The Future of Experience: New Rules of Engagement

I am delight­ed to announce that, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Gold­smiths Uni­ver­si­ty, we have launched ‘The Future of Expe­ri­ence’ report look­ing at the poten­tial impact of emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies on expe­ri­ences both on and offline.

Over the last ten years, mar­ket­ing has trans­formed. Dig­i­tal has well and tru­ly changed the game when it comes to how we reach and engage with our cus­tomers, we’ve gone from mar­ket­ing to audi­ence seg­ments to mar­ket­ing to an audi­ence of one, from large for­mats to 4 inch screens (now even watch size screens), and from work­ing days to 24/7/365 marketing.

It’s true that we are spoilt for choice in terms of the ways we can reach our audi­ences, but tech­nol­o­gy has also meant that con­sumers have the pow­er to choose who they’ll let into their lives. This means that only brands with the best expe­ri­ences will prevail.

So, what con­sti­tutes a great expe­ri­ence? It’s one that is mean­ing­ful, per­son­al, con­sis­tent and cre­ates a deep con­nec­tion. But it’s also about excite­ment, sur­prise and delight. Giv­en the cur­rent hype around emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies such as vir­tu­al real­i­ty and robots, we want­ed to find out how these new tools and tech­niques could help brands deliv­er even bet­ter expe­ri­ences. We looked at how are they being used right now and what their poten­tial is. We asked what the new con­sid­er­a­tions are giv­en the much more per­son­al and immer­sive nature of many of these technologies.

And what we found was enor­mous poten­tial, and new rules of engage­ment. We test­ed vir­tu­al real­i­ty (VR), aug­ment­ed real­i­ty (AR), arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI), wear­ables and Inter­net of Things (IoT) appli­ca­tions in a num­ber of work­shops. We inter­viewed tech­nol­o­gy experts and car­ried out a nation­al sur­vey of 2,000 people.

From our study, we found five key areas that brands need to consider:

• Empa­thy – the tech­nol­o­gy allows you to cre­ate incred­i­bly mean­ing­ful and excit­ing expe­ri­ences which can have pro­found effects on phys­i­cal and men­tal states, because of this brands need to prac­tice extreme empathy
• Serendip­i­ty – over per­son­al­i­sa­tion can be pre­dictable and peo­ple want to be able to dis­cov­er new things or be intro­duced to the unex­pect­ed. Tech­nol­o­gy should always enhance and not replace human actions
• Pri­va­cy – but not as you know it. New tech­nolo­gies allow con­sumers to cre­ate their own pri­vate dig­i­tal world, where they con­trol the brands that do and don’t enter into a dia­logue with them based on the qual­i­ty of the expe­ri­ence offered
• Reci­procity –our rela­tion­ship with tech­nol­o­gy is set to rad­i­cal­ly change as we start to learn from, and teach machines. But expe­ri­ences need to be help­ful, prac­ti­cal, per­son­al and pro­gres­sive to encour­age repeat use
• Adapt­abil­i­ty – siloes are the ene­mies of expe­ri­ences. To make this tech­nol­o­gy tru­ly work to cre­ate great expe­ri­ences, busi­ness must break down organ­i­sa­tion­al siloes to pro­vide seam­less service.

Here at Adobe, we’re in the busi­ness of help­ing cus­tomers cre­ate beau­ti­ful expe­ri­ences and then mea­sure the impact of those expe­ri­ences. We hope that this report will inspire you to embrace new tech­nolo­gies and be bold and even more cre­ative in your approach to cus­tomer experience.

Click the image below for the full report:

https://blogs.adobe.com/digitaleurope/files/2016/07/Adobe-Report-The-Future-of-Experience.pdf