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April 25, 2017

SMART HOME MOVE, BK?

Smart homes have been considered science fiction since movies had sound. Remember the movie Smart House?

Now everything in our house is smart. You can just walk into a store and buy something to make your dumb home a brainiac.

But even the smartest among homes can be duped.

In fact, an old school, fast feeder has come up with a way to get into your smart home’s head.

Burger King managed to make a commercial where they trick Google Home into listing off the ingredients in a Whopper. Innovative for a beef-pusher. Tech forward even.

But how does it play with consumers? We don’t ask for ads on our TV, but they show up anyway. We don’t make a fuss out of it.

But with Burger King, we wonder whether the novelty of this ad will be strong enough to get over the added feeling of potential intrusion in controlling something in the consumer’s precious domiciles.

Google Home is called a personal assistant — a device only the owner should be able to activate, right?

Maybe that’s what’s a bit unsettling. Or that cold, robotic voice trying to coerce us into thinking about that warm, broiled burger.

Marketers are going to have to tread carefully, and cleverly, if they want to leverage our tech in surprising ways. Or risk ending up with a whopping disaster.

What’s next? Maybe commercials will start asking our personal assistants if we want to start buying their products. Alexa — got a bitcoin on ya’?