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I think the most important thing for brands to realize about the device story at this
point is that the people who are experiencing content and interacting with brands across
multiple devices are actually the people they probably most want to reach.
Consumer behavior on all of these devices and, from a Connected14 perspective, when
they’re used in conjunction, is incredibly fascinating, but also has to be understood.
It’s very important to know what your customers are looking for. Our goal since the very beginning
has been to put customers first and make sure that their experience is great. So, we’ve
continuously tried to do things that improve their experience.
There is the need for large players to kind of have dominance and to hold dominance, and
we will continue to see kind of the play for dominance in this new space. There will be
things that will basically capture the imagination of humanity; for example, the whole concept
of touch as an interface. It took so little time for it to catch on.
It’s like all you had to do is build it, literally, and they came by droves, and this
is not just a phenomena limited to a particular geography. This is global. When we speak we
still gesture, simply because it makes for more meaningful conversation. We can use emphasis.
We really kind of communicate and make it clear that we get our point across. And imagine
if we could use those gestures to communicate with all the network devices around us.
TV has to lead this innovation because a smartphone – you can use it outside, and a tablet,
too; but TV cannot move, right? It has to have its own meaning to be there. It’s big.
It’s expensive, so why do we have to be there? Why do I have to spend money to get
that kind of TV at home? So, I think the TV industry has to think about what they have
to do. The have to think about, “How do we work together? What’s the big picture?”
But TV has to be more of the leading space.
I think the mobile phone is the lynchpin to create the Connected14. I think that location
is really important moving forward because that increases the targeting and the relevancy
of marketing messages to users. I think foursquare and companies like that are just in the beginning
of really affecting change in marketing and advertising.
What’s unique, though, about Connected14 is the value proposition of the home starts
to go up because we are now finding that, with these devices, that experience that’s
happening with all of them being connected – it’s an area for us to understand, “How
do you meet the customer in that space? How do you design the right device that facilitates
the type of experience that they’re having?” And one of the areas around Connected14, which
can be challenging, is quantifying that experience.
When it comes to integration of devices, it’s basically the living room experience, and
we look at it more from a perspective with regards to, “What are the use cases that
is relevant for you in the living room, when you are in the living room?” And then, from
that perspective, then I look for the partners that are good in that respect.
So, looking at what they’re doing with their devices, when they’re doing that and, “What
can we offer to them in the development of those devices that makes the most sense for
this experience?”
You can’t execute the Connected14 without a strategy. There needs to be a high-level
strategy, and then execute through the individual devices that we’re going to tie together.
Now, the issue that we run up to, or the hurdle that we all have within the Connected14, is
that it’s relatively new. Tablets didn’t really exist two years ago, and so we’ve
got new devices that we need to create brand platforms for and experience platforms for.
And so, marketers are going to take a little while to wrap their heads around that.
With respect to this last online holiday season, we had more people access hp.com on a tablet
than any other device.
Because people are not interacting with brands in the same way they were even just four or
five years ago. It’s changing very fast, and next year it’ll have changed even more.
The notion that we can kind of form-fit advertising messages that were intended first for the
TV into a mobile space or into a tablet space, I think, is a mistake. I think you have to
think about the device, think about how the consumer uses that device and then think about
how your brand comes to life on
that device.