Author: Charlotte Newbury

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Humans vs. Robots: How B2B brands can bring AI into their day-to-day

The second instalment of our ‘Humans vs. Robots’ event series revealed one clear reality – organisations are on their way to establishing generative AI within their day-to-day work. 

And is it any wonder? Generative AI has accelerated far beyond the hype we discussed in our first event. We’ve all heard the claims – it helps you create more great stuff with the same resources, and can even improve the quality of your work – if only by enabling people to focus on the areas where human ingenuity brings the greatest value.

But if the thought of everyone racing ahead fills you with FOMO or anxiety, you are not alone. 

One thing that has remained true is the uncertainty B2B brands are feeling about how best to proceed. Though most are motivated and willing, burning questions remain on the practicalities. Where should you start? How far can you go? How worried should you be about IP, legal implications, or bias? Should we expect marketing budgets to fall? 

At our recent ‘Humans vs. Robots: The Alliance’ event, we asked an expert panel to share their practical examples of where AI is being put to work in B2B. Deftly moderated by veteran tech journalist Martin Veitch, we were proud to host Leila Hajaj, Executive Communications at Google DeepMind; Karen Quinn, Senior Director of Brand and Corporate Communications at Finastra; Liza Hicks, ex-IBM Social and Content Lead; and Unlimited Group’s own Technical Director, Tom Wilks on the panel. 

Here are five of their top tips for getting started with GenAI: 

Start Experimenting, and Fail Fast 

“It’s like driving into an empty car park. You think, ‘hey, I can park anywhere’, and the choices are overwhelming. That’s what it feels like when you start using generative AI. The hardest part is often making that first choice,” said Tom Wilks. 

Narrowing down the possibilities for AI implementation is the first step, but it’s where many B2B professionals admit to being blindsided. It’s also, according to our panellists, one of the more satisfying challenges to address. 

“Block 45 mins in your calendars,” Liza Hicks suggested, “Think about what is taking up your time, and identify the tasks you don’t enjoy doing. That’s where AI can help.” 

Tom Wilks agreed. “Start small,” he said, “with quick wins, things that are really competitive.”  

That’s the business angle – but there’s a real human benefit to turning AI tools towards your least favourite tasks – and this has great potential to make your working life more joyful. “There’s a lot of people that still have this fear that AI is going to take their jobs – but in fact, it will just take their tasks,” Karen Quinn said. “Embrace it. See what joy it can bring to your day.” 

Getting stuck in is also the best way to identify the places AI will have the biggest impact on your working life – whether that’s by taking over the tasks you dislike, or increasing overall efficiencies. It helps to be very intentional, Leila Hajaj advised. “Think about the tasks you want AI to do, and break them down into specific component parts. It’s about getting comfortable with experimentation, as well. You’re not going to get it right the first time – you’re going to need a ‘fail fast’ mentality.” 

Work On AI Literacy 

Once you start identifying use cases for generative AI, you’ll need to begin the next stage – getting it to do exactly what you want. If implemented correctly, AI can get you “70% of the way” with certain tasks, Liza Hicks said. That leaves a solid 30% still in your hands. 

The more AI literate you are, the more you can influence those percentages – but you can’t assume an AI output is 100% accurate. Human oversight is vital, and will become increasingly so as you start implementing AI into your processes – especially with brand reputation on the line. 

“There are inherent issues, especially surrounding things like DEI, within generative AI,” Leila Hajaj warned. “It’s a tool. Our success depends on how well we wield the tool. That’s why, in the future, everyone is going to want AI literate people in the workforce. You wouldn’t hire someone who refused to use the internet.” 

Panellists spoke about how their companies were approaching the issue of AI literacy. Attendees heard how some, like Finastra, had implemented dedicated training time and even organised AI expos, while others were encouraging employees to experiment by taking a gamification approach to AI use. 

“It’s not a tech skill, it’s a life skill,” Karen Quinn said. “We tell people – even if you don’t use it here, you’ll need it eventually. It’s not going away.” 

