Takeaways from CES 2016Takeaways from CES 2016

Las Vegas.
For one week each year Sin City plays host to the next-generation of innovations and technologies before they’re introduced to the
marketplace. This year, more than 200,000 attendees came to CES to walk through 2.5 million square feet of trade show space to see the latest
drones, connected cars, TVs and smartphones, and even a VR device that gives you the sensation of flying through the sky like a superhero.
Y&R sent some of our brightest minds to take in the sights and sounds of CES 2016. Here’s what they had to say:

Alan Vassberg
Vice President, Communications Planning
Y&R Austin
Unlike years past where it felt like the focus was on the technology innova-
tions, CES 2016 was really about people — and how technology enhances
the lives of ordinary people. In my previous CES visits, the technology on
display (and the language used to promote it) was about changing the way
we live and the way we do things.
This year, however, both the cool new technologies and the associated
messages acknowledged that people are already doing interesting and
worthwhile things. This new generation of technology is designed to
enhance, capture, enable, represent, or accommodate the human
experience, not change it. GoPro wants you to “Be a Hero.” Samsung is “in
sync with real life.” Fossil is “for the curious life.” Massimo says “ready, set,
go.”
The technology doesn’t create the experience. It encourages and supports
what people already do. To be sure, to some degree technology has always
done this. But now, technology brands seem to have realized that they don’t
exist to create the human experience, but instead to support it. That’s as it
should be.
Even two years ago,
3D was still a really big
thing. This year, VR has made
3D all but irrelevant. Just
because a technology is “hot” at
CES one year doesn’t mean
that it is going to catch on. For the record, the
Oculus Rift is awesome.
VR technology will change
the way that stories are
told—and by extension, the way
brand stories can and will be
told.
When cars started
showing up at CES,
the line for what
constituted “consumer
electronics” started to blur. This
year, it seemed more blurred than
ever, with technology that was
clearly not even remotely designed for
a consumer audience (industrial
drones, robots, 3D printers). I
expect that blurring to
continue, along with the
line between B2B and
B2C marketing.
Soon, every article of
clothing we wear will be
smart (or will have the ability to
be smart). The question is, will
our clothes use their
intelligence for good, or
for evil?
A few medical ideas
blew me away—like the
use of 3D printed medical
models to allow doctors to do
better pre-surgical preparation.
And a depth-sensing projector that
allows you to view cross-section slices
of a three-dimensional object
(imagine, for example, a doctor
examining a CT scan!). This is
no longer the stuff of
science fiction.

Joe Rivas
EVP, Global Client Leader
Y&R New York
Let's face it, CES is flat out overwhelming. With literally
thousands of new product and services to sort through,
how is one supposed to figure out what to pay attention
to, and what matters most?
One useful lens I use for evaluating new technology is
not to look at it through the competitive context of its
respective category, but instead think about it against
the one thing the vast majority of innovation
successfully competes against: Time.
We are entering an “era of hyper-efficiency” – a period
where technology and innovation strive to eliminate the
inefficiencies that exist in all of our daily behaviors,
activities and tasks. And the innovations that enable us
to successfully chip away at this long tail of inefficiency
- and give us time back in our lives - are often the ones
we reward with success.
We saw this trend on full display at CES 2016. Take the sexy, high profile discus-
sions around the future of self-driving cars. According to a 2013 study conducted
by the Brookings Institution, Americans spend 175 billion hours a year in transit,
which translates to about 100 minutes per person per day - and guess what, 90+
percent of this is in cars. Through this lens there is no single greater potential
productivity boon than the adoption of self-driving cars at scale.
Even something visually striking such as Samsung’s smart fridge isn't just
about making the refrigerator sexier, it's about making it more useful. With
the built-in ability to order groceries from merchants such as ShopRite
and FreshDirect, we are talking about hundreds of trips to the grocery
store saved, and thousands of hours back in the hands of consumers.
And let's not forget the direction we are headed in is not only to make our
waking hours as efficient as possible, but the full 24 hours of every day. To
that end we have to give some attention to the Sleep Number IT bed that
promises to keep us from waking up throughout the night - by triggering
actions such as regulating the temperature in your home. Don't be sur-
prised to see a host of new “sleep oriented” innovation coming our way at
CES in the next few years and beyond. It's the next frontier of efficiency,
the uncharted sea of opportunity - as we strive to make the most out of
our most valuable and precious personal resource: time.

