Q&A with Cameron Worth, CEO & Founder, SharpEnd

Media 7 | April 22, 2020

Cameron Worth, CEO & Founder of SharpEnd leads the company’s mission to help brands move closer than ever to consumers by connecting packaging, retail and experiential activity.

He is a regular speaker and writer on how to build brands in a connected world. He has spoken at Cannes, the Festival of Marketing, LuxePack Monaco and New York, Ad:Week Europe and New York, DMA, the Connected Consumer Conference, Mobile World Congress and the IoT World Forum.

MEDIA 7: How did the idea of “the agency of things” come to your mind?
CAMERON WORTH:
 SharpEnd was created in 2015 as the world’s first Internet of Things focused agency, so there is a slight play on words when we say we’re the Agency of Things. I think the idea of giving things their own agency is an interesting concept, and the strapline fits our capabilities on multiple levels.

M7: In what way does technology drive the association of SharpEnd with global brands? What approaches are followed to enable sustainability?
CW:
Our simple proposition is to help build brands in a connected world, and to do that you must always start with identified consumer needs or pain points and look at technology as just an enabler to deliver an appropriate solution (when appropriate). 

Take the issue of sustainability, which is often a pain point for brands that grapple with issues such as how we can reward sustainable behaviour change. One of our approaches to this could be to look at communicating the recycling credentials of the different products. Whilst the consumer can engage with a product as part of a wider consumer experience, the same technology could also house content that could tell you whether the product is recyclable, which type of bin it goes in etc.

SharpEnd’s work with Unilever is a case in point. We built a digital product that incentivised recycling through gamification but also served to educate through informing people how and where to recycle in a clear fashion. All users had to do was simply scan their packaging to have all this information at their disposal.


"Brands tend to overlook their largest owned media asset - the product itself."

M7: What are the modern brands not doing enough to engage with their customers?
CW:
Brands tend to overlook their largest owned media asset - the product itself. It’s a costly oversight when you consider that brand owners have far more products in the market than they do TV spots, or outdoor posters.

For us at SharpEnd, we look at activating the product as a digital touchpoint – whether that’s an NFC enabled wine bottle, QR codes or augmented reality.

Ultimately, it’s about using the product as a direct channel for engagement. We believe every progressive brand that makes and sells products should be doing this.

M7: How important for you is creating value for your consumers? Could you tell us how connected packaging provides value?
CW:
It’s central to what we do - it's why we start with the pain point rather than the technology.

Our starting point creatively is always “how do we heighten the enjoyment in the context of use?”

Connected packaging is different to traditional advertising. You’re no more than 5cm away from the product, and usually the product is in hand at the point of engagement. You’re either thinking of using, or actively using the product. The relationship is arguably more intimate and therefore more compelling.

Take our work with  Böen Wines for example. As part of the world’s largest roll out of NFC in the wines category, the post-tap creative platform included providing food and wine pairings that complemented the wine consumers were interacting with, as well as sharing information on the brand’s heritage and tasting notes. Everything we implemented went towards heightening the consumption moment experience, and the brand has been reaping the rewards with high engagement rates and session lengths of well over a minute per engagement.


"Every progressive brand that makes and sells products should use the product as a direct channel for engagement."

M7: How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected your work - what day to day processes have you had to re-tool to be able to pull them off remotely? What does your remote tech stack look like?
CW:
We are benefiting from the fact that as a five-year-old business, we’re natively connected. We’re very collaborative, we’ve always been working from Google Docs and we’ve been using Slack religiously for a few years now.

The very nature of our work means that the brand owners we’re supporting are based in various locations across the globe, so we’ve always been using video conferencing too. So there hasn’t been too much of an impact on SharpEnd’s ways of working.

That being said, one of the main things our leadership team is focusing on is mastering remote management and leadership. How do you keep the team motivated? How do you make sure everyone is feeling included? What are you doing on a weekly basis to make sure that it’s not just professional, but there are social elements as well? We’re being very respectful of the fact this is a lockdown from the greater world and not just from the office.

