Has the COVID-19 pandemic been the catalyst for art to become more accessible?

In our first-ever episode of Scrap the Manual, Angelica and Rushali explore how the pandemic influenced art throughout the last couple of years, and how it will move the industry forward, too. Throughout the conversation, the hosts align on their shared passion for creativity and technology as the world of fine arts—including museums, art galleries and experiential activations—quickly pivoted and adapted to emerging technology, which until now has been waiting for its moment.

You can read the discussion below, or listen to the episode on your preferred podcast platform.

And that’s it! There certainly hasn’t been a lack of innovation over the past year, and as we look ahead to 2022, we can’t wait to see what happens next. But stay tuned, as the Labs.Monks will continue providing regular insights and experimentation into new trends as they emerge. See you then!

Granted, it’s been a while since I’ve been at the student’s end of a classroom, but I’d like to think I haven’t totally lost touch with my childhood education. And as much as I enjoyed being in school, my fondest memories—prior to discovering the internet—are probably those that were most hands-on.

Field trips and practical lessons gave me the chance to learn on my own terms. Rather than learning through the filter of others, these outings allowed me to create my own educational narrative and learn through first-hand experience—escaping the usual set up where you sat staring at a teacher as they talked at you from the front of the room.

However, since my earlier expeditions to the local science museum or treatment plant—yes, my school was very progressive—educational technology (edtech) has changed the game considerably. Smartboards (digital whiteboards), laptops, and smartphones have made their way into the classroom and the curriculum. And as with anything concerning children, this influx of technology in the classroom adds fuel to the fire of the helpful vs. harmful debate.

We have to deal with the fact that progress is inevitable. My parents for one, missed out on most of the digital revolution, leaving them oblivious to a lot of its benefits. Who would have expected that with just a smartphone and a selfie-stick, you can discover parts of life on earth that are otherwise invisible or out of reach? That’s the innovation that Google Expeditions, an educational tool launched in 2017, offers by showcasing the promising ways in which AR and VR can turn your average lesson into an extraordinary expedition.

While we might not be able to avoid progress, we can influence it by deciding how to expose future generations to innovative tech. What better place to start than by using innovative tech to take children to places beyond their wildest imagination—creating experiences that even field trips can’t match?

Back to the Chalkboard

I’ve never met anyone who learned to play football just by reading about Cruijff’s biggest feats alone or could ride a bicycle after watching Peter Sagan pull-off a winning sprint. If we want to develop certain skills and learn valuable lessons, we have to live them. And even though offline teaching increasingly revolves around exploration, there’s still a gap between many areas of applied learning and everyday practice.

Why not close the gap by using technological advancements to our advantage? By giving children access to experiences that are quite literally out of this world, we can further encourage the development of real-world skills—without having to leave the classroom. 

Others are taking note of this potential; investments dollars have risen in edtech over the years, with over $1.45 billion raised by US edtech startups in 2018—beating the $1.2 billion raised the year before. But that money is also going into fewer and fewer companies, demonstrating a need for edtech tools and startups to stand out with unique experiences and demonstrable educational results.

As this increasingly competitive environment matures, the winning edtech startups are those that provide differentiated experiences. They won’t use tech for tech’s sake, but will find the best medium for the message and iterate upon it. Sitting for hours on end scrolling through our feeds is not something you want to actively encourage, but exploring a virtual visualization of a DNA string is.

Designing these experiences requires educators to build an appetite to try new things and innovate—essentially, they must become students themselves, seeking out ways to innovate. A publisher can translate their book into a CD or internet portal, which might offer some interactivity and exploration, but that does little to make the lesson significantly more engaging or meaningful to a student. Instead, edtech requires an entirely new mentality around learning.

The Next Frontier  

It’s not just earthly life that’s suddenly at our fingertips thanks to new technical interfaces. VR offers the first real means of making “space travel” possible for everyone. The SPACEBUZZ project is something particularly close to my heart. TLDR: a real-life rocket pulls up to schools, virtually launching students into orbit.

While working on SPACEBUZZ, I got to see first-hand how an interactive VR experience can leave a lasting impression on developing minds and encourage curiosity. Guided by real-life astronaut André Kuipers (who helped develop a fact-based script and serves as Mission Commander in the experience), kids get to gear up and produce in a 15-minute space flight.

