It’s a hor­ror for mar­ket­ing heads. Where­as in the past there were clear­ly de­fined fields of ac­tion, to­day the dig­i­tal econ­o­my is con­stant­ly flush­ing new top­ics on­to the agen­da that need to be eval­u­at­ed and, if nec­es­sary, in­te­grat­ed in­to one’s own plan. The In­ter­net of Things is one of these new fields.

The In­ter­net of Things (IoT) is mak­ing its way in­to our homes, sup­port­ing us in our every­day of­fice life, help­ing to op­ti­mize pro­duc­tion and lo­gis­tics process­es, po­ten­tial­ly chang­ing the mech­a­nisms in health­care, and in­flu­enc­ing the world of mo­bil­i­ty of­fer­ings. In short, there is no area in which IoT does not play a role. And the de­vel­op­ments are com­ing thick and fast. One ex­am­ple : two years ago, the first In­ter­net-en­abled re­frig­er­a­tors could be seen at the largest elec­tron­ics trade show, CES (Con­sumer Elec­tron­ics Show) in Las Ve­gas ; at the last IFA in Berlin, they were al­ready a fixed part of the prod­uct range of al­most every house­hold ap­pli­ance man­u­fac­tur­er. And in five years‘ time, we’ll have trou­ble get­ting our hands on any ap­pli­ance at all with­out net­work ac­cess and a display.

These de­vel­op­ments are be­ing dri­ven from two di­rec­tions. The first is „what goes, gets done“: The In­ter­net of Things is a gi­gan­tic ex­per­i­men­tal mead­ow ; every­thing that seems fea­si­ble in some way will be tried out soon­er or lat­er. This may seem point­less at times, but in any case it pro­vides new in­sights and ex­pe­ri­ence. And even if the idea seems out­landish at first, it may sud­den­ly be­come an ex­cit­ing so­lu­tion in a dif­fer­ent con­text of use. So some ini­tia­tives should not be laughed off too ear­ly. Even if it’s about net­worked hair­brush­es or fish­ing drones, for example.

The sec­ond point is that the ac­tu­al pur­pose of IoT de­vel­op­ments is to sim­pli­fy work­flows, in­ter­ac­tions and process­es for the user. To do this, it is nec­es­sary to an­a­lyze process flows and iden­ti­fy ad­van­tages through net­worked de­vices or prod­ucts and make them us­able for one­self. So if de­vices au­to­mat­i­cal­ly an­a­lyze wear parts and re­order them at the right mo­ment, gaps in ser­vice and thus po­ten­tial user frus­tra­tion are elim­i­nat­ed. A good ba­sis for a long cus­tomer re­la­tion­ship. And it’s al­so a great op­por­tu­ni­ty that brands should take ad­van­tage of and not leave to their competitors.

What is cer­tain is this : Both per­spec­tives are con­stant­ly dri­ving de­vel­op­ments for­ward. Why and how can brand ex­ec­u­tives act, ac­tive­ly shape mar­ket de­vel­op­ments, and thus po­si­tion them­selves for the fu­ture ? To this end, we are pri­mar­i­ly look­ing at the ar­eas of smart homes and mo­bil­i­ty, i.e. en­vi­ron­ments that are gen­er­al­ly high­ly rel­e­vant as touch­points for the tar­get groups.

Our dai­ly en­vi­ron­ment be­comes one touchpoint

New smart prod­ucts are ap­pear­ing on the mar­ket al­most dai­ly, es­pe­cial­ly for our do­mes­tic en­vi­ron­ment. Pre­vi­ous­ly ana­log every­day items are now be­com­ing net­worked, smart sys­tem mod­ules. The re­frig­er­a­tor al­ready out­lined will not on­ly be avail­able in the fu­ture with a touch­screen for im­me­di­ate food or­ders, it will al­so an­a­lyze con­tent in the fu­ture to in­de­pen­dent­ly cre­ate shop­ping lists or sup­port health-con­scious nutrition.

