Even as we move clos­er to a future with smart roads, cities, and theme parks, there are some cus­tomer expe­ri­ences – like dri­ve-throughs, in-store retail and buy­ing a car – that remain pre­dom­i­nant­ly ana­log. Sev­er­al brands – includ­ing McDon­ald’s, Ford, and Adobe – recent­ly shared details on how they are dig­i­tiz­ing ana­log expe­ri­ences.

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These ana­log-turned-dig­i­tal moments pro­vide a bet­ter cus­tomer expe­ri­ence by remov­ing the poten­tial for fric­tion and by per­son­al­iz­ing inter­ac­tions, and show how easy pick­ing up a cof­fee, a bike hel­met, or a lux­u­ry sedan might be in the not-so-dis­tant future.

Here’s a clos­er look at what these brands have in the works.

Restaurants

McDonald’s is on a jour­ney of “com­plete trans­for­ma­tion,” accord­ing to Deb­o­rah Wahl, senior vice pres­i­dent and CMO of McDonald’s USA. All aspects of the brand must change, start­ing with food and the addi­tion of antibi­ot­ic-free chick­en and kale – not to men­tion all-day break­fast, which she said helped push McDonald’s to its high­est Q4 income ever.

But with 26 mil­lion dai­ly cus­tomers in the U.S. alone, dri­ving change across the orga­ni­za­tion is no easy task. Per Wahl, the brand’s core tenets are qual­i­ty, ser­vice and con­ve­nience, so McDonald’s must deliv­er on those expec­ta­tions in a con­sis­tent man­ner, while nev­er­the­less sur­pris­ing and delight­ing its con­sumers. That means focus­ing on tim­ing and bal­ance.

“In dig­i­tal, there are a lot of shiny toys,” she said. “We were the first to jump into mobile pay because we saw where that went and that was good… Peo­ple look at brands and say they’re behind, but it’s what can you do first – what’s the biggest cus­tomer need? Let’s solve that and then do all the oth­er things, but at the right time and moment. That takes a lot of dis­ci­pline because there’s lots of new stuff.”

Those shiny new toys for McDonald’s include an app with more than 10 mil­lion down­loads and self-ser­vice kiosks in 1,000 loca­tions, as well as a VR exper­i­ment with Hap­py Meals in Swe­den and an inte­gra­tion with Ford­Pass in the U.S.

Ford described Ford­Pass as a plat­form that “reimag­ines the rela­tion­ship between automak­er and con­sumer.” It includes a so-called mobil­i­ty mar­ket­place – Ford­Pass Mar­ket­place – which includes vehi­cle con­trols and smart park­ing reser­va­tions, as well as “mobil­i­ty expe­ri­ence cen­ters” called Ford­Hubs, one-on-one help via FordGuides and Ford­Pass Perks, or “rewards that will make your jour­ney enjoy­able.”

The McDonald’s inte­gra­tion falls under the lat­ter. Addi­tion­al Ford­Pass Perks part­ners include 7‑Eleven. Ford says these inte­gra­tions allow the brand to “rec­og­nize mem­bers with access to mer­chan­dise and unique expe­ri­ences.”

It’s unclear how exact­ly these brands will exe­cute the afore­men­tioned access to mer­chan­dise. How­ev­er, it’s pos­si­ble this could include, say, the abil­i­ty to order food.

This isn’t wild spec­u­la­tion. If it doesn’t come from McDonald’s and/or Ford, it may very well be made real­i­ty from brands like Tes­la and/or Dunkin’ Donuts, which had a proof-of-con­cept demon­stra­tion at Adobe Sum­mit.

In fact, David Nueschel­er, an Adobe fel­low and the vice pres­i­dent of enter­prise tech­nol­o­gy, said, “There’s no such thing as an ana­log expe­ri­ence any­more. Even the poster has been dig­i­tized.”

Like McDonald’s self-serve kiosks, Nueschel­er demon­strat­ed an intel­li­gent Dunkin’ Donuts kiosk that taps into Adobe’s Mar­ket­ing Cloud to allow cus­tomers to con­fig­ure their cof­fees and teas pre­cise­ly how they want them. In the­o­ry, the kiosk could rec­og­nize con­sumers by their mobile devices and fea­ture per­son­al­ized con­tent when those con­sumers enter a Dunkin’ Donuts loca­tion, and even allow these cus­tomers to eas­i­ly order their favorite drinks sim­ply by tap­ping their phones on the kiosk.

“It’s the mag­ic you need to make your­self homoge­nous,” Nueschel­er said.

That mag­ic extends to the dri­ve-through.

Call­ing a car the “ulti­mate mobile device” and “the old­est mem­ber of the Inter­net of Things,” Nueschel­er said, “The dri­ve-through hasn’t evolved since the ’50s. We want to change that.”

That means a bold new future in which cus­tomers can place dri­ve-through orders via touch­screens in their cars, which, again, like the McDonald’s self-ser­vice kiosks above, con­firm order details to avoid mis­takes and enable easy mobile pay­ments.

Retail

While online shop­ping cer­tain­ly has many ben­e­fits attrac­tive to con­sumers, there may soon be ways for retail­ers to dig­i­tize their in-store expe­ri­ences beyond bea­cons and push noti­fi­ca­tions.

For his part, Marc Eaman, Adobe’s direc­tor of Mar­ket­ing Cloud tech­ni­cal mar­ket­ing, illus­trat­ed the exam­ple of how tech­nol­o­gy can trans­form the hereto­fore ana­log process of buy­ing a bike hel­met from a phys­i­cal store.

