Floor 9

Welcome back to another episode of Floor 9. This week, Tom Trudeau from our partnerships team chats with our managing director Adam Simon about everything that marketers should know coming out of the Apple event on Monday. Together, they discussed various new Apple products, the upcoming Apple Intelligence features, as well as these AI-driven features will change consumer expectations and reshape brand interactions. Topics covered include:

• The new iPhones’ surprising hold on pricing, and what it means for the smartphone market (0:58)
• Analysis of the upcoming suite of Apple Intelligence features (2:23)
• The new “visual intelligence” features coming to iPhones, and what it means for marketers (5:30)
• The ability to capture immersive spatial video and images, and what it means for Vision Pro (7:13)
• Updates to AirPods and additional support for contextual audio (8:32)
• New hearing health features coming to AirPods Pro (11:47)
• New health & fitness features to Apple Watch and Apple’s sustainability goals (14:41)
• What brands should do to prepare for the new era of AI search (17:42)
• How Apple is positioning Apple Intelligence and where the company stands in the AI competitive landscape (19:51)
• Why spatial computing remains a key focus in Apple’s strategic roadmap (21:28)
• The long-term prospect for Apple Intelligence and large language models in general (22:05)
• Closing thoughts on Apple’s latest products and what they mean for a new deployment phrase of consumer-facing AI (25:30)

If you enjoyed the episode, please consider giving us a five-star review on Apple Podcast. Follow the Lab on LinkedIn and on Medium for our latest insights. Thanks for listening!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this special bonus episode of the month, the Lab’s strategy team assembles to discuss the highlights from the results of our latest Futurecaster survey! Futurecaster is the Lab’s proprietary innovation tool that identifies how your audience is engaging with the tactical areas of innovation across emerging technologies and media channels.

In partnership with Dynata, we survey 2,500 smartphone owners aged 16-74, asking them about their awareness, past and planned usage, and perception of emerging technologies and media channels. That survey data is fused with our Acxiom data stack, allowing us to identify which tactical areas of innovation your audiences engage with.

With each new edition of the survey, we gain interesting new insights into how consumers are adopting and interacting with new technologies. This year, the results showed noteworthy developments across a wide range of innovation territories, including generative AI, augmented reality and mixed reality, retail and lifecycle loyalty, smart city and mobility solutions, the experience economy, and the creator economy. For example, awareness of generative AI tools continues to grow, with 55% of respondents saying they have heard of them, up from 36% who said so last year. 

Listen now to learn more about Futurecaster and the key insights we learned from this year’s survey!

If you enjoyed the episode, please consider giving us a five-star review on Apple Podcast. Follow the Lab on LinkedIn and on Medium for our latest insights. Thanks for listening!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Floor 9, the Lab’s managing director Adam Simon welcomes two senior UM executives, Dan Chapman, Global Chief Strategy Officer, and Andy Littlewood, Global Chief Product Officer, to Floor 9 for an insightful discussion on the impact of the over-reliance on AI within the media landscape, how agencies can work with clients to avoid becoming “bland brands” and lead the Renaissance of Media. Specifically, they took a deep dive into the following topics:

• The shifting landscape of the media industry and the end of digital ad triopoly
• The impact of generative AI on the ad & media industry, and the best strategies to deal with it
• The role AI in brand-building, and how to increase brand differentiation in an era of homogenizing digital platforms and ad tools
• The “brand vs. agency” dynamic and what agencies can do to help clients navigate AI’s impact
• How to avoid becoming a “bland brand” and being commoditized by AI by rediscovering nuanced brand patterns
• How marketers can lead a renaissance of creativity in this new era

If you enjoyed the episode, please consider giving us a five-star review on Apple Podcast. Follow the Lab on LinkedIn and on Medium for our latest insights. Thanks for listening!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This month on Floor 9, the Lab team assembles for a panel discussion on the future of the entertainment industry. Faced with rising streaming fatigue, high-churn “nomadic subscribers,”  and the looming threat of AI-generated “slop content,” Hollywood needs to be smart about navigating the post-streaming-wars industry landscape, and that begins with re-aligning their business model with the market reality. In this episode, host Ryan Miller is joined by Chelsea Freitas, Tom Trudeau, and Richard Yao to break down the various issues facing the entertainment industry today and point to the best practices going forward.

If you enjoyed the episode, please consider giving us a five-star review on Apple Podcast. Follow the Lab on LinkedIn and on Medium for our latest insights. Thanks for listening!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As usual, Apple’s latest WWDC event brought forth many software updates, but the star of the show was Apple’s major AI update — Apple Intelligence, which will enable LLM-powered new features across Apple’s entire ecosystem. In this episode, Adam and Ryan took a deep dive into Apple Intelligence, the ChatGPT integration, its impact on the AI competitive landscape, and more. Listen now to hear our analysis on the WWDC announcements, including: 

• Apple Intelligence overview - 2:20
• Siri’s big upgrade - 5:58
• Fun AI features: Genmoji and Image Playground - 10:26
• Apple’s AI privacy promise & how it works - 14:04
• Apple’s OpenAI partnership & ChatGPT integration - 21:07
• How Apple’s AI strategy differs from competitors - 26:20
• Safari Highlights & new Photos app updates - 30:01
• New immersive Vision Pro content - 33:20
• Implications for brand marketers - 37:58

f you enjoyed the episode, please consider giving us a five-star review on Apple Podcast. Follow the Lab on Twitter @ipglab and on Medium for our latest insights. Thanks for listening!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

May marks the beginning of the tech conference season, and this year, we had three key players in the AI race — OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft — all hosting their respective developer conferences within a two-week period in May. If you missed the announcements, fret not! The Lab team is here to help you keep up with the fast-evolving AI developments and competitive landscape.

