newscrafting and trendspotting

TrendspottingandNewscrafting

White PaperJune 2012

@erwwpr

Marian Salzman is CEO of Euro RSCG Worldwide PR, North America, andEuro RSCG Life PR. She has been called a lot of names (or at leastdescriptors), from “the corporate clairvoyant” to “Xena of the Zeitgeist,”and categorized as everything from a coolhunter to a trendspotter.Salzman was the only trendspotter in the world to whom TheIndependent (U.K.) gave a 10 out of 10 when it last rated the world’stop trendspotters, and Nielsen named her one of the “top fivetrendspotters in the world.” When Salzman unveils her end-of-yeartrends list, her media dance card fills up right away—recent highlightsinclude clips in The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Forbes, PRWeekand Times Online (U.K.). Because of the accuracy in her reports and hermedia-friendly style, Salzman remains a go-to source for such outletsas Reuters, USA Today, The New York Times and “Good MorningAmerica” throughout the year.

Since taking the helm of @erwwpr in August 2009, she has instilled atrendspotting mindset among her team—not to predict the future but toanticipate it, decode it, harness its power, and tailor it for clients (andprospects) and their brands, and maybe even shift culture at the same time.

“[Marian Salzman is] wonderful at tying it all together—not just lookingfive years out but making sense of the last 10 years. And it’s thebreadth of topics that she can make sense of—technology, environment,business, entertainment—that’s amazing.” —Alison Fahey, formerpublisher and editorial director, Adweek

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What Are They Doing?Most people are satisfied with a simple answer to that question and then moveon. And most curb their curiosity or focus it more narrowly to develop expertisein a special interest such as sports, medicine, online gaming, woodworking orcooking. But for the insatiably curious, “What are they doing?” is just one dropbefore a whole cascade of prodding and probing questions: Why are they doingthat? Who else is doing it? What does it mean? Where did they get the idea? Whatwill they do next?

White Paper: Newscrafting and Trendspotting 3

@erwwpr

For those of us who are insatiably curious about what other people are doing,there are, fortunately, some respectable careers where we can nose into people’slives and get paid for it. Some become psychologists, some go into anthropology,some take the route of opinion research and some become journalists. Without aclear game plan to direct my nosy energies, I’ve cycled through all of those andfound myself in trendspotting, an emerging discipline that’s perfect for theinsatiably curious.

Looking back over 20 years of curiosity, I see some clear patterns at work—notsurprising, since recognizing patterns is one of the key skills of trendspotting.I’ve always been fascinated by watching people in real life as they go about theireveryday activities: shopping, eating, chatting, working. Even before it was part ofmy job, I’d always tracked who’s wearing what and how they’re wearing it; who’shanging with whom, and where, and what they’re doing; which brands areinvolved and which could be but aren’t.

I’ve always liked to get people talking, both in person and online. And to behonest, I don’t just pick up information from my own conversations with people; alot of it comes from overhearing other people talking. Sometimes it’s artful tuningin to the ambient talk around me, and sometimes it’s shoddily concealedeavesdropping. Anybody who has spent time with me will have seen my attentionwander; it might be that I’ve just had an idea for work, or it might be that I’vejust overheard someone nearby say something that has grabbed my attention.

I see my trendspotting work as having a lot in common with sociology andanthropology. But working in public relations, I also see a lot of overlaps withjournalism; it’s no coincidence that many PR people used to be journalists. Wehave an awful lot in common, and in a media environment increasingly shaped bysocial media, our skills and agendas are going to coincide. As I will argue in thispaper, PR practitioners can now best serve their clients by incorporating theskills of trendspotting into a new discipline: newscrafting.

I know a lot of people get queasy at the thought of blurring the lines betweenjournalism and PR, and I can totally relate to that. When I read a report onstudent debt or a new medical procedure or urban regeneration initiatives, Iwant the journalist’s best shot at the facts and a smart, impartial interpretationof what it means. What I don’t want is a journalist presenting a product or acorporation favorably (or unfavorably) because he or she has been paid to spin astory that way.

So here is one clear boundary: Journalists are supposed to serve no commercialinterests other than their employers’; PR professionals serve the commercialinterests of their employers and of their clients. As the Society of ProfessionalJournalists lays it out,1 journalists have an ethical duty to seek truth and provide“a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues.” As for PR, the PublicRelations Society of America member statement of professional values2 says this:“We adhere to the highest standards of accuracy and truth in advancing theinterests of those we represent and in communicating with the public.”


@erwwpr

“Thanks to the rise of social

media, news is no longer

gathered exclusively by reporters

and turned into a story but

emerges from an ecosystem in

which journalists, sources,

readers and viewers exchange

information. The change began

around 1999, when blogging

tools first became widely

available…. This was followed by

a further shift: the rise of

‘horizontal media’ that made it

quick and easy for anyone to

share links (via Facebook or

Twitter, for example) with large

numbers of people without the

involvement of a traditional

media organisation. In other

words, people can collectively

act as a broadcast network.”

