Time for some more then. A proper top ten this time, too.
I'm going to be doing the rounds with a little presentation about some thoughts that might affect the planning and comms landscape in 2008 so I'm going to keep this pithy for now. I'll try and link to a powerpoint shortly.
1. Branded Utility - OK before the yawns set in I think 2008 will be the year that brnaded utility goes mainstream as an agency offer. Agencies will need to understand the role products play in people's lives and what people find useful better than they do now, and brands will need to obsess about thier areas of expertise.
2. Soundvertising. Soundtracks for brand experiences, wherever you are.
3. Crowd-creation. the solus act of consumer creation opens up to the participation of crowds. Especially as digital and physical brand experiences try to join up better.
4. We are all linked to celebrity. The degrees of seperation (or linkage) plummet over social networks and we're all giddy with celebrity (aren't we?) so why don't brands start to link us to the famous?
5. Unpimp. I think the VW spot points to a bigger trend - as we move into a more austere and uncertain time, things will get simpler, clear, less ambiguous. Unpimped.
6. Avatising. I don't know if the word works, but rather than come across brands in the places that our avatars roam, I think agencies will start to find ways to put your avatars in their (screen-based) ads.
7. You're not my friend. Brands have the potential to know an awful lot about us - from our LinkedIn and Facebook and MySpace profiles and blogs and everything. I think we might see someone create a way to harvest this data for marketing. And for people to create smart wyas of 'ad-voiding' these freaky advances.
8. Transparent is the new green. Fairly obvious I think - but green marketing isn't enough. Compaines need to be convincing and transparent in their social and environmental policies - as do their agencies. We'll need to offer carbon neutral campaigns, as well as be transparent ourselves.
9. A new line. I hate the snobbery of ATL/BTL (and have worked both sides so can take that position, I think). But a new line is emerging: screen vs off-screen. To win in a screen-based world, we'll see an agency appear in 2008 that truly gets technology, direct marketing and film.
10. Playfulness. Play and fun is hugely underestimated by agencies and brands. I'm talking about more ludic, meaningful and interesting experiences than interactive banners and the odd microsite. Elements of playfulness will be built fundamentally into campaign design.
So, there we go, do you think I'm way off beam, or about right?
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Kwanzaa.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
All change
Ok it's nearly the new year, and probably time to ring some changes. I'm going to try a different name for this blog. I don't know if that's blogging best practice, but hey. I think I actually coined YAPB before Another Planning Blog appeared (as far as I'm aware) but there's an obvious similarity in the name. Alt.planning is my Flickr username so it seems to make sense to try that out, I guess.
Predictions 2007 - how'd I do?
This time last year I made 13 predictions for the year - things that might affect the communications landscape. I thought it would be nice to see how it went. I think I got 11 out of 13.
1. Video becomes all-pervasive. For this one I have anecdotal evidence that you see more video on websites generally. Maybe a littl ebit more interestingly, it seems to be standard practice now to seed new TV campaigns on YouTube to create a bit of buzz before the ads hit TV screens.
2. YouTube will commercialise. This happened on May 11th with a variety of formats that start to blur definitions of direct and brand communication.
3. Agencies evolve. The agency landscape is in flux (and continues to be so). The requirement to beat ad zapping, and to deliver big ideas in multiple channels has seen new agency positionings come to the fore this year (think Anomaly and Zeus Jones, or BMB's design briefs from First Choice)
4. Admovies. The emergence of longer ad formats to regain consumer attention - and we saw 9 minute ads for Shell (although that's a bit of an ask for a media buy).
5. Brand openness. Some of the brands that really seemed to break through this year tended to open themselves up to public participation, or open the kimono to reveal the pains and sweat of running a business. Think about brands like Howies or Onitsuka Tiger.
6. Web 2.0 services will only grow if they are useful - I did predict a pop in teh bubble of Second Life and I don't think I've seen anything in the media about it except for their CTO leaving. I always felt it wasn't truly useful. I did think we'd see more of services like Loopt and the social networks. Facebook put on 41m new users this year.
