amazon echo

052 - Brian Roemmele - Amazon’s Hardware Announcements: Keys to the Castle - Pt. 1

Echo Buds, Echo Frames, Echo Loop, and more new products take Alexa to new fields: what does it mean? Brian Roemmele is known as the Oracle of Voice for a reason. Over decades he has predicted so many things that came true. The brilliance of these new products like Echo Loop is about getting Amazon into the castle without fighting for spaces that are already occupied, like the wrist or the pocket.

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About Our Guest:

Brian Roemmele is the recognized world authority on how voice AI will impact computing and commerce. Over arc of his career, Brian has built and run payments and tech businesses, worked in media, including the promotion of top musicians, and explored a variety of other subjects along the way. He has been published in Forbes, Huffington Post, Newsweek, Slate, Business Insider, Daily Mail, Inc, Gizmodo, Medium, and is an exclusive Quora top writer. He hosts Around the Coin (earliest crypto currency podcast), Breaking Banks Radio and more, discussing everything from Bitcoin to Voice Commerce.

Brian created the Multiplex app and Multiplex Magazine, a way to stay on top of everything important in technology, payments and just about anything else. He has taken the stage at Money 20/20, ETA Transact and many private events as a speaker on the future of Voice Commerce.

Companies don’t patent things just because.

A big theme of this episode is getting out of the weeds of the technical features and instead looking at better ways to get work done. Think big picture. We are looking at the beginnings of new use cases in brand new paradigms.

When you paradigm shift, the canvas is blank, and that’s where we are with voice.

This is Part 1 - tune back in next week to hear more! We cover branding and marketing foundations based on personas and archetypes, which will determine success tomorrow. 1-click subscribe free in your favorite podcast app now so you don’t miss it.

The idea of the app is already gone.

amazon-echo-devices-frames-buds-loop-phone.png

From Brian’s Quora article about Amazon’s Fall 2019 release and preview of products (9/25/2019):

If Echo and Alexa devices from Amazon along with the Skills ecosystem were a stand-alone company in 2019, using typical startup multiples, Echo, Inc would be worth about $500 billion dollars. This is an astounding achievement and there shows no sign that the acceleration is slowing.

Amazon Owns The Far-Field Voice First Market, Now They Are Comping For The Near-Field

Today was a next generation Amazon Alexa-themed event with Echo devices for every possible use case but most specially the near-field. I have surfaced ~32 primary Voice First modalities. Amazon is now in three:

1. Near-field - on the body

2. Mid-field - small environment

3. Far-field - open room

read more

Timestamps by topic:

  • 04:00 Amazon’s patents telegraph the future

  • 04:50 Amazon did not dominate in smartphone, obviously (Fire Phone failed - and at the time in 2014, people overlooked the first generation Amazon Echo)

  • 05:50 Smartphone is an old modality

  • 06:10 iPhone is the iconic smartphone

  • 06:30 What is the strategy to get into the castle? Content and shopping, largest merchant on planet

  • 07:10 “Amazon is a retailer, not a technology company” - this is why Amazon created the voice first experience first

Brian Roemmele - @BrianRoemmele

Brian Roemmele - @BrianRoemmele

  • 07:35 Amazon does not pretend to be a tech company, they’re a company that produces technology

  • 07:50 Amazon doesn’t have mindshare yet, and that is key

  • 07:55 What happens with content and mindshare? How does content creation play in?

  • 08:30 Amazon is not going after the smartphone or smart watch (not after the wrist or the pocket

  • 09:10 Products that define new categories must be loved and hated

  • 09:30 “Talk to the hand” back in vernacular with Echo Loop

  • 10:30 Tech companies don’t consider anthropological and sociological impact of products

  • 11:10 We ask “Can we?” too often and don’t ask “Should we?” enough

  • 11:45 Brian’s thesis: Hyper Local

  • 11:55 Echo Loop (a ring) is not always on - it has a button to engage Alexa. It draws you into the Alexa ecosystem without taking away from Apple AirPods - and that is brilliant.

  • 13:20 Future of the voice assistant that you talk to like a significant other

  • 13:30 Done thumb clawing at screen - that is the future

  • 13:50 Echo Frames and Echo Loop are early versions of the ubiquitous voice future

  • 14:20 Near field computing, mid-field, and far-field (open room) - Amazon’s secret weapon over the castle wall was to get in the home (with Echo in 2014) - which became the fastest adopted consumer technology in history

  • 15:10 The tech leap happened organically with consumers from kitchen to living room - Amazon is doing the same strategy again to get people to adopt this in the near field

  • 15:50 People mocked the iPad (menstrual pad?) and look what happened - these products have to be hated or mocked

  • 16:30 iPhone was laughed at because it didn’t have a keyboard. What is past is prologue. We always see the future through the glasses of right now and the past - always view the future through the rearview mirror:

  • 16:40 We defined the new in the words of the old, e.g.: the horseless carriage, flameless candle, talking pictures.

