5 ways to make voice technology work for your business

The future of voice and its impact on customer success, experience and engagement is one you need to start working on, and fast.

As part of #ColliderPredicts, our latest series of events exploring the most cutting edge tech and how that can, and should impact your innovation, we started with voice, and what that could mean to you.

Collaborating with Unruly and their incredible Connected Home, we were joined by voices from Amazon, Matchbox Mobile and Barclays to discuss the next steps for corporate innovation where this is concerned.

Here’s our top five moves we think you could start working on now, thanks to one hell of a special panel* and a room full of high flying corporates who are already thinking “what next?”

1. Offer something substantial.

Voice will be successful for your corporate if you offer real value, otherwise you’ll risk diluting its proposition as a meaningful engagement.

Work out where you can find that meaning for your audience.

2. Don’t offer in isolation.

Avoid becoming too obsessive with voice being the next cool but weird thing — look at it as just another platform like Instagram was to Facebook.

Going forwards, your strategy needs to include voice, but not just voice. It’s another channel to tap into.

3. Get your business prepared early.

Don’t wait until you need to include voice within your strategy. Get the backend of your tech ready to integrate, even before you’re ready to use it.

4. Remember the interaction will be different

The user interface and experience with voice is entirely different to the majority of other technologies we currently use on a day-to-day basis. That means you can expect a different kind of interaction.

Think about how that could impact you.

5. Honesty and TRUST matters.

For voice to be truly successful, we need to have trust in the technology — especially as our homes are incredibly sacred spaces.

It’s up to the businesses using voice in innovative ways to make sure these experiences are truly valuable, and not just there for the sake of it.

*With thanks to: Simon Gosling, Futurist, Unruly Matthew Calamatta, CTO, Matchbox Mobile Chris Chabot, Technology Evangelist, Amazon John Cooper, VP of Mobile Payments Innovation, Barclays Andy Tait, Co-Founder and COO, Collider

And a huge thank you to Unruly Media for hosting us in their incredible Connected Home. What a space.

Collider and Unruly Launch New MadTech Mentoring Scheme

What do you get when you cross the very best MadTech startups with some of the most incredible names in video AdTech?

Not a funny punch line, but a pretty impressive mentor network reserved only for Collider startups.

We're super excited to announce the launch of our brand new MadTech Mentoring Scheme, in collaboration with our good friends at Unruly.

The scheme is all about giving the opportunity for our startups to learn from the UK's bigger AdTech star, with some of their most senior and successful team members across five disciplines stepping up to offer help and support.

Paired especially based on the incredible skills of the Unruly team and the challenges of our startups, today marked the first of four mentoring sessions running across the year.

Unruly Co-Founder, Matt Cooke, opened the event.

Brilliant little speech from @unruly.co's Matt Cooke 💪🏼👌🏼

A post shared by Collider (@collidergb) on Jul 20, 2017 at 6:03am PDT

Set in the Home – their zingy, innovative, state-of-the-art house packed with iOT and connected home tech, built smack in the middle of Unruly HQ, the location couldn't have been more perfect.

Joining us from Unruly included: Gel Goldsby – Reporting and Data Team Lead, Jule Owen – VP of Product, David Waterhouse – Global Director of PR and Content, Nat Clark – People Team Manager, Laura Thomas – Client Director and Olivia Goodman, Global People Director.

And from the Collider alumni we had Beem, Miappi, LivingLens, RTObjects, CampaignAmp and Release.

With five cohorts now behind us, this is the latest addition to our growing initiatives and partnerships in offering on going support to our alumni.

Unruly Collider MadTech Mentor Scheme

The Trial And Tested Method: Amsterdam Part 3

Every entrepreneur knows that trialling and testing is a must, and anyone working to help startups grow should know this applies to them too.

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That's why last month we put on our third Amsterdam popup – a tried and tested method of getting curious brands to collide with our incredible startups – this time with Nike, TNT/FedEx and Scotch and Soda.

