2020 trends

22002200 TTrreennddss:: What Will Affect OurWorld in the Next Decade?

Media Future WeekMarian Salzman

May 16, 2011

@ erwwpr Marian Salzman Trendspotting


Why Trends?Why do we look at trends when

creating actionable and insightfulstrategies for big brands?




•To identify the driving forces behind today and thefuture and plan for long-term success.




•To identify the driving forces behind today and the futureand plan for long-term success.

•To discover unexpected opportunities that can helptransform brands and businesses.




•To identify the driving forces behind today and the futureand plan for long-term success.

•To discover unexpected opportunities that can helptransform brands and businesses.

•To manage into change by giving insight into thedrivers of key business, consumer and social trends.

Learning to Spot Trends

It means tracking


people

socialmomentum

companiesradical

breakthroughs

brandseconomies

Spotting trendsis big business for people

in many industries who needto be thinking ahead, for

themselves and their clients.


And, really, isn’t that

everyone today?


Unquestionably, it’s everyonein this audience today.


11.5 Macro Trends for 2020(and How They Mean Business)


1.Mother Earth Needs Valium


1. Mother Earth Needs Valium

•Maybe in the decades of prosperity we forgot how much wedepend on Mother Earth. Then came Hurricane Katrina andall the ensuing worrying signs: tornadoes ripping across thesouthern U.S.; massive flooding in Pakistan, Sri Lanka andAustralia; a heat wave in Russia; torrential rain andmudslides in Brazil….

•The jury is still out on whether it’s man-made or not. Buteither way, the climate is changing and getting decidedly weird.

•Are seismic events getting more frequent, too? The 2004 Asian earthquake and tsunami; earthquakes in Spain, China,Haiti, Chile and New Zealand; the volcanic eruptions ofEyjafjallajökull in Iceland and Merapi in Indonesia last year;and this year’s Japanese earthquake and tsunami.


1. Mother Earth Needs Valium

•What’s next? Could the La Palma volcano in the Canarieserupt and send a megatsunami across to flatten the U.S.East Coast? Could the Yellowstone Supervolcano blow up intothe finale to end all finales, with Americans getting aringside seat?

•Only economic engineering, with a massive injection and dripfeed of money, have saved the world from near economiccatastrophe so far. What sort of geo-engineering do we needto save the world?

•How big a valium would we need to calm Mother Earth?


How Trend No. 1Means Business:

The Dutch have arguably the world’sbest record in geo-engineering withwater management; when the worldfears eco-bust, Dutch can think geo-boom. Businesses everywhere need to besure they’re better prepared thanTokyo Electric Power Co. Not manycountries would behave as meekly asthe Japanese.


#mamaneedspills



2.Tobacco,GMOs,Trans Fats...What’s Next?

2. Tobacco, GMOs,Trans Fats…What’s Next?

•When so many things turn out to pose health risks, whatcan consumers trust? Which everyday products could killthem? We’re all familiar with these:

– Tobacco. Doctors and a young Ronald Reagan promoted the healthbenefits of cigarettes. Even after medical research found conclusiveproof of health risks, tobacco companies continued to refute it.

– GMOs. When genetically modified organisms hit the headlines arounda decade ago—after the BSE scandal—Europeans talked of Frankensteinfoods and set strict regulations. As of April 2011, the EU is stillhesitant; GMO cultivation is limited.


2. Tobacco, GMOs,Trans Fats…What’s Next?

And next, wireless communications?:

– Cell phones. For a decade, people have been wondering whether cellphones bring health risks—especially brain tumors—but the U.S. FDAsays, “The weight of scientific evidence has not linked cell phones withany health problems.” In Europe, many sites are quoting a 2007 reportfrom the European Environment Agency saying that cell-phonetechnology “could lead to a health crisis similar to those caused byasbestos, smoking and lead in petrol.”

•The concerns aren’t stopping cell phones and Wi-Fi frombeing widely adopted, so the potential for an issue isgrowing. Although maybe the worries will switch torepetitive strain injury—teens and young adults, especially,spend far more time texting than calling.



Everything could change with a“perfect wireless storm.” Everyone incell-phone and Wi-Fi provision needs tothink about potential vulnerability toclaims by millions–maybe hundreds ofmillions–of global consumers.


#nowwhat



3.Water: The Next Oil

3. Water: The Next Oil

•People have been talking for decades about water as the nextoil, but it will soon become a scary truth—and we’re not talkingbottled water, which already costs as much as car fuel.

•Drier places in the world (Australia, the Middle East, theAmerican Southwest) have long lived with drought andsquabbled over water resources for the basics of life:drinking and growing food.


3. Water: The Next Oil

•Now, modern consumption and hygiene habits, plus today’spopulation growth, have been draining reservoirs, rivers andgroundwater faster than a bathtub with the plug pulled.

•Whole seas have been shrinking—the Aral Sea in CentralAsia and the Dead Sea in the Middle East, and in the U.S.,Lake Mead was an estimated 54 percent empty in 2008.With climate change, southern Europe could become evenmore like North Africa.