7. Mapvertising had started to appear in previous years driven largely by Google Earth but we've seen a bit more maturity in campaign activity, from BA, Jet Blue or Target painting, well, targets, on their roofs.
8. The environment becomes marketing's problem. Well, 2007 really was the year of green marketing. We ran campaigns for BP and the COI that you really wouldn't have seen in previous years.
9. Web 2.5 emerges - the always-on-you, filtered web. I thought there'd be a lot more expert/filtration of community content but what seems to be happening is the middleman is being cut out through community empowerment on web 2.0 platforms (think: crowdfunder or zopa)
10. Co-creators get paid. It follows if you want consumers to create content or influence product design that you'll have to pay them properly, rather than expect them to do it to idle time away. Witness the Lego factory or Netflix prize to develop improved user prediction software.
11. This is one I think I missed completely. I thought mobile IM would come through strongly in 2007 but instead emergent platform like Facebook over O2 seem to presage the way forward.
12. This one is in two halves, one of which I got spectacularly wrong - that the iPhone would be vapour. Oh well. But I did thnk Apple would have to back off DRM or wobble. iTunes Plus debuted in the spring.
13. Console content. I thought we'd see branded content emerge to take advantage of the networking power of new gen consoles. It's happened to a degree - that brands are getting cuter about embedding in game content, so I'll give myself half again.
What do you think?
1. Video becomes all-pervasive. For this one I have anecdotal evidence that you see more video on websites generally. Maybe a littl ebit more interestingly, it seems to be standard practice now to seed new TV campaigns on YouTube to create a bit of buzz before the ads hit TV screens.
2. YouTube will commercialise. This happened on May 11th with a variety of formats that start to blur definitions of direct and brand communication.
3. Agencies evolve. The agency landscape is in flux (and continues to be so). The requirement to beat ad zapping, and to deliver big ideas in multiple channels has seen new agency positionings come to the fore this year (think Anomaly and Zeus Jones, or BMB's design briefs from First Choice)
4. Admovies. The emergence of longer ad formats to regain consumer attention - and we saw 9 minute ads for Shell (although that's a bit of an ask for a media buy).
5. Brand openness. Some of the brands that really seemed to break through this year tended to open themselves up to public participation, or open the kimono to reveal the pains and sweat of running a business. Think about brands like Howies or Onitsuka Tiger.
6. Web 2.0 services will only grow if they are useful - I did predict a pop in teh bubble of Second Life and I don't think I've seen anything in the media about it except for their CTO leaving. I always felt it wasn't truly useful. I did think we'd see more of services like Loopt and the social networks. Facebook put on 41m new users this year.
7. Mapvertising had started to appear in previous years driven largely by Google Earth but we've seen a bit more maturity in campaign activity, from BA, Jet Blue or Target painting, well, targets, on their roofs.
8. The environment becomes marketing's problem. Well, 2007 really was the year of green marketing. We ran campaigns for BP and the COI that you really wouldn't have seen in previous years.
9. Web 2.5 emerges - the always-on-you, filtered web. I thought there'd be a lot more expert/filtration of community content but what seems to be happening is the middleman is being cut out through community empowerment on web 2.0 platforms (think: crowdfunder or zopa)
10. Co-creators get paid. It follows if you want consumers to create content or influence product design that you'll have to pay them properly, rather than expect them to do it to idle time away. Witness the Lego factory or Netflix prize to develop improved user prediction software.
11. This is one I think I missed completely. I thought mobile IM would come through strongly in 2007 but instead emergent platform like Facebook over O2 seem to presage the way forward.
12. This one is in two halves, one of which I got spectacularly wrong - that the iPhone would be vapour. Oh well. But I did thnk Apple would have to back off DRM or wobble. iTunes Plus debuted in the spring.
13. Console content. I thought we'd see branded content emerge to take advantage of the networking power of new gen consoles. It's happened to a degree - that brands are getting cuter about embedding in game content, so I'll give myself half again.
What do you think?
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