Unfortunately, there was no pomp and circumstance at this year’s CES trade show.
The Consumer Electronics Show took place last week, but this time it was a little quieter than in earlier years due to the pandemic, which has put a halt on many shows, like CES.
All the announcements that matter the most to marketers are here and a few future trends to keep an eye on. This year, many new and improved consumer tech products were announced, even though there was not a lot of pomp. With them came a lot of new ways to talk to people.
Mobile Devices
As usual, mobile phones made their appearance at CES 2022, but the event was mainly about bigger-ticket items like cars and home entertainment. Despite that, some smaller brands have made moves in the mobile device space, impacting how more prominent brands think about their phones.
The two things that go together are selfies and shopping with other people.
Phone: The Vivo V23 claims to be a good phone for taking selfies. The mid-range phone comes with two front-facing cameras and a lot of software that can help you improve your high-resolution selfies. The Chinese manufacturer has probably looked at the back-facing cameras of its competitors and decided to go zig when they zag instead of going straight. It seems like the company is betting on the influencer and social media crowds to buy a selfie-focused phone.
For marketers, that’s even more proof that influencers can be very powerful. It also backs up Snapchat’s claim that the camera is the new keyboard and the primary way people communicate with each other for a new generation. The smart money will be on a broader range of virtual try-on, filters, and branded content opportunities, all powered by the selfie, that will be more interesting and useful to people.
Advertising on Vehicles
Attendees were interested in the “color-changing car” when it came out of CES in 2022. iX Flow technology, powered by E Ink, was shown off by BMW. It allows the outside of the car to change from black and white to different shades of each color. According to BMW, the new E Ink technology opens up new ways of changing a vehicle’s appearance in line with the driver’s preferences, the environment, or needs. On the other hand, the technology allows for a level of customization that has never been possible before. You may be able to buy ads on cars automatically in the future.
It’s still very early for this kind of technology to be used on cars, vans, and trucks (outside of Bond movies, of course!).
Video Game Technology
As you might expect, there were several new monitors and gaming hardware at the show. If you want to play games on your TV at home, Vizio made a lot of noise with its most significant and loudest monitors, such as the 50-inch M-Series Quantum X 4K HDR Gaming Smart TV. This TV can play games on your computer because it has a variable refresh rate. Meanwhile, Panasonic’s top-of-the-line OLED TV, the LZ2000, also meets the needs of the new generation of gamers. It’s an excellent time to remind marketers and brands that gaming is becoming more and more common, with a broader audience than ever before.
Metaverse-Mania
If you want to show that the “metaverse” isn’t real, this CES 2022 would be excellent proof. It was a word that came up a lot in tech presentations that were supposed to be intelligent and interesting. Many different things were used to make the metaverse even more confusing. These things included smart glasses, industrial solutions, and gesture recognition technology.
The lesson for marketers is that they should pay attention. Your clients’ conceptions of the metaverse are very certainly quite distinct from those of their competitors and the general public. It is now formless and faces many challenges before becoming a successful marketing platform (though individual virtual environments are still very much worth experimenting with).
5G
It’s easy to forget that 5G was initially heralded as a game-changing advancement in mobile technology. The idea that it would seamlessly allow people to have live VR experiences on their phones and make streaming much better has only been realized to a limited extent so far. Despite that, CES 2022 saw a lot of mid-range and even budget phones that will come with 5G as standard, like the impressive-looking Nokia G400.
Marketers should remember that not everyone has access to the most up-to-date technology but that those audiences do get their attention at some point. People will be able to get more of the next generation of data-gathering and content-serving soon.
4K
The cost of 4K technology for home displays is going down, like with 5G technology. While only about 50% of households in the US have 4K TVs, that number is growing, with more and more people looking forward to the 8K future. While the recently announced TCL 98R754 may not represent a generational shift, it and other CES 2022 announcements demonstrate that the premium TV industry still has the opportunity to bring 4K to viewers.
It’s hard to sell the benefits of 4K to people who don’t have TVs that can show it, just like it was hard to sell HD and VR. Expect some creative thinking along the lines of the 2005 Sony Bravia LCD advertisement to help sell some of these new 4K devices to the people.
CES was a good show for marketers who want to sell the most recent tech. Whether it’s Samsung’s new Eco Remote that charges itself through Wi-Fi and mobile signals or routers that automatically adjust their antennae predictions, there are a lot of great ideas for ads.
Wearables
There might not be as many people who notice smartwatches as there used to be, but the most recent versions of the technology show that they are still essential to hardware and software companies. Among other things, the Garmin Venu 2 Plus, for example, has a speaker and microphone that make it possible to use voice assistants and all of their marketing opportunities right from your phone.
However, for marketers at CES 2022, the most important thing to learn is how wearables are being used in health and fitness solutions. Wearables are a big part of many eCommerce and affiliate strategies in 2022, so it makes sense for marketers to think about them as part of their strategies at that time.
CES is expected to be held in Las Vegas in January 2023.
