The document discusses emerging trends that will impact how people discover, interact with, choose, and buy products and services in 2019. It identifies 7 key trends: 1) Visual discovery and shopping will merge with advances in visual search and augmented reality; 2) Audio interfaces will become more prevalent through growth of voice assistants and hearables; 3) Personalization will be a major focus of brands using artificial intelligence; 4) Consumer awareness of data privacy issues will grow; 5) New frictionless purchasing behaviors will emerge through concepts like Amazon Go; 6) Brands will increasingly focus on social good and their positive impact; 7) User expectations of how fast brands can react will increase.

1. MULLENLOWEPROFERO
Experience
Transforming
Trends
2019

2. Good X tech
Hyper-responsive experiences
How people
discover and interact
How people
choose and buy
How brands
react to the world
Inspiration on tap
Audio goes AWOL
The intimate internet
The data race
Buying without barriers
Experience Transforming Trends 2019
2019 marks a shift in digital transformation. ‘Proper’ AI now permeates many leading brand experiences. We
move from solving individual consumer challenges to society wide issues, some of which have been caused by
tech. Community expectations on how fast brand experiences should react reach new heights.
We combined the views of our teams, distilled our research partners’ predictions, and correlated this with what
we’re seeing on leading brands’ roadmaps, to identify 7 areas we feel will make the biggest impact in how we
interact with digital experiences in 2019.

3. Inspiration on tap
From: functional ‘add to basket’ ecommerce
To: richer ways to discover and buy
2019 Tipping Point: Visual discovery & shopping merge
How people discover and interact

4. 2019 is a
watershed
moment for
visual search for
discovering and
buying products
By the end of 2018 eMarketer expects that 51.2
million Americans, or 15.5% of the population will
be using AR monthly. By 2020, that number is
anticipated to grow to 67.5 million.

5. Tipping point: visual discovery + shopping merge
Snapchat AR visual product
search with Amazon
Google lens arrives on iOS.
Launched in 2017 recognising
250,000 items it now recognises
1 billion items
AR is now accessible in text
chat interfaces like
Facebook’s Messenger

6. Adidas creates
a virtual store
environment in
a social lens
In December 2018, Adidas
launched a virtual store and try on
experience within Snapchat to
where the user can select and try
out their Ultraboost trainers.
Source: Engadget 2018

7. Easyjet
Look and Book
EasyJet allows users to find the
nearest flight and hotel in the
EasyJet app via an Instagram
image.
It is currently the highest rated
airline app in Europe, driven in
part by Look and Book
encouraging positive reviews.

8. NYX L’OREAL
Live streamed
assistants + AR
L’Oreal match their AR makeup
experience with live streamed
personal assistants.
As a result of embedding
augmented reality experiences in
its online shopping website and
app, L’Oreal saw a rise in e-
commerce sales to 9.5% of all sales
during the first half of 2018,
compared to 5% in 2015.
(Source Reuters 2018)

9. Amazon
Part Finder
“The Search
With No Name”
Amazon’s latest visual search tech
allows for people to order parts via
visual recognition, ideal for those
searches for items you’ve long
forgotten the name of.

10. Audio goes AWOL
From: experiences accessed through the
smartphone screen
To: experiences that mesh with your real-world
routine
2019 Tipping Point: audio leaves home with the rise
of ‘Hearables’
How people discover and interact

11. We hit a peak smartphone moment in 2018

12. “Voice
interfaces” have
seen the largest
leap in interest
from 2018
Q. Which of the following emerging technologies do you expect to be most
important to you in 2019? YOY percentage point change in those selecting
each as important. Source: WARC Toolkit 2018
Restricted data
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13. Lego Duplo
Stories
Using voice to
reach new
audiences
Lego created an Alexa skill that
provides audio instructions for
model building and tells
associated stories, enabling Lego
to help parents educate and
entertain their kids.

14. Voice assistant
speakers grow
and hearables*
emerge
The number of Alexa skills jumped
from 1,000 in mid-2016 to 21,000 in early
2018 to now more than 40,000. There
are 20,000 Alexa-compatible smart
home devices, a fivefold increase from
4,000 at the end of 2017. To date 100m
Alexa embedded devices have been
sold (Amazon 2019).
“By 2021, early adopter brands that
redesign their websites to support
visual and voice search will increase
digital commerce revenue by 30%.”
(Gartner 2018).
By 2022, 417 million
hearables are projected
to be in use, growing
50% annually until then,
(Juniper Research,
December 2018)
*Hearables: an ear-mounted device that supplies aural
content or information to the wearer that is either
generated by computations and data on the device
itself or by an attached app.

15. Amazon Alexa
enabled
headphone
explosion
Amazon opened up Alexa to all
bluetooth headphone makers in
November 2018. AI assistants will be
available to more of us in the tech we
carry around with us every day.