What really makes a difference is giving children the hands-on experience to learn. While children who watched just the VR flyover film were impressed by the view of earth from space, the students who experienced the onboarding mission first got into the mindset to better investigate and understand what they were seeing from the stellar view—like the visible effects of deforestation, air pollution and more. Similarly, the Lockheed Martin initiative, Field Trip to Mars, shows just how much influence a positive application of technology can have on the appetite for learning, bolstering a positive perception of digital experiences.

By embedding practical technology in the everyday lives of the next generation, in the right setting, we’ll not only see a continuation of positive technological experiences but also provide access to a broader educational experience. In addition to giving children a new perspective on the world around them, these digital experiences could inspire deep engagement with their passions across a variety of subjects, helping cultivate the next generation of scientists, teachers, astronauts, manufacturers and more. We could tailor parts of these experiences to speak to individual needs, because who knew that according to one study girls learn better from a virtual teacher while boys prefer tutoring from a drone?

The above gets at the heart of what makes edtech such a powerful tool: teach students in a scalable way that’s personalized to their individual learning styles. In a Medium post that serves as a primer to the different styles of personalized learning, the Office of Educational Technology within the US Department of Education defines personalized learning as “instruction in which the pace of learning and the instructional approach are optimized for the needs of each learner.” The key thing is that “learning activities are made available that are meaningful and relevant to learners, driven by their interests and often self-initiated,” and edtech offers an excellent opportunity to prompt that sense of exploration in students.

With this potential for individual enrichment, edtech doesn’t have to be limited to education throughout the formative years. Imagine what we could do if we applied the same theory throughout the entire educational infrastructure? In supporting lifelong learning, edtech could play a key role in training across disciplines, including fields in which the stakes are high, like in the medical industry, combat training or of course: space travel.

From digital experiences that inspire to the possibility of personalized courses and expert guidance based on personal data, edtech can set students up for a lifetime of learning, helping them discover and apply their passions to benefit society as a whole.

I might not be in formal education anymore, but I’m definitely still learning—and look forward to continue paying that experience forward to help tech users of any age better explore and relate to the world around them.

While an exciting game and sports-stars-turned-celebrities alone were once enough to raise an audience for broadcast sports, today’s leading brands strive to provide premier, engaging digital experiences that reach users through personalization and emerging tech. And we know, because MediaMonks recently went for the gold and made it onto the Hashtag Sports Engage 150 list, which features the top partners engaging consumers through sports and fan culture today.

Through our sports-related work—encompassing platforms, creative content and technical innovation—we’ve formulated a game plan for brands to better engage and deliver upon the needs of fans through sports. This includes more effective utilization of user data and investing in emerging tech solutions, allowing brands to bring their A-game to enhance spectatorship for fans both near and far away from the game.

Transform Spectators into Active Participants with Emerging Tech

We all know the joke of those who buy the biggest TV screen available before an important game, only to return it after hosting a viewing party. But today’s digital media allows brands to do more than just provide a larger-than-life picture; through emerging tech, they can provide entirely new experiences that significantly improve spectatorship through heightened immersion.

A premier platform achieving this is the 2018 Webby Award-winning Red Bull Air Race for Google Daydream, which takes users on a thrilling ride aboard a virtual airplane that follows actual flight paths from real races. Giving users full control to look wherever they please, the experience makes them feel as if they’re really there.

But VR lets you do more than let users feel present in the moment. “The benefit something like AR has over 360-degree video is that it’s a platform,” says Robert-Jan Blonk, Senior Interactive Producer at MediaMonks, noting the amount of on-screen data present to the user. “In this case, we built a platform with pilot info, race standings and different locations where races are held, which users can go back and replay.”

This added level of autonomy is powerful for fans who want to be part of the action. “Sports fans want to feel like they have a role in the game and aren’t just bystanders,” says Emily Veraart, Senior Digital Strategist at MediaMonks. While Red Bull Air Race users don’t influence the race directly, interactive toggling of the camera lets them experience the event in their preferred way—whether it be the middle of the fray or at a safe, omniscient distance.

