Today, everything in your life is directly or indirectly connected to the electronic devices. Everything from shopping to health metrics are done through mobile devices. And for marketers, it is the virtual window to consumers’ life.
They wake up in the morning. Their sleep monitor, wearable device, connected bed or smart phone, or other devices know precisely when they woke up and will relay this information to the cloud. The devices know what quality of sleep they had.
They go to the bathroom, brush their teeth with the connected toothbrush that guides them to brush those hard to reach places they are not brushing well enough, or to reduce the pressure in other areas, where the teeth enamel is eroding.
Example: P&G AI Toothbrush
They weigh themselves on the connected scale, which alerts them if they lost weight rather suddenly, signifying an impending congestive heart failure.
Example: Withings
They use the commode fitted with urine and stool analyzing sensors and mechanics, pre-programmed to do routine examinations and report if they find something nasty.
Example: Philips Smart Toilets
They use the connected shower that measures the water consumption and temperature, so it can suggest better ways to conserve water and not lower their blood pressure below a certain level due to excessive temperature.
Example: Koehler Smart Showers
People take items from the connected refrigerator for their breakfast smart refrigerator, which reorders items running low and can potentially keep a calorie count based on their consumption.
Example: Samsung Smart Refrigerator
Their connected toasters, microwaves, and stoves could tabulate results with the data collected from the fridge to validate their consumption amount and overall eating habits, which would populate the data directly at their health app.
Further, the autonomous car to get to some place that magically suggests where they can locate their favorite coffee shop and stop for a quick coffee. In fact, the store location is tracked, based on the previously collected traffic data from the autonomous cars and GPS trackers. Finally, on the way to their office building, it will let them know what special offers are there nearby, exclusively for them.
Yes, billboards would be able to serve ads that are customized just for that consumer. For a marketer and corporate, this medium is no different from a regular digital channel that can be accessed from a tablet or smart-phone.
So, every second, consumers would throw out more data that can be gathered, collated and analyzed by the marketers.
Role of Marketers
All the data thrown by the consumer is captured even when they are sleeping. But consumers often don’t realize they are consenting to a slew of different devices and service providers. Typically, either as legal cover or from an exploitative tendency, companies serve digital reams of terms and conditions by asking the consumers to accept before giving them personal data access to their site or app or whatever. Honestly, who thinks that anyone reads them, other than the lawyers and geeks?
But, all of this comes with a huge responsibility on the part of marketers; to protect the privacy of the consumers.
Corporate and marketers need to be careful that sensors, or any other technology that follows a consumer’s digital path, are transparent in their purpose.
Their priority should not be how to target or set campaigns to attract more people towards their brand, their priority should be how to protect consumer’s data.
All this unbelievably humongous quantum of data is going into the cloud, with storage costs coming down by the second. And with the processing costs, too, coming down rapidly, marketers can collate and organize this data, crunch it in real time, and come up with incredibly powerful and actionable insights.
About the Author
Rahul Budania is the CMO & Co-Founder at Happy Digital Media. He is also a Writer & Keynote Speaker.