—The Economist


@erwwpr

“Trends are about changes in style and taste. … Changes in style and taste do not justhappen out of the blue. Only human beings can create changes in style and taste. And to theextent that we can understand human beings’ behaviour we can understand how changes instyle and taste come about.” —Press release for Henrik Vejlgaard’s Anatomy of a Trend

Thinking HeadlinesBeyond the fundamental “who is paying” difference between journalismand PR, there are many similarities, and I’m not just talking aboutcuriosity and gathering information.

The raw material of journalism is news—new information, or newperspectives on familiar information. The same applies to PR.


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Journalism looks for information and angles that will generate attention-grabbingheadlines; so does PR. Journalism aims to craft relevant information intointeresting articles that will hold people’s attention and shape their opinions; sodoes PR.

Journalism is being forced to adapt to a media environment in which consumerscan quickly flit among outlets that satisfy their needs for information,entertainment and interaction; so is PR.

Both journalists and PR practitioners have to know and do what it takes toengage the interest of their audience. However truthful and honest their outputmight be, if it’s boring it’s wrong. If their work doesn’t grab the attention of theiraudience and hold it, they are wasting valuable time and money; they are notdoing their job.

Journalists who don’t know how to engage people’s interest should seriouslyconsider becoming academics, if they can find a college willing to employ them.PR professionals who just crank out press releases are in the wrong line ofwork; they should work in the corporate archives.

In recent years, I’ve admired the work of journalists at every level, from heroicnational figures such as my friend Bob Woodruff right through to the unsung andlargely unknown citizen journalists reporting on local affairs for Patch.Sometimes I catch myself wondering where I would be now if I had stuck withmy early interest in journalism. Looking around at the dire straits of many newstitles and all the layoffs hitting journalists, I feel sorry for the profession andgrateful that my trendspotting instincts took me into a line of work that’sdestined to grow, thanks to another fundamental difference between journalismand PR: Journalists have to report on what’s happening, without becomingactively involved; as a general rule, they can’t create an event to report on, can’tmake the news that they report. We PR professionals aren’t hamstrung by thoseconstraints. There’s no ethical reason why we should not be actively involved increating and crafting news. In fact, there’s every professional reason why weshould be putting the best of our energy and ingenuity into being news creatorsand newscrafters for our clients.

Our clients pay us to bring them to the attention of the right audiences and tocreate positive, fruitful engagement with those audiences. For brands and causes,the essential value of PR is increasingly coming from its ability to master thechanging forms of news as traditional and social media intertwine. PR firms havea massive opportunity to go way beyond the old practice of pitching the news tobecome masters of newscrafting for our clients—a mix of putting out routinenews in more compelling ways, creating news opportunities and coattailingrelevant breaking news. Trendspotting is ideal for all these purposes.


@erwwpr

Places to Devour Great Information

Branding: psfk.comBusiness: fastcompany.comContent: buzzfeed.comCultural happenings: flavorpill.comDesign: core77.comEvents: urbandaddy.comFashion: polyvore.com andwwd.comFood: foodspotting.comHealth/medicine: oncolink.comLuxury: luxist.comMen’s stuff: acontinuouslean.comMusic: pitchfork.comParenting: scarymommy.com andmikeadamick.comReal estate: zillow.com andtrulia.comRetail: racked.comSocial media: mashable.comTrends: coolhunting.comVisual inspiration: pinterest.comWellness: healthland.time.comYouth: mtv.com

“Those who insert themselves into as many channels as possible look set to capture themost value. They’ll be the richest, the most successful, the most connected, capable andinfluential among us. We’re all publishers now, and the more we publish, the morevaluable connections we’ll make.” —Pete Cashmore, founder and CEO of Mashable


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Entertainment, Interactionand Information RuleFrom pretty early on in my career in advertising, I had little respect for the arrogant command-and-controlmindset that prevailed across large tracts of adland. With just a few big broadcast media channelsavailable, far too many advertising professionals thought they could treat consumers as a captive paid-foraudience that could be brainwashed into buying stuff by sheer weight of media and repetition.


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I guess that mindset worked when prime-time TV meant something andaudiences were passive and less savvy; it certainly funded plenty of high-cost productions and glamorous lifestyles.

For many years, it was clear to me that the savviest advertising people andthe smartest ad campaigns had an intuitive understanding of PR; they wereso interesting and so insightful that they just couldn’t help but bust out ofthe straitjacket of paid media. They understood that it’s not smart to crankout commercial messages that bug people and are treated by consumers asmore noise to be filtered out. They understood that they had to become partof people’s everyday conversations and part of the popular culture.