For MediaMonks Operations Manager Donny Hofman, this level of interactivity is integral to the experience.  “The most interesting thing about an experience like this is the freedom you can give to users,” he says. “You can potentially get anywhere in the action that you want—and where you can’t place a camera in real life, you can in VR.” That latter point describes how emerging tech can enhance sports spectatorship through entirely new perspectives: “It’s a rediscovery of something you’re familiar with,” says Hofman.

Reach Fans with Targeted Content and Personalization

The sports industry encompasses several different parties, each of whom has their own fans and content: teams, federations, individual players and industry-adjacent influencers. This makes the industry ripe for producing always-on content.

During the Rio Olympics, we produced with Google Zoo a platform to deliver content to sports fans throughout the Games. Designed for both online fans and those visiting Rio de Janeiro to attend in-person, the platform integrated various forms of content (like timely updates and summaries from some of the region’s most influential YouTube content creators, the Castro brothers) onto a map of the city. In addition to providing relevant spatial information in this way, the platform surfaces up personalized content responsive to how they interact with the platform, like recommending content based off behavioral habits and viewing preferences.

The benefits to better understand fans are measurable. According to MightyHive’s Data Confident Marketer report, data-confident marketers’ success “is attributed to becoming more customer-centric: they’re able to apply first-party data in ways that help them understand who their customers are, what motivates them, and how digital advertising plays a role in their purchasing decisions.” Such confidence in their data allows brands to identify which information fans seek, where and when—and which partners make the best sense for engaging with fans through supplementary content.

This level of personalization, paired with forging partnerships with content creators and influencers, is ideal for delivering upon changing user expectations for how to consume sports. “With sports, there’s a bigger generational divide in user behavior,” says Veraart. “Baby boomers and millennials are used to watching sports with their family, but Gen Z doesn’t have that relationship with how they watch sports.” According to Veraart, much of this shift is informed by the constant discussion happening on social media, as well as an abundance of statistics and data available for the most avid fans to track. Brands can meet this need with a content strategy that offers a sliding scale of data and content tailored to fans’ individual preferences.

Engage User Needs through Contextual Design

When developing a digital platform for sports consumption, carefully consider the context in which users will interact. Consider micro-moments that prompt users to engage in the first place: the sports tourist attending a big gaming event in town, the stats-obsessed fan, the user who simply wants to see what games are playing at the height of the season. “How you guide the user through a schedule is a key example of the types of challenges a sporting federation may face,” says Joeri Lambert, Business Monk at MediaMonks. “Another is how you apply the data that you have to alert the user of games or information that they want to see.”

One crucial consideration in how to best support user context is whether the platform is accessed via mobile or desktop. With the All of Brazil Plays platform, for example, the mobile experience was tailored more toward location-based information for those attending the Games who needed to know where to go, and when. On desktop, meanwhile, users were treated to their personalized newsfeed of recap content, perfect for those catching up on a day’s many events.

Marrying data with digital creative—whether it be a digital content platform or emerging tech—is a smart strategy for brands to reach sports-obsessed and average fans alike. From helping users keep up with their favorite team to placing them right into the action with immersive tech, digital content transforms spectatorship from a passive experience to an active one, letting everyone revel in a good sporting victory.

You’ve probably heard the joke before: one can buy a top-of-the-line TV, only to find that it’s already become obsolete by the time it’s installed in the living room. Joking aside, the rate of change in technology seems faster each day, prompting some brands to feel as though they’re treading water when getting accustomed to the platforms available.

Digital-only brands like Uber and Airbnb have significantly raised the bar for digital user experiences in growth markets like Latin America, and while the regional market privileges social relationships and recommendations, brands that haven’t prioritized the digital customer experience should view digital transformation as an opportunity—rather than a challenge—to better meet their customers’ needs in an exhilarating time of change. According to Forrester’s eCommerce Trends to Look Out For in Latin America, “By 2022, the number of unique smartphone subscribers will grow to 68.5% of the total population in Mexico, 71.0% in Argentina, and 74.6% in Brazil,” which means there’s great potential for brands to engage digitally with a growing audience—and time is of the essence to prepare.

