This Tuesday, Apple revealed some great new products including an LTE capable Apple Watch and a few new iPhone models. Check out Epsilon's recap of the event below and the implications this hardware will have for marketers.
2. The Future of the
Smartphone…
is not the Smartphone.
Ten years ago, Steve Jobs introduced the world to the iPhone. While
Apple wasn’t the first to the marketwith the smartphone, the iPhone was
revolutionary in the way it brought both content consumption and
creation together in one beautiful design with a simple user experience.
The iPhone became the center of Apple’s ecosystem, driving the success
of the App and iTunes stores, creating new business models, and
enabling consumers to create and share content. For brand marketers, it
fundamentally shifted the way we connected with our client partners
customers from focusing on mass reach and messaging to designing
personalized experiences.
Apple’s health became largely dependent on the iPhones success.
It was ironic, therefore, to see Tim Cook introduce the iPhone X as the
future of the smartphone when products from, the WatchSeries 3,
AirPods and Siri are slowlyeroding iPhones status as the center of their
ecosystem. The Series 3, AirPods and Siri will once again change how
consumers interact with technology and how brands interact with
consumers. This will mean a shift from building for screens and creating
content for discoveryto designing for voice and leveraging data and
machine learning to provide solutions.
Steve Harries
VP, Innovation and User Experience
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3. Town Squares
Apple’s retail stores have always been more than just a store. They are Apple's bridge
to the consumer, and paint the brand ina positive and helpful light. They are a place to
learn, explore, engage, and of course, buy.
This weeks event not only revealed the release of a few great new products, but also
touched onthe future of Apples largest product, their stores. However, they're not
called stores anymore. Instead, they’ll now be referred to as Town Squares. These
Town Squares will differ from traditional stores, and integrate themselves into the
community. The largest ones will feature open plazas, large forums and quiet
collaborationareas, called boardrooms.
Apple has also created a new positionwithin these stores, entitled the Creative Pro.
The Creative Pro will be to Liberal Arts what the Genius Bar was to Technology -
offering weekly sessions focusing on photography, video, app design, and more.
Implications:
Apples focus on retail locations, and their new nomenclature, shows their continued
efforts to integrate themselves into local communities. The Town Squares are places
where consumers can come together and enjoy eachothers companywhile
simultaneously engaging with Apple products and their partners. Additionally, the
Creative Pro is an extension of Apple’s push to empower user created content. As we
shift from the days of content creationto enabling user created content, brands need
to put strategies in place that build upon this trend.
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4. Apple Watch
The biggest upgrade to the Apple Watch Series 3 is the integration of LTE and the
ability to make phone calls, send text messages, and stream music straight from your
wrist. As previously mentioned, this marks the beginning of the end to the
smartphone, as connectivity is not limited to a touch enabled screen.
The WatchSeries 3 will take advantage of all the new features that WatchOS4 brings,
including a fully functioning Siri, P2P payments, a redesigned workout app, an
increased focus on heart rate monitoring, and more. Siri will offer up dynamic,
personalized content that will change depending on the time of day. As you use it
more, the smarter it will become.
Apple’s AirPods are the easiest way to interact with Siri, handle phone calls, and
stream music. Expect Apple to continue to push these two products together and
further integrate them into the fabric of their ecosystem.
Implications:
As the combinationof Apple Watchand AirPods starts to become consumers primary
devices, brands need to think about how to reach consumers on a voice + visual
consumer landscape. Brands need to think amount how to design for a limited UI with
voice being the enabling factor. These apps should be simple and offer a concrete
form of utility for the user.
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5. 4K Apple TV
Live sports has always been a huge deterrent for potential cord cutters. The new
Apple TV will have a dedicated sports tab that will feature every live or upcoming
game available to the user. If Apple is able to provide local sporting events through
some type of in-house streaming service, as opposed to simplyproviding a new place
to find ESPN broadcasts, it could really change the streaming landscape and make
cable companies run for the hills.
There was also a big focus, rightly so, on the availabilityof 4K content. To start, any
purchased iTunes movie will be upgraded for free to 4K. Additionally, the likes of
Netflix and AmazonPrime are eager to offer new 4K options. What could really be the
differentiator, is Apple's focus on creating original content. A dedicated and
addicting libraryof content, unavailable anywhere else could be a strong benefit
towards furthering your footprint into the Apple ecosystem.
Implications:
If the new iPhone is designed to be the hub for 4K content creation, the new Apple TV
is the place you share it with your friends and family. Integrating these two together is
a large part of Apples attempt to take over your living room, and furthers the trend of
empowering user created content.
