3 Smart IoT Marketing Examples You Can Learn From

The Inter­net of Things is help­ing brands gath­er more data, reach more con­sumers at more moments, and enhance the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence.

Lisa Lacy By Lisa Lacy. Join the discussion » 0 comments

Increased adop­tion of smart tech­nol­o­gy in venues like high­ways, cities, and theme parks doesn’t just gen­er­ate data, moments, and expe­ri­ences – it also has pro­found impli­ca­tions for mar­keters.

Look no fur­ther than brands like Kodak, Block­buster, Walk­man, Bor­ders, and Black­ber­ry. These brands are just five exam­ples of titans of indus­try that failed to adapt as new tech­nol­o­gy was intro­duced and/or as con­sumer pref­er­ences changed, said Travis Sabin, prod­uct man­ag­er for mobile app ana­lyt­ics at Adobe, who spoke recent­ly at Adobe Sum­mit. Brands that want to avoid sim­i­lar fates need to adapt to new tech­nol­o­gy – like the Inter­net of Things, or IoT – to avoid dis­rup­tion.

The Only Constant…

But this is per­haps eas­i­er said than done as the only con­stant is change in tech­nol­o­gy. In fact, one-time state-of-the-art wear­ables like Apple Watch, Fit­bit and Nike Fuel­Band are becom­ing increas­ing­ly com­mon, along with the smart ther­mo­stat Nest and Amazon’s voice com­mand device Echo, as well as devices like Progressive’s Snap­shot, which mon­i­tors dri­vers’ behav­ior for poten­tial dis­counts, and dig­i­tal media play­er Apple TV. In fact, technophiles can take advan­tage of a mar­ket that now includes:

  • Smart baby mon­i­tors like Mimo, which send infor­ma­tion about babies’ breath­ing, sleep­ing tem­per­a­ture, body posi­tion and activ­i­ty to care­givers’ smart­phones.
  • Smart door­bell cam­eras from Vivint, which show approach­ing vis­i­tors day or night on users’ smart­phones.
  • Smart locks from Kwik­set, which are paired with users’ phones to open and lock doors – even remote­ly.
  • Smart plugs from the likes of Zuli, which allow users to set pref­er­ences for light­ing and tem­per­a­ture, which are adjust­ed when users enter or leave a room, in addi­tion to allow­ing them to con­trol con­nect­ed lights and appli­ances from an app and to mon­i­tor ener­gy con­sump­tion.

But it’s not just whiz-bang stuff that makes our lives eas­i­er. The IoT is a force to be reck­oned with that will dis­rupt every sec­tor – if those sec­tors have not been impact­ed already, Sabin said.

The IoT Market

The IoT is a net­work of con­nect­ed devices that can be mon­i­tored and con­trolled remote­ly, but it’s also the con­sumer expe­ri­ence derived from it, Sabin said. It includes sen­sors, which are used to col­lect data and can be very small and placed vir­tu­al­ly any­where; remotes, which typ­i­cal­ly include smart­phones and tablets, but also desk­tops; servers, which col­lect data; and ana­lyt­ics that tie every­thing togeth­er, process it, visu­al­ize it and help con­sumers – and mar­keters — glean insight. Some pro­jec­tions say there will be 23.3 bil­lion IoT devices by 2019, which is twice as many tablets, smart­phones and PCs today com­bined. In addi­tion, Sabin said $1.7 tril­lion will be added to the glob­al econ­o­my from IoT, with $50 bil­lion com­ing direct­ly from devices. Fur­ther, IoT is grow­ing thanks in part to fac­tors like expand­ed Inter­net con­nec­tiv­i­ty, high adop­tion rates of remotes and the declin­ing costs of sen­sors, as well as myr­i­ad ben­e­fits, like increased con­sumer con­trol and enhanced cus­tomer expe­ri­ences, cost sav­ings as a result of alerts about prob­lems before they become large-scale issues and even dis­as­ter pre­ven­tion capa­bil­i­ties like smart cement that can deter bridge col­laps­es. Even though some con­cerns remain about secu­ri­ty, pri­va­cy, lack of a com­mon set of stan­dards and high imple­men­ta­tion costs, there are some solu­tions in the works. Fur­ther, here are three exam­ples – and ben­e­fits – that demon­strate the advan­tages like­ly out­weigh any remain­ing draw­backs.