The most important thing to understand about digital transformation is that it’ll have no end: it’s a process, not a project. With every new channel comes a new way of interacting with consumers, and as soon as you become comfortable with one, another arrives. Due to the speed at which this occurs, brands must move away from a desire to simply chase the next (or even current) big thing and instead focus on building a culture that is agile and ready to adapt to emerging channels. In fact, you’ll likely find that a desire for a new app or website is in fact indicative of a need for a new business model.

A New Perspective for New Experiences

The digital transformation process challenges not only the way brands reach their audience, but also their internal structures. They must be ready to break down silos and look for more collaborative ways for talent across departments and levels to work with one another. At Gartner’s CIO & IT Executive Latin American Summit in 2017, one of the key findings was that “CIOs play a crucial role in transforming the enterprise,” particularly by providing an outsider’s perspective on user experience thanks to their informational skills. “It always helps to have someone see you from the outside,” says Carlos Rivera, Consulting & Platforms Lead at MediaMonks MX, on the need for organizations to seek new points of view to provide new experiences.

Digital transformation typically begins by taking stock of the business’ KPIs, assessing its internal structure and polling stakeholders at all levels of the organization. From there, organizations must benchmark themselves to industry competition. Much like how Instagram has done well to absorb features from competing brands (like stories), organizations should take a look at what’s working for digital-only brands within their industry and pay special attention toward how they drive change in the way consumers interact.

The next step is to envision the goals of the organization. We call this a digital playbook, which is a plan that maps out the digital transformation journey for the organization. While a digital playbook serves as a useful guide to an organization’s initial steps, the partner relationship shouldn’t end at the assessment. Instead, the partner should be able to translate that assessment into actionable steps every step of the way. “We provide this resource to help you better understand and activate our digital playbook,” says Rivera. As your goals evolve or new channels emerge, “your partner can connect you to the rest of the agency and production network to further bring in the expertise you need along the process.”

Embarking on the Journey

A manageable way for organizations to execute their new digital strategy is to take a channel-by-channel basis. “We can approach things on single channels, like on the mobile side for example,” says Rivera. “From there, we can turn our approach to the website or whatever else comes out naturally.” For example, we previously revamped the Aeromexico app in order to provide a mobile experience that was consistent with the website. Having netted over 100,000 downloads in just a month, catapulting it to the top spot in Mexican travel apps, our next opportunity was to streamline its digital booking process—a process that entails external transactional platforms in addition to just those owned by the brand.

This works well for some brands, but those who strive for a more consistent user experience can take a more holistic approach from the start: one can easily imagine all the various ways that platforms and channels tie together and feed into one another. Optimizing an offline call center can inform chatbot development, which in turn contributes to a digital messaging or social strategy, which can tie to creative content and so on.

As part of an ongoing digital transformation engagement with Club Premier, we put together an attractive app that helps customers take care of all their spending needs, enhanced with personalized content to improve the user experience. The result is a modernized experience that aligns Club Premier’s loyalty spending program with other apps users are seamlessly using daily. Through the app’s success, we’ve gone back to the drawing board with Club Premier to collaboratively build a sustained, ongoing digital transformation process that can spread across their entire ecosystem.

Recognizing the integrated nature of platforms and the dynamic user journeys across them return us to the earlier point that digital transformation cannot be treated as a project with an endpoint, but is rather a permanent progression in which organizations must open themselves up to new ways of thinking. This makes long-term partner relationships ideal for digital transformation. One example of what this looks like is the shared risk revenue model in which both parties have shared skin in the game: a dedicated team that lives and dies on their client’s success. “Digital transformation is a service where we are coupled with you and go hand-in-hand,” says Rivera. “We want to be there along the way.” Wherever the path to digital transformation takes you, remember: it’s all about the journey, not the destination.

This week saw the 4A’s CreateTech conference in New York City for a rousing exchange of ideas from creative technologists and leaders in advertising. Focused on technology’s power to provide new forms of storytelling and engagement, this year’s event was focused on the new “Innovation Imperative,” a sink-or-swim feeling faced by organizations who find themselves anxious about identifying the next big thing—or struggling to catch up to the last one.

