2wowSeeing, feeling, or speaking are the most natural things in the world for us, therefore deploying these behavior patterns for marketing makes total sense.  In fact, today’s voice, eye and gesture controls provide plenty of new opportunities to make marketing ideas motion-ready, as control methods are getting more and more intuitive and adapt to the human behavior.

The smart phone with touch screen has made many new services possible which did not exist on conventional phones a few years ago. Not to mention the power of voice control. But how can marketers make use of these new control methods?

Just look at the pioneers in innovative management methods, such as Intel's Perceptual Computing or gesture control with Microsoft Kinect, and Apple's Siri has become an integral part of the operating system and has revolutionized the use of the iPhone. Google on the other hand is working on a new kind of gesture recognition as well which detects hand and finger movements with a chip that operates through radar. The big advantage is that it works much more precisely, as a radar can detect subtle changes that result from an echo when the hand is moved.

The VR technology is already being embraced by the gaming industry and changes it fundamentally by already using motion tracking à la X-Box Kinect to provide customers with a unique experience.

Brands and marketers can also create this user experience with the new control methods, so the question is why don’t you start making your products and services motion-ready?

MOVE: Gesture control is a hot topic in the smartphone industry, but still in its infancy. In a brand showroom, the customer could deal with the entire product line of a company just by gesture, eye, or voice control. The interaction creates a direct link to the brand and with complementary technologies like Augmented Reality (AR) products could become a digital experience.

LOOK: Face tracking works on desktop devices via browser only when the user installs a plug-in and there is a webcam, on mobile devices eye control currently only works via apps and not via web browsers or websites. So, take advantage of platforms and apps that are already available and popular for marketing activities, such as e.g. Snapchat. You could use, for instance, eye tracking for your web analytics to test the viewing direction of the website visitor and to determine the best position of a button or teaser.

TALK: Voice control provides marketing with a lot of potential since users barely face any barriers here. They could, for instance, connect an interactive floor plan with a voice search: The user just has to press a button at the entrance of a retail store and say what product he is looking for so that he can be led directly to the product via an interactive map.

Example Myo Armband: With the Myo wristband, presentations, music and videos can be controlled with simple hand movements and programs such as Adobe Reader or iTunes can be used easily. Thanks to several sensors, the gestures of the user are detected, so that companies could, for example, offer 360-degree product views at the PoS via eye or voice control, or use the Myo bracelet in a shop to display products on a screen via gesture control.


Now, trust your five senses and make use of the new control methods that can restage your marketing and wow your customers.

By Daniela La Marca