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Voice in Canada Podcast

Designing Alexa Skills in Canada with Ben Fisher of MagicCo

Ep. 115
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In this episode, Teri welcomes Ben Fisher, the Founder and CEO of MagicCo, a voice technology consultancy that helps brands and enterprises implement voice assistant technologies.


Welcome, Ben!

Ben previously served as Chief Technology Officer of Doable Innovation and Waywire Networks. He comes on to talk about what it’s like to make Alexa skills in Canada, and talk about a really cool Alexa skill that they’ve done with Reebok Canada to to really develop Reebok’s brand in the US and Canada.

Background

  • He was the CTO of a lot of startups in New York and even worked in a few ad agencies in a technical capacity.
  • He started MagicCo four years ago to be a place where people in advertising and technical people could gather to do cool stuff for brands. They focus solely on voice.

How Voice Became a Part of Canadians’ Lives

  • People in the US were doing things in voice in 2017 and by 2018 people were starting businesses around it.
  • In Canada, it wasn’t until late 2018 that people started developing an interest in smart speakers.

Projects MagicCo has Worked On

  • The company runs different business models. Some of them run omnichannel campaigns for brands with Alexa as a distribution mechanism. Other companies are creating products around Alexa.
  • Their clients include Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, Chobani Yoghurt, Elite Coffee, energy and power companies like National Grid, the air force, and others.
  • They work in industries like energy, financial services, consumer product goods, and healthcare.
  • They develop voice applications for all the major platforms including Samsung Bixby and Google Assistant. They also develop chat bots that are connected to voice assistants.

Breaking into the Canadian Market

  • They find Canada to be a very robust market. The growth curve of voice technology adoption in Canada outpaces the US’s in terms of how fast Alexa and Google Home are being adopted.
  • There are a lot of regulatory hurdles in some industries and they present diverse challenges especially because the regulations are different in the US and Canada. That affects the deployment of new voice products or campaigns in Canada.

Developing a Skill for Reebok

  • Reebok was doing a sneaker drop and hired MagicCo to help with carrying out the whole process through Alexa.
  • They worked with Cardi B who was promoting a shoe line with Reebok. Reebok was giving away a few pairs and the give away campaign was all over the media.
  • The media campaign directed people to go to a certain Alexa skill so they could sign up to win. They then had to re-open the skill at a certain time to find out if they had won.
  • Millions of people signed up and returned to check if they had won, which presented some technical challenges. MagicCo was hired to help sort out those challenges.
  • Reebok now has millions of users worldwide who will be notified of their drops through Alexa.

Generating an Email List Through Voice

  • They have been doing data collection by offering users the things they want in return for data.
  • That helps them get the names and emails of users, which is powerful to have in order to reach back out to clients.

 List of resources mentioned in this episode

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