Figuring out what we can be doing in terms of team building exercises is on-going. This is something that I don’t think anyone can nail by themselves, and we’re looking online for a lot of inspiration on how to go about doing this.



"At SharpEnd, we look at activating the product as a digital touchpoint – whether that’s an NFC enabled wine bottle, QR codes or augmented reality."

M7: Do you think we will constantly be looking over our shoulders and have to have a remote plan ready?
CW:
I have made an active decision to not comment on potential long-term impacts of Covid-19. There will be a time for that, but now is the time for sensitivity on a human level, in my opinion.

My only request to the team is that we make sure we’re staying sensitive, responsive and productive.


M7: When did you start working and what was it?
CW:
I started when I was 16 in publishing and got to see first hand how brands were shifting spend from print to online. I was there when the publication I was working on launched its first website, and saw the ad sales starting to increase, and the print sales starting to shift over.

That was 15 years ago now, but my career path has always been in and around online, from digital innovation to engagement tech, to where I am now as the founder of the world’s first IoT agency.

ABOUT SHARPEND

SharpEnd – The Agency of Things™ - is moving brands closer than ever to consumers by connecting packaging, retail and experiential activity.  We are a full-service partner to some of the largest global brand owners across fashion, spirits and CPG including Estée Lauder Companies, Pernod Ricard, PepsiCo, Mattel and Nestlé. You can find out more here https://wearesharpend.com

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Chirp Partners With Mysten Labs to Develop the Future of Decentralized Connectivity

businesswire | March 31, 2023

Mysten Labs, a Web3 infrastructure company and initial developer of the Sui Layer 1 blockchain, today announced that it has entered into a strategic partnership with Chirp, a decentralized, multi-protocol, global wireless network and a platform for the Internet of Things (“IoT”) and high speed wireless broadband. Through this partnership, Chirp will leverage Sui’s decentralized, dynamic, and scalable technology to build the future of connectivity. Founded in 2021 by Tim Kravchunovsky, Chirp is harnessing the power of decentralization to build the world’s most robust, seamless, and user-friendly network. Chirp’s IoT and high-speed broadband internet solutions are fully wireless, available anywhere, and both easier to manage and more cost-effective than alternative networks. To provide low-cost IoT and internet solutions, Chirp enables its community to grow the network through its custom-built gateways. The company has developed two product lines: an IoT hybrid network that utilizes its own wireless network infrastructure and also uses capacity from other Network Operators to extend its network coverage and reach. The IoT network is powered by a gateway called The Blackbird and the wireless broadband solution is powered by a community-owned gateway called The Cardinal, both of which will utilize Sui’s unique blockchain technology to bring traditional network infrastructure to the Web3 world. “While IoT has delivered immense value to billions of people around the world, it remains very difficult to navigate, forcing users to engage with various vendors, networks, and platforms to achieve their intended objectives,” said Tim Kravchunovsky, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Chirp. “Chirp’s mission is to prove that IoT can be affordable and easy to use. By leveraging the Sui network and the benefits of a decentralized economy, Chirp is building a product that has a variety of B2B and B2C applications across multiple sectors of the economy, from transportation and autonomous driving to home automation. We can’t wait to work with Mysten Labs to continue to unlock the innumerable possibilities inherent in decentralized connectivity and make life easier for our users.” Mysten Labs was launched in 2021 by former executives of Meta’s Novi Research and lead architects of the Diem blockchain and Move programming language. The company is helping develop Sui, a decentralized, proof-of-stake blockchain that builds on important innovations in consensus algorithms and leverages novel data structures to deliver a high-performance, low-cost Layer 1. "Chirp is building the infrastructure for millions of users and billions of devices to connect on a decentralized network. While this is no small feat, the company’s strong team of experienced builders, network engineers, and telecom experts - combined with Sui’s decentralized technology and capabilities - make Chirp as well-positioned as any to execute on this mission,” said Evan Cheng, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Mysten Labs, initial contributor to the development of the Sui protocol. “We are excited to partner with Chirp to bring these unique, customer-focused solutions to market, and look forward to being a part of this journey.” About Mysten Labs Mysten Labs is a team of leading distributed systems, programming languages, and cryptography experts whose founders were senior executives of Meta’s Novi Research and lead architects of the Diem blockchain and Move programming language. The mission of Mysten Labs is to create foundational infrastructure for Web3.

