Trends for 2007: A Lazy An Agile Approach to Prediction
By Mat Morrison January 10th, 2007
In Stories
Advertising Age’s editor Scott Donaton lambasts ad agencies’ weak & wooly viral campaigns, fake blogs (flogs), and social networking services.
Consumers have been saying much the same for a while. Perhaps we might see a downward trend here?
For a couple of years now, at around this time, I’ve bothered my friends with questions about what they foresee for the year ahead.
Here are mine.
1) Everyone in advertising gets a bit bored of Consumer Generated Media: Face it, only a few people are going to do this well. Despite Ad Age naming “the consumer” the ad agency of last year, it’s one thing for Firefox enthusiasts to produce videos, some products are less likely to have an evangelising audience. However, I am currently filming my Depend ad on spec. It’s going to be big.
I can’t help thinking that some brands are just being lazy.
Furthermore, incentivised services such as PayPerPost (which pays bloggers for advertorial) must erode the trust that bloggers share with their readers. Although - to be fair - it’s probably a good way to get Googlejuice.
2) There’s a bit of a shake-up in the search world as traditional direct clients begin to realise that their affiliates are competing for their keywords. Big brands stop throwing money at search, and start acting like small companies - looking after the cents. But this may be a reflection of the fact that I’m excited about Blair Gorman’s Taguchi-Based Ad Optimiser.
3) Brands increasingly use the internet as a way to listen to what their audiences are telling them. Marketers employ quant analysis techniques developed in other business disciplines to turn the mass of data into stuff they can do. For too long, web analysis has been used to justify the past - our campaign spends, our planning decisions. Now we have to use it to control the future.
That’s a suitably visionary note for me. What do you think? What are the three big predictions for 2007? Contributors will be sent our collated list, and will be credited (with links) in any follow-ups to this post.
1 Leo Ryan // Jan 13, 2007 at 7:15 pm
Observed phenomena: Jarvis Cocker is putting together his next European Tour and asking fans in different cities to nominate support acts. Goodbye booking agents. Under a ‘Bands Needed” post on his MySpace page Cocker asks for assistance: “I need your help regarding these upcoming shows - I’d like to get interesting support acts from the locality of each concert & thought maybe you might have some suggestions”.
He even sets some parameters for his brief including budget; A link to some music might be useful & the performers MUST be local ‘cos the promoters can’t provide much of a fee for performing.”
Wildly irresponsible prediction: The inevitable rise of Consumer Generated Everything disintermediates everyone whose job is to try and predict consumer tastes.
2 Will McInnes // Jan 19, 2007 at 7:07 pm
1- Politicians move still more aggressively into online media to ‘connect’ with the public, with mixed results
2 - DRM fails
3 - Web TV initiatives hit the big time - TV is ravaged and morphed by the same forces that hurricaned through the radio and newspaper worlds
4 - Vertically-targetted industry niche blogs and community websites filter from the predominantly adult male techie worlds to reach un-web-savvy industries. The publishers of these make good money.
5. Email’s flaws as the communications tool of choice are exposed as more and more people declare ‘email bankruptcy’ - RSS picks up some of the pieces, as do IM and (shock horror) the telephone
6. The ranks of one-person-army consultants working both solo and as part of agile teams continue to swell: laptop; mobile phone and expert blog as marketing tool.
7. Huge opportunities open up for companies that can unify or allow people to better manage their many community profiles - some kind of portability/inter-operability between social networking websites
8. As above, but for companies that can allow us to better manage our multiple online security profiles and log-ins, very securely, and done online
3 Armando Alves // Jan 21, 2007 at 6:31 pm
Hi Leo et al.,
upon your request here’s my shot on the trends for 2007
1) Re-mediation of TV: in the beginning of the decade the web tried to emulate the habits of old media. Nowadays, it’s TV (and old media) that will embrace the new forms of expression of digital media. Don’t be amazed if some of these days you’ll see the newsticker rolling RSS feeds or a radio station with live emission of podcats
2) Evolution of Channels: differents targets (youngsters, senior) are approaching channels differently, and brands should be playing close attention to special channels (e.g. Mobile Marketing and Instant Messaging). We’ll see companies trying to find out how they work effectively, while remaining non-intrusive.
3) Social profiling privacy - increasing concerns on where the data from social networks goes, how secure are the websites (XSS attacks, cross scripting) and users demanding more choices in the way they decide to share their data
4) Rating authenticity - tools and directories of authenticity of blogs and online media will help the filtering of information overload. The same way stars and rankings helped users filter the products they will now appear to filter the relevant media sources (in light of recent PR scandals such as WalMart adn PlayStation)
There’s a lot more i could say, but these ones popped out immediately so i figured they would be the most important.