Now five years into my full-on PR life, my trendspotter radar is giving mestrong signals that the traditional Madison Avenue approach to marcommswill be history sooner rather than later. I’m not saying that creative imagesand copy have no place in the future. It’s just that mainstream 20th-centurymarcomms doesn’t call the shots anymore; it’s not the main event now andhas no automatic right to top billing. Consumers decide who and what is the star.

With megamultichannel TV and a virtually infinite choice of media contentavailable 24/7/365 through interactive channels, consumers who are evenslightly savvy are now in charge of their own media experience. They usetechnology to get less of what they don’t want (“Look at this” advertising)and more of what they do. And what they do want is the media trifecta ofentertainment, interaction and information.

The best output of classic adland can still score with consumers, but itmust be created with an eye to living in social media and spreading throughit. By social media I’m not just talking about Facebook and Twitter but alsoany online media that allows users to upload and share their content:YouTube, MySpace, Vimeo, LinkedIn, Flickr, Orkut, Spotify, Patch, specialinterest forums (e.g., parenting, medical) and millions of blogs. These andother social media are now front and center of attention because they giveconsumers personal control and anytime access to that winning mix ofentertainment, interaction and information.

The traditional mass media (TV, radio, print) that reigned through the 20th century is still the preserve of production-heavy set-piece marcomms.But the social media that’s grabbing so much attention in the 21st century isthe new home turf of PR. Social media is where nimble PR professionals canapply their news smarts and trendspotting savvy to newscrafting for clients.


@erwwpr

“I have seen the future, and it’s very

much like the present, only longer”

—Woody Allen

“Being part of the conversation is the key to this new world.… There has got to be a newkind of advertising where companies can get their products found and discussed, but notcause they shoved them in your face like they do in TV where they interrupt your footballgame to talk about shavers or beer.” —Author and tech evangelist Robert Scoble


@erwwpr

News Redefined: What’sNew and Relevant to MeThe notion of news has evolved a long way. It’s no longer what used to be delivered by the paperboyevery morning or by the TV anchor at a set hour every evening. Not only do growing numbers of Americansnot get their news in those traditional ways anymore, but growing numbers of Americans have never intheir lives gotten their news in those ways.


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The old-style network broadcast news has given way to 24/7 rolling news onthe TV, plus online text and video. Print news titles that have managed tosurvive have mostly supplemented their daily paper edition with an onlinesite that’s updated throughout the day. Web-only sites such as Mashablehave pitched in to the news business as news curators, picking up newsfrom sources online, posting links and adding their own commentary.

In fact, people who are interested in getting breaking news fast willprobably find it first online well before it appears in traditional news media.The pivotal moment for this trend was probably 2008-09. Within minutes ofthe Mumbai terrorist attacks in November 2008, Twitter and Flickr wereproviding eyewitness accounts, photo and video of events as they happened.3

Then in January 2009 the extraordinary landing of US Airways Flight 1549 onthe Hudson River was first reported on Twitter.4 And a few months later itwas social media sites that spread the news and comments about MichaelJackson’s death.5

These events and many that have followed since (e.g., Iranian elections, ArabSpring) have created a self-reinforcing perception that social media is theplace for the most up-to-date breaking news from virtually anywhere in theworld. The trend is screamingly clear: More and more often, we’re learning ofwhat’s happening in real time by Twitter. When Captain Sullenberger landedon the Hudson, I was less than a mile away and the TV was on, but my newstip came by tweet. When Whitney Houston died, I was clocking CNN, but I gotthe word ahead of its breaking news flash, again by Twitter.

This is a powerful self-reinforcing trend.

With mobile devices, anybody on the scene of an event has all the equipmentthey need to report and upload the latest, with text, photos and/or video—and that’s exactly what they do, encouraged by all the other people whohave done it and gotten a few minutes of fame in the process. Professionalnews organizations can’t have reporters in every location where news mightbreak, so journalists sign up to social media and keep an eye on the timeline.Consumers and news junkies like me who are interested in the latest newsknow that it tends to break first on social media, so when it happens theyget it fast and spread it to their online contacts.

As an old foreign correspondent friend of mine explained it:

“When I was a wire service reporter in the 1980s, news would come to thenearest wire service bureau through stringers, local media or eyewitness.The bureau would send a short statement of the event (‘snap’) onto the newswire; this alerted news wire subscribers in newsrooms around the world,who would mobilize their own coverage to check and report the news. Thepublic would get the news from news organizations.”


@erwwpr

“News is happening all around

us, at every moment, and being

broadcast before a live (and

decidedly social) audience day

and night. Now more than ever,

PR types and media mavens need

to work together and focus on

the 24/7/365 nature of

newscrafting. It is PR’s answer

to integrated or 360-marketing

practices in adland. If you’re still

stuck telling stories, you had

better start crafting them,

celebrating our relationships

with the media and getting

collaborative, because the days

of a one-way-mirror approach to

getting the word out are long

gone.” —Marian Salzman on

mariansalzman.com, Dec. 26, 2011

Now the chain is a lot shorter and a lot faster: An event is witnessed by someonewith a Twitter account who tweets it. It gets retweeted through Twitter andspreads fast; the public hears about it at the same time as news organizations.