16. Sunglasses
with a
soundtrack
Bose Frames deliver an Audio-
Augmented Reality experience.
On sale in January 2019 for $199,
they’re equipped with a built-in
microphone, motion sensor, and
open-ear headphones to interact
with Siri and Google Assistant and
link to GPS to provide location-
aware experiences.
They weigh just 45 grams.

17. KLM Connected
Seats Translation
Tool
KLM used Google Cloud’s Voice
AI services to bring together travellers
who spoke different languages to
connect them.

18. Walmart
patents Store
Listening to
improve service
Walmart has filed a patent to listen
to sounds in its stores.
The sound sensors can “capture
audio of conversations between
guests and an employee stationed
at the terminal,” the patent reads.
“The system can process the audio
of the conversation to determine
whether the employee stationed at
the terminal is greeting guests.”
Image Source: Verge, Fortune 2018

19. “Is that a
cough I hear?”
Alexa Health
With always-available voice,
brands are exploring more service
opportunities.
For example, by programming
Alexa’s speech recognition to
identify coughs and sniffles, then
use that information to upsell cold
medicine and chicken soup.
Source: Forrester 2018

20. The creepiness
factor is a big
barrier to
adoption of
digital
assistants
Trialled by the likes of IBM and
McDonalds, Soul Machines’ Digital
Humans are the usable but often
creepy face of AI, aka The ‘uncanny
valley’ problem.

21. AI assistants
breaks out of
chatbot
interfaces into
real world chat
Google Duplex demonstrates the
potential for moving AI chatbot
assistants.
Breaking through the ‘uncanny
valley’, audio powered chatbots
feel like a natural conversation.

22. Audio has advantages over visual-based AR
experiences to overcome the creepiness factor
Visual focused experiences Audio focused experiences
vs
AR Glasses
‘Digital Human’
Assistants
Audio ‘AR’
Enabled Glasses
Audio Virtual
Assistant
vs

23. Snips.ai
enables brands
to build their
own voice
services
without big
tech.
Using an interface similar to
Amazon's Alexa, Snips AI aims to
make our world simpler through
voice control.
All voice data is kept by the user
on device and not shared with the
brands that use the services.

24. The Intimate Internet
From: personalisation = your name on a product
To: smart personalised services
2019 Tipping Point: Personalisation is CMO’s biggest AI
investment in 2019
How people choose and buy

25. CMOs prioritise
AI as top
technology for
investment in
2019
Q. Which of the following emerging technologies do you expect to be most
important to you in 2019?
Source: WARC 2018
Restricted data
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26. Within AI,
CMOs’ top
investment in
marketing is
personalisation
Q. In which aspects of your marketing are you using AI?
Source: WARC Toolkit 2018
Restricted data
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27. People increasingly expect personalisation
from digital services
80%of consumers are
more likely to do
business with a
company if it offers
personalized
experiences.
91%of consumers are
more likely to shop
with brands that
recognize,
remember, and
provide them with
relevant offers and
recommendations.
Accenture Interactive, 2018 Personalization Pulse Check
Epsilon, online survey of 1000 consumers ages 18-64, 2017.

28. Uniqlo
personalises
sizing
Uniqlo is using a mixture of
purchase history, personal size
data and return data to create
smart size recommendations
based on what gets sent back.
They create size recommendations
then allow you to tailor the fit to
your liking.

29. Red Thread
uses
personalisation
to do away
with sizes
Mass tailoring of products
uniquely to you.
Using its tailoring algorithms,
manufacturing process and
designs, RedThread delivers
clothes direct to consumers within
one week of purchase.
All RedThread requires from the
user is a short fit quiz — and four
photos. Users receive their tailored
products within 7 days.

30. Google maps
launches ‘Your
Match’
Launched mid-2018, Google will now
not only tell you what’s nearby – but
how likely it is to suit you. Pre-set
preferences and previous reviews
are some of the inputs used to
create your score.

31. Masse.app
creates
personalised
trusted
communities
Masse aims to create an online
shopping environment in which
you can trust that all
recommendations are made by
people like you, without a sales or
marketing agenda.
They blend AI and people to
moderate the platform.

32. Netflix
personalised
visuals based
on taste
“We don’t have one product but
over a 100 million different
products with one for each of our
members with personalized
recommendations and
personalized visuals.”
Source: Netflix Tech Blog 2018

33. Netflix
personalised
experiences
Netflix’s Interactive experiences
like Puss In Boots and Black
Mirrors ‘Bandersnatch’ has the
potential to give the company
more data on user choices to
further tailor their experiences.

34. Johnnie Walker
My Edition
personalises
product to the
individual’s taste
Johnnie Walker My Edition uses
machine learning and proprietary
algorithms to match a taste profile
to one of a range of six new and
exclusive Johnnie Walker blends. It
allows people to explore flavour in a
fresh and engaging way not
offered elsewhere.