  • 17:50 Most voice first experts have nothing to do with the technology world, which irritates folks in tech

  • 18:45 Computing is not what it was for the last sixty years, and it will not continue to be what is has been the last twenty - think about this for typing and interacting

  • 18:55 Technology gets bigger and bigger until it disappears (e.g. you don’t talk about your carburetor, you just buy a car that works or Jobs saying RAM doesn’t matter, you will only care what the computer does or accomplishes)

  • 21:35 There are no killer applications for voice. “Apps?” That’s 2D. (Check out our interview with Dave Isbitski, Chief Evangelist of Alexa, where we concluded the same thing)

  • 21:55 So what are people really looking for with voice?

  • 22:30 "The idea of the app is already gone.” - Brian

  • 23:40 The intimate relationship that technology can and will spawn is the killer app. We can’t see that world clearly yet

  • 24:50 We’re not battling on the grounds defined by prior technologies

  • 25:10 We’ve only seen 4 of the 175 modalities that voice first works in

  • 25:50 Amazon’s brilliance is great utility to an existing ecosystem (Alexa)

Echo Buds (pre-order Echo Buds for $129.99 <— this link helps support the show!)

Echo Buds (pre-order Echo Buds for $129.99 <— this link helps support the show!)

  • 25:00 Amazon doesn’t expect Echo Buds to replace Apple AirPods

  • 27:20 Echo Buds isolate noise and incorporate multiple VAs like Google and Siri

  • 27:30 AirPods are a cultural phenomenon about fashion as much as sound- that is why they won’t be easily replaced by Echo Buds

  • 28:05 Brand signaling with AirPods, or whatever product comes next- that is human

  • 28:30 Loop and Frames are wise moves

echo-frames-personal-audio.png
  • 29:10 AOL move to open AOL Mail to internet mail is similar to Buds move to open to other VAs

  • 29:40 Amazon subsidies for Buds and Amazon Music. Music is a commodity - supplier does not matter.

  • 30:10 When you stream music, that streaming service makes almost nothing (e.g. Apple, Google, Spotify) - loss leader. The strategy is about attention, narrative, communication with the customer.

  • 30:50 See: Prime. Brilliant. Long term relationship.


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Connect with Brian Roemmele:

045 - Hearables and the Future of Audible Social Media - Dave Kemp

Dave Kemp from Oaktree Products is an expert on hearables, which are smart, wireless in-ear devices such as AirPods. And they’re probably the future of voice, more so than smart speakers.

Dave and Emily talked about ambient computing from Alexa to wearables to the connected car. And interestingly we touched on the dire need for curated content to replace the noisy and overwhelming experience of social media today. Plus, hear how Alexa Flash Briefing might be the first iteration of that improved content experience.

AirPods are Apple's most popular accessory product, with 35 million units sold in 2018 alone.

AirPods are Apple's most popular accessory product, with 35 million units sold in 2018 alone.

Topics and timestamps:

  • Hearables including AirPods and competitor products such as Samsung Galaxy Buds, Pixel Buds, Microsoft Surface headset

  • 5:10 Amazon hearables in late half of 2019 (competitor to AirPods)

  • Apple's new H1 chip in v2 AirPods shows that Apple is dedicated to AirPods for the long term (beyond using the W1 chip from Apple Watch), now AirPods have their own chip architecture just for hearables

  • First application is "Hey Siri" activation (no tapping required)

  • 7:10 Bret Kinsella helped people visualize importance of the smart speaker as training wheels, a conditional device to make people comfortable with the voice assistant, offloading smartphone related tasks to VAs. But hearables are really riding the bike.

  • The near-field voice assistant is key (smart speakers like the Amazon Echo and Google Home and Apple HomePod are far field)

  • 9:00 We have to recognize there has been a dramatic behavioral shift since 2016

  • It has becomes socially acceptable to wear in-ear devices all the time

  • 9:20 Form factors are developing: earrings (fashionable hearables) and Bose AR frames with speakers near the ear could be the future

hearables-woman-airpods-earrings-pierced-beetle-moment-podcast.jpg
  • 9:40 Hearing aids as a form factor allow for usage that is super discreet - moving away from stigma today and to all-day usage

  • Passively consuming content while synced to digital environment - all day usage is plausible

  • 10:30 Emily's Bluetooth headache - how can we minimize exposure to EMFs from a health standpoint?

  • 11:00 AirPods case could become the receiver vs streaming content from phone to AirPods. Content could be housed in the AirPod case and streamed in a lower bandwidth from the edge vs the cloud.