Social media have become de facto prime channels for breaking news about bigevents such as terrorist attacks and natural disasters. But this traditional notionof news comes through the same channels and on the same devices as people’sown local news updates (“Checkin line at JFK 3 is really bad today — computersystem is snarled up,” “The Korean diner on Main is offering 25% off lunchtoday”) and their personal status updates (“Loving my new ride,” “The new JayZis totally slammin’”).

But who says that news has to be Big Serious Stuff about politics, crime, theeconomy and catastrophes? For consumers who use social media regularly, newsis the new and relevant information that appears on their feed. Some of it mightbe Big Serious Stuff, some of it might be the latest on pop culture, some of itmight be about their personal interests, and some of it might be gossip andcomments from friends and contacts.

In just a few short years, we’ve come to the point where all news organizationsand all journalists have to take social media seriously, at least as tipoffservices; they can’t afford not to. As far as I’m concerned, the same applies inspades to PR agencies and professionals. On social media we can see not onlythe news breaking (including news about our clients and their industries) butalso how people talk about it; we can track the rise and evolution of trends asthey spread; and if we’re doing our job right and crafting compelling news forour clients, we can engage consumers with content that offers what they loveon social media: entertainment, interaction and information.


@erwwpr

How to Become a Trendspotter 1. Scan the media systematically. Don’t forget to scan the research institutes and their press releases.

2. Identify, analyze and extrapolate trends. Focus on their nature, causes, speed and potential impacts. Guesstimatethe density and the velocity of the changes.

3. Plan possible scenarios. Imagine the future, including opportunities and risks.

4. Consult experts and influencers. The best futurists do Delphi or expert polling.

5. Employ computer modeling. You don’t need to be Einstein, but use today’s easy supercomputing to create “whatif” scenarios.

6. Simulate possibilities. Life is a battlefield, so play war games. If this happens, then what’s next?

7. Develop your vision. Put on your magnifying glasses and look at the big picture of the possibilities—and how canyou set these goals and realize them.

Amended from a list by the World Future Society.

“Social media’s key ability is that it enables you to get your message to your guests andconsumers that was right for that week out into the market … Now! A traditional printmessage booked months earlier might not be the right message today as competitors andthe economy change.” —Social media marketing blogger and consultant Jeff Bullas


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Trends for NewscraftingWe’re long past the days when trendspotting was a little left-of-field wackiness, when it was what myBritish colleagues used to call “a bit of a laugh.” Even so, there are still a lot of strange ideas abouttrendspotting, and many of them involve variations on whatever amusing references people can muster—crystal balls, tea leaves, tarot cards and the Delphic oracle are old favorites that are guaranteed to turnup. I sometimes try to set people straight about the difference between trendspotting and futurology,between spotting current patterns with implications for future strategy and making predications aboutthe future. It’s true that I don’t shrink from talking about the way I expect things to evolve; it’s whatinterviewers and the public expect. Being spectacularly right is a great bonus, while being blushinglywrong is an occupational hazard; trendspotting is not for the fainthearted.


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Still, for the purposes of my agency, Euro RSCG Worldwide PR (which we now call@erwwpr), and its clients, trendspotting is not about predicting the future. Ourtrendspotting is partly about creating strategies that help our clients prepare forwhat’s likely so that they can get ahead of the crowd and shape events. It’s part ofour innovative positioning as future creators; we focus on building brands by puttingthem in the center of cultural storms.

Equally important for PR professionals is the pullingpower of artful trendspotting—the capacity to opendoors and feed newscrafting. It has evolved through theyears from a “what?” through a “nice to have” tobecome a “must.” My co-workers have now thoroughlyunderstood that as an agency an important part of ourwork is to call trends and to leverage them so that wecan craft news for our clients and ourselves. With more than two decades ofspeeches and interviews about trends for newspapers, TV, Internet channels andconferences under my belt, I can guarantee that people’s appetite for trends newshas grown and is still growing.

One thing that makes trendspotters so irresistible for news professionals andconsumers alike is that we notice shifts and changes in this hyperconnected,overloaded world of TMI, and we’re not afraid to have a shot at making sense of them. We draw attention to things that people might not have seen yet, or might have seen and not noticed, or might have noticed and not thought about.

Sometimes the changes are happening in places where everybody is looking but just not seeing. That was what gave me the advantage with singletons in 1999 andmetrosexuals in 2003. Sometimes the changes are happening in places and ways thatare too new for people to notice or take seriously, like the Internet before it wenttotally mainstream; that’s how I was able to do online focus groups in the early ’90s,at a time when most people didn’t even know what online was. And sometimes thechanges are happening in places where people have stopped looking, often becausethey’re heading in the other direction. That’s what makes fallen-off-the-radar placessuch as Detroit so interesting.

