Co-authored with @bbhlabs, we identified 3 key trends at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show and what they mean for marketers:
Media Daily News featured the article, which can be found here.
Over the course of this week, a few Denuologists will be posting their impressions from CES. Here is the first with more to follow:
Last week was my first time at CES and now I understand why Apple doesn’t show up here. Don’t get me wrong: the inexorable onward march of technology is impressive. Incremental gains are being made every year in processing power, graphic quality, and size. But put it all together under a single convention center roof and much of it just feels desperate; companies urgently trying to get your attention to tout the fact that the 2 inch paper-thin display from last year is now down to 1.2 inches. The 3DTV displays go on for miles, showing you what every form of content looks like in 3D (Documentaries! Cooking shows!). Most of the booths seemed to have an implicit sign hanging over them reading “WE NEED YOUR MONEY”. It reminded me that for every breakthrough we embrace, whether it be CDs, HDTV, or MP3 players, there is a pile of innovations where the public collectively shrugged its shoulders (Laserdisc anyone?).
This time of year brings us warm holiday cheer, carols sung by choirs, and the droning moan of the undead as they wander the streets for fresh brains.
Wait, what?
In all seriousness, zombies are the monster-du-jour nowadays. The success of AMC’s “The Walking Dead” and films like “Zombieland” point to them becoming a cornerstone of pop culture and, of course, this includes the digital space. Online, one can learn how to defend themselves against the undead hordes, run simulated survival scenarios similar to the classic game, “Oregon Trail,” or dispel certain myths that have cropped up in recent years about zombie culture.
Don’t think of this as issue 73 of Reflecteur, think of it as your handy survival guide to online zombie infestation. Also, happy holidays.
Whether its how many friends our brain can process on Facebook, or pulling a “Being John Malkovich” and living vicariously through someone else’s Twitter feed, this week’s Reflecteur is socially aware of all the nutty things our favorite social networks can do to one’s mind. Also, see how mapping APIs are being used to reflect racial issues in urban environments and The Pool’s latest research results for short-form online video.
All this, plus making fun of hipsters, in this week’s Reflecteur.
In between getting destroyed by the Zerg in Starcraft 2 and whacking snakes in the head exploring FrontierVille, this month’s issue of PLAYED stares in the face of the last days of summer and welcomes the fall, where gaming goes bananas and, of course, news and insight follows.