Jon Bird
Global MD
Labstore
Because of its size, if you’re not careful, CES can seem to exist in
a constant state of gridlock. Reflecting on my tour with GroupM
Chairman Irwin Gottlieb, and my whole CES visit, I summarized
what I saw into three ‘I’s’ – Immersion, Interaction and Innovation.
Immersion – besides the ubiquitous IoT (Internet of Things), I think immersion is
the key tech trend from the show. Whether it’s higher definition screens (forget
4K, here comes 8K and 16K), Virtual Reality or 3D Audio, everything about tech is
being designed to be as immersive as possible. Realer than real. In five years, it
will be 120-inches. Screen resolution will continue to escalate – the Tokyo
Olympics this year will be broadcast in native 8K. Screen technology is also
changing. Besides Organic LED, we witnessed Quantum Dot and Backlight
Master Drive – all with blacker blacks, brighter colors and imperceptible pixels.
Gotlieb showed us one Quantum Dot screen that he warned us not to look at
too long. “You won’t be able to go back to your regular TV,” he joked.
Interaction – increasingly, tech is about human interaction between man and
machine. The Amazon Echo smart speaker is one example. Alexa technology was
built into several of the devices featured at CES this year. To some the Samsung
Smart Hub fridge was a “fridge flashback” – we all remember the Internet-
connected fridge of some years ago. But the Samsung Smart Hub steps up the
game. Using Amazon Echo, you can ask the Smart Hub to add items to your
shopping list. You can upload photos from your phone to use it like a 21st Century
fridge magnet. And most interesting of all, the fridge has cameras on the inside
that take a shot of its contents each time you open or close the door. These are
automatically uploaded to an app, so that when you are at the grocery store, you
can instantly see what’s in your fridge, and which items may need replenishing.
Innovation – CES is ultimately all about invention and innovation, and there were
some super-cool new tech ideas on show, such as the SCIO Food Scanner, which
allows you to scan your food to instantly judge its nutritional value – e.g. fat con-
tent, carbs and calories. There were also some more mundane but still clever con-
cepts such as the Twin Wash – two zones in a washing machine to wash two dif-
ferent types of loads at the same time. But the invention that most captured my
imagination was one yet to come. Remember Google Glass? There will be a time
in the near future when you will have micro projectors implanted under your eye-
lids, which will beam images directly onto your retina. By doing this, you will be
able to instantly activate a heads-up display of relevant information streamed from
the Internet. Imagine Google Glass without the glasses.

Divya Darsi
Assistant Account Planner
Y&R Austin
I should point out that this was my first CES and man,
was it great. Incredibly overwhelming, absolutely too
many things to see and no possible way to actually see
everything. The interest and excitement was palpable.
If you remember all of the science-fiction books and TV
shows from your childhood, it felt like we are seeing the
beginnings of those technologies and maybe in ten
years our lives will be very, very different. Technology
doesn’t want to dictate how we live our lives but rather
seeks to accommodate/adapt to our needs and
enhance our lives with their capabilities. Whether it was
a fridge, clothing (belts, smart bras, shoes, shirts), home
appliances, TV mounts, health tracking devices, etc., they
all seek to fit your lifestyle.
I saw a lot of haptic technology, still very early it seems. Intel had a
screen showing an underwater scene and people wore these bracelets
and when they moved their movements created ripples on the screen.
They mentioned some use cases like dancers being able to see how
their movements visualized.
I also saw a lot of VR, and I wondered if VR would be applied to
filmmaking. VR creates a lot of opportunity for non-linear storytelling—so
take that and apply it to movies and it could be amazing. To that end, I do
wonder if once VR actually takes off and we see if being used and in the
wild (hoping it is successful), will be see an increase in demand for 360
degree cameras? Maybe next year or the year after…
While smart clothing is really cool and has the possibility to make our
lives healthier, they still aren’t wearable yet. I think we are scratching the
surface of really powerful built-in functionalities but there are still so
many steps to getting the intelligence provided they the device that it
didn’t feel completely seamless at this point. With that said, however,
they were are really, really cool.

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