Head­lines about gun-fir­ing drones might have con­jured up fear with­in the gen­er­al pop­u­lace that Skynet is a step clos­er to declar­ing war on us all, but, in real­i­ty, drones are a bold new fron­tier for mar­keters that can be used for good.

The Drone Marketplace

It’s a grow­ing con­sumer mar­ket­place, to be sure. In fact, an April For­tune arti­cle declared 2015 “the year con­sumer drones get seri­ous.”

That’s thanks in part to more acces­si­ble offer­ings from play­ers like Chi­nese tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny DJI and unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cle com­pa­ny 3D Robot­ics. Cam­era brand GoPro, too, is report­ed­ly design­ing its own line of con­sumer drones with high-def­i­n­i­tion cam­eras, which will hit the mar­ket in late 2015.

Early Applications

How­ev­er, to date, drones have real­ly been more of a nov­el­ty and are enjoy­ing a moment in the spot­light as some­thing of a tech­no­log­i­cal won­der, thanks to both fans and influ­encers alike.

Take this Mil­len­ni­um Fal­con drone from a “Star Wars” enthu­si­ast, for exam­ple, as well as reports a “Top Gun” sequel will include drone war­fare to bet­ter reflect the real­i­ty of Navy fight­er pilots today. There’s also domes­tic god­dess Martha Stew­art, who pub­licly declared her love of drones, par­tic­u­lar­ly when it comes to sur­vey­ing her prop­er­ties.

Going Commercial

Land sur­veys are indeed where much poten­tial lies in future appli­ca­tions for drones.

To wit: Elec­tron­ics mono­lith Sony announced it was launch­ing a drone sub­sidiary that will sur­vey land and inspect infra­struc­ture. Oth­er com­pa­nies like real estate invest­ment mar­ket­place Fun­drise and mobil­i­ty inte­gra­tor iBusi­ness Tech­nolo­gies have announced sim­i­lar efforts.

But, real­ly, video access that would be hard and/or expen­sive with­out drones is per­haps where the biggest future poten­tial lies for mar­keters.

#DroneWeek

In fact, indus­tri­al giant GE just wrapped up #Drone­Week, or what it called “the first-ever drone show on Periscope.”

The five-day pro­gram includ­ed re-engi­neered drones fly­ing over and into five of GE’s most remote test and build facil­i­ties – includ­ing the Blow-Out-Pre­ven­ter man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ty in Hous­ton; the jet engine test­ing facil­i­ty in Pee­bles, Ohio; and wind farms in Tehachapi, Cal­i­for­nia – to give audi­ences “nev­er-before-seen views into the loca­tions where today’s most badass jet engines, loco­mo­tives, wind tur­bines, and indus­tri­al machin­ery are made and test­ed to extremes.”

Accord­ing to Sam Olstein, glob­al direc­tor of inno­va­tion at GE, the brand has always been an ear­ly adopter of plat­forms that enable it to tell sto­ries and dis­trib­ute con­tent.

#Drone­Week enabled the brand to “[show­case] the breadth of GE’s dif­fer­ent technologies…and we [were] able to bring it to peo­ple from insane per­spec­tives,” Olstein said.

What’s more, the effort result­ed in a halo effect on oth­er net­works.

“It’s been use­ful to look at how a chan­nel like Periscope fits into the broad­er mar­ket­ing mix and how [do we]…take advan­tage of live pro­gram­ming for the life of the broad­cast and then think about the life of the con­tent once the Periscope stream has evap­o­rat­ed,” Olstein said. “These are learn­ings tied to how to con­tin­ue to cre­ate con­tent and pro­gram­ming in this new frag­ment­ed media land­scape.”

Per Olstein, the brand pre­vi­ous­ly shot con­tent with drones in its Fac­to­ry Fly­overs series.

“But I think we’re see­ing a real­ly mon­u­men­tal par­a­digm shift around all of the var­i­ous cre­ative appli­ca­tions about drones, par­tic­u­lar­ly drone cin­e­matog­ra­phy,” Olstein said. “In New York at the end of last year, they had the first-ever drone film fes­ti­val, so I think you’re see­ing the democ­ra­ti­za­tion of cre­ators’ abil­i­ty to cap­ture insane cin­e­mat­ic per­spec­tives off of any of these drones where pre­vi­ous­ly you would have had to rent a heli­copter and invest pro­duc­tion resources.”

In oth­er words, drones are help­ing to lev­el the cre­ative play­ing field that, when “mashed up with new plat­forms and capa­bil­i­ties and social media, presents a whole oth­er lay­er to con­tent,” Olstein said.

