Page 105 - The EDIT | Q2 2017

Thoughtleader
When you consider the rise of voice and how it will displace screens, it’s very intuitive and makes sense. Look at how kids message and how they use devices
— they don’t type, they talk. Screens are actually a pretty clunky way to control things — having to take a device out of your pocket, unlock it, and push digital buttons is actually very un-intuitive and cumbersome.
If that wasn’t enough, the other huge development that will kill screen is mixed-reality. As we saw in Part One, mixed reality — layering information over the world — will change much of how we interact with our environment. Once MR can make any flat surface a display, what’s the point of watching content on a physical screen? Of course, in the future some people will choose to do this — just as some people still cherish the experience of listening to a vinyl record. It will be an incredibly authentic way to consume content — but will be seen as an indulgence and unwieldy for most content.
Somewhere between never and forever: The long and the short of everything
The third significant implication for our industry
is going to be in the area of measurement and tracking the impact of media investment. I suspect that a whole new area will need to emerge as
the forces of short and long-term measurement continue to wage war with each other.
On one hand — and largely because of the rise
of digital media — we’ve seen a huge swing into short-term measurement and KPIs. This is been at best problematic for marketing and media and at worst an out-right disaster. Short term measurement sucks. It sucks because it doesn’t indicate long-term brand share or health. It sucks because it forces people to optimise to immediate tactical short-term
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But this is just the beginning. If we think we had
an attention problem when people were choosing their brand repertoire of toothpaste, just imagine the challenge we have when they’re out-sourcing that decision. Just for a start, the division we’ve seen between long-term brand building and reinforcing saliency versus in-market impact of information and activating actions will be split even further. Just for a start.
The end of screens
Screens are everywhere and ubiquitous. Multi-screen planning and optimising investment across screens and devices is now the height of sophistication in our industry. We’re living in the peak of the age of screens — and they will dominate our industry for decades to come, right?
Wrong. The age of screens is pretty much winding up. Let’s look at the evidence.
One, voice control is now emerging more and more around us with every month. We talk to smartphones and home devices. We control our home entertainment with voice. Take a careful look around — the future of device control is voice control. Two, this is translating into changes in search behaviour. The growth in voice-search
is outstripping text search and will continue to displace traditional forms of search. Three, a new wave of technologies means that devices can pay attention to us. From eye tracking so that we don’t have to scroll down (or up), to motion sensors so the lights know that we’re in a room — and even thought-control (yeah that’s now totally a thing); the idea that we’ll need a screen to control what a device is doing is rapidly going out of fashion.
THE EDIT ISSUE 06 | Q2 2017