Brief Encounters with Beckham

What do you use your TV for today?  Gaming, a mechanism for distraction, or watching back to back repeats of BBC’s Sherlock?  I trust you are all doing the latter.

Anyway, soon we could all be using our TVs to get our hands on David Beckham’s underwear.

Unfortunately I’m only being partially literal when I say that. 

This is the news that H & M are going to run an interactive advert during the upcoming American Super Bowl, in which owners of the newest Samsung TVs will be able to use their remotes to directly purchase items from Golden Balls’ Bodywear spring collection.

You’ve heard of e-commerce; this method of consumption has become known as ‘t-commerce’ whereby you can use different devices to make your purchases.

We will start to see more and more tech stories in 2014 about devices becoming increasingly integrated, capable of multiple tasks and become more interactive with other devices. 

Last year saw the launch of the Xbox One which aimed to be the central part of your living room with all your media accessible through one system.

This latest interactive element in the advertising world means you won’t have to avert your eyes from Mr Beckham on the screen in order to power up the laptop and make the same purchase.

The key is that it’s all done in real time.  Less time spent dithering about making the purchasing decision; do it instantly and it’s hard to take it back. 

Though this is extremely bad news for those with an impulsive nature and a limited shopping budget, the ‘real time’ way of doing things isn’t going anywhere.  It’s something that my colleague and telecoms expert Warren Free talks about in his blog Real time. All the time.

Of course this all relies on internet connectivity; now the backbone of any IT system. 

The aforementioned integration movement is something that a lot of businesses will need to bear in mind when taking a look at their IT systems in 2014. 

With more devices plugging into your network than ever before, the focus needs to be on knowing what’s going on, reducing complexity, robust connectivity and telecoms, and making sure everything and everyone is talking to each other.

I, in the meantime, shall be in anticipation for next stage of interactive advertising – sharing that Haagan Dazs with Bradley Cooper.  One can dream.