Anna Nicanorova characterizes innovation in today’s marketing-technology world as being: fast, open and boundless. Originally from Chishinau, Moldova, she worked in her home country, as well as in Germany, Russia, The Netherlands, and the United States. Today, from her base in New York, she leads Annalect Labs, the innovation department within Annalect, Omnicom’s data-driven marketing solutions agency.
Her mission at Annalect Labs is to create semi-stable prototypes (mainly marketing software) that solve old problems in a new and efficient way, or provide a fresh approach to marketing communications. Labs activates 15-17 projects per year.
The one that stands out this year is Superbowl Moodometer – the facial recognition technology used to track how people really feel about advertising. Anna’s team built and executed the project in under two weeks. They quickly learned how facial recognition technology works, developed the prototype internally, and spent a week monitoring participants. They were excited to how technology can work to distinguish people’s attitudes and perceptions of brands based solely on facial expressions.