Stove tops and ovens can be con­trolled re­mote­ly or op­er­at­ed more con­ve­nient­ly with voice as­sis­tants. Light­ing com­po­si­tions, bur­glar pro­tec­tion, op­ti­miza­tion of en­er­gy con­sump­tion – al­ready pos­si­ble to­day, om­nipresent in the fu­ture due to the mas­sive­ly in­creas­ing prod­uct range. And au­to­mo­bile man­u­fac­tur­ers have al­so long since ini­ti­at­ed a change in their prod­uct port­fo­lios. In ad­di­tion to ve­hi­cle pro­duc­tion, they are po­si­tion­ing them­selves as ser­vice providers and are in­creas­ing­ly view­ing cars as mo­bile, net­work-dri­ven and au­to­mat­ed ve­hi­cles. In ad­di­tion to orig­i­nal ve­hi­cle ser­vices such as the tem­po­rary ac­ti­va­tion of en­gine pow­er or en­ter­tain­ment ser­vices, man­u­fac­tur­ers will al­so in­te­grate ex­ter­nal ser­vices in­to their ve­hi­cle en­vi­ron­ment against pay­ment. In­sur­ance, de­liv­ery ser­vices – what­ev­er the heart de­sires and the user can put to good use is wel­come in the com­ing app econ­o­my in cars. In­ci­den­tal­ly, they are all unit­ed by the in­creas­ing con­trol of the en­vi­ron­ment via voice con­trol sys­tems such as Alexa, Siri or Google Assistant.

There are CHal­LEnges and opportunities

In both en­vi­ron­ments, fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent chal­lenges – which go be­yond sim­ple op­er­a­tion – need to be mas­tered. Con­sumers in­creas­ing­ly ex­pect „ma­chines“ to think for them­selves. Dig­i­tal con­trol – nice ! But re­al sim­pli­fi­ca­tions will on­ly suc­ceed if we suc­ceed in iden­ti­fy­ing the re­spec­tive user, know­ing and sharp­en­ing his or her pro­file and, in turn, mak­ing pre­dic­tive of­fers. To do this, we need to gen­er­ate user IDs and use them as seam­less­ly as pos­si­ble along the cus­tomer jour­ney ; the da­ta is then stored in the clouds at all times. So much for the the­o­ry. Be­cause it is pre­cise­ly the sov­er­eign­ty over in­ter­faces to the con­sumer – and that is ex­act­ly what the user ID is – as well as da­ta sov­er­eign­ty, that are con­sid­ered to be crit­i­cal suc­cess fac­tors of the fu­ture. In short, every­one wants to get in on the ac­tion, and every­one is try­ing to po­si­tion them­selves to stand up to plat­form gi­ants like Face­book, Google, Ap­ple and Amazon.

In ad­di­tion to the struc­tur­al chal­lenge, the right of­fer­ings for the fu­ture must be de­vel­oped and im­ple­ment­ed. Un­like in the past, when clear­ly de­fined spe­cial­ist pro­files for re­search and de­vel­op­ment usu­al­ly did the job, in this de­vel­op­ment en­vi­ron­ment there are far more skills that need to be as­sem­bled, and with them a new way of work­ing. New dig­i­tal ser­vices are not ex­clu­sive­ly the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the re­search and de­vel­op­ment de­part­ment ; the trend to­ward ad­ver­tis­ing ser­vices is al­so broad­en­ing the range of top­ics on the mar­ket­ing agenda.

Since it is no longer just the idea that is de­ci­sive for the suc­cess of a new of­fer­ing, but above all the way in which it is im­ple­ment­ed and, in some cas­es, the speed at which it is im­ple­ment­ed, col­lab­o­ra­tive work­ing meth­ods and greater agili­ty than in the past are im­por­tant cri­te­ria for suc­cess. Prod­uct spe­cial­ists then meet in­for­ma­tion ar­chi­tects, de­sign­ers, pro­gram­mers, an­a­lysts, lat­er­al thinkers. And ide­al­ly, con­sumers are al­so quick­ly part of the team to de­vel­op mean­ing­ful ser­vices for this new mar­ket. The chal­lenges for mar­ket­ing can there­fore de fac­to on­ly be solved with in­ter­dis­ci­pli­nary task forces that can use de­sign think­ing work­shops, rapid pro­to­typ­ing and it­er­a­tive de­vel­op­ment process­es to quick­ly de­vel­op IoT of­fer­ings – both hard­ware and dig­i­tal ser­vices – in close collaboration.