35. The Data Race
From: hitting the GDPR deadline
To: services designed for people's privacy agenda
2019 Tipping Point: Snowballing consumer awareness of data
and privacy issues
How people choose and buy

36. Growth, Data
and Trust lead
CMO challenges
for 2019
Source: WARC Toolkit 2019
Restricted data
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37. Retail
Surveillance:
China Social
Credit
To encourage a culture of sincerity,
China’s social credit system links into
e-commerce giants like Alibaba via
the Sesame program. Certain
behaviours - like buying diapers - up
citizen’s social credit scores, whereas
others like excessive time on video
games lower it.
From preferred school choice to
travel options, the credit system has
already been used to block 9 million
people with "low scores" from
purchasing domestic flights.
Image source: Wired 2018

38. With big data comes big responsibility
Imperial College researchers
estimate Digital Assistant Data
could predict a couples’
likeliness to break up with 75%
accuracy
In 2018 Taylor Swift concert
goers were secretly
subjected to facial
recognition screening to
filter for known stalkers
Rise of VPN use and encrypted chat in
western society
(Chart shows number of Telegram
users worldwide Source: Statista 2018)

39. “The first 3 companies to a billion
users (Yahoo, Google, Facebook)
made money from your privacy,
the next 3 will be about
protecting that privacy”.
David Gorodyansky

40. “From ‘don’t be evil’
to ‘can’t be evil’ ”
Ali Yahya on decentralisation

42. Apple’s differential privacy

43. Tim Berners-Lee + Inrupt. Your personal data all under
your control, moving power away from big tech

44. Buying without barriers
From: old school checkouts and buy buttons
To: frictionless behaviours hitting stores
2019 Tipping Point: Amazon Go and Amazon Wardrobe take
new purchase behaviours into mainstream high streets
How people choose and buy

45. Amazon Prime
Wardrobe
Rolled out in the UK in winter 2018,
Amazon Wardrobe brings “try
before you buy” shopping to
fashion. Customers can order up to
8 items with no upfront cost, only
paying for those they don’t return.

46. H&M invests £15m in Klarna, opening up low
friction credit to more audiences

47. Amazon Go roll
out smart
stores in the UK
Amazon is planning a UK launch of
Amazon Go in London’s Oxford
Street in 2019.
Amazon is aiming to open 3,000
Amazon Go stores in the US by 2021.

48. Microsoft &
Kroger launch
their own US
pilot
The brands are partnering to pilot a
connected store experience, with a
view to developing a ‘Retail As A
Service’ (RaaS) offering.
Digital shelves will enable hyper-
targeted ads, leveraging personal
data and in-store video analytics.
At it’s simplest, it might mean
flashing up a certain icon once
you’re in an aisle, to flag a product
that’s on your shopping list

49. Ping An’s
Good Doctor
‘1 Minute
Clinics’
Ping An are trialling unmanned
clinics with smart medicine
cabinets.
The AI diagnosis tool covers 2000
commonly seen diseases and can
automatically dispense from a
range of 100 medicines.
China based Ping An is the largest
mobile/AI Health tech company in
the world with 228m registered
users.

50. Good X Tech
From: frictionless experiences for individuals with good as
an afterthought
To: experiences with a positive social impact
Tipping Point: Living in a post ‘Delete Facebook’ world
How brands react to the world

51. People care about purpose and a brand’s impact
on society
66% of consumers
say it’s important
for brands to take
public stands on
social and political
issues.
79% of
respondents said
they’re more loyal
to purpose brands,
and 73% said they
would defend
them.
64% of consumers
around the world
now buy on belief,
a remarkable
increase of 13
points since 2017.
Sprout Social, 2018
Cone and Porter Novelli
& M/A/R/C Research,
2018
Edelman, 2018

54. Big tech’s negative impact on society was felt in 2018,
from fake news to privacy and election fraud

55. People adopt
detox and
digital
wellbeing
“The heaviest smartphone users
are the most depressed, anxious
and lonely.”
Gen Z and millennials are ahead in
making a conscious effort to
decrease time spent on social
media, with 58% of each cohort
admitting to have done so.
(Source Global Web Index 2018)

56. Instagram
redirects
eating disorder
searches
Changes to Instagram’s service
make body image issues
unsearchable.
Instead the app offers people
looking at or posting certain
content the option to access tips
and support.

57. Barclays and
Monzo address
gambling and
alcohol
addiction
Monzo have taken the initiative to
provide those with gambling
addictions an opportunity to block all
gambling spending from their
account.
Barclays followed with similar
functionality, which could also be
applied to other services like bars and
restaurants serving alcoholic drinks.