Spotting trends and making sense of them for newscrafting requires a combination offocused and peripheral vision. Trends flagged by sharp-eyed greenhorn trendspottersrisk being just bits of more or less interesting random information unless they arefitted into a bigger strategic context of implications and potential opportunities.Sometimes these puzzle pieces fall into place straightaway; other times, theconnections are only evident in hindsight. This is where the peripheral vision andcontextual awareness of experienced trendspotters comes into its own.

For example, the live-in-the-moment alternative culture of surfing went from being ahot trend among sun-bleached youngsters on the West Coast (and my legendaryformer Chiat\Day colleague Lee Clow) to becoming an enduring global mainstay. Butthe energy of ocean surfing was too irresistible to stay offshore. It spawnedskateboarding, then snowboarding, which both became massive mainstream trendswhile retaining their young, edgy feel. The big trend common to all three is findingways of going fast on a moving board, so we can expect new variations on the trend.


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5 Apr @4AsEuro RSCG Worldwide PR's CEO Marian Salzman looksat how technology and "newscrafting" are reshapingPublic... http://fb.me/1yKQwx0zo

“[T]here’s good money to be made in second guessing the future. At the same time, goodmoney can also be lost getting it wrong. And the really big money? Well, that doesn’t comefrom following trends. That comes from people with original ideas who create trends.People with the courage to build something—and then see if anyone will come. Foreveryone else, being a fast follower is probably the next best option.” —Fast Company


@erwwpr

Be the NewsThe tools have changed, but the essential job of marcomms professionals is thesame as ever: to generate awareness and an engaged following for our clientsand causes. Back in the day, that typically involved some long, involved set-piece moves—either an elaborate advertising campaign with hefty media spendor a lot of patient schmoozing of news outlets for a PR campaign.


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Now brands and causes have a smart new option. Marcomms asnewscrafting costs a lot less than Madison Avenue marcomms and has muchmore potential for leverage than classic PR. The big ask is that it demands alot from its practitioners: creativity, originality, daring, mastery of socialmedia, constant awareness of news and trends, and 24/7 responsiveness.

It also demands clients that are willing to step up and be bold. As an agencyof news creators, we say to our clients, “Don’t be in the news; be the news.”We love generating opportunities for them to do just that.

Over the past 20-plus years, my interests have broadened from corporatebrands to charities and social enterprises (the Bob Woodruff Foundation, OneYoung World) and to local development initiatives (Fairfield County CreativeCorridor). As we found with trial-and-error newscrafting initiatives such asthe PepsiCo Tweetup in 2009, social media is a great way to use trends tospark attention-grabbing ideas, develop them and amplify them fast, on thefly to craft running news stories for clients.

Embracing trendspotting and newscrafting as strategic tools opens up atreasure trove of opportunities for PR professionals and their clients.Develop a reputation for them, and you can expect dozens of speakingopportunities every year that will raise your profile and generate furtherinterest, opening doors and generating conversations. Devote time andattention to curating trends—sifting through all that TMI, collecting the goodstuff, putting it into context—and you will always have the raw material tocraft news and command attention.


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“As I glanced back at Next [the

best-selling 1999 book I co-authored

called Next: Trends for the Near

Future], I found we were talking a

great deal about hyperlocalism, and

how newscrafting would become a

local love affair—proved out these

many years later with Patch and

every local website, and with many

of us turning to our extended social

networks to find out about the

weather before turning on the TV

news. It’s amazing how true this one

rang; we even mentioned that

advertisers would have the chance

to get hyperlocal, too (hello, search

engine optimization and custom

messaging).” —Marian Salzman on

the Huffington Post, Feb. 28, 2012

Three Must-Reads

Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson (Simon & Schuster, 2011). The truly greatest trendsetter of all commercial anddesign times, Steve Jobs, is the focus of this biography, based on 40 interviews conducted with him over twoyears. The strong forces of personality and intellect spring from the pages, as does his mortality and emergingawareness that success as a human being as well as achievement at his life’s work will get factored into theultimate life report card that he’ll be handed when he passes on.

Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011). The author, winner of a Nobel prize,takes the yang to Gladwell’s yin on intuition and argues that we make choices in business and personal life andwhen we can and cannot trust our intuitions.

The Start-up of You, by Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha (Crown Business, 2012). LinkedIn represents the best ofthe new social, which is a life of blurred life and work, and of constant connectivity. This book, by Hoffman, ofLinkedIn, and Casnocha, is a guidebook to managing your career, Brand Me, as if it were a hot startup business.