Think About (and Implement) AI Policies – Now 

“A lot of data is at play here. Get in early and set your policies.” 

That was Leila Hajaj’s advice for B2B businesses. She continued, “We’re at this really interesting inflection point where AI is not particularly regulated – but this is coming. There are going to be more and more guardrails put in place about how AI is used in a wider society – it’s imminent, and businesses are going to follow suit and bring up their own AI charters.” 

It’s a belief Karen Quinn shared. “For us, it’s about tempering enthusiasm in some areas, and encouraging it in others.” Exploration is good – but doing so safely is paramount. “We’re looking at Shutterstock AI and Adobe AI, so the ones that have commercial licensing in place, in order to protect against some of these regulatory changes. Otherwise you’re potentially opening yourself and your organisation’s reputation up to something that could harm you in the future,” she said. “It pays to be a bit cautious.” 

And if that sounds off-putting, Liza Hicks was there to remind us that it’s not so dissimilar to the ways of working we’re already familiar with within the B2B space. “We’re used to working within frameworks in our jobs. This is really no different.”

Prepare To Spend (At Least a Little) 

When ChatGPT first hit the web – and the public consciousness – it was the price tag which caused some of the biggest shockwaves: it was free. 

Of course, in the time since, AI tools have been launching from every direction, and many of them come with a considerable charge. So, with cyber security and data safety on the line, how much should B2B businesses be expecting to spend? 

“It’s important to maintain a clear view of costs,” Karen Quinn said. “Computationally, if your engineers are using generative AI, using virtual environments that can be scaled according to the task and size of the model is one way to manage costs.”

This kind of reactive approach to the business need is one Liza Hicks also recommended. She shared a process of “looking first at specific tools, and seeing what extra abilities they can offer you.” Then, only after CIOs can confirm whether these abilities don’t already exist within previous tools, should you make the purchase. “It’s about that business case for added impact.” 

But that financial impact may not be immediately visible, Tom Wilks cautioned. The immediate business case in the short-term is more about the time that AI can help you to reclaim. “It won’t always be financially tangible right away – instead, you’ll see benefits like more delivery, higher-quality execution, and more innovative thinking over a period of six, nine, twelve months.” 

And Leila Hajaj went one step further. “It’s a red herring to focus on how AI can drive ROI alone,” she said. Instead, think about how you can repurpose the time saved by AI tools into something really exceptional. “In the long term, it’s going to help you deliver bigger, more exciting, more creative programmes. The value will be in the long term, and what you can produce, not what you can save in the short term.” 

Think About What You Actually Need – and Get Tailored Tools 

The ‘buy versus build’ debate is collecting momentum as larger brands begin experimenting with generative AI, and more and more of them, (like Amazon), are announcing intentions to develop their own LLMs. 

But Leila Hajaj cautioned that this shouldn’t be the route all businesses take. In fact, she said, you shouldn’t even be worried about buying into a large AI platform unless your business is sufficiently large enough to get use from it. “When you’re a big business, platforms as a service integrate easily. But these are costly. So think – what do you really need?” 

She continued, “If you have a niche use case, just get a small, specific tool.” That’s why experimenting at first is so important – because you’ll only know what your specific needs are when you’ve given yourself an opportunity to explore potential use cases are within your day-to-day working life. 

The kind of content you need to produce should also influence the tools you choose. Some tools will have language models more suited to your end-goal than others – and so it’s worth experimenting to see which is better at addressing your specific challenge. 

Don’t Lose The Human Element 

One thing is clear: there is no battling against the robots. “Don’t fear AI. Don’t be afraid to dip your toe in the water and see where it can take you,” said Leila Hajaj. “It’s not a question of if, but of when you’ll implement AI.” In other words – avoid starting now and you’re simply risking falling behind. 

Even for the risk-averse, there’s no reason for concern – humans are still going to play a vital role in an AI-powered future. Just as our panellists predict that humans are going to grow to depend on AI tools, the AI tools in question are just as reliant on the people using them to produce good work. “Much like an understudy, they’re there to make you better,” said Karen Quinn. 