58. Financial Times
She Said,
He Said
Going into 2018, only 21% of experts
quoted in FT articles were women
Through the use of AI tool ‘She Said,
He Said’ this year the proportion of
female opinion writers in the FT has
increased from 21% to 30%. The tool
tracks not just gender diversity but
ethnicity and geographical location
of contributors.

59. Blockchain is used to transform trust and
transparency in supply networks
De Beers - Diamond Sourcing Fishing industry - legality and sustainability

61. Blockchain for
journalism
Po.et + Civil.co
Blockchain introduces two
fundamentally new concepts for
journalism: self-governance and
permanent archiving.
Po.et is building an open, universal
ledger that records immutable and
timestamped information about
your creative content.
Civil aims to enable fair and trusted
journalism. Civil is owned and
operated by the news organizations
and the readers they serve using
CVL tokens.

62. Hyper-responsive
experiences
From: agile development cycles
To: experiences that react fast to community need
2019 Tipping Point: Heightened expectations of how brands
react to user communities
How brands react to the world

63. In 2018 the
cultural
expectation of
responsiveness
increased
In May 2018 Starbucks shut down 8,000 stores
in North America for a day to train
approximately 175,000 employees about racial
sensitivity following an incident earlier in the
month where two African-American men were
arrested for waiting for a colleague without
ordering.
“I take it very personally, as everyone in our
company does, and we’re committed to
making it right. It will cost millions of dollars,
but I’ve always viewed this and things like this
as not an expense, but an investment in our
people and our company. And we’re better
than this.” Howard Schultz, CEO Starbucks.

64. People are
intolerant of
brands who
react slowly to
experience
issues
UK Bank TSB experienced weeks of
issues following a systems upgrade.
It locked out nearly 2 million customers
and cost the bank £176.4m in customer
compensation, foregone income,
waived fees and fixing the system’s
defects.
Source: TSB 2018, Independent 2018

65. From ‘Agile in tech’
To ‘organisational agility’
To
Organisational agility
“31% of organizations that qualify
themselves as highly agile have
increased revenue by 20% or more.
only 1% of organizations that categorize
themselves as having ‘average agility’
increased revenue by 20% of more”
Source: Forbes 2018
From
Agile in Tech
“Almost three-quarters (71%) of
organizations report using agile
approaches sometimes, often, or
always.”
Source: Project Management Institute, 2017

66. Choosy: from
“celeb look” to
your door in 7
days using AI
AI driven clothes brand Choosy
makes Instagram #OOTD easy.
Solving a common retail problem
of speed and stock (H&M reported
they have $4bn in unsold stock in
2018), Choosy offer twice-weekly
collections of 5 items, each derived
from an algorithm that
determines the hottest trends on
Instagram that day. Its’ products
are available for only a few days,
and items are only made when
there is enough customer interest.

67. Tesla took just 5
days to improve
brakes
The Tesla Model 3 was the best-
selling sedan in the US in 2018. Safety
has always been core to the Tesla
brand, however in May this year a
Consumer Reports test (the US
equivalent of Which?) found issues
with the claimed stopping distance
of the Model 3. However, in a marked
difference to most car
manufacturers, who would have to
recall the model to deal with this
type of problem, Tesla swiftly
updated the cars with an over-the-air
patch which reduced braking
distance by 20ft. And managed to do
this in just five days.

68. Epic Games
updates Fornite
every 2 weeks,
reinvents it’s
seasons every
2 months
EPIC Games hit of 2018 Fortnite Battle
Royale’s key to success was keeping the
experience fresh with new releases and
challenges each week, so there was always
something new to discover even for the
game’s most dedicated players.
There are now 200 million Fortnite players,
and the game broke records with over 8
million simultaneous players

69. Gordon’s Gin
builds real-
time relevance
with
#YayDelay
Only 86% of British trains ran on
time In 2018, the lowest proportion
for more than a decade.
Using an algorithm that took train
delay data and sentiment within
social media, Gordons Gin reacted
by offering frustrated commuters
a chance to step back and relax
with a free gin + tonic.

70. Good X tech
What brands should do: Mindful innovation -
go beyond fixing customer experiences to
making an impact on society using digital
tech.
Hyper-responsive experiences
What brands should do: Bake analytics and
community driven change into experiences
How people
discover and interact
How people
choose and buy
How brands
react to the world
Inspiration on tap
What brands should do: Create experiences
that link unmet discovery needs with fast
fulfilment
Audio goes AWOL
What brands should do: look for
opportunities to use audio on the move
and more human ways of interacting with
services
The intimate internet
What brands should do: Personalise services to
build a strong value exchange for users’ data.
The data race
What brands should do: Offer value for services that
demand user data; adopt privacy by design.
Buying without barriers
What brands should do: Investigate new ownership
models and frictionless purchase options
Experience Transforming Trends 2019

71. For more information contact
peter.moody@mullenloweprofero.com