How the rollout of 5G will impact experience as we know it

Just last week, Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) in Singapore and the National Research Foundation announced plans to set aside SG$40 million to build an open and inclusive 5G Innovation ecosystem. Leveraging on 5G as a key digital infrastructure of tomorrow, the government looks to “embed digital transformation at the core of communities”.This will support 5G technology trials for enterprise use-cases, opening new testbeds and for use of research and development, as IMDA explores clusters such as maritime operations; urban mobility; smart estates; Industry 4.0, consumer applications and government applications.While it is still in its early stages at the moment, speaking to Marketing about the adoption of 5G, Jeff Cheong, deputy president, DDB Group Singapore and head of Tribal Worldwide Asia and Singapore, said that while 5G promises to be a more superior connection with a “remarkable” latency and bandwidth performance, the focus shouldn’t just be on speed.Better implementation on this new service is key to the growth of creativity.According to Cheong, some of the opportunities include emergence of “live reality” which provides content creators wider breadth of opportunities to initiate viewer participation.“Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) never gained mass adoption. With 5G’s fast data transfer, perhaps it will give content creators more tools to overlay mixed reality on their live content to create a new kind of viewers’ participation,” he said. With the demand for videos, comes the demand for more content. As such, the role of storytellers becomes crucial to better tackle clutter in the online space. Cheong also said the quality of production must also be elevated due to competition from a global stage.However, while the fast internet speed allows for opportunities and innovations, brands will also be required to step up and ready themselves to meet the demands of consumers. As such, brands need to prepare in advance solutions for troubleshooting to counter potential issues.Better experiences carvedSalesforce’s Asia area vice president, enterprise, Cecily Ng who said that 5G will “supercharge” marketers’ use of data analytics in IoT and AI to bring a new level of intelligence about the customer.Specifically, it will enable high-speed immersive AR and VR experiences that make companies dramatically better at engaging customers in real-time. In addition, with 5G enabling latency to drop below one millisecond, she sees VR and AR being able to process images faster than the human brain. “The goal of creative infusion in marketing is to enhance the customer experience,” she said.With the heightened expectations 5G entails for creatives and marketers, Ng said next-gen technologies can open new pathways for creativity and enable industry players to “do better”. This can be done by bringing about personalised customer journeys through fast data, which is also armed with layers of information about customer behavior and preferences. She added:The possibilities for the creative use of these technologies to solve existing problems are endless.Meanwhile, MediaMonks’ newly-appointed APAC VP of growth, Tobias Wilson said it won’t change creativity but it will allow the industry to create higher quality experiences for consumers and stretch industry players’ legs a little more. He was also of the view that:“Sadly, a lot of the technology we have access to simply won’t work in the real world and falls over in testing.”Citing a study by Google, Wilson backed up his point saying 40% of consumers will leave a page that takes longer than three seconds to load. In addition, the same study found that 79% of shoppers who are dissatisfied with site performance are less likely to purchase from the same site.“Anything that allows us to create a more dynamic experience for the user without affecting the load time is more than welcome,” Wilson said.(Gain valuable insights into best practices about CX at Marketing Interactive‘s Customer Experience Conference 2019 on 26 July at Four Seasons Hotel. Click here to find out more!)