A Marketer's Guide to Collision

' You’re not to blame if you felt a deep sense of FOMO last week. With three important conferences happening all at once (Cannes, Collision, and NFT.NYC), most marketers chose their beloved Cannes, while a few of us techies decided to head to Toronto for Collision.

For my friends and colleagues in the south of France, this blog post is for you. Here’s my take on the latest innovations bubbling-up from the world’s largest startup conference.?

This year, Toronto really shined.

With 35,000 attendees, Toronto was awash with venture capitalists, startups, and tech executives from all over the world. Toronto is a clean, vibrant,?and diverse startup mecca and the 4th largest city in North America. They are placing a huge financial and strategic bet, investing hundreds of millions into country-funded accelerators in a bid to become the next Silicon Valley.

There are a lot of disruptors coming.

The quality of startups was striking. The issues that society (and consumers) are facing are more numerous now than in recent memory, creating (what I believe) will be a huge Web3 innovation wave. Now is the time to lean-in, learn, and experiment. If you aren’t building your digital innovation muscles and organizing for constant change, you are already behind.?

Walmart is an excellent example of a company “leaning-in” to innovation. They announced at Collision (yet another) Blue Labs, with a time horizon of innovations that won’t hit stores until 2030 and with complete separation from its corporate parent, Walmart is methodically protecting its innovation culture by creating a “safe space” for new ideas.

We are all technology companies.

I’m borrowing a quote from Olivia Morley, Reporter at AdWeek who said that “agencies are technology companies.” I would add that every company is a technology company. Loyalty is won and lost on digital experience, making the partnership between a CMO and CTO more important than ever before. It's was striking to hear the digital proficiency of the CMO's on stage from VMWare, Philips, and Unity - not simply in the domaine of marketing, but in all aspects of CX. The best CMOs work across internal stakeholders and teams. "If you're simply doing what is expected of you as a CMO, you're not doing your job." (overheard at Collision).

Let’s take a look at some trends.?

Collision is an innovation firehose and you can’t spend three days walking the floor without walking away with a genuine sense of the future. Here are a few of my observations.

1. Customer service will soon be a job for avatars - They are more lifelike, more intelligent (not quite sentient) and will soon sense and convey emotion.
2. The “super apps” are (finally) coming - Apps that solve complex problems by integrated multiple services (like Uber) are coming. Asia has enjoyed "super apps" for over a decade, and the sheer volume of cross-app integrations discussed at Collision is telling of a new wave. Think of a single travel app where your plane ticket, hotel, restaurants, theme parks, and more are integrated and working together.
3. AI will make personalized content at scale a reality - AI isn't just for creating trippy hell-scape images. It's going to improve, and ultimately provide marketers with the ability to generate thousands of assets with a single click of a button. It's available in 2D today, but I met several companies that will bring this to your video advertising as well. Goodbye production company, hello AI-generated video advertising.
4. Quantum computing will have a profound impact on data security - Your company's network isn't ready for a quantum computer hack. It's coming, and security startups are racing to build solutions that will keep your data safe in the quantum world.
5. FinTech is proliferating and tokenization is not going anywhere - The power to start your own bank, launch a credit card, create your own loyalty program, launch your own crypto currency and more is becoming more affordable with startups working to democratize financial services for businesses of all sizes.

The future according to Eric Schmidt

In a world where Elon Musk dominates Twitter with pie-in-the-sky projections, it’s nice to?hear from Eric Schmidt. Where will the next trillion-dollar companies come from? It's these three areas, according to the ex-CEO of Google:

1. Quantum computing - will be scaleable within a decade
2. Synthetic biology - will eventually be very cheap
3. Energy consumption - both supply and demand side

A few startups to keep an eye on.

It’s an immense honor to listen to a startup pitch. Each time, you’re hearing a Founder tell you a story about a problem they are so passionate to solve that they are willing to risk it all. The smartest and most charismatic people I have ever met are startup Founders and the dopamine rush you feel when the “lightbulb moment’ hits is both addicting and inspiring. That said, if you’re evaluating startups for angel investments, strategic partnerships, pilots, or even acquisition - the sheer volume can be daunting. I maintain a “5-point scorecard” to organize my thoughts and allow for easier comparison.

SnapWrite AI - auto generated product descriptions for eCommerce

Save hundreds of hours by simply uploading your product image and let the AI do the rest. It identifies the object, assigns categories and keywords (already SEO optimized) and writes a product description that's in the tone of voice of your brand.

SoulMachines - photo realistic AI avatars for customer service

Empathy is the hallmark of good customer service. SoulMachines provides AI that fakes this feeling pretty well, as the avatar adapts to a consumer's mood with lifelike avatars that are ready to sell products, deliver support, and/or entertain.

G2 - ratings and reviews for B2B software

G2 is like Yelp but for B2B software. Forget dusty-old analyst reports and use the wisdom of the crowd to determine which SaaS solution is right for your company. We know how powerful rating and reviews are to consumer decisions, so it's worth keeping an eye on if you're in the SaaS industry.

Liifer Technologies - food ordering platform for gamers

It's no secret that gamers love to eat. The concept of food delivery paired with gaming was popularized on Twitch. But why fumble for a phone when you can order directly from inside your XBox? This team builds the menu and ordering function as an app in the console.

Brave Motion - motion capture for athletes and coaches

Body-tracking motion sensors have been around a while. So what makes this interesting? For sports coaching and rehab; this startup allows you to improve your golf or tennis swing, your running stride. I can totally see a Nike or Under Armour scooping-up this tech (if they don't have it already) and a new layer of competitive fitness data for Stride communities.

StandardAI - autonomous checkout for retailers

Amazon Go Stores made this technology famous... but what about everyone else? Finally there is autonomous checkout coming for other major retailers. The ability to walk-in, grab what you want and walk out (in under 3 minutes) is coming soon to a retailer near you.

Maple - innovative tele-health platform

COVID accelerated the tele-health space over a decade. At Stagwell, our agency YML helped Kaiser Permanente with its mobile health app (read about it here) and it's exciting to see another great app was developed in Canada.

Faire Wholesale - wholesale marketplace for independent brands

"Things not sold on Amazon" is the most popular filter on this eCommerce platform that claims to be the one-stop-shop for independent brands. It's growing quick, with a sizable team in Toronto. Think Shopify but for wholesalers.

Tandym - digital store cards for brands

Run your own rewards program at a greatly-reduced cost! A white-label solution for any-size retailer. It's cool to see startups doing what they do best - democratizing services that are typically controlled by a handful of massive players. Tandym is taking on the biggest credit card companies with a technology that removes many of the fees from the system.

Kama DEI - emotion-aware NLP for customer service.

This AI learns and adapts to an individual's values and ethnic background. Kama DEI is currently focused on the indigenous people of Canada (read here) however any brand seeking to use AI to speak to a diverse audience of consumers (that's everyone) would be wise to consider this company.

Was it worth skipping Cannes?

Attend Cannes if you’ve already “made it” and want to celebrate your achievements. Attend Collision if you’re eager to take part in the future. Every aspect of our economy and business is going digital and innovation is constantly disrupting industries and destroying barriers to entry. The future is bright - but it’s very clear that the future is in the hearts and minds of the attendees in Toronto.?

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