| | August 20158CIOReviewBy Boon Lai, VP-Marketing, Philips North AmericaProduct Innovation in the Digital Age: Technology as a Catalyst for Engagementopinionin myAt this point, we've all heard about Internet of Things (IoT). Once inanimate objects now provide powerful intelligence and strong connection to furnish imaginable integration. We are at the precipice of a new era where common items in our lives will be able to talk wirelessly among themselves--making decisions and performing tasks that will make our lives more convenient and comfortable. If this is the language of the future, how do marketers keep up? How do we stay one step ahead of consumers? How do we make sense of the reams of data generated from the approximately 3.9 billion connected things in use in 2014--not to mention the 25 billion expected by 2020?One thing I have learned in my role as Vice President, Marketing, Philips North America, is that technological push can act as a catalyst to deepen consumer engagement, drive loyalty, and build brand preferences. Moreover, these technologies can be channeled to gather real-time data for informing the way a brand could transform their products to meet consumer needs. Philips Sonicare harnessed this trend to drive action from an important but often hard-to-reach target audience of future product adaptors: youth. Merging Digital Capabilities with Consumer Needs Leading up to 2014, the Philips Sonicare consumer business faced a challenge: power toothbrush sales were dominated by adults (80 percent), with only 20 percent of sales among youth (children ages 4-12). In addition, the child oral care market was competitive, saturated with various brands, including Philips Sonicare, clamoring for consumer attention. We knew through our research that parents faced challenges trying to motivate their children to brush their teeth regularly and effectively. Meanwhile, kids sought to brush their teeth
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