The slowly unfolding water crisis is agreat opportunity for businesses toroll out more water-efficient productsfor newly conscientious consumers.Companies and countries with a trackrecord in water will be especiallywell placed.

#nobusinesslikeflowbusiness



4.What’s NotOnline-able Is Doomed

4. What’s Not Online-able Is Doomed

•In the 1980s, CDs made LPs obsolete, then MP3 musicthrough the Internet started killing CDs and underminingthe whole old-style music industry.

•In the late 1990s, DVDs started replacing VHS tapes; adecade later, DVDs are under pressure from Tivo-style DVRsand on-demand Internet-delivery services.


4. What’s Not Online-able Is Doomed

•Digital cameras hit consumer markets in the early 2000s;in 2005, Kodak’s digital products and services overtook itsfilm product sales. Now, who needs a camera when a mobilephone can take pictures and upload them to view online?

•Printed books, magazines and newspapers are selling less,and the contents are being consumed more on computersand pads. In February 2011, e-book sales overtook printbook sales with a 202 percent month-over-month increase.




Consumers value being able to dothings online–including havingfriendships. Brands or products thathave smart online elements will beatthose that don’t.

#getonorgohome



5.The New Social:Antisocial

5. The New Social:Antisocial

•Even if we don’t like the name, we all love social media. Butsometimes its paradoxes are just plain ridiculous—or tragic.

•These days, people don’t smoke when they’re feeling nervousin a social setting; they check their FB page or Twitter feedon their mobile device (as antisocial to people nearby ashaving cigarette smoke blown on them).

•Some people even check their mobile device while they’rewalking along the street or in stores, oblivious to the peoplearound them—until they bump into them.


5. The New Social:Antisocial

•The “new social” often interrupts physical interactions withpeople—attention keeps flitting from the face-to-faceconversation to the online action.

•It’s a one-way trend of more technology, nevertheless.Another 10 years of smart phones (iPhone 15?) and tablets(iPad 13?) will make it even more compelling for consumersto conduct social interactions through their technology.




As consumers’ social interactions aremediated more by tech, companies havea huge scope for making money withhardware, software and services thatenhance them.

#socialsecurity



6.The Brain and HomoSapiens 2.0

6. The Brain and HomoSapiens 2.0

•Neuroscience is the new rock ’n’ roll, the new darling of themedia, looking into brains with high-tech scanners andrevealing the workings of everything from addiction to love.

•It holds out the promise of enhancing memory andcreativity, as well as offering better treatment for illnessessuch as dementia and Parkinson’s, and delaying the aging ofthe brain with supplements, drugs and devices.

•And there’s more…


6. The Brain and HomoSapiens 2.0

•We now know that our brains are shaped—literally—by whatwe experience. And what we are increasingly experiencing isinteractive technology mediated through the screens thatrepresent the world to us.

•Now we have the scientific instruments to see how thetechnical tools we’re using are changing our brains. We havea box seat to watch the emergence of Homo sapiens 2.0.

“Perhaps not since early man first discovered how touse a tool has the human brain been affected soquickly and so dramatically.” —UCLA neuroscientist Gary

Small on modern technology




Watch as n (for “neuro”) gets applied tobrain products and services: nBoosters,nHancers, nNutrients, nGames,nGagement. Get into people’s brainsyourself by becoming a detachedanthropologist to notice key points thatmight not be apparent to insiders (whomight be too busy screen-watching).

#brainsgetsmart



7.More Realthan Real

7. More Real than Real

•Even in the dark ages of computer graphics, the U.S. Marineswere using a version of first-person shooter game Doom fortraining, and airline pilots were training on simulators.

•Now with CGI and 3-D, gamemakers and moviemakers arecreating experiences more vivid, more stimulating and moreimmersive than virtually anything in the mundane physicalworld of everyday reality.

•Military pilots “fly” unmanned drones on combat missions,and millions of civilians immerse themselves inhyperrealistic computer games for hours on end.


7. More Real than Real

•It doesn’t even need fancy graphics: Interactions on simpletext-based social media platforms such as Facebook aretypically experienced comparably to offline interactions(online-ability strikes again!).

•Some consumers already tend to find ordinary lifeexperiences less “real” than mediated virtual experiences.As computing power increases and technology companiesrefine their offerings, growing numbers of consumers willdrive this trend.




In the struggle for consumers’attention, there are two options: Payout a lot of money for Matrix andAvatar levels of vividness or get muchsmarter at lower-cost “nGagement.”

#virtualnecessity



8.Hyperlocal Is the New Global

8. Hyperlocal Is the New Global

•It’s interesting to know what’s happening in other parts ofthe world, but how much does it really matter? Compare itwith what’s happening hyperlocally, right on your doorstep,which is more likely to be useful and virtually guaranteed tobe relevant.

•All the hot new online services are either about wherepeople live or work (Groupon in the U.S., Mecom in theNetherlands and other parts of Europe, ProXiti in France,Patch in the U.S.) or where you are right now with yourmobile device (Foursquare, Gowalla), so that they candeliver news, information and deals that are likely to matterto you.