The conference had a sense of urgency about it, but not without excitement, too. Its prevailing theme was to look past preconceived notions of what’s possible and to view challenges as new opportunities. A shortlist of concerns: What if artificial intelligence threatens my job security? How can my organization reach audiences on cutting-edge channels? How do we anticipate the fabled Next Big Thing?

Attendees didn’t have to wait very long for a solution to these questions. In her opening remarks, 4A’s President and CEO Marla Kaplowitz presented an edict in response to technology’s encroachment into the creative process: “We must all become creative technologists, at every level of the organization.” Easier said than done, perhaps, though with so many bright minds in a room together, plans of action were sure to emerge.

Eschew Fear for Fun

Our very own Sam Snider-Held, VR/AR Creative Technologist at MediaMonks NY, uses the term “techno-wizard” to describe the work that he does: “It’s like being a wizard, but instead of using magical stones and spell books, my tools are VR, AR, programming and machine learning.” In his playful talk “Becoming a Techno-Wizard,” Snider-Held expressed how a personal, creative goal can propel anyone “through learning all the hard, technical stuff” in their way. In essence, creative technologists should have fun.

For Snider-Held, that goal is “technologically-driven lucid dreaming,” or translating environments from imagination to virtual space with as little friction as possible using machine learning. This nod to imagination and play highlights how ingenuity shouldn’t be lost in working with tech. In fact, at a later CreateTech panel on artificial intelligence, event emcee Charlie Oliver and CEO of Tech2025 mused how “Something that’s missing in AI is ‘charm.’” Basically, she says, technology’s status as a black box sometimes leads to a sense of unease for creatives and marketers who don’t yet understand it.

But this anxiety about the changing tech landscape is exactly why Snider-Held suggests everyone empower themselves to leverage for their own goals. “AI isn’t going to take my job,” he says. “Instead, it’s allowing me to spend more time to make cool things rather than do detail-oriented, repetitive work.”

Become a Techno-Wizard

Snider-Held may be right that the closest thing we have to magic is technology, but how does a techno-muggle become a techno-wizard? The answer lies in committing to a constant willingness to learn and expand your (or your team’s) skillset bit-by-bit through an iterative process.

The industry tends to think of innovation and “the next big thing” as a monolith—a disrupting force that must be unlocked. But this view obscures all the little things that made it possible to arrive at the big thing. In his opening keynote at CreateTech, Dr. Kumar Mehta offered a tongue-twisting shift of perspective: “The thing behind the next big thing might be ‘the thing.’” He gave the example of how the invention of the wheel is seen as remarkable, “but what gave it value was the axle, which attached it to a movable platform.” Innovation, then, is an iterative process where one thing leads to another—the big thing is an aggregate of little things. Those who really want to lead in “innovation” must first and foremost treat it as a learning process where experimentation can eventually lead to value.

This way of thinking provides a more approachable framework for adapting to trends: start somewhere small and work up from there. Snider-Held walked the audience through his iterative process of creating a simple tool that performs complex world-building tasks in virtual reality. With just a few gestures, the tool lets you place AI-designed, animated three-dimensional assets within the space.

Just a small experiment born out of curiosity—“What if I could use machine learning to place assets in a virtual environment?”—snowballed into something bigger, resulting in a tool that could help Snider-Held and colleagues design much faster. But the experiment isn’t the only thing that transformed: so did Snider-Held. “I started off being the AR and VR guy on the team,” he told the audience, “but now I’m the AR, VR and machine learning guy.” He also mentioned how such experiments can result in ready-made prototypes that can serve as tangible solutions to new problems, showing how the techno-wizard mindset is as useful to entire organizations as it is for inspired individuals.

In summary, “Don’t wait for opportunities,” says Snider-Held, which really speaks to the over-arching theme of the event. Organizations shouldn’t wait for a big change but continually seek out new ways of doing things. Through this, both organizations and individuals can enjoy a new sense of confidence and enthusiasm to tackling the latest trend challenges.

The Consumer Electronics Show, or CES for short, is one of the world’s greatest celebrations of advancement in consumer technologies. Running throughout the week in Las Vegas, both the biggest players in tech and new startups alike have descended upon the conference to discuss and show off some of the biggest breakthroughs in tech throughout the past year.

