In 2017, I pitched Personalisation Hub to a major Australian telco (that we were working with at the time). Because we had just finalised all their custom (personalisation) integrations into AEM Sites, they did not see a need for Personalisation Hub (for their website).
HOWEVER, they asked whether Personalisation Hub could support personalisation in retail (as omnichannel was all the rage back then). I accepted the challenge (even though personalisation in bricks & mortar retail had never been done before, especially not at scale).
Our initial challenge was to determine whether we could get the platform’s (real-time) personalisation profile to work on digital signage. There is a massive difference between supporting a website versus supporting hundreds of devices/displays, all running in different locations (at the edge).
We needed to demonstrate that we could get contexthub to work within AEM Screens (the digital signage version of AEM Sites).
After our initial meetings with the core AEM Screens team (who are based in San Francisco). They had absolutely no idea what contexthub was. So we connected with the AEM contexthub team in Basel (Switzerland) directly. Over the weeks that followed, we worked mornings testing AEM Screens & raising bugs (for the team in San Francisco) & evenings with the contexthub team in Basel, trying to get contexthub working.
During this process, O2O received several threatening emails from Adobe, saying that O2O were modifying their source code. We kept trying to explain that it was Adobe’s team in Basel that were making changes to their own source code (the challenges of working with big tech).
Eventually, we struck gold & we got targeting working on digital signage through Personalisation Hub’s integration with AEM Screens.
My next challenge was how do I go about demonstrating that we can change campaigns (playing on a retail display) in real-time. I had a meeting (i.e. slack conversation) with our lead engineer & we decided to integrate Dialogflow into Personalisation Hub.
Dialogflow (is a Google product) that allows users to build agents & voice-enabled/chatbot experiences (e.g. for Google Home devices). Today, Dialogflow would be considered as a solution that allows businesses to build their own custom AI Agents.
On Friday afternoon we got Dialogflow integrated. Friday evening I spent building out a Dialogflow Agent & authoring some very rough targeted campaigns. By early Saturday morning, I was having a conversation with my test display. The display was talking back to me & playing back the latest iPhone/Samsung offers that I was asking for.
I got so excited that I asked my wife to take a video of me talking to the display. I sent the video to my main contact at the telco. He in turn got just as excited & shared the video with his executive team.
Below is a shortened version of the video that I sent (I clipped the video to remove specific branded product requests – please excuse how I’m dressed – it was a loooong night).
What I was not aware of –> One of the telco’s executives (that had received my video above), was with some of the Adobe team in San Francisco. He then showed the video to an Adobe exec, explaining what we had done….
What happened next, had a significant impact on the future direction of the company…
to be continued >>
