Chapter 13 Future Users, Content and Marketing

Case Study Chapter 13: The Near Future Jason did not respond to her question but instead went over to his Motorola Blocks device and tapped the voice icon on the OSLI block.

The Story

Saturday Morning

It was a sunny late Saturday morning when Jason woke up. He lay in bed thinking of all the things he had to do on his day off work. As with any other morning, he got up and commenced his routine of taking a shower, shaving and making himself some breakfast and coffee. During these preparations he enjoyed the company of Osli's voice. She read him the news from last night. Apparently Apple's shares had closed for the week at an all-time low, another shipment of raw petrow had been stolen and Lady Gaga's avatar had been hacked. Osli then moved on to sharing the local happenings including the opening of a new Argos food store a couple of blocks away and the re-election of the mayor.

Source: Heinze, A., Fletcher, G., Rashid, T., & Cruz, A. (Eds.). (2017). Digital and Social Media Marketing: A Results-Driven Approach. Routledge. Accessible online http://mastersindigitalmarketing.org/book/ #passion4digital This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

"Osli, please stop with this boring news. Give me an update on the local sales and try to keep it a bit more interesting this time," said Jason as he finished his meal and got ready to go out.

Your item - MB HardDrive 3x5 - has been dispatched and should be here in about 2 hours. User John615 had two kittens for sale, £30. User SmartyPants is selling a classic vintage car - Mercedes S180 - for £1,300." Osli continued. "User TotalBiscuit is selling an Oculus Iris for £620. User BuyMe

has...

"Wait!" interrupted Jason. "Suspend the delivery until tomorrow morning. And what was that last one? Give me more details."

Osli changed her tone indicating a change in stream and stated, "One Oculus Iris, version 3.7, compatible with MB devices after 2.8. Improved camera functions including 360 degree mode and haptic feedback. No discounts available."

"Great, make the purchase" ordered Jason.

"Would you like it delivered or would you like to pick it up from 15 Tsarevo Street?" asked Osli. "It is less than 18 minutes away on foot."

Jason did not respond to her question but instead went over to his Motorola Blocks device and tapped the voice icon on the OSLI block to switch back to the manual interface. He knew he spent a bit too much time listening to the voice of the OnlineShopLivelnterface, which everyone called Osli. Even though he liked her conversations he would prefer one with Nicole who he had been dating for last two months and who he had planned to meet not too much later. Jason confirmed the order and then manually re-configured the blocks in front of him to invoke the security mode and set an intelligent message response for incoming messages.

Motorola Blocks - MBs - were the runaway success story for the company. The development had come out of an experimental collaboration with an anarchist Dutch design collective who originally claimed they were dismantling modern society "block by block". The MB device could easily be separated into pieces by Jason - each block connected wirelessly with hidden magnets - and built into new configurations just as easily. Although sometimes the combinations produced unexpected results. Despite Motorola's overall control of the project there were still elements of the design collective's original anarchic ideas in some blocks. Jason had now picked up a half screen block, a small hard drive block, a function block and a battery block. With his 'phone' in hand Jason left the house to collect his new impulse purchase.

On his way to Tsarevo Street, Jason looked through his social feed of connections. He had 'filtered to 'nearby'. Osli had also filtered the feed to only show the most interesting items. There was a party tonight at 64 King Street and a status from Ivan, "Such a beautiful morning". Jason automatically

Source: Heinze, A., Fletcher, G., Rashid, T., & Cruz, A. (Eds.). (2017). Digital and Social Media Marketing: A Results-Driven Approach. Routledge. Accessible online http://mastersindigitalmarketing.org/book/ #passion4digital This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

removed the last message by marking it as less interesting. Why, Jason did wonder though, did Osli think this message was interesting?

After collecting the Oculus Iris block there was no time to experiment. Jason had to prepare for his date. Jason walked to the new Argos foodstore. He ignored the advertising for the standard blocks that all shops now carried and tapped in the codes for a bottle of rosé and a 3 brassica bouquet at the ordering terminal. He scanned his 'phone' across the payment paid and was then prompted for his daily authorisation code. Jason was always a bit frustrated by this extra security but he knew the benefits and realised that this was inevitably because it was another purchase in less than an hour. He quickly asked Osli for the code 'she' had generated earlier in the day while he was sleeping. Jason's voice was the final security check to obtaining his romantic gestures, but he also knew that his purchases would match his current profile which included his message on the Social Map about today's date with Nicole. Jason already knew how important this matching could be when some of his earlier impulse buys of experimental blocks had caused Osli problems with the bank when it tried to block the payment because they didn't match his current profile on the Social Map. Jason only found out later when Osli provided a terse summary of situation, "Payment issue over the purchase of fractal block is now resolved." and he had then pressed 'her' for more details.

After collecting his wine and bouquet, Jason walked towards the fountains in the main square next to the University for Integrated Communications. He casually flipped through his social feed and saw that Ivan's new status was at the top of the 'interesting' and 'nearby' messages again. It just said, "Such a great day".

"Osli, what are you doing?" Jason muttered under his breath, knowing that he had switched off voice commands after paying in Argos. As he was about to mark down Ivan's status again Jason saw that there were three comments beneath the status and these definitely grabbed his attention. The first came from Tracey, Ivan's wife. "Why would you say that, what's so great about it?" Jason knew that Tracey was away travelling on business for a week. The next message was also from Tracey, "What are you doing at Sydney's?" Ivan hadn't turned off automatic location tagging. The last message was from Nicole: "He is amazing. You don't deserve him you old hag!"

Jason had already stopped walking. Nicole was temporarily house sharing with Sydney.

Jason turned around and walked home. Osli and a bottle of rosé would be his company tonight.

Further Information

Submitted by Zdravko Andreev in response to a seen exam for a postgraduate Information Systems course in 2013. Used with permission.

Discussion questions

Source: Heinze, A., Fletcher, G., Rashid, T., & Cruz, A. (Eds.). (2017). Digital and Social Media Marketing: A Results-Driven Approach. Routledge. Accessible online http://mastersindigitalmarketing.org/book/ #passion4digital This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

1. What type of campaigns would be successful in the world described by the story?2. What tools and information might be available to define a buyer persona?

Class activities1. With what you know about this world, outline a potential digital marketing campaign for a

dating application?2. Identify the ethical issues raised by this story, how should these be considered within digital

marketing campaigns planned for this world?

Source: Heinze, A., Fletcher, G., Rashid, T., & Cruz, A. (Eds.). (2017). Digital and Social Media Marketing: A Results-Driven Approach. Routledge. Accessible online http://mastersindigitalmarketing.org/book/ #passion4digital This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.