Trendspotting 2010

21st Jan 2010 A passion and truth by Tom

The traditional and social media channels have been buzzing during the past few weeks with trend predictions. The pace of change today is so fast, you could be forgiven for not knowing every innovation or even what’s on the cusp of becoming mainstream. So we’ve done the hard work for you and picked out the five trends for 2010 we think are the most relevant to you.

• Real Time Information

Consumers’ lust for real time information is being dramatically accelerated by the prolific uptake of smartphones and is now very much in the mainstream. That three billion iPhone applications have been downloaded from the Apple App Store in just 18 months is perhaps testament to this.

Real time information is all about people demanding up-to-date and relevant information when they want, and the advancement of mobile phone technology now means that this can be anytime, anywhere. If I wanted to find out what the best price was for a CD, whilst in-store, I could quite easily. Want to know exactly where my train is? As Apple say, ‘there’s an app for that’.

Taking it a step further, expect to see augmented reality come to the fore this year. This is another technology made possible by the smartphone revolution. It mixes the real and digital world, overlaying data on a live video feed to give users useful information about the environment around them. When you see it in action it suddenly makes sense – check out this short video. This Guardian article, published earlier this week, also gives a useful overview.

• Real Time Reviews

There are very few who do not use reviews anymore. And while just one review can sway a purchase decision, there are still flaws in the system. People seek out the reviews they want to see, and are, apart from serial reviewers, generally only tempted to review if their opinions are very strong (be it positive or negative).

However, as anytime, anywhere connectivity continues to sweep across the nation, honest reviews at the time of use will mean more accurate reviewing. After all, it’s better to write a review on TripAdvisor whilst in the hotel room, than wait until your holiday is over. The opportunity to do this will inevitably become greater and users will become more comfortable doing it, so the number of reviews online will only increase.

• Random Acts of Kindness

Moving away from technology and back to the recession (the hand that has fed the trend-spotters most over the past couple of years) we’ve witnessed a real effort over the past year by companies to overcome the negative perceptions that consumers may have developed. Last year saw Random Acts of Kindness emerge as such a tactic, and our money is on this gathering more momentum throughout 2010. Great examples last year came from Hyatt and KIND Snacks in the US, but it’s happening over here too. Ocado, for example, are known to give customers an additional gift in their order from time to time, just to say ‘thanks’.

Random Acts of Kindness can really be anything that helps the customer out unexpectedly. As long as it’s kept random… that’s the key, else it becomes expected. Yahoo have also shown that consumers can get involved too, sharing their random acts of kindness in a new campaign called You In?, driven, naturally, by our old friend, the social network.

• Transparency

The shift towards greater transparency is another trend that really gathered mainstream adoption in 2009 and will dominate the business agenda in 2010. Fuelled at least in part by the recession and aggravated by the banking crisis, consumers’ growing suspicion of corporations and global super brands has led to a demand for more information about what we’re buying and who from.

The theory is, the more truths a customer knows, the more trust they will have in the brand. So businesses are opening up and ‘telling the truth’, showing consumers what they are really like, and – crucially – acknowledging what people really think of them. You can’t ignore the role social media such as Twitter has had in bringing this to the fore.

ASDA’s transparency drive (just try Googling ‘ASDA transparency’ to see how many different initiatives they have underway) and First Direct’s First Direct Live initiative are both very good examples from the last year. On a less grand scale, others are using Twitter to monitor and respond to customer feedback. Some of the best are here. Is your business engineered for transparency? If not, this is the year to address it.

• 3D

OK, so this might not quite be a technology many clients will be rolling out across their businesses this year, but 2010 is set to be the year 3D achieved mainstream recognition. Desipte only hitting our screens in December, 3D film Avatar has become the third highest grossing film ever in the US box office charts, overtaking Star Wars amongst many other blockbusters. In November, Channel 4 held a 3D TV week, with Sainsbury’s giving away the requisite red and green glasses needed to view the effects.

Yet we have moved on somewhat from the 1980s, and are perhaps at a point where 3D technology can become more commonplace. We are already expecting a 3D 2010 Fifa World Cup, as 25 games will be captured using 3D cameras. Industry experts are adamant 3D is on the brink of going mainstream, Sky is set to launch a 3D channel later this year and industry analyst Screen Digest predicts there could be as many as 13.6m 3D TV sets installed in Europe by 2013.

So there they are. The key take out with the trends above, and trends in general, is that they have a snowball effect. As consumers become more familiar with them, the more they will use them, the more others will be encouraged to try them, and the more expected they will become (except random acts of kindness, of course!).

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Tom

Posted about 1 month ago at 17:59 on 28th Jan 2010

A bit more on the 3D front for this weekend...Sky are showing the Arsenal v Man Utd game in a handful of pubs in 3D. This is a test before it's rolled out on a bigger scale in pubs across the UK.

You can read a bit more about here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jan/28/arsenal-manchester-united-3d-sky

 

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