KEEPING UP WITH THE PACE OF DIGITAL

There’s a constant flow of developments, products, platforms, disruptive technologies and curveball applications being issued every day, all of which could have practical applications for your business. Maybe you’ve read, or heard, about some of the following (if not, there are some notes at the end of this piece*)…

1: Ninja dumps Twitch for Mixer
2: Dr Peter Scott-Morgan fuses with AI
3: Deepfakes get verbal with ‘Photoshop for Voices’
4: Hollywood finally loses out to the gaming industry

So what does this mean for you and your company? Surely these are just some vaguely interesting stories that you happened to miss. No big deal, right?

Well… yes and no. All of the above relate to a development that has, however laterally, a link to how you might promote yourself online – whether it’s a practical piece of software, or more of a deep dive around how the next generation might use digital tech for entertainment, research, or as part of their of day to day life.

Now think about other recent digital developments out there that you may be unaware of, such as Google ring-fencing web component frameworks to lock in users… Facebook being unable to guarantee the security of their own messaging apps, while simultaneously extending promotion of public and private groups as part of their mission to assuage concerns about user privacy… Instagram rolling out like removal in order to reduce the social anxiety that prolonged usage and exposure to adverse commentary can instigate… GDPR – often dismissed as a ‘waste of time’ – starting to bite since the ICO began handing out fines of £180 million+ for legislation breaches…

All of these things, and more, are likely to have a tangible impact on how you promote yourself digitally. Of course, you might say – perfectly understandably – that you just don’t have the time to be on top of things like this.

That’s exactly where we come in, and why partnering with us for delivery of your online strategy helps you futureproof the digital health of your business. That’s because *our* business is digital – we don’t limit ourselves solely to building websites or managing social media feeds. We devote time and resource to constantly keeping pace with tech developments, monitoring the changes that are likely to have most impact on (or benefit to) our clients, assessing how we need to apply it, then presenting it as an option with legitimate commercial value.

Maybe you think you can monitor and manage this pace of change in-house? Recent, qualitative research undertaken by Marketing Week has shown – even in businesses with a dedicated marketing department – that opting for complete in-house control as opposed to an agency relationship is not providing the results businesses were hoping to see. In fact, achievement versus expectation for in-housing fell below par across *every* metric discussed (including productivity, creativity, transparency, consistency, cost-saving, and control), with a performance gap in some cases of up to 15%. Further questioning revealed that relying totally on in-house teams led to concerns regarding lack of innovation and scale creep – with ‘decision by committee’ leading to missed deadlines.

From our experience, we’d also seen how marketing staff are often used as a shortfall resource when cover is needed, and that they don’t necessarily receive the support and training they need to keep abreast of developments immediately outside of the business sector they’re in – and therein lies the danger. Your team can become trapped in an echo chamber when it doesn’t have the benefit of an outside perspective in the mix.

When it comes to keeping you ahead of the digital curve, you can be assured that having a trusted third party like Greensquare onboard will be a winning strategy all round.

*About those stories in full…

1: Ninja dumps Twitch for Mixer
Tyler Blevins, aka Ninja, is a livestreamer of gaming content. He recently left Amazon’s Twitch.tv to join Microsoft’s own streaming site, Mixer (which is some way behind sites like Twitch and YouTube when it comes to popularity), in what is believed to be a multi-million dollar deal. Livestreaming internet services are growing at a frantic rate, and are becoming more appealing to audiences – 80% of surveyed users would rather watch a live video than read a blog. By the end of 2019, online video will account for more than four-fifths of global internet traffic.

2: Dr Peter Scott-Morgan fuses with AI
Dr Peter Scott-Morgan is a roboticist who was diagnosed with MND in 2017. He is hoping to drastically increase his life expectancy, undergoing radical elective surgery and leveraging relationships with Intel, Microsoft and DXC Technology to create a learning, emotionally engaged AI which will become his primary point of communication. The aim is to make this approach to living with disability the norm, allowing those with similar diagnoses to live as intellectually and physically an active life as possible, using cutting-edge technology to improve and enhance clinical outcomes.

3: Deepfakes get verbal with ‘Photoshop for Voices’
Replica Studios is an Australian-based tech company who have developed an artificial intelligence than can synthesise the human voice. Aimed at creatives, their software will let users type up scripts and dialog, and instantly play it back in the voices of their characters, with easy to use ‘style filters’ that control the mood or emotion of the voice. Naturally, there are huge implications when it comes to privacy and / or fake news, as we’re entering an era where – in effect – we can manipulate visual and audio reality almost beyond the point of comprehension.

4: Hollywood finally loses out to the gaming industry
2019 is set to be the year when the video game industry overtakes Hollywood as the leading source of entertainment revenue, taking into account all possible interpretations of how this figure can be arrived at. Esports, livestreaming, physical sales… entertainment is no longer something that the mass market merely consumes – advances in technology (and the corresponding price drops) mean that entertainment is now something that the mass market can participate with in real-time, further blurring the lines between VR and real life. Look out for more ‘phygital’ experiences in retail stores and at shows and events very soon.