Exclusive CES Asia video: Tech packaged for marketers' consideration

For more from CES Asia, see "Five trends you should be exploring", a column by Razorfish's Kevin Grubb, also published today.

Here's some background on the technologies showcased by DAN and featured in the video.

IC Paper

What is it? Two digitised paper advertising mediums powered by conductive ink, electric circuits and flat-thin sensors. there are two variations: 'Lumos' enables various lighting effects, while 'Vox' activates different sound effects. These are the result of a collaboration between Carat, AgIC and Yo-Ren.

Why care? It allows paper to become a "gadget" to provoke special communication engagement. The tech can be tailored for outdoor posters, print media in magazines and newspapers, product packaging and other customised mediums such as price tags and coasters. Carat's argument is that brands do not need to invest heavily in bulky hardware in order to produce an interesting branded experiential zone.

Emotion Analyser

What is it? A real-time emotion visualisation kit the purports to analyse brainwave signals. It analyses five emotions (interest, like, stress, concentration, drowsiness) and shows quantified results. Dentsu teamed up with Professor Yasue Mitsukura from Keio University for development. The kit utilises a headset device and a camera attachment equipped with brainwave analysis algorithms.

Why care? Consumers can no longer tell white lies in market-research panels.

Social Ticker

What is it? A concept watch for CMOs to track social successes and failures. Social-media posts about the brand and its competitors are visualised on a circular timeline on the watchface in real-time. "When checking their watch[es], they can check society at the same time," according to a line in the product brochure, which also calls the watch a "wearable contact point that is continously linked to CMOs".

Why care? CMOs who are social-media laggards can see social trends and public opinion at a glance instead of ordering their social-media teams and agencies to produce documents. CMOs can set their own keywords to show relevant social-media data. The watch will be particularly useful in cases of flaming, to reduce the time it takes to respond to a soc-med crisis.

Popcon

What is it? A new on-demand content consumption experience for viewers of online videos on both PCs and mobiles. It is a partnership between Carat, Amplifi, Mango TV and AVD Digital Media. 

Why care? Viewers can interact with any element in the video (people, items and environment) to activate a pop-out box of associated rich-media content. This can deliver a video-in-a-video, a mini game, an ecommerce link, or a recruitment page. A new measurement metric is underway for Popcon.

Galar Virtual Reality

What is it? A VR application using a headset containing a gyroscope for view control. 

Why care? This technology can help improve the sensory experience of VR and be applied to interactive games and space design.

What is it? A directional acoustic product that is different from conventional loudspeakers. The audio is analogous to a beam of light from a spotlight. Control over transmission region and distance is possible.

Why care? Controlling the direction of sound precisely can improve the sound delivery of advertisements. Personalised audio messages can also be directed to individual consumers without increasing the noise level of the environment.

The following interviewees appear in the video report:

• Motohiro Yamagishi, ‎CEO of Dentsu Aegis Network China
• Phil Teeman, group managing director at Dentsu Aegis Network China
• Andrew Ballen, ‎CEO/Founder at AVD Digital Media
• Adil Zaim, CEO of Carat China
• Anthony Ho, marketing director - media at Mondelēz China
• Pete Mitchell, global media innovations director at Mondelēz International
• Fan Li, senior marketing manager at Mini China
• Zhu Ting, marketing and communications lead at Wei Chuan Foods

Campaign's takeaways

These technologies are not groundbreaking. The value here is the way they are being made a little more accessible to clients. As they are usually only available in research projects among academics or in development labs among techie firms, seeing such technologies a step closer to marketing reality is notable. Folks from rival media agencies Campaign found scoping out DAN's booth made remarks of how "cleverly packaged" the products were. Some of these technologies are already known in Japan (DAN's home turf) but were being showcased in China for the first time.

On another note, whether these products end up as 'shelf innovations' remains to be seen, because any innovation needs scalability and concrete go-to-market plans. Accessibility, though, is a good start; and with client interest, scale may come in time. 

For the record

OMD China also had a booth at CES Asia, where it was hosting:

• A discussion panel about consumer electronics
• A presentation by startup finalist teams participating in the OMD Innovation Fund (OIF)
• A whitepaper launch about programmatic buying in China
• A keynote speech by Doug Pearce, Omnicom Media Group Greater China CEO

(Editor's notes: Sincere apologies for poor sound quality on some of the interview clips. With so many consumer-electronics devices competing for attention, the show floor was brutally loud. Also please note that we have chosen not to subtitle every statement word for word, instead leaving out sections where the person re-stated information.)