“[A] firm that defines its purpose in terms of public relations in the historic sense willembrace new forums for conversation and new forms of content for what they are:wonderful and effective news tools that enhance and facilitate the process of buildingdeeper, more enduring and mutually beneficial relationships between organizations andtheir stakeholders.” —Paul Holmes, the Holmes Report


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A Trendspotter’s TimelineHere are the key trends I’ve spotted and analyzed, debated and promoted over the last two decades:

In an age of intrusive media coverage, how much longercould brands justify paying a fortune to celebrities(known to cynics as “hire a liar”) to use the brand? Still,Hertz seemed to be bucking the trend with its man O.J.Simpson—until he took off in a white Bronco and kept mytrend on track.

(After realizing, duh, of course they are, it morphed into“It’s America Online!”) Hence our powerful consumerlaunch of America Online. More than 18 years later, isAmerica ever not online?

Big brands didn’t anticipate that people could worry aboutwhat they eat and even fear their food. Then cows startedacting mad and food angst went mainstream. Suddenly itbecame sane to look hard at the corner diner’s egg saladsandwich and ask where the eggs were hatched. And nowfood brands scramble to satisfy our demand to know what’sorganic, local, free-range, shade-grown, fair-trade, line-caught,sustainable…. (I remember sitting in the dining room of Nestléin Vevey, Switzerland, in 1996 trying to persuade its thenpresident that this trend would turn food marketing upsidedown. He looked at me like I had three heads and a longbeard. I gave up. That’s me: always early to the party. Somepeople don’t appreciate us when we get there too early.)

“Once upon a time, farms were pastoral places close to nature, and the ability to obtain healthy, safe foodwas a given. In our high-tech agribusiness world, though, the innocence of food is vanishing fast. Recentoutbreaks of foodborne illness have shown that simple plants like lettuce and spinach can harbor deadlygerms. And the use of antibiotics and hormones in animal products also raises weird-science fears.” —Redbook


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For many years, “Think globally, act locally” had been oneof those ideas that made sense. By the late 1990s, theidea was gaining enough traction to create action. Nowthe buzzword is “hyperlocalization”—increased concernover what’s going on in our immediate communities butwith heightened awareness that those communities areintimately connected to the wider world.

Nor is it modernization or Westernization. Americans tendto think that when other countries develop andmodernize, they want help and encouragement to becomejust like the U.S. This mistake accelerated a trend ofpushback against American power plays. Have U.S.popularity and status ever felt as precarious as in thepast 15 years?

Bondi Beach is one of the dream spots of the world, andthe iMac in Bondi Blue was great foreshadowing ofMillennium Blue. It became the color that changedfashion in clothing, technology and décor. While Y2Kturned out to be a false alarm that was soon forgotten,we’re still living with hues of Millennium Blue.

Married with kids was no longer a safe assumption.Women were marrying later and the whole dynamic ofdating and mating was changing. We looked for newways to game the laws of the fertility gods and to findMr. Right. Online increasingly proved to be just right forwomen. Today, one in eight American couples marryingmet on the Internet and people with fertility problemscan shop for sperm and/or eggs there.

“[G]localization [is] the process of stripping locality of its importance while simultaneously adding to itssignificance … The time has come to admit that it has arrived there: or, rather, that it has brought us (pushedor pulled) there.” —Social Europe Journal

“Earlier this year, women became the majority of the workforce for the first time in U.S. history. Mostmanagers are now women too. And for every two men who get a college degree this year, three women willdo the same. For years, women’s progress has been cast as a struggle for equality. But what if equality isn’tthe end point? What if modern, postindustrial society is simply better suited to women?” —The Atlantic


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By the early 2000s, men who cared about their groomingand moisturizing regimes were firmly in the mainstream.In 2003, I flagged the trend, repurposing the term“metrosexual” (coined by Mark Simpson in 1994) andtriggering a global tide of media coverage. Cue the yangto the yin of metrosexuality: Recently young men infashionable precincts (Williamsburg, Brooklyn; the Missionin San Francisco) have taken to sporting lumberjackbeards and learning to hunt.

In the pre-digital age of pen and paper, it was “DearDiary,” but that impulse has transformed into “Hello,World” thanks to blogging. In 2004, “blog” was Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year and I predicted that bloggingwould become a mainstream activity. Now, Technoratilists more than 133 million blogs in the world.

“Google is to be reinvestigated over new claims that it deliberately collected personal data, including emailsand passwords, while it was capturing images for its Streetview Maps service in Britain.” —The Telegraph

“I’m intrigued about the use of the term metrosexual. In Britain, the word is fairly innocuous and is merely asynonym for ‘well-groomed,’ although in a city like Middlesbrough, it’s used more loosely and is applied to anyman who has changed his underwear in the previous week.’” —Worldsoccer.com

I worried that the Net was driving a spying trend, making itpossible for private eyes to run background checks, satellitesto document indiscretions, and parents to use camerasurveillance to watch their kids in their own homes. Now wecan buy background reports online for $9.95, Google Earth hasphotographed everything, nanny cams are commonplace andprivacy is one of the biggest words in discussions of ourvirtual world, from Facebook policies to FTC regulations.


