Marketer of the year nomination at MS Belux: NUI and how Kinect brings high-tech magic to consumers (vote for us!)

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My colleague David Merzel,  has been nominated as the Marketer of the Year 2011. This is a yearly award by Trends/Tendances. David and his team were responsible for the launch of Xbox Kinect controller in Belgium last year and developed a special marketing approach.
I was listening to David yesterday as he explained the reasoning behind his marketing strategy, the Close Contact Marketing. He has a black belt in karate and the marketing approach is based on that sport, with six rules of close contact, going from yellow to black belt.

What’s also interesting is that this is the first time a software company is nominated for this award. It’s another sign of what many call the Consumerization of IT.

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While I do hope you vote for him Smile, it makes me reflect on how technology, more specifically Natural User Interfaces, is bringing the magic of technology into our everyday lives. That’s the job of technology companies in a sense: removing barriers to adopting technology. Also reminded me of a Twitter comment by @netlash I saw a few days ago:

“We only call it technology when we were born before it was invented.”

The term Magic in conjunction with Kinect is not new: Magical Team award in Silicon Valley was received by the team earlier this year. So yes, Kinect is a good example of how technology which behind the scenes is pretty complex, is now entering our everyday lives in a very user friendly way. Have you Kinected?

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