4K content, live sports, and a simple user interface will be the driving forces behind
the adoption of the new Apple TV. Over the coming years, we'll begin to see a
greater percentage of cable users switch to streaming services, and in turn, over-the-
top (OTT) advertising will see massive growth. If your brand’s television presence is
only through traditional channels, now is the time to start seriously thinking about
OTT options.
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6. iPhone 8
The iPhone 8 features incremental upgrades over the 7, while still offering plenty of
leeway between the highly touted X. As for the 8, we're given a brand new glass
backing to facilitate wireless charging, a 12mp camera, 4K video capabilities, and an
A11 Bionic chip offering much faster processing power. For brand marketers, this
means that consumers will have decreased friction between creating truly compelling
content and will lead to a sense of professionalism in the average consumer. In turn, we
should see more and more content being shared across social media. The real game
changer comes under the hood in the form of the A11.
The A11 Bionic chip is a significant upgrade from the A10. It contains a neural engine
that helps to process some of the software involved in artificial intelligence and enables
the phone to process a lot of data on the device itself - a key distinction to eliminate lag
time in passing large amounts of data through the cloud.
Implications:
Apple has made it pretty clear that they are going to heavily invest in Augmented
Reality. The A11 chip allows AR applications to respond to real world objects and
events as quickly as possible, further bridging the gap between the real and
augmented. Brands can enhance user created content by offering a multitude of AR
capabilities as well as bring real time data into the experience.
What's more is the chips ability to facilitate neural engines. Earlier this year, Apple
released Core ML to the public, a way to help developers run machine learning
algorithms inside their apps. The logical next step is to allow developers to access the
neural networks inside the A11 Bionic chip. When that happens, we're in for the next
great wave of third party apps, and the beginning of a highly predictive Siri. For brands,
this means that a high amount of consumer decisions will be made through the use of a
proxy, and the need to market to those proxies will be just as important as marketing to
the consumer.
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7. Augmented Reality
Long-term, what we will remember from this Falls Apple Event is the initial offering of
hardware that took AR into the mainstream. The iPhone 8 and X are perfectly designed
to take full advantage of ARKit’s offerings and the use cases are going to fundamentally
change how consumers interact with their devices. In turn, it offers a compelling new
way to interact with brands.
The camera will become a users primaryplatform within their phone and in a sense the
new operating system from discoveryto creation to enablement. Whether that means
gaming, shopping, watching sports, or navigating a new city, will be up to the user, but
brands canfind a way to integrate themselves in nearly every category.
Simple branded filters and lenses will become more interactive through social media,
the ability to integrate live data will allow for complimentaryexperiences at live
sporting events, and the eventual pairing of artificial intelligence to augmented effects
will set the stage for a synthetic reality.
Implications:
The first major marketing use cases that we’ll see Apples ARKitflourish in revolve
around product discovery and purchase. The ability to engage someone with a
product, be it furniture, clothes, toys, or more, and allow them to try it out in the
comfortof their own home will push them increasingly down the purchase cycle.
Brands that deal inphysical retail will be hard pressed not to offer some type of
augmented reality experience.
Look out for a new category of apps that provide utility and entertainment in real time,
effectively blending into the physical environment.
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8. iPhone X
“The iPhone of the future”
There are two major upgrades that the X has over its 8 counterpart. Facial recognition
through an upgraded front facing camera and an almost bezel less screen. While the
later is an aesthetically pleasing feature and will surely impact the amount of content
consumed on the device, the former offers some very unique use cases.
Not only will it allow you to unlock your phone simply by looking at it, but it also
introduces Animoji. Your simple, 2D emojis, now transform into almost 3D like animated
faces that can mimic your actions and voice and bring a sense of personalization.
Expect users to share these like crazy and perfectly ties into the overall theme of
enhancing user created content.
As consumers become more and more familiar with these actions, look to see Apple
open up that camera to developers - allowing brands to animate mascots or logos and
aid in the creation of content and interaction.
Implications
The improvements to the front facing camera bring it out of the realm of ‘selfies’ and into
a platform of its own. FaceID will offer increased biometric security that brands should
use to ensure their users safety, and the depth sensing camera allows for new
interaction opportunities. With improved processing power on the device itself, we’re
heading towards a day where artificial intelligence will interact with augmented effects
to enhance our everyday lives and decision makings. Brands who take steps to prepare
for this day will stand to benefit in the long run.
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