4 Nigel Shardlow // Jan 22, 2007 at 6:36 pm
Crowdsourcing.
Start of Economic meltdown.
Everybody realises that Climate change is, actually, a Big Problem.
5 Iain // Jan 22, 2007 at 10:33 pm
I seem to have begun the year obsessed by stuff, and who’ll create it. So these things currently seem important to me:
1. People who can script a good story that works across multiple media. It’s a good time to be a young and upcoming scriptwriter who has grown up with interactive media. Perhaps I’ll develop a side-line as an agent.
2. Editorial skills. We still need help sorting through the rubbish to get to the real nuggets. Better automated and human help is required. Brands can get involved in their areas of expertise. I’m terrible at editing - I also pledge to speak and write in shorter sentences this year.
3. Widgets. Small applications. Things that help you do small useful tasks and go about your business. I’m hoping that there’ll be similar backing on this side of the pond for people who want to create useful and helpful tools.
6 Barry Goodman aka Nostradamus // Jan 23, 2007 at 7:35 pm
Here are my useless predictions for the world of digital communications in 2007:
o Big Brother will be axed as Ch4 will be in danger of losing its government grant.
o Mobile phones will no longer have punctuation keys. Instead they will be able to convert spoken messages into SMSs.
o Though it hasn’t peaked, interactivity between organisations and their customers will reach such a fever pitch that they simply won’t be able to cope with the flow, resulting in siginificantly reduced and impaired response levels and a consequent image battering. There are many examples of this happenng already. Eventually organisation(s) will offer multiple choice non-qualitative interaction, or just stop inviting queries and suggestions altogether.
o ITV will sell Friends Reunited at a loss and someone else will buy it and make a killing.
o Retailers will continue to suffer as customers use them as showrooms, following which they turn to the web to find the cheapest source. Eventually Amazon or a new company will set up a clearing house for a vast range of suppliers, enabling the customer to shop online from the widest possible range of outlets and consolidating the purchases into one delivery.
o Someone will invent TV that you can view “in the round”, ie from all sides and above.
o Climate change will fall into insignificance as tension rises between Iran and the Gulf States.
7 dan o'connor // Jan 24, 2007 at 2:10 pm
>>>dan waves hand over crystal ball. realises is not crystal ball, but in fact wayne rooney’s head. stops waving hand over wayne rooney’s head. atmospheric mist begins to roll in, stage left. realises have left oven on. begins predictions>>atmospheric smoke gets thicker and thicker. dan realises he has set fire to wayne rooney. exits stage right
8 Simon George // Jan 24, 2007 at 3:08 pm
Just a few thoughts…
MUSIC
Music broadcast (and music industry in general!) needs a serious shot in the arm and 2007 could be the year (finally) for it… if no-one want to pay for broadcast music, a subscription model (i.e. where you don’t necessarily consider that you are paying for it) could be the success, but it needs total industry support and to work across all consumption platforms or the consumer will do what they’ve done to-date… vote with their feet.
Someone has already said that DRM will die - I agree: DRM is so easily cracked now that rightsholders will realise that a “carrot” approach is better than that of the “stick”.
TV
The advertising world will start finding more intelligent and relevant ways to talk to consumers and focus less on forcing us to watch ad breaks by making hardware suppliers disable the ability to screen them out, or watching obvious product placement.
The uptake of TV via media other than TV will increase, but only when aggregators realise that people don’t really want o watch TV on a 1″ mobile phone screen… but a PSP screen, iPod video, A-N-Other-device-with-4″-screen is viable (but only if you don’t try and charge premium rates for the same experience that we already get ‘free’ on the tellybox in the living room!
EVERYTHING ELSE
The world wakes up to carbon emissions (yes, even the USA… if only a little bit).
We spot a certain poetic justice in the equation: EAST EUROPEAN WORKER MIGRATION TO UK [is directly proportional to] NUMBER OF HOLIDAY HOMES BEING BOUGHT BY UK CITIZENS IN EASTERN EUROPE.
Happy 2007 to you all
9 dan o'connor // Jan 24, 2007 at 4:51 pm
Another prediction: my predictions disappear.
10 Mat Morrison // Jan 24, 2007 at 5:05 pm
Wouldn’t dream of it, Dan
11 dan o'connor // Jan 24, 2007 at 6:59 pm
Ah, Mat, ’twas mine fault. My predictions were supposed to go somewhere in between the rather random Mystc Meg impression that I actually seem to have posted. Which would have made more sense. Here they are again:
1) American political blogs, particularly those on the Democratic party side (daily kos, my DD, blue state project) will find it increasingly difficult to maintain their claim to be insurgent and ‘outside the tent’. The upcoming Presidential primary season will see the blogs (and their ‘netroots’ readers) become just another special interest within both US political parties. More and more, candidates will be accused of being beholden to particularly influential blogs.
