Would you manage your home by phone?

Emerging trend: Smartphones are becoming home data managers – capable of tracking and enabling habitants’ activities (music, shopping, cooking) and home settings (e.g., temperature, safety, lights).

Implication: Device and chip makers will compete with telecom players will gain a bigger share of home networking. They will want consumers to have their brands to be top of mind and trust them with more personal information.

Action:

1-      Seize the opportunity to re-brand, with new products and capabilities that go beyond communication.  

2-      Put permission marketing ahead of precision marketing when messaging consumers about their home.

3-      Communicate benefits such as convenience, time-saving and comfort when setting up a home network and assure consumers their information (e.g., lifestyle habits, address and app usage) will be kept safe.

Would you like to use your phone or a wearable device to manage your home-based activities? Or would you find it intrusive?

Special thanks to Zuzanna Skalska of 360inspiration who informed me of Samsung CEO’s keynote speech on future homes at the recent IFA conference and inspired this post.

Dark Social: How To Crack That Nut!

Emerging trend: Dark social, as in private social media conversations (e.g., SMS, email, Snapchat, Whatsapp, FB messenger), is significantly bigger in volume and impact more decisions than what we coin as word of mouth today. This trend was first brought to public attention by the Atlantic. And now according to a new study from Radium One cited in Media Post

·         91% of Americans regularly share information via dark social methods, and  

·         59% of all online sharing is via dark social

Implication: Critical opinions about family, health, politics, and religion will largely remain in private digital circles. Marketers will need to rely on self-reported data (e.g., surveys, interviews) and trusted relationships to gauge brand and other topic mentions in dark social.

Action:
1- Improve email targeting
2- Make your content hyper relevant to your target audience. 
3- Invest in social CRM team and infrastructure to keep close connections with customers who will take the information to their friends and family, and give you feedback.