1. Smart Highways

Solar Road­ways is a Sand Point, Ida­ho-based com­pa­ny that pro­duces a mod­u­lar sys­tem of spe­cial­ly engi­neered solar pan­els that can be dri­ven upon, which is per­haps most col­or­ful­ly illus­trat­ed in this video.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=qlTA3rnpgzU

The pan­els con­tain LED lights to cre­ate lines and sig­nage with­out paint – which make them easy to adjust to accom­mo­date traf­fic or road­work – as well as heat­ing ele­ments to pre­vent snow and ice accu­mu­la­tion. Plus, the pan­els have micro­proces­sors, which Solar Road­ways says makes them intel­li­gent. “This allows the pan­els to com­mu­ni­cate with each oth­er, a cen­tral con­trol sta­tion and vehi­cles,” the brand says. Solar Road­ways says it is still in the ear­ly phas­es of devel­op­ment. While its pan­els will even­tu­al­ly be avail­able for high­ways, non-crit­i­cal appli­ca­tions like dri­ve­ways and park­ing lots will come first. The brand has com­plet­ed two fund­ing con­tracts with the U.S. Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion and was award­ed a third in Novem­ber. In addi­tion, an Indiegogo cam­paign has helped the brand raise near­ly $2.3 mil­lion. “Our goal is to mod­ern­ize the infra­struc­ture with mod­u­lar, intel­li­gent pan­els, while pro­duc­ing clean renew­able ener­gy for homes and busi­ness­es,” the brand says. “We’ll be able to charge elec­tric vehi­cles with clean ener­gy from the sun, first on our solar park­ing lots and when we have enough high­way infra­struc­ture, while dri­ving.” IoT Mar­ket­ing Insight: Data While wide­spread use is like­ly years away – along with mass adop­tion of self-dri­ving cars – a world in which roads can talk to autonomous vehi­cles with con­sumers with­in clear­ly opens up tremen­dous pos­si­bil­i­ties for brands and mar­keters.

2. Smart Cities

In 2015, Barcelona was named the top smart city in the world by mobile, online and dig­i­tal mar­ket research firm Juniper Research as a result in part of its use of smart grids, smart traf­fic man­age­ment, and smart street light­ing. Per tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny Cis­co, which helped Barcelona launch City Pro­to­col, a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion sys­tem for smart cities, in 2012, Barcelona boasts inno­va­tions like:

  • Smart bus stops with Wi-Fi.
  • Inter­ac­tive maps and real-time arrival times.
  • LED street­lights.
  • Park­ing sen­sors.
  • Garbage can sen­sors.

All of this stream­line waste and light man­age­ment, as well as traf­fic, and makes the city a more liv­able place – and poten­tial­ly a mod­el for oth­er loca­tions.

It’s also some­thing Cis­co says gives Barcelona itself a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage as it is an attrac­tive option as more peo­ple move to cities. Although expen­sive to imple­ment, Barcelona can now derive data – such as stats about the flow of cit­i­zens, pol­lu­tion, and traf­fic – to stream­line city oper­a­tions and gen­er­ate sav­ings. In fact, per Sabin, Barcelona is sav­ing $50 mil­lion a year at its water treat­ment plant alone and is gen­er­at­ing an addi­tion­al $50 mil­lion in rev­enue as a result of its smart ini­tia­tives. IoT Mar­ket­ing Insight: Moments With more con­nec­tions between devices, con­sumers and net­works in smart cities come many more moments for brands to tar­get – and reach – con­sumers.

