Marketing's New Toolkit

Where should marketing focus now?

If at least one desk on your team doesn't look like this, you're missing out.

Source.

Given that 'digital is dead' - as in everything is now digital - we should be focusing the experimental portion of our budget should now be working on the interaction and experience itself. This can come in the form of either the Internet of Things where pretty much anything can be a medium for delivering messages or the interface between brand and consumer.

One of Trendwatching's recent briefings was on "No Interface" which highlights speech, gesture, touch and sight as the means to enrich our lives. No more looking at a rectangle or looking down. The days of "Two Thumbs Media" (an agency I thought about starting) are long past given the likes of Amazon Echo, ringZero and singlecue.

The Internet of Things represents the new frontier, the wild west, and the unknown. It will be big - but no one is quite sure where it will net out. Will it be the "Industrial Internet" (GE's world view)? Will it save or end electricity? Will consumers care?

Regardless of where it ends, marketers should adopt a new tool kit to figure out how their brand fits in this space. And that list should start with the building blocks themselves. If your digital team was adept at crafting landing pages, integrating web forms and salesforce.com in real time and a host of other daily digital chores then they should have the chops to play in this space.

One example of a starting place is the "WunderBar" that comes as a bar of chocolate where each piece is a different sensor just like your smartphone that allows you to experiment with all kinds experiences.

Sound, motion, temperature and proximity all have the potential to create meaningful interactions.

What will you build today?