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ENTERPRISE IOT, DEVICES

Semtech Expands LoRa® Portfolio with New Transceiver Featuring Long Range, Low Power Consumption, LoRaWAN® Standard and Global Connectivity

Semtech | March 17, 2023

Semtech Corporation (Nasdaq: SMTC), a high-performance semiconductor, IoT systems and Cloud connectivity service provider, today announced the expansion of its market leading LoRa® portfolio with a new transceiver for use in Internet of Things (IoT) end points that provides lower power consumption, global connectivity and long range. The new LoRa Connect™ LR1121 brings the best LoRa transceiver RF performance to date with the multi-band versatility permitting a single, low-power chip to be used anywhere in the world. It is pin compatible with the current LoRa Edge™ devices, allowing module makers such as Murata to have a single hardware design for a wide range of applications, with global connectivity. Likewise, Integrated Passive Devices such as Johanson Technology can readily be used alongside the LoRa Connect LR1121 to offer a smaller footprint, reduce time to market and minimize design iterations. The highly integrated LoRa Connect LR1121 transceiver provides LoRaWAN connectivity for terrestrial low power wide area networks (LPWAN) operating at 470MHz, 868MHz and 915MHz; it also provides LoRa 2.4GHz and the S-band for direct connection to satellites. “Semtech’s LoRa Connect is targeting the connectivity challenges faced by the industry today enabling widespread adoption and reinforcing LoRa’s position as the de-facto platform for IoT,” said Robert Comanescu, senior director of the IoT Chips Business at Semtech. “We continue to invest in improving LoRa technology and enriching our product portfolio with multi-band LoRa support and LoRa Cloud™ services that will provide best in class, sustainable, ubiquitous and global IoT connectivity.” New modules and reference designs, developed in partnership with Johanson and Murata, are ready at launch and offer a smaller form factor, lower assembly costs and faster time to market. Murata’s Type 2GT module, currently supporting the LoRa Edge LR1110 and LR1120 products, is also now supporting the LoRa Connect LR1121, offering a turnkey solution for lower cost assembly and faster time to market with a pre-certified LR1121 variant readily available. "By collaborating with Semtech on this offering, we are leveraging both companies’ leadership and expertise to create the most needed solution in the IoT market which provides multi-band LoRa® and long range - frequency hopping spread spectrum (LR-FHSS) communication over sub-GHz and 2.4GHz ISM bands as well as licensed S-Band for satellites," said Sasaki Akira, general manager of Connectivity Module Marketing, Murata. "The new multi-band module allows designers to develop products with a faster time to market by minimizing BOM size, cost and complexity." Likewise, Johanson Technology’s IPD is also compatible with the LR1121 and replaces many RF passives, allowing a smaller form factor and lower assembly costs. A reference design is available now on the Semtech website to jumpstart chip down designs. About Semtech Semtech’s LoRa chip-to-Cloud platform is a globally adopted long range, low power solution for Internet of Things (IoT) applications, enabling the rapid development and deployment of long range, ultra-low power and cost efficient IoT networks, gateways, sensors, module products, and IoT services worldwide. Semtech’s LoRa technology provides the communication layer for the LoRaWAN® standard, which is maintained by the LoRa Alliance®, an open IoT alliance for Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) applications that has been used to deploy IoT networks in over 173 countries. Semtech is a founding member of the LoRa Alliance and produces the “The WAN Network Show” podcast to connect massive IoT end users to operators of LoRaWAN networks around the world. With the proliferation of LoRa devices and the LoRaWAN standard, the LoRa Developer Portal is a technical support platform for IoT innovators to learn, connect, collaborate, and find resources to help accelerate product development efforts and expedite time to market. To learn more about how LoRa enables IoT and creates a more sustainable and smarter planet, visit Semtech’s LoRa site.

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