And Liza Hicks agreed, “AI can’t uncover the individuals who will bring brands to life. That’s up to us.” AI can’t come up with unique angles or compelling stories, even if it can help you craft the way you tell them. Getting the best results from the tools requires human input. Whether through prompt engineering, or quality control and fact-checking – generative AI is not perfect, and neither can it add that extra-special human touch. 

Towards the end of the session, one audience member queried how much longer we will have to babysit AI tools with human moderation and supervision. The response from the panel was almost unanimous: forever. Liza Hicks explained how, although AI is adaptable, an algorithm can’t (yet!) pick up on a cultural moment. That means it will potentially miss out on creative opportunities, and issues of bias will likely remain for as long as the data AI draws from is itself imperfect. “We should never take our eye off the ball,” agreed Leila Hajaj. 

“Until AI tools are able to purchase and check other AI tools, there will be space for the human element,” said Tom Wilks. 

So, at least until then, let’s keep working together – in an alliance that promises to revolutionise the way B2B professionals work. 

Interested in hearing more? Join our ‘Humans vs. Robots’ LinkedIn community, created to bring like-minded B2B professionals together, to learn, share and progress with GenAI. It is an open forum to support us all in putting AI into practice. Please follow the group at this link, and we’ll see you there. 

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Listen (and Look) Up! What neuroscience can teach us about building attention-grabbing campaigns

“Nobody reads advertising. People read what interests them, and sometimes it’s an ad.” 

Howard Luck Gossage (an infamous American adman dubbed “The Socrates of San Francisco”) coined this particular phrase in the ‘50s, but you could be forgiven for thinking it comes straight from a 2020s influencer handbook. 

Interest, or attention, is – and always has been – a flimsy thing. It’s pretty hard to capture and harder still to pin down. Do that successfully, and you’ve still got to convert it into action. 

For agencies and brands alike, this is a constant challenge. And it’s one that science is determined to crack. 

Neuroscientists have been working on understanding and measuring attention for years (with mixed success). It’s for exploring questions like these that Dr. Cristina de Balanzo, a Board Director at Walnut Unlimited, first established the ‘Brainy Bar’ in 2015. It has since covered important subjects such as emotion, memory, perception, our senses and emotional advertising – but this time around, Cristina chose to uncover the science behind what makes people truly pay attention. 

She was joined by top neuroscientists Dr. Tim Holmes, Aoife McGuiness and Dr. Andy Myers, who came together to deliver a series of lectures on the topic. They spoke about what attention means, how to measure it, how to use it to drive memorable creative – and how all of that can help to deliver effective brand campaigns. 

Here’s what we learned.  

Lesson 1: The quality of attention matters

When was the last time you gave something your full attention? I mean really, truly, fully – not just keeping your eyes-forward in a meeting while internally wondering about your dinner plans, or surreptitiously scrolling through TikTok or Twitter while you listen to a film. 

If the answer is ‘a while’, you’re hardly alone. Nowadays, we’re constantly flirting with overstimulation, and any campaign has to triumph over innumerable distractions if it’s to meaningfully reach anyone at all. 

Tools like eye-trackers are increasingly popular as brands attempt to understand which ads are having an impact, but as Dr. Tim Holmes explained in his lecture, when it comes to measuring attention, we miss a lot of nuance if we focus only on the length of time spent looking at something. 

“We tend to assume that sustained attention is always good news for an ad campaign or a package on a shelf, when in fact sustained attention is probably more likely to correlate with cognitive load. That is: with confusion,” he explained. 

For this reason, he said, time is not a good enough measure on its own. We need to understand more than whether we are drawing people’s eyes; we need to build campaigns that give them a positive reason to keep looking.

Key takeaway: Brands don’t just need to capture people’s attention, they also need to make that attention worthwhile. Focus less on the amount of time someone spends looking at your campaign and consider whether you’ve successfully routed the attention you get into meaningful action or positive brand consideration. 