While new tech is always exciting, each year presents its own challenge in separating hyped-up optimism from reliable use cases. But this time around, it seems that some technologies have graduated past the hype curve and are settling into proven, worthwhile use cases. Here are some of our highlights from CES 2019.

Reality is shifting. Dive deeper into the promise of AR.

The Family Came Together

To kick off the conference, the faces of S4 Capital shared the stage for a panel session on the first day of the show. Sir Martin Sorrell was joined by Wesley ter Haar of MediaMonks and Peter Kim of MightyHive, bringing the whole S4 family together to discuss the ever-evolving landscape of storytelling in the digital age. The three discussed some of the biggest challenges for organizations, mainly the need for always-on creative and personalization as well as control of data required to deliver on those creative opportunities. On that latter point, Kim offered a solution.

“Fragmentation is the enemy of speed,” he said, “and we see the opportunity to unite the creative and media function in a way that hasn’t been done for decades.” It’s clear that it’s time to tear down the walls that lock away the data needed to provide a better experience to users and help brands in their media buys. And speaking to that need for personalizes data at a faster output, Sir Martin Sorrell identified the platform that will have perhaps the biggest impact in the next five years: voice.

Everything’s Getting a Voice

Just how important is voice, anyway? Take a look at the CES show floor and the answer is obvious: extremely. In the past year, Amazon has made a point to introduce its Alexa assistant to seemingly any and every device and appliance in the home. Kohler showed off its Alexa-controlled Numi toilet, which allows users to heat the seat, control lights or play ambient sounds via voice. If that signals anything, it’s that no space is off-limits.

Now Google, who has given its Google Assistant a heavy presence at this year’s show, is following Amazon’s example in unveiling its Google Assistant Connect platform. The tool enables developers to integrate the assistant into their own devices more easily, allowing for an entire home ecosystem of Assistant-enabled devices and inviting entirely new user contexts into the home.

Voice-enabled interfaces are “turning homes into the new frontier for business,” according to MediaMonks Innovation Director Geert Eichhorn. While AI has been ubiquitous in our lives for some time—controlling air traffic, recommending movies based on our view history and more—it’s this new humanization of AI that’s helping brands get their foot through users’ front doors.

AR and VR Continue to Show Promise

Voice isn’t the only hot interface at this year’s show. AR and VR also made an exciting splash—for example, HTC’s announcement of the Vive Cosmos, a virtual reality headset that promises to pair not just with PC’s but also smartphones as well, letting users take it on the go

At a panel titled “The Augmented Reality Experience,” Managing Director at MediaMonks LA Olivier Koelemij offered a few key insights and takeaways about AR for brands who want to take advantage of the tech, but don’t know where to begin. First, “Mildly branded, shareable filters like you see on Facebook and Snapchat have been really positive examples for the new types of advertising enabled by AR.” But most exciting to him were platforms like Google Playground, which enables users to create shareable AR content directly in their smartphone’s camera, opening up new types of interactions for users.

Whether your experience is the right fit for virtual reality, augmented reality or mixed reality depends on what you’re trying to achieve: AR selfie filters are great for letting users express themselves, though it can be a powerful tool for showing off how a product fits into users’ lives (for example, previewing how furniture looks in the home). VR, meanwhile, provides a great environment for storytelling and building empathy.

And that’s a wrap! CES never fails to disappoint, and there’s plenty to look forward to in the next year. While creative ideas like roll-up displays and flying cars take the imagination for a wild ride, the real theme of this year’s CES is the data that, when used effectively, lets organizations develop content and experiences in demand by their audience. We’re excited to watch—and continue to participate in—the industry’s evolving trajectory.

With omnipresent technology on the horizon, are we headed toward a cyberpunk dystopia?

That was the big question MediaMonks posed to the audience at its Fast Co. Fast Track session, offering attendees food for thought to mull over with drinks. Rejecting a future in which pop-ups and banner ads vie for our attention literally everywhere we look, speakers Eric Wagliardo and Jouke Vuurmans offered a more optimistic view. By using emerging technology like VR, AR and artificial intelligence to delight audiences, Wagliardo told the audience, “we can use creativity unconstrained by the past and the laws of physics.”

