Beko believes the Internet of Things should be led by human needs not technological novelty
Beko believes the Internet of Things (IoT) might fail to catch on with consumers if it's led purely by technological novelty rather than human needs.
In response to this, the appliance brand has launched a ‘Tomorrow’s Home’ vision and strategy centred around connected products that genuinely enhance real everyday lives. The brand’s approach takes IoT and humanises it, branding it the Internet of Everyday Things.
Tech giants Amazon, Samsung and Google are at odds to dominate the connected home space, but smaller entrants are proving to make ripples through innovative products. Beko sees competitors as potential, saying that collaborations and business partnerships will gain traction across categories.
Beko’s vision for the connected home has been brought to life in a film, created by R/GA London & Istanbul, that premiered at the IFA festival in Berlin over the weekend.
The Drum spoke to the creators behind the brand vision film, Fura Johannesdottir, group executive creative director at R/GA London and Oguz Bayram, digital marketing manager at Beko, on the ‘Tomorrow’s Home’ concept.
Can you explain what the home of tomorrow vision is for Beko?
Bayram: This vision constitutes Beko's contribution to the debate about the Internet of things, and argues that it may fail to catch on with consumers if it's led purely by technological novelty rather than human needs.
Instead, Beko have developed a unique human-centred design approach, focused on making sure connected products genuinely enhance real everyday lives. That’s why we sum up our approach as the “Internet of Everyday Things” besides IoT.
How is Beko's positioning as the 'connected home of the future' different from Amazon's or other competitors? How does it plan to stand out in the market?
Bayram: 'The internet of Everyday Things' reflects Beko's positioning as "the official partner of the everyday". And in line with this, Beko are inviting families to help co-create their future appliances through feedback and pre-testing, which will ensure their relevance and meaning.
In connected home space or IoT there are myriad of gadgets, devices and hopefully competitors. Technology fragmentation is one of biggest challenge ahead of us. That’s why collaborations and business partnerships will gain traction across categories. We have recently announced a collaboration with Amazon DRS. We will see more partnerships and collaboration in this domain.
What was the creative strategy / concept behind the film?
Johannesdottir: We took a strategic look at the brand vision films currently out there in the marketplace and the overall feeling was that they didn’t deliver a true consumer and brand vision. Most of them portrayed the future as a highly technical and complicated cold place, where people live in their own isolated worlds of connected things – they all just simply felt – a bit sad and soulless. Who wants to live in world like that?
Our vision for the future is quite different from that. We believe people will still be people. We think technology is going to become much more integrated and seamless in your day to day life. It’s not about the technology, it’s about making life easier and connecting people in a simple and engaging way. The technology is only the facilitator, and it needs to be simple. We decided early on to showcase the film through the eyes of young kids and show how magical the future of the connected home can be if done right. But overall we wanted to show a human film that people can relate to, a future you can relate to and look forward to.
Is there a product roadmap associated to the film that we can expect to see announced?
Bayram: The film itself is mainly giving Beko’s point of view on the future of the home. How easy and seamless experiences will enhance everyday lives. We are heavily working on the new Beko connected product range that will be launched in 2017.
Is this campaign anything to do with Beko's new R&D centre in the UK?
Bayram: Although there is no direct relationship between the campaign and our new R&D center in UK, all of our R&D centers are working in different IoT projects.
What else did R/GA and Beko collaborate on, was it just the film?
Johannesdottir: We have previously worked with BEKO on a strategy around the connected home and we are currently exploring different touch points and possible product solutions to bring this vision to life.