Find more from Dr. Tim Holmes on LinkedIn. 

Lesson 2: It’s not just about what we see, but how we see it 

What makes a good creative campaign? 

Neuroscientists haven’t quite come up with a framework yet, but researchers like Aoife McGuiness are getting close. Her work helps us to understand why we find creativity and the arts rewarding, and therefore what elements should go into building an effective brand campaign.

What makes something fun to look at? Well, as she told attendees, “It’s not just about the object properties, it’s about the act of information processing. Enjoyment is not all about what we’re looking at, but how we’re looking at it and the things that happen in the brain when we do.” In short, people derive pleasure from their own ability to understand. “This reward can come through detection of novelty, pattern forming, violation of expectation, a puzzle to solve, a visual trick and so on.

“What differentiates this abstract type of reward is that it’s not linked to any kind of survival instinct – it’s just pleasure through the act of information processing.” 

And, if you get tricky with it, you can create that feeling of pleasure. Take this SwissLife campaign about ‘Life’s Twists and Turns’: 

The text creates a kind of “cognitive conflict” (it makes us double-take), which is “an aesthetically appealing experience” to the brain. This gives people the reward required to hold their attention, rather than just grab it. 

In short, we like it, because it challenges us – and this makes it fun to look at. 

There’s even better news, too. Researchers have found a link between the activation of the part of the brain that switches on during these moments of conflict, and memory – which suggests that there is a link between this kind of creative and brand recall. 

Key takeaway: Creativity is key. Ideas that challenge our expectations or force us to think really do engage a different part of the brain – and that can give viewers pleasure and have a positive impact on their ability to remember it. 

Aoife McGuiness is Customer Neuroscience Manager at CloudArmy. 

Lesson 3: You shouldn’t forget about audio 

Our ears are always on, and you don’t have to be actively listening to process information. In fact, passive engagement is much more common than active listening. After all, when are we ever truly actively listening in our day-to-day life? That is: doing nothing else but focusing on the input of our ears? It’s rare, that’s for sure. 

But as Dr. Andy Myers explained, the idea that passive listening is less effective than active listening is a misunderstanding of how we interact with the auditory world. 

“We don’t have to be aware to be processing information,” he explained. “And ‘active’ doesn’t always mean ‘accurate’.” In fact, Walnut research found that in an experiment, up to 16% more errors were made by active listeners than their passive counterparts. 

That same experiment highlighted that branding was also stronger in the passive condition, and that when a brand was mentioned a second time around passive listeners, the brain response was particularly boosted. (So if you’re planning a radio ad, definitely repeat your brand name…) 

“In the overstimulation age, our brains are looking for ease,” Andy explained. But the context of your programming is also important to consider. If you are listening to classical radio and a loud, metal-backed ad plays, that causes an abrupt attentional shift. “We found that congruency is key,” he said – when listeners weren’t disturbed from their flow, they took in more information. So information-heavy campaigns performed better on talk radio, and sonic ones were better suited to music radio. 

“Attention is prone to the simplest priming,” Andy said, “And our attention is affected by our expectations.” So let people hear what they’re expecting to hear, and you might just come out on top. 

Key takeaway: The context of your message is hugely important. When you’re working with audio formats, ensuring that your campaign meets expectations is the best way to attract valuable passive attention, and land your message more successfully with an audience. 

Dr. Andy Myers is a Director at Walnut. 

Hey! Down here! 

Do I still have your attention? 

You might not have considered the neuroscience behind your favourite brand campaigns before – I know I hadn’t – but since attending the Brainy Bar I’ve been spotting cognitive conflict everywhere. 

The truth is, capturing attention requires your creative to jump through a lot of hoops – and some of them aren’t possible to predict. How busy someone is, the mood they’re in, how much more cognitive load they’re able to take, whether they’re hungry, tired, or irritated by a particular song or sound… 

It makes designing attention-grabbing campaigns something of a minefield. But brains are not unhackable, and by rewarding audiences’ attention, giving them something interesting or unexpected to look at – or, otherwise, aligning with the background hum of their life – we can deliver brand campaigns that really make an impact. 

You can find out more about our eye-catching campaigns here. 

Or click here to learn more about the Walnut, the human understanding agency. 

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Humans vs. Robots: 5 key takeaways from the Unlimited B2B AI content event

An overwhelming show of hands closed out our AI event. Host Martin Veitch had asked the room of assembled B2B marketers to raise them if they had started to introduce generative AI tools at work. When he asked the opposite – if anyone was planning on steering clear – all hands remained in laps.

Clearly, AI is more than just a news story. Unlike the Metaverse, tech’s last big ‘disruptor’, AI is actually in use, now, by real people doing real work. Its adoption is only going to accelerate, but brands aren’t uniformly confident about how to proceed.

As more AI tools are launched, and campaigns like WWF’s AI-generated Future of Nature make headlines, B2B brands are left wondering what they should be doing, what they need to know, and what pitfalls they need to avoid.

Unlimited B2B hosted an event to discuss just that. Our panel was composed of UNLIMITED’s technical director Tom Wilks, the antagonist speaking on behalf of the robots, while neuroscientist Dr Cristina de Balanzo from the Human Understanding Lab argued for the ongoing benefits of the human touch. They were joined by Susi O’Neill from Kaspersky, and Cristina Tudorascu from Canon Europe, in a panel moderated by acclaimed tech journalist Martin Veitch.

The fast-paced discussion lasted for an hour and a half, and generated lively interactions from the gathered B2B professionals. For those who couldn’t make it, or those who want to reminisce, here are five of the key takeaways:

Brands Have Started Experimenting

Along with contributions from several attendees on the floor – who are already using SEO-driven content for websites, and adopting tools like Copilot for Microsoft Office 365 – we heard from panellists about the progress they’ve made so far in implementing AI tools.

“When it comes to content creation at Canon Europe, we have already started to incorporate AI technology as part of our content journey,” said Cristina Tudorascu. She spoke about how the company has introduced both a translation AI tool, and a voice-to-text generator to capture insights from SMEs in the business.

Neither, she pointed out, are perfect. “The system is still struggling with some elements that are quite important for us – like people’s names, product names – and there is a little bit of difficulty around different accents.”

These initial struggles aren’t putting them off from expanding their AI toolkit, though.“We understand that this is only a little bit of AI technology that we’re currently using, but this is the first step – and we’re looking forward to understanding even more, and making these tools work for us even better.”

The Compliance Question is Looming

One term, in particular, seemed to haunt the discussion: compliance. Never mind what AI can do – how useful is it? What can brands actually, legally, use it for? How does copyright work? What do lawsuits like those being waged by Getty Images against Stability AI, and Sarah Silverman against OpenAI mean for the use of AI in branded materials? Is there any such thing as brand safety with generation AI?

“Technology is moving much faster than regulation,” said Susi O’Neill. “It’s a totally grey area.”

Brands have to balance the potential risk against the possible reward. She went on to add that, “right now, if you’re using generative AI, even if you’re taking those images and manipulating them, changing them, you don’t own the copyright on that. So it’s about where you are on your journey.”

And this ‘risk versus reward’ debate looks very different for businesses of different sizes – especially given the limitations of AI creativity. “I don’t want to feed out a content mine of a trillion different formulaic pieces of information that have already been covered. For me, generative AI isn’t going to generate anything new that’s worthy of an award.”

“If you need to scale, and you don’t have very much legal risk – say you’re a start-up, or you work with very niche audiences – maybe it’s fine to go ahead. But if you’re a big corporate, you’re taking on a lot of legal risks. Now is maybe not the right time.”

Collaboration is Key

Good news for creatives – most attendees were in agreement that while AI is likely to be useful for undertaking menial tasks (like transcribing event recordings, for example), it can’t generate truly creative ideas. At least – not yet.

What it does have is “66 billion different data points, able to be retrieved within seconds.” Tom Wilks pointed out how AI “can democratise access to technology. You don’t have to figure out the best way to search any more, you type the question however you want it – and you’ll still get the information back.”

Finding the right question, or prompt, is likely to become an incredibly valuable skill, and one developed entirely in response to the rise of AI tools: prompt engineering. Dr Cristina de Balanzo spoke about the importance of human insight to this role, and explained how “the power of context will massively influence decision-making.” The context within which a question is asked is vital to getting the correct answer. This, she explained, is something AI tools – which function “more like a two-and-a-half year old” – don’t have.

What they can do, however, is provide a starting point. Susi O’Neill explained, “If you’re a business and you can’t hire the best talent, say you don’t have the best budgets, can you use prompt engineering to get to certain styles with the right kind of training? Yes – but you still need that human edge. You still need those senior writers and creatives to twist things and say ‘that word isn’t quite right’, or ‘that doesn’t sit well in the advert’, ‘that works in one language, but in another is not quite edgy enough’.”

“It’s about using the tools that are out there when we have gaps in resourcing or can’t hire the best people to get us a bit further along.”

If that thought still fills you with dread – you’re not alone. Our resistance to fully embracing AI isn’t particularly unexpected, according to Dr Cristina de Balanzo. “Human beings are very resistant to change, because it’s physiologically painful – but if machines can do the jobs that we don’t want to do, they can make life better,” she explained.

Beware the ‘Brain Drain’

Working together with AI to check its work and build on its foundations seemed a popular approach amongst attendees, who largely agreed that AI could be put to good use in creating first-draft content, or providing a starting point for a human to then adapt, edit and improve.

But Susi O’Neill warned that, if we allow AI to take the position of entry-level creatives, the industry could soon find itself with a lot of high-level workers and nobody rising up to replace them.

She explained, “You need junior writers to learn from the seniors, and be able to build up their craft. When I see some of the first passes of ChatGPT, it reminds me of the junior writers I’ve worked with. It’s no worse – but it’s also no better. We still need people to come into our industries who are going to learn crafts and learn how to improve. But potentially, some of those roles are the ones which may be made redundant.”

AI is Only Young

Given the vast impact AI has already had on the market, you might be forgiven for forgetting that it’s still a young technology. Every day, new tools are released, and those that exist become smarter and smarter.

According to Tom Wilks, we haven’t even started to touch on the full range of AI’s capabilities. Soon, he said, AI will even learn to mimic human creativity – which he was confident will happen “probably quicker than most people expect it to. In some creative mediums, we’re already pretty close to being there.”

“The scale and the scope of what we are on the cusp of being able to achieve is unlike anything we’ve been able to see before,” he said. “We have to be open to the point that we may not be the top intelligence on the planet in some of these areas for much longer.”

One thing that all of the experts could agree on was the fact that AI is here to stay – and it’s us humans who’ll have to adapt to deal with it. But whether that’s by creating and implementing robust data protection and copyright policies, or via the creation of entirely new roles (such as prompt engineering), the road to embracing AI will be far from smooth and straightforward.

And it’s only just begun. Martin kicked off our session by reminding attendees that ChatGPT has only been live since November 2022. In just shy of eight months, it has already upended the way many B2B brands think about content creation.

What developments could the next eight months see?

To derive the most value from an AI-powered future, B2B brands must establish clear guidelines for when, and how, to use AI tools – and when to revert back to the human element.

Watch out for our event recording, coming soon!

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In case you missed it: 5 key takeaways from MWC ‘23

MWC2023

After the interruptions of recent years, you might have thought that trade shows were dying off. If Mobile World Congress 2023 is anything to go by, in-person events are back.

This year’s MWC welcomed a staggering 88,500+ attendees, from 202 countries and territories, there to hear from 2,400+ exhibitors and 1000+ speakers. Forgive the number dump, but it’s the clearest way to demonstrate the scale of the event. It is a very big show.

