Reading Tips of the Week

Digitisation is not a megatrend anymore, it has become normality nowadays. It determines both our private and professional daily life. In particular how people spend their free time has changed enormously in the course of digital change in recent years. The best example is the way sport is done nowadays.  Thanks to digitally connected devices, more and more people train more specifically and more consciously. This way, they can constantly check their vital signs and their fitness level.

But not only that. The way in which classic sports are consumed has also changed significantly. Furthermore, the improvement of network connections as well as the increasing popularity of smartphones have contributed to completely new sports being created, for example League of Legends (LoL).

The progress of technology has already turned well-known gaming competitions into huge global events and thus ultimately brought e-sports into our daily lives. The number of spectators in e-sports is rising. The corresponding turnover and the number of companies that make investments is increasing as well. The most recent example is Bayern Munich. Together with its partners Telekom, Allianz and Siemens, the tradition-steeped football club announced its participation in the eFootball.Pro league.

So the question is: Why could e-sports as a marketing instrument be interesting for your company?

Two weeks after the spectacular Singles’ Day, it was time for the next online shopping mania: Black Friday and Cyber Monday – and they did not disappoint. Consumers and retailers enjoyed a week full of special offers and made millions of transactions. Similar to #Double11, this e-commerce mania far exceeded all forecasts.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday which have their roots in the USA have already established themselves as the most relevant sales events of the year in Germany (and throughout Europe).

Not only do they shape customer behaviour, they also revolutionise calendars as well as price and marketing strategies. Everybody wants to take part. But how should retailers, manufacturers and brands approach these huge sales events so that they constantly make a profit from them?

The development of the Internet of Things is nowhere near slowing down. Quite the opposite: by the end of this year, presumably 4.8 billion networked endpoints will be used in the enterprise segment and car industry. According to a forecast by Gartner, this figure will even rise to 5.8 billion by 2020 which is equivalent to an annual growth of 21 per cent.

Two forces are driving this development forward: speed and size. On the one hand, companies use an improved broadband connection to make real-time analysis and on-demand intelligence possible. In B2C as well as B2B, several use cases have already shown their potential. On the other hand, sensors – an essential component of the Internet of Things (IoT) – become smaller and smaller and more and more sophisticated.

In this context, Gartner states that companies will use physical space to interact with their customers through these tiny sensors. Smart Cars, Smart Cities, Industry 4.0 or Smart Farming are familiar terms surrounding a phenomenon that covers way more – for example the next stage of the IoT technology called »Smart Dust«, which currently attracts a lot of attention.