Mobile Branded Story Experiences, Virtual Agents and Characters featuring Conversational AI
We’ve been pretty quiet lately.
We’ve been working.
Barely time to Tweet, never mind, right a worthwhile blog post.
We are in the process of moving our contentAI studios platform and a service out of Beta to release our Ver. 1.0 product — Sometime during the first week of December.
You’ll see a brand new front-end user interface…behind the scenes, there are revisions to the core engine and logic that will continue to improve user engagement.
Stay tuned.
Yes, SIRI is the best PR agent for virtual agents on mobile these days. While most of it’s functions have been available on Android for over a year, the press that SIRI’s getting is terrific for the Industry.
We were sent the following link to a really interesting in-terminal Airport virtual agent:
Coupling the interactivity with a hologram is great to see — And, for location based engagement makes a lot of sense.
We’re still avoiding visual representations on mobile, due to platform standards; but, it’s more likely we’d incorporate visual avatars through an AR (augmented reality) interface as the first step. . .perhaps in 2012?
It is great to see the “personal digital assistant” hype go into full gear this past week with Apple’s inclusion of SIRI at the OS level.
SIRI is a smart technology. After all, it’s $150 million of taxpayer funded DARPA research. Even if it’s a bit dated.
Apple was very smart to integrate SIRI within the REALLY IMPORTANT embedded communication apps on the iPhone 4S — The previous “app version” of SIRI could barely handle integration with six APIs and could draw upon very limited data pools to get you a Taxi or a Restaurant reservation (from within it’s limited list). The illusion of intelligence continues with it’s access to Wikipedia headlines (an old chatbot trick), but it feels intuitive, which is important.
The real issue comes with “cross talk,” where an AI engine cannot parse between similar phrases or words that have different meanings. i.e. “I need to find Sam Adams.” Are we talking about the beer, the mayor of Portland, an historical reference or a friend with that name?
What’s the solution?
AI-based virtual agents that are tailored for a specific set of data; brand information and narrow-focused engagement; i.e. one agent per application. The dream of having a single agent who can access data from dozens of apps simply isn’t in the cards, not in the near future.
So, create a personal agent for each application. For each mobile brand engagement. It’s quick. It’s affordable. It’s what we do.
Of course, we do really enjoy seeing the enthusiasm for virtual agents that SIRI has brought to the forefront. For that alone, SIRI is a wonderful thing.
ASIDE: Let’s not forget, the voice recognition feature is from NUANCE, not SIRI. We can integrate with cloud based voice recognition platforms very easily. But, we’re wary of the issues these systems still confound us with, where a 10% failure rate can create incomprehensible user input. People type on their phones all day long. It’s the #1 form of written communication in the World. It’s private. It’s quiet. We still like typed conversations.
Meetings, presentations, conference track and a party or two. . .CTIA in San Diego this week.
Looking to get a hold of one of the team? Send an email from our CONTACT PAGE and we’ll get right back to you.
#mobile #platform #ctia
Yup, we’ll be there. Looking forward to a range of meetings and some new relationships.
Also, we just got an invite to present at the MOBILE PLATFORM CHALLENGE. So, that’s another area to find us.
See you in San Diego.
Stay tuned for an upcoming post on our thoughts about the iPhone and SIRI. We think it’s terrific to see Natural Language Processing get a big PR boost. . .but, we also know the limitations of an “all knowing” personal assistant (it can never be as “all knowing” as we’d like to believe). . .Anyway, detailed thoughts soon. But, congratulations to SIRI and their team.
While the study was small in scope, the take-away from the New York Times article here
Addresses not just an “addictive” nature to mobile engagement – But it goes further — To a “love” of our mobile devices.
The subjects’ brains responded to the sound of their phones as they would respond to the presence or proximity of a girlfriend, boyfriend or family member.
Virtual characters and agents designed for mobile engagement fulfill the 2-way communication needs associated with the devices — the raison d’etre they have evolved to evoke such deep emotion. We’re 99.9% certain that this “love” has not come into being due to GPS sensors, mobile banner ads or even “push” notifications.
To fulfill and make “love last,” emotionally compelling mobile content experiences matter!
I’d posit that mobile devices have evolved to evoke “love” because they’ve become our most important communication channel with friends and family (other than face-to-face).
