An Emerging Era of Brands as Innovators, Inventors and Makers

In recent years, if you wanted to know what a laptop, phone or tablet looked like – you had Apple … and all of the imitators. But 2017 is the year that the post-Apple landscape has begun to emerge. Now the terrain has opened up for experimentation in every corner of consumer technology, and unique ideas are popping up at an exciting pace.

At the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show we saw laptops in a staggering number of sizes, shapes, costs and features. Samsung made a Chromebook that also runs Android apps, transforms into a tablet and has a built-in stylus (Samsung Chromebook Pro). Lenovo shared a stunningly thin two-in-one keyboard with a screen that doubles as an e-ink sketchpad (Lenovo Yoga Book). Dell shared a business laptop thinner than a MacBook Air and cheaper and more powerful than a MacBook Pro (and with a borderless touchscreen – the XPS 13-inch 2-in-1).

Gaming computers were in abundance, including the wild $9,000 Predator laptop from Acer, which has a 21-inch curved screen, built-in virtual reality, outrageously powerful specs, built-in subwoofers, a foldout keyboard and weighs 20 pounds!

PC makers shared desktops that are aimed straight at Apple’s core audience: creative professionals. The Microsoft Surface Studio has a giant touchscreen drawing canvas and a funky control wheel. The Dell Inspiron All-in-One has built-in speakers more powerful than a Bose soundbar.

We saw smartphones with built-in augmented reality and virtual reality (Asus ZenFone AR running Google Tango and Google Daydream out of the box). There was a phone with Amazon Alexa built in (Huawei Mate 9). Xiaomi even shared a phone that is all screen, with no bezel on three of the four sides (the Mi Max).

Smart watches, a category that was quiet for most of 2016, started to hint at what’s to come. Traditional watchmakers such as Casio and Fossil blended traditional watch design (and analogue hands) with smart innards. New Balance’s first foray into the smartwatch category, the runner-oriented RunIQ, also generated sizeable buzz.

And Amazon and Google left Apple in the dust in the race to conquer AI and smart homes. Dozens of third parties incorporated Amazon Echo’s open API into their products this year. From the Triby connected fridge magnet to the Ford SYNC in-car infotainment system, you can now talk to Alexa in more places than ever.

What does this mean for the brands we serve? The era of brands as publishers, which required agencies to become content creators, has started to give way to an era of brands as innovators, inventors and makers. It no longer seems unusual for a sneaker company to make wearable computers, or for a consumer electronics brand to get into the health and fitness game. And that’s an exciting prospect for marketers, for whom the definition of brand marketing has expanded into exciting territories, which would have seemed impossible only a few years ago.

David Quintiliani is Group Creative Director at VML New York