It seems a
really popular thing to do, to share your predictions for the year, if you're a planner.
I used to send an email at the beginning of the January term to clients and agency folks. This year it's in the form of a presentation with lots of interesting pictures, and on the blog.
In true fashion, I'll do it as a list of ten. Actually thirteen - how's that for value-add - things.
1. Video becomes all pervasive. We'll use it more at work, at home, on our sites - and it won't all have to be made by Ridley Scott. Good enough will be OK.
2. YouTube will commercialise, spawning all sorts of new ad units and formats. These will blur the distinction even more between brand and direct advertising.
3. With YouTube commercialised and $67bn ad revenue in play, agencies will wonder what just happened. Who will be able to cope, adapt, react quicker? Will they be agencies who insist on making things simple, or agencies who are good at navigating the complex?
4. One reaction from tradtional advertisers will be the true emergence of admovies. I've blogged about this before, but things like Lucky Star, or BMW Films in terrestrial TV breaks will appear.
5. In the increasingly complicated media and creative landscape, target audiences are dead. You don't know who's being attracted most to your content - or your brand's loose associations. A brand manager's job has to become more open and about managing those loose associations in an interesting way. NOT boring people to death by trying to micro-manage everything to a tightly defined brand onion or whatnot.
6. I think we'll all end up scoffing at the agencies and brands and people that flooded into Second Life, and Twitter, and all thise memes. They are just ideas that seem like worth exploring for a while before the novelty wears off. I think we'll see useful services like Loopt gain traction though.
7. I love maps. they are intuitive and human interfaces for data. I think we're going to see more Flickr mashups, like Nokia's, and things like Platial or Bugaboo turn into a mass creative and online platform. We'll see maps everywhere in communications as they are a great bridge between the digital and physical worlds.
8. Greg Nugent talked at the Battle of Big Thinking about the environment becoming marketing's problem. That makes it the agency's problem. We'll need environmentally-aware campaign platform, messages, ideas. Less and less paper-based stuff, and allow consumers to tell us when we've got it wrong.
9. Web 2.5 will emerge. This has two key dimensions. It's the always-on-you web - in terms of services and devices. And it's the mediated, filtered web - still social and democratic like 2.0 but with content leaders improving the value of what we find. Big role for agencies and brands there.
10. We'll see more and more co-creators want to get paid, in real money, for their contribution. If we get paid for designing ads, won't they?
11. There are more devices coming onto the market that enable mobile IM. There is a new generation of mobile users coming on-stream, the IM generation. I think we'll see mobile IM hit the big time. Which will create a whole new interesting platform for branded interaction.
12. I suspect the iPhone will be vapourware. I suspect people will come to realise DRM music and video is the spawn of the devil. As a consequence, Apple will wobble this year. I hate to say it and I hope it doesn't happen, as I love Apple to bits, but I think it will.
13. Finally, I think the new gen consoles are going to create some sort of paradigm shift. Not just through more social gaming (via the web or in the same room, like using a Wii), but they are a fantastic new advertising content platform. Sure, we'll need to be careful how to create and deploy such communications, but advertising through and FOR these consoles will start to emerge.
Anyway, there we go. The beauty of having this stuff on a blog is, hopefully, you'll tell me what you think, and we'll see how I do by the end of the year.
HNY.
Apparently, the Wall Street Journal wanted some thoughts about my blog post about Loopt in my 2007 predictions. In a nutshell, here's what I think: Loopt seems to be at the intersection of a number of trends, which makes it interesting. A lot of the work we’re doing now is digital and we’re always looking at new platforms for communications and creativity, and I think 2007 is going to be a big year for mobile marketing. It’s map-based and I think maps are an increasingly popular and natural interface to data in communications. It’s very web 2.5 in the sense it’s a service that’s always on you. It seems like a natural extension of the increase in mobile IM. And brands are looking constantly for way to create and engage with communities of relevant and like-minded people. Practically every campaign we devise has a social networking component to it. For instance, we can reach audiences comparable to TV through MySpace. Loopt is interesting because it promotes social networking on the users’ terms – its their buddy lists, not ours – and therefore the communities are genuine and real. The challenge is to use services like Loopt in a way that makes sense for our clients’ brands, and for these communities. Also, the really important bit about a successful communication is whether it is timely and relevant, and if people can do something with it, so much the better. Services like Loopt could potentially be great platforms for the delivery of a branded communication with some sort of local geographical fulfilment – perhaps rewarding groups of friends with an offer in a store or coffee shop.
All you need is a picture.