In anoth­er proof-of-con­cept demon­stra­tion, he used Google to search for “bike hel­met” on his phone and saw an ad from out­door retail­er REI, which took him to REI’s mobile site, which invit­ed him to install the REI app. From there, Eaman was able to access REI’s hel­met selec­tion and was then asked to log in to the app to pur­chase the hel­met he want­ed.

How­ev­er, when log­ging in, he received a push noti­fi­ca­tion that there was an REI loca­tion near­by and the app asked if he want­ed to open Maps for direc­tions. When he arrived at the store, he received not only a wel­come mes­sage from REI, but also an invi­ta­tion to try out the brand’s Smart Bag expe­ri­ence that com­bines bea­cons, Blue­tooth, and RFID tech­nol­o­gy to pro­vide a bet­ter shop­ping expe­ri­ence.

The REI app can be con­nect­ed to the Smart Bag sim­ply by tap­ping it and, from there, Eaman placed the hel­met in the bag and, once he left the store, the Smart Bag under­stood he had left the premis­es and charged his account for the item with­in.

“This is re-envi­sion­ing the shop­per journey…for an immer­sive retail expe­ri­ence,” Eaman said. “And it’s an expe­ri­ence that has delight­ed me in the dig­i­tal and phys­i­cal world.”

Car Dealerships

Anoth­er tra­di­tion­al­ly ana­log expe­ri­ence: Buy­ing a car. Because in part cus­tomers don’t go to show­rooms as fre­quent­ly as they did 10 years ago, Mer­cedes-Benz has been work­ing to evolve not only its deal­er­ships, but also its mes­sag­ing, said Natanael Sijan­ta, direc­tor of mar­ket­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions at Mer­cedes-Benz.

“In the ‘80s, it was easy. Cus­tomers came in and you sold them a car. You did not have to do much,” Sijan­ta said. “We’ve had to change the per­cep­tion of every employ­ee and the mind­set of employ­ees to a seam­less brand expe­ri­ence.”

How­ev­er, he also not­ed that even in a dig­i­tal world, there still has to be some kind of phys­i­cal han­dover of the car at some point and cars will return when they need ser­vice, so he thinks deal­er­ships will not dis­ap­pear com­plete­ly – but their per­cep­tion will change. This deal­er­ship evo­lu­tion includes rethink­ing cus­tomer touch­points.

“We have to go where our cus­tomers are, like with pop-up stores or rad­i­cal­ly rethink­ing what we do in terms of spon­sor­ship or any oth­er activ­i­ty,” Sijan­ta said.

Those activ­i­ties include fash­ion shows, like its spon­sor­ship of Fash­ion Week in New York, Berlin, Aus­tralia, Istan­bul, and Mia­mi, and relat­ed con­tent, like its Obses­sion with an Icon video, which Sijan­ta said tries to approach fash­ion com­mu­ni­ca­tion in a way the com­mu­ni­ty likes, but that also includes Mer­cedes’ val­ues and insights.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=GIO8cpiEG0U

“The prod­uct is our ecosys­tem,” Sijan­ta said. “We have to become a con­stant ele­ment in [our] cus­tomers’ [lives]. It’s not just dri­ving to work and home or to the gym. We have to become part of our cus­tomers’ lifestyle.” Mer­cedes taps into that lifestyle through rel­e­vance,

“The prod­uct is our ecosys­tem,” Sijan­ta said. “We have to become a con­stant ele­ment in [our] cus­tomers’ [lives]. It’s not just dri­ving to work and home or to the gym. We have to become part of our cus­tomers’ lifestyle.”

Mer­cedes taps into that lifestyle through rel­e­vance, emo­tion, and exclu­siv­i­ty, deliv­er­ing con­tent like behind-the-scenes livestreams from auto shows.

“Peo­ple feel respect­ed because they get to see behind the scenes,” Sijan­ta said. “You have to find intel­li­gent ways to talk to cus­tomers.”

In addi­tion to mes­sag­ing, Mer­cedes has rev­o­lu­tion­ized its over­all brand expe­ri­ence with the addi­tion of fea­tures like its Mer­cedes me por­tal, which gives own­ers access to ser­vices, prod­ucts and “lifestyle offers” from Mer­cedes, its par­ent Daim­ler and their part­ners in what Sijan­ta described as “a per­son­al­ized ecosys­tem.” Along with the por­tal has come a

Along with the por­tal has come a Mer­cedes me store in Ham­burg, which the brand says “revolves around just one thing: you.”

Each month, Mer­cedes says its Mer­cedes me store will focus on “a new, inter­est­ing theme,” as well as “unique events, thrilling sto­ries and very spe­cial peo­ple” because “everything’s pos­si­ble at the Mer­cedes me store: fash­ion show, art exhi­bi­tion or music event, a lat­te mac­chi­a­to with a view over the Inner Alster Lake or an oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­fig­ure your Mer­cedes.”

Along with Mer­cedes me has come a sec­ond screen real-time rac­ing expe­ri­ence, My Race Hub.

“This is only avail­able to our dri­vers with our cars,” Sijan­ta said. “It’s one-of-a-kind con­tent rel­e­vant to them, exclu­sive and emo­tion­al.”

These efforts have helped con­nect Mer­cedes to con­sumers out­side of deal­er­ships, but fur­ther change is afoot.

“Young cus­tomers don’t think about own­ing a car,” Sijan­ta said. “They just want to get from A to B.”

As a result, Mer­cedes is also rethink­ing its busi­ness mod­el to adjust to the lifestyles of these future cus­tomers. And that means Mer­cedes is look­ing into short-term rentals and pay-per-use options and has acquired some star­tups as a result, Sijan­ta added.

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What dig­i­tized ana­log expe­ri­ence are you most eager to see in real-life exe­cu­tions? Why?