  • 11:20 Outfitting our bodies with technology - what are the health implications for heavy EMFs (Electric and magnetic fields (EMFs) are invisible areas of energy, often referred to as radiation) - hear a quick Flash Briefing about why EMFs are a problem - TBD…

  • 12:25 Flash Briefing and passive consumption of content

  • Flash Briefing is a gem

  • Dave’s Flash Briefing (Future Ear Radio) is his daily blog post on futurear.co then the briefing is a 60 second tease about the blog post (a promotional vehicle to his blog post)

  • Flash Briefing should be the star of the smart speaker - such a powerful use case

  • 14:00 This is the precursor to audio social media, consuming on demand the content you want to consume from your favorite sources (curated feed)

  • Amazon should be featuring Flash Briefing more but now it's relegated to the Settings area of the Alexa app

  • How can we put the Flash Briefing idea on other platforms?

  • 15:15 We are so overwhelmed with social media- what if you could Google Reader / RSS all that content?

  • Ways to better curate your attention and cut out the noise

  • We love Twitter but it requires so much parsing - what does the future hold and how can voicefirst make passive content consumption better?

Get in touch with Dave Kemp:

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039 - Katherine Prescott: Alexa Privacy, Echo Show 5

Katherine Prescott is the Founder and Editor of VoiceBrew, a digital media company dedicated to helping people get the most out of Alexa. We discussed privacy on Amazon Alexa as well as the future of #voicefirst advertising. Which tech company's business model has true alignment with the end user, examining Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook.

Katherine Prescott is the Founder &amp; Editor of VoiceBrew, a top resource for Alexa tips and best uses

Katherine Prescott is the Founder & Editor of VoiceBrew, a top resource for Alexa tips and best uses

Topics and timestamps:

  • Privacy - Amazon Alexa - is she recording?

  • Amazon Echo Show 5 announcement - new features, especially for greater privacy and user data control

  • When is Alexa recording vs listening?

  • How do I control my privacy settings on Alexa?

  • 3.10 This privacy dialogue is healthy - it improves voice assistants for consumers

  • Echo Show 5 has a new camera shutter and the ability to say “Alexa, delete everything I said today”

  • 4.20 Alexa app is not the focus

  • 5.00 Discoverability is the ultimate challenge

  • 5.05 It’s called the 5 but this refers to the 5.5 inch screen - is same as third gen echo

  • 5.10 Why the Echo Show 5 is such a big deal - compelling land grab for affordable smart display space

  • 6.10 Like the shift from radio to TV, third party Alexa skills will improve dramatically because of multi-modal

  • 10.04 Will smart display pave the way for advertising? Banner even? Less intrusive than voice? Alexa diplsay ads?

  • 10.50 Emily: sponsorship and brand preference will be paid for - that will be the advertising, unlike previous digital like banner ads or PPC

  • 11.30 Katherine: Tech giants are shifting toward privacy as a feature

  • 13.15 Business model and alignment - Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook. Great point from Katherine.

  • 14.02 Google's pitch: we provide free services and collect your data.

  • 14.27 Think of privacy in broader context - we are in the early innings of voice 

See this post on Instagram and follow @beetlemoment for #voicefirst news

See this post on Instagram and follow @beetlemoment for #voicefirst news

Sources:

  1. Echo Show 5: https://www.techradar.com/news/amazon-echo-show-5-everything-you-need-to-know

  2. "Buried in this morning’s Echo Show 5 announcement are a couple of new security features worth highlighting. In addition to the inclusion of a built-in camera shutter on the new smart display are a pair of Echo  commands that let users delete voice recordings with an Alexa command." -https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/29/amazon-adds-alexa-delete-what-i-said-today-command/



Enjoy this episode about #voicefirst marketing and technology? Please leave us a review! 1) Click “Listen in Apple Podcasts”, 2) Click “Open in iTunes:, 3) Click “Ratings and reviews”. Thanks!

Enjoy this episode about #voicefirst marketing and technology? Please leave us a review! 1) Click “Listen in Apple Podcasts”, 2) Click “Open in iTunes:, 3) Click “Ratings and reviews”. Thanks!

Get in touch with Katherine Prescott:

Twitter: @kbprescott

Instagram: @voicebrew

Voicebrew.com

015 - Why Voice First and Smart Speakers Are a Marketing Must

What is Voice First?

Topics:

  • Position Zero or bust

  • Voice search

  • Speech recognition

  • Alexa Flash Briefing

  • Smart speakers

  • Alexa

  • Amazon Echo

  • Google Home

  • Transcribing all of YouTube automatically

  • Carl Jung and the collective unconscious - how this applies to indexing our global speech

  • “Marketing is three things: direct response, and PR; the rest is just tactics.” - Bob Knorpp, host of The BeanCast


Mentioned on the show:

  1. See my YouTube video: Why You Should Create an ALEXA Flash Briefing | MARKETING Your BRAND

  2. Voice Tech Podcast with Carl Robinson: Perception of Smiles in the Voice, with Pablo Arias, IRCAM (here's what I tweeted about this neat show)

  3. Moz Podcast: The Science of Voice Search, with Neil Martinsen-Burrell

  4. Google Duplex:

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If you enjoyed this podcast please leave a review on Apple Podcasts (I'd really appreciate your feedback!). Tweet me @emilybinder and let me know what you think.

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