The theme of the talk anticipates a near-future in which wearables or ubiquitous AR will revolutionize the way we interact with media and technology, just like how the iPhone ushered in the era of smartphones. As these technologies become more consumer-friendly, brands might be biting their nails wondering if they’re ready for the new digital landscape. Are you?

The focus of your VR or AR experience doesn’t have to be grand to be impressive.

One of the more compelling details from the talk was about a humble plank of wood used in the Jack Ryan Experience, a 60,000 square-foot activation that pulled together some of the most cutting-edge VR technology to provide a 4D, immersive experience. Through a VR headset, the plank transformed into a startling chasm for participants to cross in virtual reality. That such a basic material in reality could become an intimidating environment to traverse demonstrates the power to create compelling experiences from just a simple object. With so many elements and gorgeous tech to compete with, who would expect a plank of wood to steal the show?

VR can be tricky, though: without a proper “hero device” like the iPod or iPhone to put the tech in almost everyone’s pockets, VR experiences must often be tethered to a specific environment for participants to don a headset and enter your world. This can be a big investment in terms of reserving a space as well as providing a rig to host the experience, though it’s well worth it if you’re hosted within a venue that allows you to reach your audience in a meaningful way. For some brands, a simpler solution might be to create an AR experience that participants may enjoy via nearly any mobile device.

Another benefit to AR is that it can enable a charming connection with objects or pre-existing campaigns that wasn’t possible before. One of the demos featured at the Fast Track event invited attendees to scan an ad for Kiwi shoe polish featuring a Van Gogh self-portrait, which prompted the artist to leap from the poster, ready to try on several pairs of shoes with the user.

The AR app was a remix of an award-winning Ogilvy campaign that “completed” various famous portraits by adding views of the subjects’ shoes. Partnering with Ogilvy and Google, MediaMonks was able to bring the Van Gogh portrait to life by stepping into the real world and responding to different shoe styles with animations and props. The experience of helping the famous artist try on shoes is humorous and helps the user relate to an esoteric character they certainly recognize, but may not have previously understood.

AR and VR are more consumer-friendly each day, offering several ways for you to reach them with ease.

 A large-scale project with emerging tech can be intimidating. While it can be difficult to identify where to begin planning bigger projects, there are several levels of engagement to design for in VR and AR, allowing brands who want to dive into emerging tech to start small and provide increasingly immersive experiences from there. One way to provide an engaging experience is to focus on one simple, primary mode of interaction. For example, the Kiwi case demoed at the Fast Track event required only a poster and a mobile device to render the character on the screen, along with some options for interacting with that character. This simple template could be useful for brands new to the emerging tech space, who also want to provide engaging, emotional experiences.

Seeing is believing.

And just like how the app brings the print ad featuring Van Gogh to life, you can use your app to remix existing assets from current or past campaigns, thereby boosting their ROI—not bad for a budget-strapped brand who wants to dive in on AR.

If a business has a little bit of extra room in their budget, they can elevate the same experience detailed above by staging it in an appealing way. While the primary mode of interaction might be to bring a character, object or other experience into the real world via AR, offering a set for participants to play with the experience can further immerse them. In the case of the Kiwi app, MediaMonks constructed a tiny room at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity decorated to look like a city street you might find in a Van Gogh portrait, allowing participants to step into the artist’s world (without the need for a VR rig and other expensive tech).

If one theme is clear across the Innovation Festival, it’s that the quickening pace of new media and platforms are challenging brands to think outside the box in providing new, experiences to enchant and inform their audiences. We were happy to allow guests into the hallowed chambers of the MediaMonks monastery to impart a secret or two about our process. But can the students surpass the master? We look forward to seeing what you create!

Today’s consumers demand relevant, personalized content and instantaneous access to information at all hours of the day. With closer access to brands through social and messaging channels, chatbots have proven to be an effective way for organizations to strike a deeper connection with users, whether they be consumers or employees.

There are several different use cases for a chatbot; it can help you provide always-on customer service, provide personalized content to users in regular intervals, help your organization proactively screen job applicants and do much more. In essence, the main benefit that chatbots provide is the automation of routine, repetitive and simple tasks to make processes more efficient. They’re also an excellent source of user behavioral data, including finding patterns in terms used, most popular queries, user demographics and more. All these benefits help brands maintain a more direct, constant connection with consumers—if they’re designed with some key considerations in mind.

