This article was published on October 31, 2012

EVRYTHNG launches to connect physical products with the web for smart marketing


EVRYTHNG launches to connect physical products with the web for smart marketing

EVRYTHNG has been formally launched to make physical objects smarter by linking them to the Web. The Internet of Things has seen plenty of coverage online but until now it has been a little slow off the mark when it comes to making more things happen around us.

In basic terms, The Internet of Things connects physical objects to the online world to share information that can be used in a number of ways. Examples include plants that tell you when they need watering via an app, car parks that can convey whether there are spaces and updates on whether your front door has been opened or parcels delivered. The possibilities are huge, but we’re not quite there when it comes to saturation.

EVRYTHNG aims to change this by working with brands to make products a bit smarter. After a long night, you may think your beer is talking to you, but if the company that markets it cottons onto the Internet of Things, this could be more than a drunken hallucination.

Object awareness

Using EVRYTHNG, marketers can consider different ways to engage with customers and turn products into channels for personalization and real-time communications or transactions.

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The cloud-based service can offer a number of ways to do this including digital point of sale marketing and personalized content, giving individual products a shareable, interactive web presence to drive sales, transactional services including ecommerce and loyalty rewards linked directly to products and real-time data analytics tracking where and how products are made, sold and used.

Using mobile technologies, finding out more about the products and objects around us could become a common habit. Rather than picking the label from your beer bottle, you may soon find yourself learning more with augmented overlays or links to another free item.

Talking about drinking, Diageo is one of the first brands to work with EVRYTHNG to create new ways of marketing and data collection. An example that worked well earlier this year was the whisky campaign launched in Latin America where consumers could attach a personalized film tribute to their dad on a bottle.

EVRYTHNG was founded in 2011 and is backed by Skype Founder Niklas Zennstrom’s Atomico Ventures and private investors.

The Internet of Things might be slow to grow for now, but the ubiquity of advertising and marketing could be a way to bring the methods and experiences forward to a broader audience. If this is the case, be careful what you say when you walk into furniture when you get back from the pub, chances are, it might say something back.

➤ Evrythng

Check out the video for a short explainer about EVRYTHNG.

 Image Credit: Chris Young / Getty Images

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