The future of voice assistants in your life, brand communications and voice commerce. As told by Amazon Alexa, Diageo, Comic Relief and Mediacom at Say It Now’s latest event….

Last Friday we hosted our first IRL event post lockdown. It was a hybrid event, with practitioners, investors, and voice pioneers attending in person, and over 100 people joining our live stream (now available to view on demand). We wanted to share our experiences to empower the audience to take advantage of this extraordinary new channel and highlight the opportunities on a global scale. 

The voice industry has been booming within the last year. We’re discovering how voice is permissive, how voice allows you to be heard, and keeps you deeply engaged and thinking differently about the brands you’re talking to. We’re seeing more new conversational capabilities coming to market on platforms like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant.  All aimed at giving users a more frictionless user experience, improving the quality of their daily lives. 

We mentioned at the top that Voicebot had recently released a new research report on smart speaker adoption in the UK. It drives home the fact that 38% of adults own a smart speaker, which will only continue to rise and has surpassed the % of US homes that boast a smart speaker (35%). During COVID, people used their devices more, and we saw that 55% of people who responded said they used their smart speaker more than they would have normally. This shows the power of the behaviour shifts we’ve seen during COVID and a great opportunity for brands to be heard as consumers continue to spend more time at home.  

World leading brands and expert practitioners joined us on the day and shared their stories about what they’ve been doing in the last few years, what they’re doing today, and what they’re excited about for the future. 

Comic Relief, spoke about how they’re keeping themselves at the forefront of new channels. With COVID having an enormous impact on charities, it made fundraising more challenging as the demand for services increased. 

They discussed new opportunities, and finding new ways to engage their audience with the work that they do. This also includes new ways to generate income, and innovative solutions that can provide the boost for them. They were keen to explore how they could use the power of voice, and the challenges they faced. They were the first amongst other charities to run targeted Actionable Audio Ads across smart speakers through global radio so listeners could learn about Comic Relief, and donate straight away – without friction. 

Diageo told us about the challenge their Whisky brand had been facing, this included taste, age, complexity, image, and poor in home experiences. They looked at what they could do to  disrupt the traditional perception the consumer has of whisky, and how they can create a new experience for users with Talisker Tasting. 

Introducing voice. Why? 

With over ⅓ of homes in the US and UK owning smart speakers, Diageo saw that as a huge opportunity to connect with consumers at home. Wanting to disrupt, connect and be where the consumers are, they talked us through key stats that really gave them the insight to invest in voice and create a talisker tasting experience for consumers to indulge in within the comfort of their home. 

Henry Penny from Mediacom took us through his favourite ‘Media First’ Audio Campaign: Berocca Boost. They worked with Say It Now to bring this campaign to life using Actionable Audio Ads. Bayer and Mediacom saw this opportunity as a way of tapping into cultural trends, to achieve Bayer’s key objectives to embrace innovation, e-commerce, and to try something ‘outside their comfort zone’. They broke down the user journey for the audience, and gave us an example of the integration of the Actionable Audio Ad including the transactional Alexa skill itself. Results spoke for themselves, where 23% of people who landed on the skill via Digital Audio made a purchase, and 42% used the Alexa skill to find out more product information. 

Lastly, we enjoyed insights from Amazon Alexa’s Chief Technical Evangelist, Jeff Blankenberg who took us through an incredible journey on what’s going on with Alexa. He covered three ways on how you can take advantage of voice technology with your brand. The first is connected devices, where you can speak to devices – whether it’s setting alarms, or turning on lights. The second is Alexa voice service, which are devices that have Alexa engines running through it. If it has the ability to connect to the internet, you can probably add Alexa voice service to your product. The third thing is the Alexa skill kit – where people are able to build a skill to be deployed across Alexa devices. Jeff Blankenburg took us through a journey, showing us practical examples from around the world, and shared his personal vision of where voice assistants may be heading.

Here at Say It Now, we’re a technology business focused on voice, and we want to attack the enormous opportunity that voice presents. Voice is estimated to have $164 billion worth of transactions by 2025, up from $20bn in 2020. Our mission is simple, to make people’s lives easier by using this new channel, to make their daily interactions and tasks more frictionless.

The turnout was phenomenal with live streamers staying on for an average of 51 mins, and positive feedback coming through to us on our WhatsApp group and during networking and panel discussions at the end.

If you missed the live stream, you can watch the event in full on demand here – https://sayitnow.wavecast.io/actionable-audio-ads-and-other-voice-stories/live