8. Hyperlocal Is the New Global

•Hyperlocal media is more than just the traditional localnewspaper or broadcasting delivered through the Internet: Itpatches together journalism, bloggers, citizen journalists, andpeople taking videos and photos in an online grapevine.

•Hyperlocal media uses the real-time, multimedia, interactivepower of the Internet to strengthen connections within andbetween local communities.




With the Internet, businesses cantrack consumer choices and adjustoffers to match. Hyperlocal mediamakes them even more relevant toconsumers and their communities.

#locoforlocal



9.USA: No.Internet: Yes.

9. USA: No. Internet: Yes.

•Although the United States still has many of the world’sbiggest tech brands, it no longer dominates the action on theInternet. North America now accounts for just 13.5 percentof Internet users, compared with 24.2 percent in Europe and42 percent in Asia.

•Silicon Valley is the spiritual home of the Internet, and theU.S. government (DARPA) is its spiritual father, but theInternet is now bigger than both. The Internet has made afading United States less important as a physical place inthe world.


9. USA: No. Internet: Yes.

•Today, many of the best bits of the U.S. are available on theInternet 24/7: music, movies, sports, TV, keynote speakerson TED, educational materials. It’s always there virtually, sothere’s less need to go there physically.

•The more time consumers spend online, the more theircyberspace destinations will blur with physical locations intheir mind.




The Internet is ousting America as theiconic Land of Dreams. People withgreat ideas and determination canmeet up online, make things happenand make their fortune (without thegreen card hassle).

#netgain



10.English Out,Globish In

10. English Out, Globish In

•Ambitious people with an eye on the coming superpowermight be learning Mandarin as a second language, but mostof the rest of the world is learning English. It’s the networkeffect at work.

•Globetrotting French businessman Jean-Paul Nerrière noticedhow many non-native speakers struggled with “properEnglish” and set about creating a standardized, simplifiedform of English with a vocabulary of 1,500 words and asimple structure—a world language called Globish.


10. English Out, Globish In

•In keeping with the online-ability imperative, anybodyinterested in learning the slimmed-down global English cango to Globish.com and start learning.

•The Globish initiative has fired up journalist Robert McCrum,who made an authoritative TV documentary of the Englishlanguage 25 years ago. He now sees Globish as the languageof the Internet-powered world.

“English plus Microsoft equals a new culturalrevolution…a global means of communication that isirrepressibly contagious, adaptable, populist andsubversive.” —Robert McCrum




In data communication, TCP/IP andHTML enabled people in any countrywith any computer to communicate. Inverbal communication, Globish has thepotential to do the same. Brands needto learn Globish.

#confluency



11.Long, Sloooow,Demanding TV

11. Long, Sloooow,Demanding TV

•For a long time, everything seemed to be getting faster andshorter—MTV videos, fast-cut movie action sequences andnow millions of YouTube clips. Not much attention required.

•Then came much more demanding long-form TV series withmuch less action and much more complex plotlines spreadover many episodes and multiple series—think “Lost,” “TheWire,” “Deadwood,” “Mad Men.”


11. Long, Sloooow,Demanding TV

•As a yin to the yang of youth-targeted, fast-twitch TV,demand for complex long-form TV has grown organically asmature consumers get drawn in and find themselves hooked.

•Europe has developed a taste for swapping loooong, sloooowgritty crime dramas shown in the original language withsubtitles—“The Killing” (“Forbrydelsen”) from Denmark,“Spiral” (“Engrenages”) from France, “Wallander” fromSweden.




Out in Consumerland, there is anappetite for content that rewardsadult attention and sophisticatedintelligence. The catch: It requiresthose traits from producers andconsumers.

#payattention



11.5CareerKick Start

11.5 Career Kick Start

•Some choose to start over; others are forced by circumstance.Either way, hundreds of thousands of people are embarkingon new careers. Great Recession = Great Kick Start?

•Many older people have been forced back to work becausepensions, savings or investments don’t cover their costs ofliving—and increasing life spans mean they’ll need even more.

•Fewer workers means lower costs for businesses—but alsoless money for consumers to spend on their products.



How Trend No. 11.5Means Business:

The more businesses can foster peoplestarting new careers, the more moneyconsumers will have to spend on theproducts businesses make.

#back2work


What It All Means

•Unexpected quakes (whether the death of Bin Laden orperma-rattles in Tokyo) cause lasting shudders.

•The real-time news ticker with the stock indices gives us alla minute-by-minute measure of the ROI of the consuminglife—we have become “bad news bears.”

•“Mycasting” becomes the name of the news disseminationgame, and we’re all in the control booth.

•Miniature, flexible and portable—from the cloud to the ideaof classrooms in backpacks versus backpacks in classrooms.Have office, will travel (or not).

•Everything is changing faster, more furiously and sometimeswith less purpose than ever. Stress fuels decades of adult life.

•ADD is the new normal. If you can’t multitask, you’re awhite elephant.


Dank je Wel.


2020 trends

Technology

social trends

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