We were joined by 10 startups across all of our cohorts and Booster Programme: Cablato, RTObjects, Unrival, Release, Duel, Storymail, Locomizer, Scoop Retail, Seenit and CampaignAmp, and just like before, trial budget was up for grabs, as each brand chose three or more startups to explore projects with.

Hosted at The Student Hotel in Amsterdam, we saw an incredible energy from the brand teams, with a number of high level executives taking part.

The brand experience first hand

Cesar Garcia, VP/GM of Western Europe Running at Nike said: “It was a great day, not just because of the result and opportunities ahead but also personally to be exposed to the thinking, entrepreneur mindset and solution oriented work style of the startups.”

Don't forget, we're open for applications to our first Amsterdam cohort! If you're a MadTech startup looking to change the world, or know someone who is, make sure you apply here.

Meet The Class of 2017: From The Crowd at Demo Day

With the very best in MadTech all under one roof, there were some incredible comments on social media throughout the day. Here's our round up of our Class of 2017 milestone Demo Day.

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1. Sarah Wood being totally awesome.

2. Jeremy Basset getting arty.

3. In response to Frenzi's pitch stating "banners are dead":

4. Startacus loving Good-Loop, our Class of 2017 Demo Day winner.

5. The Collider alumni being the lovely, supportive lot they are.

Unruly Hosted Our Fifth Demo Day, And It Was Awesome

Our startups smashed it and we couldn't be more proud, as our fifth annual Demo Day has now sailed, with some incredible brands, impressive investors and of course, some madness sprinkled in for good luck.

With video ad tech company Unruly hosting our milestone fifth cohort Demo Day, we showcased our newest startups alongside some of the very best scaleups to have graduated the programme, including Miappi, Seenit, CampaignAmp, Pixoneye and LivingLens. Brands such as Unilever, dunnhumby, Microsoft, Yahoo and Ogilvy also joined.

#ColliderDD17 crowd 💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻 pic.twitter.com/VwPuRjevwG

— Collider (@ColliderGB) March 28, 2017

The event was also the kick-off for our deepening relationship with Unruly, which aims to give back to the ecosystem.

Unruly CEO and co-founder Sarah Wood, who has mentored some of Collider’s most successful companies for a number of years, said: “Events like Collider’s Demo Day are the perfect way to connect London’s brightest founders with the people that can help bring their ideas to life.

“For Unruly, it was an unbeatable opportunity to give back to the MadTech ecosystem and encourage the next generation of businesses that will transform our industry - and on a personal level, being surrounded by start-ups in their discovery phase is always inspiring!

"With organisations like Collider, I'm confident we'll see the next unicorn come from London."

Good-Loop, one of our 2017 startups and an app which incentivises users to watch ads by donating to a charity of their choice once they reach a particular point in the video, won our 2017 Demo Day award - voted for by the crowd throughout the day.

We are thrilled to announce we are the winners of the Collider 2017 Demo Day!!! A huge thank you to the @ColliderGB team x x pic.twitter.com/JclKzMI5LO

— Good-Loop (@good__loop) March 28, 2017

The other incredible 2017 MadTech startups that pitched were:

Vensy

Vensy is a sports marketing platform that provides a simple way for brands to discover the best athletes to sponsor, while also helping athletes build and monetise their marketability.

Frenzi

Frenzi is a fast and easy platform that allows brands to build and publish engaging and interactive display ad campaigns across different online and mobile publishers.

Rate8

Rate8 is a mobile and web-based platform for consumers that give instant feedback on fashion and lifestyle items within e-commerce sites, from friends or via the Crowd.

Tweepforce

Tweepforce turns private messages into commerce opportunities by allowing users to directly buy from brands within DM conversations on Twitter.

Pearlai

Péarlaí is a technology platform that allows shopping centres to map shopper’s journies and interactions with vendors in order to customise their experience.

Adlaunch

Adlaunch enables simple, fast video creation and editing directly in a browser, enabling anyone to create good-looking video content. The platform has plans to include unique AI technology to enable even faster video creation based on image recognition and user data.

Greengame

Greengame wants to make sustainable living the norm with technology that automatically tracks activities that impact the environment – enabling cities and brands to engage and reward people for living sustainably.