Smart Theme Parks

Disney MagicBand

Intro­duced in 2013, the Mag­icBand is an all-in-one device that con­nects park vis­i­tors to the choic­es they make with My Dis­ney Expe­ri­ence, its plan­ning por­tal for rides, din­ing, and enter­tain­ment. That includes: park and hotel room entry, the abil­i­ty to buy food and mer­chan­dise, and the abil­i­ty to unlock a few spe­cial sur­pris­es dur­ing your stay. Fur­ther, Dis­ney says once vis­i­tors have linked their Mag­icBands, “Your Mag­icBand and My Dis­ney Expe­ri­ence pro­file will do the rest, cre­at­ing unex­pect­ed Dis­ney moments – just like mag­ic.” In 2015, Walt Dis­ney Com­pa­ny COO Tom Stag­gs told Wired, “If we can get out of the way, our guests can cre­ate more mem­o­ries.” In oth­er words, Mag­icBands help remove pain points so vis­i­tors get to the Dis­ney expe­ri­ence faster – and have bet­ter expe­ri­ences – despite an esti­mat­ed cost of $1 bil­lion to ini­tial­ly deploy. Per Sabin, this enhanced expe­ri­ence includes smart itin­er­aries that opti­mize routes after vis­i­tors pick the things they want to do.

It frees you up to have time to do oth­er things because there’s no wait­ing in line,” Sabin said. In addi­tion, Mag­icBand vis­i­tors don’t have to wor­ry about col­lect­ing lug­gage at the air­port – Dis­ney takes care of it and deliv­ers it to their hotel rooms. Fur­ther, Dis­ney has over­hauled the din­ing expe­ri­ence at its Be Our Guest Restau­rant so that guests with Mag­icBands who place orders ahead of time are greet­ed by name by the host­ess upon arrival as the kitchen begins prepar­ing food. “This is about the expe­ri­en­tial Inter­net,” a for­mer Dis­ney exec­u­tive told Wired. “The guest doesn’t need to know how it hap­pened. It’s about the mag­ic of the food arriv­ing.” But, like the city of Barcelona, Dis­ney now has much more data at its dis­pos­al so it can, for exam­ple, see where there’s too much con­ges­tion in a giv­en park and where it needs to increase staff in order to enhance the guest expe­ri­ence even fur­ther. IoT Mar­ket­ing Insight: Expe­ri­ence The IoT gives brands much more access to con­sumers, which means more data, but it also allows them to fur­ther enhance the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence – and to poten­tial­ly increase brand loy­al­ty.

The 5 Is Of IoT Adoption

For mar­keters look­ing to apply the IoT to their brands, Sabin rec­om­mend­ed what he called the 5 Is:

  • Inter­ac­tions: Look at where con­sumers inter­act with your brand and what inter­ac­tions are part of their nor­mal expe­ri­ences.
  • Irri­tants: Look at your brand’s pain points. For each con­sumer inter­ac­tion, list any poten­tial bar­ri­ers that might exist and detract from the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence.
  • Inputs: Look at where in those inter­ac­tions your brand could incor­po­rate sen­sors and remotes – and which inter­ac­tions pro­vide the most valu­able infor­ma­tion. From there, select the top three to five inter­ac­tions with the most applic­a­bil­i­ty for sen­sors or remotes. Then go ahead and pull the trig­ger in test imple­men­ta­tions.
  • Intel­li­gence: You need teams and tools in place to visu­al­ize and ana­lyze the result­ing data. Iden­ti­fy which teams would be need­ed to sup­port this and any addi­tion­al resources need­ed to be suc­cess­ful.
  • Insights: Look at which appli­ca­tions pro­vide a delta in ROI and val­ue before decid­ing which ones are right to imple­ment for your brand. If it can’t pro­vide insight, it won’t pro­vide val­ue to you.
Lisa Lacy

Written by Lisa Lacy

Lisa is a senior features writer for Inked. She also previously covered digital marketing for Incisive Media. Her background includes editorial positions at Dow Jones, the Financial Times, the Huffington Post, AOL, Amazon, Hearst, Martha Stewart Living and the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.

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