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.

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

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.