In the most recent issue of Marketing, Pepper is featured somewhat prominently as a sort-of avatar for futuristic retail. The wide-eyed robot promises a new level of interaction with consumers to facilitate faster, easier shopping, and may be about to become much more visible in North America thanks to a niche marketing campaign.
As Rebecca Harris wrote in our “Ads + Tech” issue, Pepper is already appearing in various retail stores in Asia and Europe (subscriber link) despite the video’s claims that Pepper isn’t really a “finished product.” (The tech community’s approach to product launches seems to have defaulted to public beta tests that come with a lot of fanfare and limited expectations for “unfinished” products that, nonetheless, are working and driving revenues.)
Pepper is marketed as “the world’s first humanoid robot,” a somewhat dubious claim (“humanoid” is a vague term), but Pepper does purportedly read human emotions to shape its interactions. The campaign above from ad agency Midnight Oil reaches out to developers in a bid to broaden the robot’s capabilities and find new markets. While the video does come off a little earnest and stock footage-y, it may well serve as Pepper’s first real step into the North American market.