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In an ideal world, bed is a great place for sex and sleep, butin a hyperactive world of hectic lives, a good night’s sleep wassomething more often desired than actually enjoyed; as Ipointed out, sleep had become the new sex. (The Economistquoted me on this in 2007—oftentimes I will talk about a trendfor months before mainstream media picks up on the sighting.)

“Sleep is the new sex, reckons Marian Salzman, a New York advertising executive and author of Next Now. Inhectic lives, sleep is at a premium. And sleep sells, whether it’s flat beds on airlines, sleep consultancy or a napat MetroNaps in the Empire State Building. In America, growing numbers of couples are installing ‘sleepchambers’ to give them a sleep-alone option as well as a sleep-together option. Why suffer from a partner’ssnoring? People are ‘finding it harder to do the sharing thing,’ says Ms. Salzman.” —The Economist, Nov. 15, 2007

“Now [Salzman] sees the trend of ‘radical transparency.’ At a large media conference in London, where allthe other speakers were obsessed with ‘monetization’ (making money from the Web), Salzman spoke of howthe Bebo generation are happy for their lives to be transparent, and think that anything not put in thepublic domain is a shameful ‘secret.’” —The Irish Times, May 5, 2008

Data is committed to digital form. There are new points ofconnectivity and a record of everything. The net effect is anincreasing acceptance of living life in the open. In a world ofintense media scrutiny, it’s wise to assume that determineddiggers can unearth the most guarded information: Nosecrets will be safe. While older generations are wary,younger people—weaned on the Internet, celebrity cultureand antiterrorism scrutiny—pay less heed to privacy issues.

As product choices and competition increase, consumerloyalty to brands is eroded. Five major factors are drivingconsumer promiscuity: commoditization, when companiesquickly find ways to make and sell similar products for less;outsourcing, which eats away at the personal connection;brand inflation, which arises when marketers dream upbrands before they think of the product; rapid innovation,meaning more choices and fewer reasons to prefer onebrand over another; and improved information, which allowsconsumers to look beyond the veneer of hype and packagingto see what’s on offer.


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The era of limitless clean water supplies has come to anend. It has been suggested that water could be tradedon futures exchanges as other sources are now. Thereare a few alternatives to oil but none to water, andthat’s scary. Over the next decade, expect to see watermanagement and conservation rise on government andcorporate agendas.

As travel becomes more of a hassle and high-poweredinteractive media delivers global content wherever youare, the balance of interest tips away from “somewhereelse” to “where I am now.” It’s a factor driving thegrowing appeal of local. Consumers want the wide worldand their global brands, but they also value theirindividuality.

“Target and Wal-Mart Stores may be the biggest mass merchandisers in the country, but both believe businessresults can be improved by acting small—that is, tailoring what they do to individual communities andshoppers” —Forbes.com

Even scarier than the subprime crisis, then and now, isthe prime crisis, in which borrowers with good credit andtraditional, thirty-year fixed-rate mortgages, and evenpeople who own their homes outright, are also feelingthe pinch. Byproducts of the prime crisis are the rise ofshort-selling and the end of believing your identity lies ina good credit score.

Children are increasingly exploited as prime-time propsor pawns, and everyday people are rebelling against it.Early examples of those on the “to be watched” list wereJon, Kate and their eight, and “the balloon boy” family;those families illustrated that the American opportunisthad gone from empowered fringe to media freak show.Although we tuned in, we weren’t turned on by theirparenting.


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This “brain health” movement includes scrutiny aboutradiation from cellphones, helmet safety, traumatic braininjuries and post-traumatic stress disorder. Poll after pollshows large numbers of Americans don’t believe the basicscience around things like cellphones, and marketers need totake fear, uncertainty and doubt seriously; the cellphonedebate, far from going away, is going to take off. Expectnear-term legislative debate about cellphone use by peopleunder age 14.

Couples who are part of the pandemic of splits forpeople over 50 (the face of the movement might be Aland Tipper?) might acknowledge a failure, but they’realso looking for life, part two, and a fresh start.

