happen, it is now when will it happen, so if brands, businesses and agencies alike don't start thinking about it now, they will be right back to where they started.
“If we don't think about it now it will be another one of these seven years before we get through to these products and it's just not good enough and it feels like we have to learn something.”
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