Amazon, Flirtey & Highways In The Sky

Anoth­er poten­tial com­mer­cial drone appli­ca­tion: Deliv­er­ies.

In fact, at NASA’s 2015 Unmanned Air­craft Sys­tems Traf­fic Man­age­ment Con­ven­tion this week, Gur Kim­chi, vice pres­i­dent of Amazon’s Prime Air deliv­ery sys­tem, pro­posed pro­ce­dures for the safe oper­a­tions of its drones. In 2013, Ama­zon released a video of Prime Air in action, which seeks to deliv­er pack­ages “in 30 min­utes or less using unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cles.”

Per Ama­zon, the brand will deploy Prime Air when it has “the reg­u­la­to­ry sup­port need­ed to real­ize our vision.”

Indeed, Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion reg­u­la­tions remain one of the biggest chal­lenges in com­mer­cial drone appli­ca­tions.

How­ev­er, anoth­er brand, autonomous aer­i­al deliv­ery com­pa­ny Flirtey, has already deliv­ered med­ical sup­plies to a free clin­ic in Vir­ginia in what was report­ed as the “first real world demon­stra­tion of drone deliv­ery tech­nol­o­gy in the Unit­ed States, autho­rized by the [FAA].”

Oth­er brands have rolled out deliv­ery ser­vices with per­haps less lofty goals, such as FunnyHowFlowersDoThat.co.uk, whose so-called Cupidrone took to the skies above Romeo and Juliet’s home­town of Verona to deliv­er ros­es on Valentine’s Day 2015; as well as The Man­sion at Casa Madrona, a lux­u­ry Cal­i­for­nia hotel, which offers a cham­pagne deliv­ery ser­vice via drone.

Literally A Double-Edged Blade

But it hasn’t been all fun and games.

The Brook­lyn, N.Y.-based out­post of restau­rant chain TGIFri­days attempt­ed an in-restau­rant mistle­toe-by-drone pro­mo­tion in Decem­ber 2014, which result­ed in facial lac­er­a­tions on one guest; and Latin croon­er – and Julio Igle­sias off­spring – Enrique had to under­go recon­struc­tive hand surgery after he was cut by a cam­era drone dur­ing a con­cert in Tijua­na ear­li­er this year.

These lat­ter instances point to some of the chal­lenges faced by mar­keters that want to incor­po­rate drones. Which begs the ques­tion…

Are Drones Worth It?

From a mar­ket­ing per­spec­tive, the answer is yes, but with a few caveats.

1. Heed Federal Regulations

“The biggest chal­lenges, sim­ply put, are gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tions.  And right­ful­ly so – we need a lev­el of pro­tec­tion for both phys­i­cal safe­ty and pri­va­cy pur­pos­es,” said Kyle Reyes, cre­ative direc­tor and pres­i­dent of tech-focused bou­tique mar­ket­ing firm The Silent Part­ner Mar­ket­ing. “Know­ing and under­stand­ing the laws and oper­at­ing with­in them will ensure that you over­come the biggest chal­lenge right off the bat.”

2. Embrace Disruption

Like an exot­ic sculp­ture whose true mean­ing is open to inter­pre­ta­tion, mar­keters must con­cep­tu­al­ize their drones as con­ver­sa­tion pieces from the start.

“It’s not very often we see a new form of online adver­tis­ing spawn before our eyes like we have with drones,” said Maciej Fita, man­ag­ing direc­tor of SEO and mar­ket­ing firm Brandig­ni­ty.

Because drones offer such a new oppor­tu­ni­ty, they will inspire con­ver­sa­tion. It’s up to mar­keters to use those atten­tion-grab­bing drones to embrace a favorite indus­try buzz­word: dis­rup­tion.

3. Your Job Doesn’t End When The Drone Takes Flight

Reyes cau­tions that after brands cap­ture con­sumer eye­balls for a fleet­ing moment, they must con­tin­ue to be sto­ry­tellers.

“It’s not the action with the drone that forms mean­ing­ful connections…it’s what actions the com­pa­ny takes next,” he said. “Drones are tools for con­tent cre­ation. Con­tent is noth­ing with­out dis­tri­b­u­tion, but then comes the engage­ment. Think: Cre­ation, dis­tri­b­u­tion, engage­ment. Boom. Suc­cess.”

4. Keep Drones Outdoors…At Least For Now

Fly­ing inside, as TGI Fri­days learned, comes with increased lia­bil­i­ty, notes Robert Alley, team leader of Vir­ginia Real Estate Solu­tions at Re/Max Real­ty Spe­cial­ists, who uses a drone to adver­tise his busi­ness.

What do you think about the poten­tial drones offer for mar­keters?