“We know the names—Octomom, the Balloon Boy parents, Jon and Kate Gosselin and their eight children, evenBristol Palin. They, and many others, represent a new shortcut to achieving celebrity: a trend prominentmedia analyst Marian Salzman defines as ‘children as prime-time accessories.’ In this scenario, people willincreasingly use their children in bizarre, shameless and sometimes unethical ways specifically to gainnotoriety and then will take one step further to brand themselves as the official representative of thatnotoriety, which means a steady income and a guaranteed spot on the cluttered but competitive medialandscape. Ms. Salzman says that while reality television is a culprit in encouraging this extreme behavior,the problem is ‘much more serious. I think we’re living in a social-media age where anything goes andeverybody has a space. So you’re seeing people being a little bit more uninhibited,’ she says, adding thateven if it is a trend, that makes it no less disturbing: ‘We have to go back and we have to say, ‘No, we can’tdo these things.’” —The Christian Science Monitor, Feb. 8, 2010

One-third of counties in the lower U.S. are at risk ofshortages, and many seas, like the Aral, are basicallydrying up. So there’s no business like flow business, andthere are big opportunities for businesses to roll outwater-efficient products and policies.


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People are disengaging with real humans to engageonline. The new social interrupts physical interactions; in10 years will all social interactions be throughtechnology? For businesses, the more that technologymediates social interactions, the more opportunity thereis to make money with software and services thatenhance the interactions.

Watch our return to brutal honesty. The widespreadcondition of “Everyone gets a medal” is seeing abacklash evinced by books such as Battle Hymn of theTiger Mother. We finally realize the great ugly truth:Americans are golden retrievers in a world ofRottweilers. Consumers are becoming more interested inthe concept, so brand messaging will need to locate thesweet spot between hype and brutality.

Also known as bloated white men, this is a condition ofsullen disenfranchisement and unemployment among thetyping-impaired. In this “mancession,” the Daily Beastreported, “The same guys who once drove BMWs, in otherwords, have now been downsized to BWMs: BeachedWhite Males.”

Metro: What’s going to be the next subculture in [the land of consumerism]?Marian: The so-called “anti-social social butterfly” [the antithesis of the social butterfly]—a person who isnot very social in real life in a face-to-face situation, but who has collected immense numbers of followersin the online world. Through this space, it’s a chance for that type of person to be overly aggressive. —Metro, Jan. 4, 2011

“As more men either share or relinquish their role as primary earner in households, they may feel the samethreat to their sense of self as women historically have. In addition, as more men take on child-rearingresponsibilities, they may feel inadequate and overwhelmed, fertile ground for depression.” —Time


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Endnotes

1http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp

2http://www.prsa.org/AboutPRSA/Ethics/CodeEnglish/

3http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/3530640/Mumbai-attacks-Twitter-and-Flickr-used-to-break-news-Bombay-India.html

4http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/twitter/4269765/New-York-plane-crash-Twitter-breaks-the-news-again.html

5http://techcrunch.com/2009/06/25/the-web-collapses-under-the-weight-of-michael-jacksons-death/

Photo Creditspage 3: (from left) creativecommons.org/SHAREconference; bburky: kk+\

page 5: creativecommons.org/kk+\

page 6: creativecommons.org/fomu

page 8: creativecommons.org/TheGiantVermin

page 9: creativecommons.org/barbourians

page 11: creativecommons.org/Dragunsk

page 12: creativecommons.org/William Hook

page 15: creativecommons.org/MDGovpics

page 16: creativecommons.org/vancouverfilmschool

page 18: creativecommons.org/gnuckx

page 19: creativecommons.org/likeablerodent

page 21: creativecommons.org /NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

pages 22-27: Trends for the Near Future, Marian Salzman, Cannes International Festival of Creativity 2012


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This white paper is the latest thought leadership pursuit by Euro RSCG Worldwide PR, which wenow call @erwwpr because we are an agency of news creators who are all about what’s importantin our culture and industry right now: social media’s shaping of the media environment. (We’re alsobest at shaking up with what comes next, and we own the hashtag in our campaigns and agencyinitiatives, so our Twitter handle just seemed right for our reinvigorated brand.)

Through research and analysis in all of our white papers—covering topics from political campaignspending and the future of men to millennials and love in the age of social media—and otherthought leadership endeavors, we are addressing topics that are not only imperative to our clientsand our own growth but are also driving news about the future. The studies are places to listenand learn. They’re propelling momentum for companies, brands and causes. They’re satisfying thenew value exchange, where consumers want brands that listen, converse and enable them.

In “Newscrafting and Trendspotting,” we’re discussing strategies for getting to the future mostsuccessfully. Why would we look at trend sighting and news creating to do that? To:

• Identify the forces driving the future and plan for long-term success

• Discover unexpected opportunities that help transform brands and businesses

• Provide insight into the drivers of key business, consumer and social trends

Spotting trends is big business for people in many industries who need to be thinking ahead, forthemselves and their clients. In today’s fast-moving business climate, the people who get ahead arethose who have their eyes on the future. @erwwpr most certainly does.

Please join us in the conversation.

Marian SalzmanCEOEuro RSCG Worldwide PR, North America 200 Madison Avenue, 2nd floor New York, NY 10016 www.erwwpr.com P: 212-367-6811 E: [email protected] T: @mariansalzman

newscrafting and trendspotting

News & Politics