Predictions 2011

That time again. Blimey.

We've done some on the agency blog, so there might be a bit of overlap. And a bit of an embarrassing photo too.

Branded Generosity – pour colour and fun into the environment. I thought that campaigns might become more austere (unpimped) in response to the downturn, but what consumers want is brands to lighten their days. If we have to endure advertising, it might as well be jolly.

Branded Usefulness – consumers are fed up doing the hard work for brands. Brands have to start doing something to give back, to do things that help their customers. Not dumb stunts like Charmin loos but things with lasting value and utility in our daily lives

Social TV – this is the year of social TV going mainstream. Kudos to the beeb, but this year it will become a mainstream communication platform.

Three-screen campaigns – branded content in the cloud, that follows you from TV to PC to Mobile

Multi-layered tech – (digital) campaigns that start to realise the potential of new technologies by layering them together. And then have them overlaid on physical experience to make them useful. Think geo-locational + social + promotional + retail …

The death of the digital agency. The digital agencies are quickly becoming commodity suppliers. Digital agencies *still* think tech-first not ideas. They think they are creatively sharp but there’s been almost no innovation or outstanding creative for 18 months + (and client’s are voting with their budgets). Old fashioned ad agencies are cracking the digital code, allied to strong strategic thinking.

Making stuff / the planningness of things– from making apps to making new products. Agencies getting involved in the creation of new businesses, and new IP. Lower cost of distribution and easier access to the market. The Anomaly / Erasmus / Coudal differentiation becomes less pronounced as other agencies chime in (starting with apps). Corollary – planners engaging with objects and production rather than briefs and concepts

The end of the herd – we might still make herd-like decisions (animalistic & tribal behaviour / behavioural economics) but at a subconscious level. Perhaps the conscious decision-making self will start to reject the mass. Don’t buy an iphone 4 just because everyone else has one – buy a John’s Phone. Join Path (the anti-social network) not Facebook.  Micro-niche goes mainstream.

Must. Resist. The. Gameification. Of. Everything. - Points mean prizes. Promo marketing campaigns turn into games. The curse & legacy of foursquare is badges for everything. Consumer behaviour is trivialised to the point where we feel happy for ‘winning’ clubcard points rather than earning them. God help us. Just say no. Or do more meaningful games.

Intention becomes the leading innovation factor in app development in 2011. It's not just 'where' you are, but what you're 'intending' to do there. This prediction refers to the fact that smartphones are becoming increasingly aware of not just your location, but also why you are there, who you are with, where you are going and how you are feeling. There is a huge opportunity in planning for ‘intention’ as well - there is so much data out there to be made sense of for our benefit. 

Fingerprinting is about shoppers leave their mark. Retailers will invite audiences into their shops and give them opportunities to contribute to the atmosphere of their surroundings. Whether it be tangible or virtual, momentary o. r lasting. (Graffiti on walls, framed photos, music play lists, any other user-generated content creation)The shopper becomes a part of the store, part of the experience they share with others, part of the brand story.

There we go. What do you think?

Generative Advertising

Listening to an old-ish talk by Will Wright (Spore) and Brian Eno on generative systems - and their use for gaming and music - struck a chord (no pun intended there).

Eno describes the role of the artist to generate seeds - and rules for their growth - rather than perceiving and  composing great forests of work from the outset.

A lot of global advertising is formed from toolkits of assets. Assets are like seeds. Little building blocks of campaigns that local marketers can draw upon to put their campaigns together.

Similarly, a lot of social media campaigns are basically little bits of content being released into a system. We even talk about seeding.

The problem is that social media systems tend to be largely beyond the control of the marketer or agency. Pesky people in the real world tend to do their own thing with our little seeds.

Which is not what tends to happen with music or gaming - there are generative systems which are quite tightly controlled by the artist.

The second problem is that marketing toolkits and traditional rigid campaign design aren't generative systems. They are OK at distributing seeds but not very good at helping them grow and turn into something interesting.

So I think an emerging role for agencies (and I guess planners, from my own perspective) will be to design more controlled generative systems in the real world, to propagate their little creative seeds.

That's different from helping shape the growth of platforms organically (Russell Davies' old gardening analogy), because it requires more intent at the outset, and the creation of tight simple few rules that can govern the passage and evolution of our work in the real world.