Interview with Laurence Kemball-Cook

So I was talking about the future of energy in cities, but more importantly, man versus machine. How can people live more harmoniously with machines? And it all comes down to the fact that cities are getting busier and busier. There's more and more advertising in your face. We're using the floor to generate power, but also to make it really fun and create really great content about what people are doing. And that is all the talk was about today, and it went down a storm. How are people and brands going to take advantage of this technology? So it's really simple. We offer a way that a footstep can make things fun. And as long as a footstep is fun, you can suddenly put all sorts of platforms around it from making really interesting games. So you walk on the floor in Times Square and games start happening on billboards. So people can control billboards. The next thing is about energy. You can generate energy in one place and donate it somewhere else. So you can transfer power. So imagine lots of people walking in a wealthy shopping mall can transfer energy to actually power a village somewhere remotely. So you can actually transfer that power and make like social change. Through the power of like one footstep. So how would you say brands, I mean we're now at a conference where there's a lot of marketers. How do you think they should use this? So ultimately it's about getting people away from just looking at mobile devices. It's about their heads up, sharing experiences. So what we've done is we've gamified the experience of energy. So it works really well for experiential marketing. So for example, with Coca-Cola, we make like dance floors that will change the volume as people dance to it. We're making red carpets at the Oscars. So as people walk down there, you're getting different kind of content. It's triggering their screens. But they're also generating energy. And then even more recently with Shell, we've made the Shell penalty challenge. So as you run on the tiles, you build up energy. And the more energy you build up, the more time you get to shoot at the goal. And that's been touring at the moment across Singapore, London and soon to be Detroit. And that's been a really exciting platform showing just like a footstep is a great way to engage people. So I look at it as that, you know, it's not just about buying. It's not just about billboards. It's not just about banners. Now the floor is a whole new medium that can be just as effective as any other communications out there. And how, if you look a bit into the future, when this is adapted even more, how does it look like? How does the scenario look like? The world is so much more than just like digital advertising. It's so much more than banner ads. You know, we're going into a scary time about privacy. And I think what we offer is we offer this floor. And the good thing about it is that our cities get more and more busier. So when I look into the future, I see cities being the next key hunting ground for brands to engage. We're going to see the next billion people on this planet living in our cities. And it's going to get harder and harder to live in these cities. But actually, making people happy is going to be the most important thing. And with a technology like PaveGen, the simplicity of generating energy from when people walk and imagining, you know, imagine your walk to work in the morning. If it could power the lights during your walk home in the evening. That kind of concept can run into advertising, really targeting people, but also giving them what they want and making things like engaging. And that's ultimately the way we see cities going is having this amazing engagement platform. But on top of that, consider applications like a digital currency where we give people rewards from walking on the tile. The more people walk on our floor, the more awards they get. But suddenly, if they walk in a city enough, they'll be getting money off their purchases. They can donate to charities. So really making people feel good and making people happy is the biggest trend we see in the future.