Marketing Brands Through Voice Technology

Steve Adubato goes One-on-One with Claire Mitchell, Director of VaynerSmart, a strategic marketing company founded by entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, from the Amazon Alexa VOICE Summit at NJIT, to discuss how they are helping companies market their brand through Amazon Alexa and other voice technology.

9/24/18 #2166

Excerpt:

"We're pleased to welcome Claire Mitchell, Director of VaynerSmart, which is? Well, we often talk about VaynerMedia as an agency built for the now, and VaynerSmart is the emerging technologies group that's looking a couple steps ahead of where consumer attention is shifting, how consumer behavior is shifting, and the current and upcoming time period. Okay. So, by the way, there's a little bit of a break in the Voice Summit. There about 2,500 people... they're not even floating around here, they're in a major conference area where keynote speeches, panel discussions, are taking place. Are you participating directly? I'm not. Just attending. Just attending? Well, not just attending. You're also meeting... Absorbing. Yeah. [laughter] Why do you think so many people have come here to NJIT? To the Voice Summit? I think there's a lot of excitement about the opportunity in voice. We've, for decades, been increasingly absorbed into screens, and right now, we're at the pinnacle moment where we can start getting away from that, and designing new ways of interacting with digital information. And that's really powerful for convenience, for speed, for immediacy, and for new ways of communicating. How many people do you think are using voice right now? At this very moment? Yeah. Hard to say. But a few statistics that are thrown around from... Throw them around. Let's go. ...survey data, the platforms themselves don't often give it out, but we do know that... Proprietary information? [laughter] Exactly. We expect that by 2020, 30% of all browsing sessions, web browsing sessions, will occur through voice, 50% of all search will be performed by voice by 2020, and that's pretty extraordinary. Why do you think it's expanding so quickly? Convenience. People are getting time back into their lives. It's so much easier to have a thought, an idea, a desire, and speak it, and receive the information that you need, rather than getting out a screen and typing. I know this sounds... I'm sorry for interrupting, I know this sounds... No. Go ahead. ...very old school, but a friend of mine happens to be an attorney. He was talking into his phone, he was sending text messages by voice, and I know what he was doing because I've s... you know, I was listening before, and I said, "What are you...?" I said, "What are you doing?" He goes, "It's very quick." It is. I... it didn't register for me. Yeah. And I thought to myself, "Is there a psychological and an emotional thing we have to go through?" I don't want to make this overly analytical, but to go from, "No, I need to send you this Claire?" Yeah. I need..."