In this episode, Chelsea Freitas from our strategy team, along with Ryan Miller and Tom Trudeau from our partnerships team, took the Floor 9 mic and discussed all the highlights from the recent developer conferences, including:

• Microsoft’s hardware-centric Surface event - 0:52
• Is AI-powered Surface laptops a legitimate competitor to Apple? - 3:27
• AI-powered Recall feature for the Copliot+ PCs - 5:01
• Key announcements from Microsoft's Build event - 9:03
• Will people call them “AI” as more AI-powered features become productized - 15:25
• The advertising implications of Copilot and Microsoft’s AI features - 16:45
• Key announcements from Google’s I/O developer event - 19:55
• The impact of Google rolling out AI search - 21:23
• Google integrating Gemini AI into its suite of popular products - 24:31
• Google’s new multimodal AI-powered creative tools - 29:03
• Last thoughts on the AI race and wrap up - 32:52

If you enjoyed the episode, please consider giving us a five-star review on Apple Podcast. Follow the Lab on Twitter @ipglab and on Medium for our latest insights. Thanks for listening!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kids these days! In this episode of Floor 9, the Lab’s strategy team (Adam Simon and Cheslea Freitas) and partnerships team (Ryan Miller and Tom Trudeau) join forces to analyze the youngest generation on the scene and their Millennial parents. Together, the team tackles topics that include:

• Gen Alpha’s key media behaviors
• How Gen Alpha socialize digitally  
• Gen Alpha as “AI natives”
• Millennials’ collaborative and overprotective parenting style
• The major concerns of Millennial parents 
• The recent “no phone childhood” movement
• Key takeaways for brands looking to reach kids and parents

If you enjoyed the episode, please consider giving us a five-star review on Apple Podcast. Follow the Lab on Twitter @ipglab and on Medium for our latest insights. Thanks for listening!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Floor 9, it’s about the Vision Pro! Ryan, Adam, and Chelsea regroup on Floor 9 for an in-depth discussion of Apple’s groundbreaking “spatial computing” headset. From our team’s first impressions of trying it on, to unpacking its use cases and market implications, the Lab team is eager to share our hot takes on Vision Pro. Key topics include:

• Assessing the Vision Pro launch and initial reception - starting around 0:57
• The Lab team’s first impressions of Vision Pro - starting around 3:31
• Discussing Vision Pro’s primary use cases - starting around 7:37
• Does Vision Pro signal a computing paradigm shift? - starting around 18:57
• The entertainment value of Vision Pro - starting around 21:40
• The user experience of Vision Pro: isolating or shared? - starting around 29:24
• Vision Pro’s impact on the mixed-reality headset market - starting around 34:23
• The marketing implications of Vision Pro and brand takeaways -  starting around 39:34

If you enjoyed the episode, please consider giving us a five-star review on Apple Podcast. Follow the Lab on Twitter @ipglab and on Medium for our latest insights. Thanks for listening!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome back to Floor 9! This week, your hosts Ryan and Adam are joined by Chelsea Freitas from our Strategy team to take a deep dive into the trends and themes from our latest annual Outlook report, which includes:

• Macro trends in consumer behaviors - starting at 0:42
• Life's New Beats - starting at 13:36
• The Remixed City - starting at 24:50
• The Revenge of the Monoculture - starting at 37:50
• The Expanding Experience Economy - starting at 45:48

Make sure to check out the full version of Outlook 2024 report on Medium here: https://bit.ly/LabOutlook24

If you enjoyed the episode, please consider giving us a five-star review on Apple Podcast. Follow the Lab on Twitter @ipglab and on Medium for our latest insights. Thanks for listening!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome back to Floor 9! As always, we’ll kick off the year with a CES episode, in which the Lab team assembles to recap the biggest trends we spotted at CES 2024, including:

• How the AI hype manifested on the CES show floors, both the good and the bad (1:05)
• How the translucent TVs wow'ed the crowd and could be interesting for retail (2:56)
• How interoperability emerged as a major trend for smart home devices (4:25)
• How digital health solutions continue to be on-demand and home-centric (11:09)
• How immersive experiences are evolving and supercharging next-gen entertainment (15:17)
• How some CES exhibitors brought a luxury touch to their products through cutting-edge tech and design (26:10)
• How the CES showcased the latest trends in play and toy: the rise of educational toys, and AI-enabled play (37:48)
• How the auto industry is rushing to integrate AI into the dashboard and re-adjust their EV strategies (47:44)
• And many more!

In addition, we also each named our favorite CES product this year!

To learn more about CES trends, read our written recap here on Medium.

If you enjoyed the episode, please consider giving us a five-star review on Apple Podcast and Spotify. Follow the Lab on Medium for our latest insights. Thanks for listening!

Correction: at the 22:21 mark, Richard mistakenly said "Roku" when he meant to say "Roxi" when mentioning their new interactive linear broadcast channel.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.