We
live in a world in which culture moves at the speed of technology. Each big
advancement – the internet, search, mobile, wifi – has liberated us
from what had been holding us back.
CES
offers marketers a time to sift through the noise and find the signals pointing to how
people are feeling and how behavior may change in the near future.
So
how are we feeling? Well, it appears we’re more than a tad mistrustful.
The
optimism of tech is being overshadowed by its darker side – an increasingly
complex algorithm that divides and perpetuates bias; social platforms that
allow falsehoods to pose as truth; screens that foster an aversion to making
actual human contact.
We don't need to attend CES to know this. What
I did take away from CES is that our mistrust extends beyond tech to the world
around us. Ironically, we're turning to tech to protect us from the ills we sense
in society.
The
home and health categories, in particular, conveyed interesting signals about how
people are feeling as seen through the lens of a range of consumer segments and
brands.
If
I were to write the movie trailer for CES, it might read like this: “In
a world that feels dangerous, dirty and difficult, a world in which people no
longer trust institutions to solve problems, heroes are taking charge to make
their world better.”
Here
are three signals I observed:
The
world feels dangerous, but my home is my personal fortress.
We've all heard the old saying that "my home is my castle." Tech brands are helping us create crocodile-filled moats around our castles. There are more and more “smart locks”, all following the path paved by Ring, featuring key codes, security cameras that can be accessed on our phone, even fingerprint readers.
Tech
is also protecting us from “porch pirates.” The Danby Parcel Guard is package
locker for our front door, enabling FedEx to place the package in a box that
can only be accessed by the homeowner with a personal security code.
Our
anxiety around personal safety extends beyond home intrusion and theft. Climate
change is is hitting closer and closer to home, with near constant news footage
of flooding, hurricane force winds, and fires. Woodside Homes
showcased new houses that can better withstand natural disasters through new
building techniques and materials.
A
very real anxiety is increasingly felt by an aging population that is
confronting the perils of getting old while living alone at home. AddisonCare is a virtual caregiver that monitors
activity in the home, medication intake, reads biometrics to create a
“safe-health” home. Welt introduced a smart-belt that
can anticipate and help prevent falls among older adults.
The
world is polluted and dirty, but my home is my personal clean-room.
Clean-tech
was everywhere. In-home air purification was a major theme, ranging from
wearable air purifiers to a lamp that purifies air in the home.
BreezoMeter provides
personalized, hyper-local air quality assessments to give people information to
make better decisions about going outside and reducing exposure to polluted
air.
Technology
is also rescuing us from the bacteria lurking on the many things we touch
throughout the day. HomeSoap is a very
stylish box that uses UV-C light to disinfect kids toys, TV remotes,
etc. Another of their products, PhoneSoap, is a 10-minute phone charging
box that also uses UV-C to disinfect the item we touch most during the
day.
Life
feels difficult and time-starved, but the world inside my home is easy.
Most
of us have experienced how voice assistants make the complex feel
effortless. This same effortless living is being enabled by a wide range
of technologies. For example, ViaRoom uses AI to
learn behaviors and automate the home environment, including appliances,
climate, shades and lights.
Looking
well beyond web-connected kitchen appliances, Samsung is designing kitchen
counters with robotic arms to help chop and prep, and also applying AI to help
plan meals and monitor nutrition.
Activities
that require us to spend time driving somewhere else, e.g., visiting a doctor,
can be done on our schedule from home. EyeQue provides
vision exams through your smartphone. MedWand enables your
doctor to provide physical examinations over the internet.
And
in the battle against a stressful world, restorative sleep seems to be our new
weapon of choice. Sleep-tech had a
huge presence at CES. Philips showed a
deep-sleep headband. Sleepace can measure our heart
rate, breathing, movement, and ratios of light vs deep sleep to optimize sleep
through lighting, smart beds, etc. All of this follows in the footsteps of
Sleep Number.
So what should a marketer do?
Research has been showing a growing mistrust of many institutions,
including government, tech companies, social media and some forms of organized
religion. This was on full display at CES.
But we also saw a way forward.
Companies can earn trust through genuine empathy backed by real
solutions – human-centered products and services that empower people to take
matters into their own hands to create a safer, cleaner and easier world for
themselves and the people they care about.