If you went to CES this year, your head is probably still spinning. More than 3,900 exhibitors showcased world-changing technologies that spanned more than 2.75 million net square feet of exhibit space across Las Vegas - the largest show floor in CES' 51 year history. There were 860,732 tweets about CES 2018 and 450,554 uses of the #CES2018 hashtag. From autonomous cars and helicopters to TVs, smart home technology, and AR and VR- there was no shortage of innovation to be seen.
The C Space Experience
I spent a lot of time at the C-Space which is the CES experience for creative communicators, brand marketers, advertising agencies, digital publishers and social networks. TeamPeople was a C-Space sponsor this year, with a suite in the Aria Hotel. This allowed us to kick-start our connections and network with innovative brands looking for top digital talent. Did you miss us at the show? We’d love to connect and share our insights. Reach out to us here.
This division of the conference tells the story of how content, creativity, technology and influencers come together to discover new ways to elevate the industry, business and brand. The repeated theme in many of the C- Space sessions revolved around the concept that you can dress something up with all the tech in the world, but if the content isn’t great- it’s just not going to work. The quality of content still matters. Pipelines need content, but content also needs a segmented and specific audience. It turns out, even at the biggest technology conference in the world- all the speakers agreed, the content that lies beneath the devices still trumps the device.
AR and VR have been around for a while now, but this year, we also heard terms like MR (mixed reality) and XR (extended reality). Another lesson learned: where there's emerging tech, there's also a lot of jargon. The belief behind immersive media is that there’s an opportunity to provide consumers with a new way to engage with content and ultimately have a new kind of experience. As a marketer, I believe this relates to how customers experience our brand as well.
While autonomous cars and robots may have been stealing the show, voice had a strong presence during the week as well. It is estimated that around 500 million people currently use or have used a voice based digital assistant, including Amazon’s Alexa voice service and Google Home. This number is set to almost quadruple in the next few years. It is expected that half of all searches will be voice searches by 2020. How about that for an SEO strategy!
Supporting the Groundbreaking Innovation Unveiled
One of the most exciting moments of the conference for our Team was the Intel Keynote on Monday Night. Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, announced the unveiling of Intel Studios, a place where Hollywood and Technology meet to collaborate in order to create immersive media, ranging from virtual reality games to non-VR sports entertainment. It was also a great platform for the announcement of the budding partnership between Intel and Paramount as the effort to bring immersive experiences to large audiences comes to fruition. TeamPeople was proud to support Intel’s vision by supplying creative talent for both the production and post-production phases of the volumetric video experience debuted at CES. Our talent worked side by side with the incredible Intel staff serving in roles from Content Producer to Digital Painters– you can catch a glimpse of it here.
We must give a major shout out to our staff at Intel, who assisted with the construction of the edit suite and hospitality area. We also had employees who walked the show floor capturing footage and editors continuously generating spectacular original content in real-time. TeamPeople provided creative talent including producers, post production editors, copywriters and social media producers to support this event!
Overall, we found the content and technology shared at CES this year to be at the very core of what we do at TeamPeople. When the mission and message matter, leading brands and corporations continue to choose TeamPeople to build dynamic media teams for in-house studios, content creation, streaming, encoding and media management. We’re riding off the momentum of CES and looking forward to a year of innovation, creativity and problem solving.
