The impact of technology on the world can be summed up by photos of St. Peter's Square in the Vatican City at two periods of time. One, in 2005, shows a crowd of people with only a few holding cell phones. The other, in 2013, shows a similar crowd of people bathed in a sea of lights from numerous smartphones and iPads.
Technology is a huge part of life now and that’s why your company needs to harness it to build your brand, reach your target audiences, and better engage your customers. At an Ivey Idea Forum in Toronto on May 7, Mike Dover, HBA ’91, MBA ’97, co-author of Wikibrands: Reinventing Your Company in a Customer-Driven Marketplace, outlined 10 trends around business and technology that you should consider in your marketing planning:
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- Creating experiences, like the wearable computing gadgets that measure physical activity;
- Connections that forge brand advocacy, such as Maker’s Mark Bourbon’s Ambassador program, which gives perks, such as custom-labelled bottles, to loyal customers who promote the brand;
- Inspiring innovation through crowdsourcing, such as Lego Mindstorms’ call for customers to upload new designs online;
- Collaborations, such as Lay’s “Do Us a Flavor” contest that asks customers to suggest new potato chip flavours;
- Interactive and personal entertainment, such as Netflix offering viewers full seasons of TV online;
- Customization, such as Amazon’s additional product recommendations;
- Sharing, such as the TaskRabbit online marketplace that allows users to outsource small jobs and tasks to their neighbours;
- Exchanging data, such as Progressive Snapshot’s offering of discounted auto insurance in exchange for customers allowing the company to use technology to observe their driving behaviour;
- Using analytics to predict consumer behaviour; and
- Harnessing access information so that data that is useless to one organization can be put to use by another.
“One of the things that scares people about technology is how frequently it’s changing,” he said.