While the article focused on iPhone users and implies that it is a more “loved” device than others, we’d challenge that assertion and suspect it is a cross-device phenomenon. Simply, iPhone users like to express their affection a little louder than the rest of us!
For those in the mobile content business, we hope the take-away here is that to keep the love flowing, you’ve got to deliver emotionally rewarding content – not just click-throughs — this is NOT the static web.
CAVEAT: Some really smart people have taken issue with the study (not just the thinness, but detail level) and that should be noted: http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2011/10/01/the-new-york-times-blows-it-big-time-on-brain-imaging/
While the technical aspects are worth questioning, the underlying notion that mobile devices are held to be extremely personal by their owners remains fairly solid. Just try taking one away from someone…or, see how they fare when they lose their device? It doesn’t take an MRI to tell you that you are touching on emotions, not just rational thought.
One of the early players in the “virtual agent” business was VirtuOZ, we have not seen them venture into mobile (though they’ve talked about it); and our interactive narrative engagement solution differs from their engine in other key respects (contentAI was designed specifically for mobile, contextual and personalized engagement, not static web).
That said, we like the work VirtuOZ do — And, we really like the perspective they offered in a Guest Post on VentureBeat:
The projected 400% increase in virtual agents by 2014 could be low (though it’s a great number, as is); but, we’d include our Mobile FAQ product in this category; and that form of application alone could drive greater adoption of IVAs on the “mobile side” of the web specific to individual products and intelligent packaging as mobile web use increases.
This was fascinating to look at from Quaker Oats and their recent mobile campaign — that’s termed “conversation,” though in our opinion, it is taking a step toward conversation without jumping into actual 2-way conversation. . .
But, it’s an important step to see a major Brand move into conversation based mobile engagement — Our position that mobile devices are, at heart, communicators, is clearly key in the campaign thinking for the above.
Thanks @Mposada for sending the link and seeing the connection!
*****
UPDATE: Another article this week with an excellent quote and perspective from Mike Wehrs of Scanbuy:
http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/strategy/10915.html
“It is also an empowerment tool that allows for a one-to-one conversation…”
There’s an amusing story in Venturebeat today about how virtual agents get “hit on” frequently:
http://venturebeat.com/2011/08/26/virtual-customer-service-agents-are-constantly-getting-hit-on/
The focus of the story is on the VirtuOZ animated characters and their “looks.” What’s fascinating is that we see this exact same behavior from a certain percentage of Users with text-only engagement. We think it’s because our “characters” are well drawn through words alone!
This was an obvious issue back during our early development – We created a zone called “backstory,” so that each virtual character would be able to engage on a more personal level, yet control the situation. So, yes, you can ask our virtual agents on a date, their favorite movies and a range of other topics (though, there are child safe filters in place for most agents).
With mobile engagement, we find that this level of personalization is what is absolutely necessary to create memorable and successful consumer engagements.
So, sure, ask away…you never know what you may find out about someone!
This was a humorous and insightful post on MediaPost today about the mobile experiences that many QR codes lead to:
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=156030#
So I turn the tables on my better, skeptical half and pose the question to her. “How would your smartphone best serve you here?”
She is a lifetime shopper. This is actually a no-brainer for her. She points to the cosmetics counter as we pass. “Tell me what shades match my skin color. There are too many choices here.” We pass by the women’s clothing section. “Tell me what that skirt goes with that you also have in the store.” We go to a restaurant and she suggests, “Tell me what the nutritional value of this menu item is — and whether it has any ingredients my kid might be allergic to.”
In other words: Let the customer ask a contextual and relevant question and give them a reply.
This is exactly what our MOBILE FAQ product offering is designed to fulfill. In fact, we’ve started prototyping a cereal product that touches on the specifics in the quote (allergies, nutritional value, etc.).
Carrying this one step further, this is why we believe that personalized mCoupons are going to replace the one-size-fits-all model — Customers don’t want to be pushed the same offering that everyone around them is receiving — They want their smart phone to deliver “smart” to them.
The closing paragraph is worth inserting:
Why would we as an industry squander that opportunity on half-measures and disappointing brand puffery that runs the risk of poisoning the well and turning people off to the prospect of a clickable world. They can tell us what they want to know, apparently without breaking a sweat, once we stop trying to impress them with what is new and cool — and instead focus on answering their simplest questions.
ContentAI studios delivers a PLATFORM AND A SERVICE producing conversational mobile marketing, entertainment and mLearning experiences.
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