Walk Like An Egyptian, See Like A Robot

Image: Matt Groening

Popular Culture never fails to fascinate us here in the agency.

Not only do the newest Memes, GIFs and Viral Videos entertain or enlighten us:
they also possess insights about the Future.

Especially these days:
Social Media is nothing less than a Collective Consciousness.

As professionals dedicated to (profitable) Marketing and (effective) Communication, it's in our interest to be constantly up-to-date on the latest trends and developments. Often, Social Media can give us clues as to what's coming before many conferences and webinars.

This week, we caught a glimpse of how a Tesla autonomous car "sees" in the 21st Century, thanks to the video below. And at that very moment, we suddenly began to grasp an exciting new trend:

The importance and power of Machine Vision.

In the 1970s, American comedian Steve Martin created a massive meme with his song "King Tut" which later influened the Bangles' hit, "Walk Like An Eqyptian", long before the Mannequin Challenge and Emojis.

Take a look at the following Tesla video and you will suddenly realise:
In our century, forget about dusty old Egyptians: we need to learn to "See Like A Robot"!

In a recent post, we mentioned the work of Google Lens and continual efforts in Artificial Intelligence to refine machines' abilities to "see".

A picture is worth a thousand words, as they say.

As a consequence, trend-watchers at Crimson Hexagon believe that images can provide us with a host of useful data that can be used to better understand our customers. And more importantly, their Digital Lifestyle.

In an interesting whitepaper on the subject, the authors propose a new Social Media monitoring metric that may help us even more than SOV, Share of Voice.

They feel strongly that SOY, Share of Eye, will become increasingly valuable as consumers begin to focus at lightning speed on images, rather than our beloved USPs and well-crafted claims.

They'll scan "informational territory" much like the 2018 Tesla does as it navigates roads, people and predicts potential accidents.

They'll begin to see their world as robots:

Photo: Crimson Hexagon. "The Fundamentals of Image Analytics", 2017 

That's not news for many of us who employ Eye-Tracking in online Usability Testing.

However, the new twist is that Predictive and Prescriptive Analysis done by AI agents will increasingly allow us to delight our best customers with even better service, real-time solutions and the quality that our "Wallies" expect from their cherished Lovemarks.

Chart: Crimson Hexagon. "The Fundamentals of Image Analytics", 2017 

See what we mean?