1.1) Near-blanket-coverage TV advertising will remain the primary means by whcih American politicians communicate with voters
1.2) Blogs will have almost no effect on British political life.
2) Blu-Ray will be this generation’s Betamax. Well done, Sony!
3) Consumer-Generated-Content will be increasingly relied upon by news media as a way of professing to some sort of democratisation of the news (”See? See how we are not the metropolitan liberal elite because we have used cameraphone pictures from someone in Newcastle?”)
3.1) American TV networks will try to incorporate online on-demand viewing figures during sweeps week in order to recalibrate advertising rates (upward).
4) Broadband will become ever cheaper, but British coffeeshops will remain tragically blind to the joys of providing it free to cutomers.
4.1) Lack of broadband access will become a genuine social disenfranchisement issue.
12 Nathan Williams // Jan 26, 2007 at 1:12 pm
Have to agree with Nigel. I think we should all commit to doing something about climate change as opposed to endlessly droning on about marketing toss all the time. Uh, maybe we could take advantage of that fact that as a bunch of marketers with a collective ‘marketing big brain’ we could put it behind something worthwhile as opposed to the knocking out yet another campaign for yet another piece of FMCG toss that no-one needs? Anyone up for it?
13 Mat Morrison // Jan 26, 2007 at 1:32 pm
The answer to climate change is, of course, Monsanto products, more DaSani bottled water, and haut couture radiation suits.
Oh, and we should be able to make a killing off the Carbon Trading people, too.
14 Nathan Williams // Jan 26, 2007 at 1:40 pm
You are a marketing slut Morrison ;-)
15 barry Goodman aka Nostradamus // Jan 26, 2007 at 3:47 pm
I have to correct one post from Dan and comment on another:
Dan says “Blogs will have almost no effect on British political life”. Au contraire, they’re already having a huge effect on British political life. Guido Fawkes (www.order-order.com) has been a major mover in umpteen political scandals, most recently the cash-for-honours and Smith Institute affairs. Iain Dale is also very influential, as are journalist bloggers such as Melanie Phillips and Oliver Kamm.
I agree with Dan’s predictions about US Democratic blogs, but only because Daily Kos etc give so much space to conspiracy theorists and other twisted nutters.
Secondly, I get the feeling climate change is rattling a few cages. This is an example of how digital communications are really changing our lives. If someone writes that 12,000 scientists believe it is man-made, then a whole world believes it - numbers, plucked out of nowhere, count. Yet academics with 30 years’ of slimate study behind them believe that the Stern Report is riddled with inaccuracies and false accounting, for example using 2005 as its last trend year (the year of Katrina) when in fact there were no damage-causing hurricanes in the US in 2006. For a balanced view, listen to:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/radio4_aod.shtml?radio4/theinvestigation.
I am yet to be convinced that climate change is anything other than part of the earth’s normal cycle, unsurprising when you consider that the earth’s core is made of molten metal and under the magnetic influence of the sun.
16 Mat Morrison // Jan 26, 2007 at 4:41 pm
Barry — many thanks for your comments, and for giving me the opportunity to explain to some of our readers about the practise of trolling.
To be fair, though, it was Nigel who brought climate change up in the first place. Perhaps he’s the troll.
It is interesting (or should that be “profoundly boring”) how the news agenda seems to revolve around green issues at present. Politicians, especially, appear to enjoy using it as an issue with which to beat each other around the ears.
I predict that this story may die off later this year.
Either that, or we won’t be able to move for saplings.
I also predict that I shall remove further comments that don’t relate to the media and marketing.
17 Geoff Northcott // Jan 29, 2007 at 7:32 pm
Am going to give this some concerted thought over the next couple weeks, but here’s my first salvo:
1) In game advertising takes a big leap forward. Joining Massive, Google helps bring game ads to the masses, and the juicy target demographic and cool new medium makes it irresistable to clients and marketers alike. The latter of which hopefully will suggest context-appropriate placement, not technology brands in medieval RPGs. *cough*
2) MySpace and Facebook will still dominate the social network scene, but niche social networks / community sites, built around specific topics such as animation or file sharing or business contacts, will continue to grow.
3) Despite the overhype and the haters, Second Life continues to grow, and continues to generate PR…Sweden’s embassy sets the stage for the year nicely. Marketers will continue to blow through their clients’ money in SL on PR stunts with dubious ROI, but someone will also do something clever in that shows virtual worlds can offer real value to brands after all and starts paving the way for how brands will behave in virtual worlds in the years to come.
4) Google and Microsoft will both pile on the virtual world game, with interfaces considerably different to SL’s, and much more integration to “Real Life”, specifically around commerce.