Packed full of gadget demonstrations, debate and thought leadership, MWC is a hotbed of news, innovations and trends. As expected, this year the floor displayed innovations in AI, AR, VR, mobile phones, headsets, batteries, 6G… and much more.

According to Paolo Pescatore, a Tech, Media & Telco Analyst at PP Foresight, there was “no real standout innovative tech” this year, but a few common themes definitely caught our attention. So, here are five, quick takeaways from MWC 2023:

1.    It’s better being green

Sustainability remained a key focus for many of the exhibitors. In the most recent Global Trends 2023 report, 80% of telcos rated energy efficiency as either important or extremely important to their planned upgrades.

Unsurprisingly, then, it was clear that the industry has made significant progress towards more meaningful and scalable solutions, ultimately making greener decisions more accessible for consumers.

We saw companies such as Bioo showcase nature-powered tech like their Bioo Panel – a ‘biological battery’ which uses soil to generate energy and save water – while Nokia unveiled a partnership to deliver more sustainable chip architectures.

2.    Developers unite!

The Open Gateway initiative launched by the GSMA during the first day of the conference signals a significant shift in the way the telecoms industry designs and delivers new and innovative services.

The Open Gateway comprises a framework for APIs for universal networks. The aim is to unite the telecoms industry around open APIs – allowing cloud providers and developers to launch and update services faster, using a single access point model.

The move turns networks into developer-ready platforms. Expect to see more on this in 2023.

3.    Networks and speed

As expected, 5G featured prominently – though there was a sense amongst attendees that it had yet to prove itself to be the profitable revolution telcos had hoped for. “Speeds are not what will ultimately sustain pricing premiums (and therefore revenue growth),” the GSMA reported (via IBC). “A ‘wow’ factor is required to attract new customers or incentivise existing ones towards higher spend.”

There’s hope that this ‘wow’ factor could be delivered by the range of AR and VR technologies on display. The Metaverse is expected to continue growing through 2023, and exhibitors showcased a diverse range of applications – from flight simulators to avatar-based virtual meetings.

6G was mentioned, too, though it did not feature heavily – with network providers focusing more on applications across the metaverse, and enterprise-focused developments like private networks (which arguably received more attention than 5G).

4.    A changing of the guard?

A new brand is not news. But it might signal something bigger?

Nokia’s rebrand captured the limelight – the brand is apparently now ready to ‘[unleash] the exponential potential of networks’ – but there were rumblings of reinvention under the surface of telecoms businesses, too. There were whispers heard throughout the event of upcoming CEO transfers – though little is known about who, where, or when. This is “one to watch closely over the next 6-12 months,” said Paolo.

It’s difficult to know how significant the changes could be, but a telco industry shake-up might be heading this way…

5.    Are big names playing ‘fair’?

As expected, the fairness debate concerning the funding of network infrastructure developments raged on. Attendees heard from both sides – from speakers including EU Industry Chief Thierry Breton, and CEOs from Orange (Christel Heydemann) and Netflix (Greg Peters).

A proposed solution is the ‘fair share’ involvement of tech giants, who would be charged alongside consumers for the data used by their apps. The top six tech giants generated over 55% of all telecom networks’ traffic, according to a report from the European Telecommunication Network Operators’ Association.

Unsurprisingly, these big tech players are against being required to financially support the rollout of telecoms infrastructure. Some have raised concerns about its potential to weaken European net neutrality principles, which are designed to ensure all internet traffic is treated indiscriminately.

Netflix CEO Peters dubbed this initiative an “entertainment tax.”

The European Commission launched a 12-week consultation in February, open for contributions until the 19th May 2023.

It’s a thorny topic, there’s no doubt about that. Keep an eye on this space!

Ready to influence the next big debate?

If you’ve got something to say – let’s talk. We’ll help you define your voice, sharpen your story, and get your messages out there.

Reach out to our Business Development Manager: Sarah.Alexander@unlimitedgroup.com

Or contact info@nelsonbostock.com