Before Building, Balance Benefits and Demand

Unlike a human, a chatbot is available at a moment’s notice, 24/7. Think of bots as modern, more interactive and relevant FAQ lists at its simplest level, but be aware that they are capable of doing much more, like engaging with users based on their surroundings. Whether it be providing entertainment or self-service troubleshooting, chatbots allow brands to provide services without the need for human intervention (though in some cases a human takeover is recommended, like solving more complex tasks or providing support in emotionally charged scenarios).

That said, chatbots aren’t the right fit for everyone. Before you invest in building one for your brand, consider your target demographic and the value you wish for the bot to provide. A lack of desire for automation can cause frustration for users who must use a chatbot. There may also be a learning curve to adapt to a new technology depending on your demographic, which can lead to more problems than solutions overall. A good method for determining whether a chatbot is right for your organization is to weigh the potential benefits with user desire or demand.

Know How to Set the Tone

A chatbot serves as a notable channel for representing a brand voice. Far from a frivolous thing, an attractive voice and personality can be incredibly beneficial for brands. Microsoft’s Xiaoice chatbot, for example, employs advanced emotional intelligence to carry humanlike, nuanced conversations with users. With the persona of a teenage girl, the AI is so popular in China that she has achieved celebrity status, according to Microsoft.

But Xiaoice is just one fraction of a larger AI framework, and her underlying mechanisms power branded, third-party characters as well. So, what’s the value in these bots’ trademark small talk and chit-chat that has made them so popular with Eastern users—and what does it mean for chatbots that are designed to accomplish a specific task or organizational goal? The value lies in providing social capital by keeping users engaged, allowing for deeper emotional connections.

Given the power of a good voice, brands interested in the technology should consider the tone of voice and identity that fits their brand. While a consumer-facing bot has the freedom and flexibility to speak in a more casual tone, one that’s intended for employee use should take on a more professional persona. Will your bot speak to users in gifs? Will it offer emoji-based button responses? Is it lazy, or energetic? These are some questions you can ask to envision the personality your bot can take. Have fun with it!

Earn Users’ Trust

Chatbots are excellent at providing relevancy and personalization in their messaging to users—and they accomplish that by leveraging data gathered across the course of conversation or even through external sources (more on that below). For users to feel comfortable sharing their data with organizations, the value that data provides must be clear.  Chatbots are ideal for this because they can walk users through an onboarding process that asks permissions for data, clearly explaining why it’s necessary at each step.

As users interact with a chatbot, they get instant feedback about how that data informs the user experience. For example, a bot with knowledge of a user’s home and work addresses can prove lifesaving for finding one’s way at rush hour when transit services change. While users might find most data collection and practices to be esoteric and opaque, the question-and-answer approach (not to mention the personality) of chatbots makes this process more transparent. And once that data is in their hands, organizations can also use it to discover new trends or forecast emerging user needs, thereby improving the experience even more.

Architecture and Maintenance

Speaking of data collection, an effective chatbot requires an architecture that plugs into one or several data sources. This might include data you already have about the user (for example, a retailer pulling from a user’s purchasing history), knowledge bases that troubleshoot common questions, partner data or other sources. Whatever data sources you pull from, you must ensure your chatbot’s architecture supports it—and be prepared to add more if and when it becomes necessary. When in doubt, consider partnering with a developer who can audit your data sources and build an architecture equipped to plug into these forms of data.

On that note, to develop a chatbot is to commit to the long haul: it’s important to iterate and optimize the bot for a better user experience based on the feedback collected, whether it be explicit comments from users or implicit usage data. One major example of this is expanding your market and localizing chatbot content to match. Brands must be sure they’re ready to scale up the growing capabilities of a chatbot to accommodate emerging user behaviors—though if they don’t have the resources, a creative partner experienced in tooling assets at scale for a global audience can be of help.

A chatbot can make for a valuable service to your audience, whether its focus is on consumers or employees. But conversation is an artform, and just like any artist, you need a vision and tools in place to deliver the experience you seek for your users. Having established that, your brand is ready to say “Hello” to deeper, closer relationships with your audience.