5) As CRM, personalization, site statistics tools, ecommerce, and online marketing tactics all gel together, tracking campaigns through to actual sales will be more and more of a requirement.
6) The UGC trend continues, with brand participation increasingly and rightly viewed as a significant metric. Some brands will get it right and produce cool results such as Absolut Lomo exhibition and Nokia’s Flickr World24 map. Other brands will run uninspired initiatives and gain no traffic and no attention, and still others will find out what people really think of them, and it will not always be pretty. It will continue to evolve, and I think we will see increasingly different models for how brands encourage and take advantage of this participation.
18 Leo Ryan // Jan 30, 2007 at 3:02 pm
Our friend Kristina emailed back this prediciton: “For digital communications, the focus will be on the various forms of storytelling. From digitising something similar to the traditional storytelling methods of the aboriginals who communicated through sand paintings (one stick beating the timing of the story, the other stick drawing the story in the sand), to fairy tales used as the basis of marketing campaigns; how you tell/participate in a story will be key for 2007.”
And has a lot more of them at: http://btheremag.com/2006/12/01/you-ve-got-a-trend/
19 sportman // Feb 4, 2007 at 11:12 am
1. Companies won’t be able to peddle expensive tat. Within minutes of realising it’s poor quality or overpriced - the whole world knows about it. This is a very good thing.
2. We’ll have a sports star in the UK who is as talented a brand ambassador as he is a sports performer. America all ready has him - LeBron James. LeBron Swimming pool ad proves this and also that TV advertising is not dead. (In saying that i’ve just realised i’ve only ever seen the ad over the internet).
3. Environent, green tax, carbon neutral, carbon positive, Inconvenient Truth. Ya de ya de yada (spelling?). It’s all real and the next freak weather event in UK will make it even more so.
4. A handful of stupid brands will be seriously caught out by trying to fake a blog, hoodwink consumers or pretending to be ‘down wid da kidz’ - perhaps even prosecuted.
20 ade // Feb 5, 2007 at 11:59 pm
I realise that, as it’s the start of February, I’m coming late to this particular shindig, but here’s my 0.02 Linden Dollars:
1. Very little will change.
2. The things that many people describe as predictions for the year will remain as merely things they’d like to happen to make their day jobs more interesting.
3. The vast majority of web developers that sit outside of the digital media elite will carry on
using tables for layout. Damn their eyes.
4. Climate change deniers become as popular at dinner parties as holocaust deniers.
5. I won’t get a Christmas bonus again this year, but this time I won’t mind.
21 ade // Jan 3, 2008 at 5:48 pm
Chaps - fancy revisiting this list to see how accurate (or otherwise) the predictions were?
My take on 2007:
- Second Life has not been the panacea certain people were expecting. I’m not using the phrase “Emperor’s new clothes” about it as often as I did in March/April, but that’s mainly because fewer people are talking about it.
- DRM suffered a couple of body-blows (Apple and a few key music publishers releasing DRM-free tracks for a premium)
- Widgets did indeed take off (well done Iain), but they’re suffering a pause as people wait for the Platform wars to resolve themselves.
New for 2008:
- Facebook Platform vs. OpenSocial becomes the new VHS/Betamax (or should that be Blu-ray/HD-DVD?). Facebook win.
- A dispute between political bloggers gets nasty and makes the mainstream news.
- Channel 4 is taken to court over ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ and forced to apologise for the fact it was a badly-researched pack of crap.
- The first RMM child is born, and everyone makes ‘Version two-point-oh’ jokes.
22 Dan O'Connor // Jan 9, 2008 at 1:20 pm
Ade,
You’re a mindreader… We’ll be revisiting our 2007 prognostications soon (can you bear the anticipation?) and calling for 2008 clairvoyancy.
I don’t mind if there is an RMM child, just as long as it’s not mine.
23 Dan O'Connor // Jan 9, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Oh, God, I just realised how wrong I was about Blu-Ray…
24 Free stuff from Contagious Magazine // Jan 10, 2008 at 1:17 pm
[...] part to announce that we *will* be revisiting our 2007 predictions as Dan promised and in part to let you know that we are working on a project (to be announced in [...]
25 Mat Morrison // Jan 15, 2008 at 7:00 pm
Wow. Adrian was MOST right, I reckon. He should get a prize.
And I spent most of the latter half of the year working on reforestation projects and greenwash.
If we’re all going to die, God, could you please spare us the pious bores? I’m sure we’ll bump into enough of them in heaven.
26 Mat Morrison // Jan 15, 2008 at 7:02 pm
And I think the “dead DRM story” should count towards people’s 2007 scores. Let’s not be petty.