9. Media agencies:
You are in the driving seat, but think ideas and not just channels
•Measure KPIs that work for my business, not ones that work on your post-buy.
16. Right now, one in every two people within the
developed world is connected-up into a social
network
(source: ComScore, Nielsen, eMarketer, ITU and SNS).
20. Upwardly Mobile
One in four of the developed world owns
a smart phone
One in every three access internet via the
phone
(source: eMarketer and IDC 2010).
At this moment in time there exists a computer that can perform 4,000 complex calculations every single second. It’s called the IBM 1401 It currently sits in a museum. That is partly because the computer that sits in an average smart-phone carries out 100,000,000,000 calculations per second. And whereas the 1401, which was developed in 1959, weighed ten tons - the same as three elephants – the microchip in your smart phone is the size of your finger nail.1 in every 4 of the developed world have one of these super computer in their pocket (source: eMarketer and IDC 2010). This exponential increase in computational power has, as we all know, changed the world and of course changed the world of communications.
Complexity and fast change suit agnecies, thank that they are always one step ahead, they can lead the clients, be indispensable and profitable
Evangelizing of some agencies works against the industry sometimes, preaching about doing digital only sounds ludicrous most of the time
Nomediaeverdies, clients want a neutralapproach, unbiasedcomparisonofvarioustypesofmediaandan independent recommendation, we need to ensureourpackage, in-store, CRM, traditionalanddigitalmediasynergize
Think about ideas first, but since they are so good with numbers they push stuff that makes them look good. This is why procurement is ubiquitous
Neutrality and unbiased recommendation that would help driving the business despite lack of clear link between media and sales in most casesKeyquestions to answer: howdigitalfits my TG, howshould I integrateit, how do I make marketerscomfortableinthedigitalspace
Where are we right now? We are now in what is widely referred to as the information age. In the 70 and 80s we built our computers, the 90s we built our networks and in the first two decades of this century we will build our social networks. Each technological paradigm is built on top of the previous. When you reflect on this, it is totally understandable to think that the fundamental driver of change was is not demographic or socio-political – it is in fact Technology We had previous believed this. But we now think that we were wrong.
The true driver is us, as in humanity. Technology is simply the enabler You can sense this if you lay-out the technological epochs Each technological paradigm is on some level answering a human need. It is a deep human drive that has driven the uptake of social not the technology.And what a phenomenon it is.
Right now, one in every two people within the developed world is connected-up into a social networks (source: ComScore, Nielsen, eMarketer, ITU and SNS).
Globally, there are now 1.2 billion social networkers. Sorry, that’s wrong.
There are now 1.2 billion independent media owners. But, of course, these are very different from the media owners we have known to date. As they all link to each other. And they are connecting and updating constantly – for example 91% of 16-24 access Facebook an average of seven times a day. They still largely comment with impunity. They are incredibly influential - 78 per cent of consumers say they trust peer recommendations on social media – only 18 per cent trust advertising (Source: Nielsen).
And these social networks are not stopping at their own boundaries – they are infecting the entire web. Social networks are making connections to other websites via Facebook’sOpenGraph - log-in or Like a website and automatically inform your friends and leave a print on your social graph. Hot on their heels to socialise the web is Twitter with their new Follow button and Google with +1It is important to reflect on this for a moment, as it is so easy to just say ‘yeah sure’. But this is leading to a complete change to how society is functioning. And all of this new social activity is, of course, increasingly not bounded by the desk.
One in four of the developed world owns a smart phone. But many non smartphone users access the web – therefore closer to one in every three access internet via the phone (source: eMarketer and IDC 2010). And it is increasing dramatically – the next billion to come online will be via mobile devices. In fact, the smart-phone market actually eclipsed the PC market during the first quarter of 2011 for the first time - according to data from IDC. Vendors shipped 100.9 million smart-phones during the fourth quarter, compared to 92.1 million PC shipments.
And nine out of 10 of these smart phone users are using social media (Source: TNS Digital Life, MLDL, ComScore and Cellular News) Social access via a smart-phone is leading to a quickening in the speed at which information, and therefore influence, is moving.
Social access via a smart-phone is leading to a quickening in the speed at which information, and therefore influence, is moving.
From hugely significant ramifications such as the Arab Spring in the Middle East through to the death of super-injunction in the UK, we are seeing the effects of the rising speed of influence. These are the early results of having people connected in real-time. As significant as this was, this connecting people up was only part of the social media journey - now for the second part of this social network epoch. This is where things are going start to get interesting – for us as people and for us as a business.But, we’ll come back to that.
Before we get to this, we try and paint a picture of the world five years from now. Let’s start by exploring what sort of technology is likely to emerge – so we can make a more evidence-based prediction. To do that let’s start by getting greater clarity on what is it exactly that is driving this human evolution. Not a big question then.
What’s driving us? If you look at the different technological epochs it suggests that the evolutionary drive is that of liberating ourselves from physical and time-based constraints. If you project forward, this suggest that the ultimate end point will be a state of abundance – where you are able to be everywhere with everyone with everything in the moment.If we assume that this is the ultimate goal - any technology that ever works will, in some way, enable us to move one step forward to that state. It seems to work historically - when you look back, it serves as a useful paradigm against which to assess the likely uptake of technology – Transport, Computing, Internet, SMS, Social Networking. All of these have unshackled the human spirit from any time, spatial or informational constraints.We are going to attempt to use this paradigm to think-forward on how the landscape will change of the next five years – after we have done this we will then paint the picture of the next five to ten years. To put some flesh on the bones. So let’s take a look at the technologies that should gain traction based on our paradigm of abundance – they fall into three main groups: