10 TRENDS FOR 2013December 2012

10 TRENDS FOR 2013• We
have been producing trends for clients for the past few years• Nothing changes on New Year’s Day; all of these trends are already happening, but will grow significantly over the next 12 months, having a greater impact than in the previous twelve• We highlight what the trends are, why they are growing, key illustrative examples, and implications for brands, rooted in what we have observed this year• These are trends, not ‘the trends’. There are lots of things happening, and we hope we have chosen some the most interesting

10 TRENDS FOR 20131. Makers2.
Online to Offline3. Work-arounds4. Paid5. Digital Scarcity6. Chinese Influence7. Acquisitions8. Targeting9. New Currencies10.The Wow Factor

MAKERS• People and brands are
extending the DIY ethos of user generated content and starting to make real, physical things. Leading to a rise of user generated content as physical things• This is driven by the falling cost of technology like 3D printers, and the rose of crowd- funding sites

MAKERS• 3D printing, where physical
objects are printed or cut out are falling in price, which will make them more viable for businesses or shared spaces like studios to buy• (The Pirate Bay now even has a special download category, physables, which are patterns to use on 3D printers)• Although music, films and art make up over 2/3 of the successful projects on the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, more people are raising money for physical products, like the Pebble ePaper watch, the Ubi voice controlled computer, or Projecteo, a projector for Instagram pictures• Marketplaces like Etsy are also making it easier to for people to design and sell their own goods to a global audience

MAKERS• Brands are also starting
to let their customers make products relating to their brands, by working with the new creator communities• Disney let visitors to their Parks create a Disney Princess with their own face on the doll• Domino’s Pizza set a challenge to the Forge open source car creator community to create the perfect pizza delivery vehicle – and hope to build it next year• The ‘Quirky’ community crowdsourced 15 iPhone 5 accessories and put them on sale on Fab.com within a week of the new phone being released

IMPLICATIONS FOR BRANDS• Get involved!•
What products are there, outside of your normal activities, that would appeal to your customers or users?• Is there a maker community with a strong affinity with your brand that you could involve?

ONLINE TO OFFLINE• Digital only
companies are establishing physical presences, or building real experiences• Online brands know that if they take their knowledge of online into the physical world they can gain even more market share

ONLINE TO OFFLINE• Amazon, the
biggest online retailer is starting to same day delivery (order in the morning and receive in the evening), and have ‘Lockers’ in public places where goods can be delivered to• Brands are offering real experiences to make the virtual real - Nissan Gran Turismo trained some online gamers to be racing drivers at Le Mans• Google’s new mobile game is a physical game. You play Ingress by walking around getting physical cues from your surroundings on your phone

ONLINE TO OFFLINE• We’re also
seeing more seamless integration between online data and traditional media• The TV ads for Halo 4 put gamers’ names & pictures from a Facebook app directly onto TV• Gambling ads can give live odds within a TV ad at half-time in a game• We’re also seeing more brands measure offline results from digital campaigns – for example the sales uplift in-store from a search campaign

IMPLICATIONS FOR BRANDS• Think about
areas where you are currently online only, but could benefit from a real world presence• This could be anything from seasonal pop-up shops to photo opportunities in high traffic areas• Think about data or information that could be used in near-real time in traditional communication• Design measurement frameworks to let you track online activity to offline

WORK-AROUNDS• People and companies are
developing work-arounds for technology that doesn’t work as well as it should• This can be seen in anything from mobile payment systems to sharing on Instagram, as people use their ingenuity to work around legal restrictions, or just service deficiencies

WORK-AROUNDS• There are lots of
work-arounds with mobile payments• Google wallet started off as a way of paying with an Android phone with its own NFC chip, but Google are now producing a full physical card• The Paypal mobile payment system works on any phone, using either QR codes or payment codes, and they are introducing it to retail chains• Square’s Wallet is a mobile app that contains all of your cards and loyalty cards by also bypasses NFC• Even through there are now over 100m phones with NFC chips in circulation (& all major manufacturers apart from Apple sell at least one), operators are experimenting with NFC chips built into the SIM card

WORK-AROUNDS• There are lots of
other examples of work- arounds where the technology isn’t good enough or widespread enough, or simply won’t let you do things• Instagram won’t let you share other people’s photos (but you can do it by taking screen shots & re-uploading)• Apple wanted to take a large cut in digital subscriptions from the FT in the Apple App Store (so the FT made HTML5 app that would work on all devices to get around it)• IFTTT – IF This Then That - is a site that lets you do your own work-arounds by linking different technologies beyond what the originators intended – for example automatically save all your Instagram pictures to Dropbox (or to put your Instagram pics onto Twitter)

IMPLICATIONS FOR BRANDS• Finding popular
work-arounds can be great inspiration for either adapting your business or creating a new business• Are there awkward things that everyone does with your product that you can simplify?• Or things that people like your customers do that you could offer as a simplified service?

PAID• There has never been
more online piracy than there is now, but at the same time people are getting more willing to pay for some things• This is down to the ease of payment, understanding why the payment is needed, and being able to see where the payment is going

PAID• Again Kickstarter is a
great example of this. It’s very simple to make a payment, there are no ‘free options’, so no freeloaders. You need to pay even to express your support for a campaign, while projects are encouraged to both explain very clearly their ‘journey’ and why they want the money• People funding through Kickstarter know that the payment is going directly to the projects (with a small deduction), and the people seeking funding often try to get closer to their funders at the higher payment levels – gigs in people’s houses, or allowing people to be involved in development decisions for example• Comedian Louis CK managed to sell an album to over 200,000 at $5 a download, by telling people why he deserved the money, and how hard he worked

PAID• A statue of Robocop
in Detroit was funded (to over $100,000) because people thought it was a great idea• Facebook has launched a new gifts service in the US, where people pay to have physical gifts delivered to their friends. Once credits are set up, paying for items is very easy• There is even a sign that newspaper paywalls may be working. The New York Times now has over 450,000 digital subscribers, and gets more revenue from subscriptions than advertising• Charities are also getting good at taking payment. Charity Water shows how its donations are spent with use of photos and GPS

IMPLICATIONS FOR BRANDS• Consider whether
you are giving something away that you could sell – digital does not have to mean free• Provenance and understanding of why payment is needed is vital – and so corporate social responsibility becomes more important than ever

DIGITAL SCARCITY• One of the
features of digital media is that things don’t run out – a store can’t run out of eBooks for example• However scarcity (or artificial scarcity) can create demand & push up prices so businesses are starting to find ways to build it in

DIGITAL SCARCITY• Brands can create
scarcity by doing things for a limited time. Ebay created an online pop-up shop for Henry Holland to run only during London Fashion Week• Sites like Fab.com run sales over very limited periods (& even the concept of ‘Black Friday’ online, where the stores were open on Thanksgiving Day anyway is artificial)• JK Rowling’s site Pottermore was originally launched to only 1m members despite there being much higher demand• Some celebrities (like Justin Bieber and members of One Direction) have special ‘secret’ accounts on Twitter & Instagram for super fans in addition to their verified accounts

DIGITAL SCARCITY• Sites are pushing
scarcity by developing their own ad formats that only they can sell, which also blur the boundaries between what is an ad and what is content• Sites doing this include Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and YouTube – and many magazines sell out of ad inventory for their iPad editions by deliberately limiting the number of ads and advertisers per issue• However this can lead to silo-ed measurement, where it’s hard for advertisers to see the performance of media in relation to the whole media buy

IMPLICATIONS FOR BRANDS• It’s an
opportunity – and a threat• It’s an opportunity to make your content seem more desirable by limiting access to it (assuming that it’s desirable in the first place), and also to try to identify your most valuable customers and reward them with some kind of access• It’s also an opportunity to achieve real stand out on sites where ad formats are specifically designed to reflect the feel and content, but it’s a threat in that it can lead to higher media costs, and more silo-ed tracking

CHINESE INFLUENCE• China’s power &
influence in the digital economy is increasing and will soon start to be very noticeable• The Chinese became the largest nation online three years ago, and since they block many Western services, domestic companies have been able to grow without competition from Silicon Valley• Now they are starting to lead and set trends, especially in mobile, messaging and ecommerce

CHINESE INFLUENCE• China is a
leader in mobile internet access. In the third quarter this year 60 million smartphones were sold in China, compared to 20 million PCs• This is reflected in it’s media channels - Social media firm Tencent has nearly 800 million active users of it’s instant messaging service; it’s also well diversified, with less than 10% of revenues coming from advertising• Its mobile app Weixin (WeChat) has over 200 million users less than two years since launch (100m in the past 6 months), and looks set to go global• Meanwhile Baidu reports that 25% of searches now relate to location, so presumably from mobile devices

CHINESE INFLUENCE• eCommerce is also
starting to out-pace the West – Singles Day (11th November, or 11.11) generated an online spend of $3 billion, compared to just $1.4 billion in the US on Cyber Monday• China also leads in mobile TV viewing, with 45 million viewers, as at June 2012, nearly half of whom pay• Not surprisingly, Chinese companies are seeing Western investment, including UUCun (mobile advertising) and Transmension (putting mobile and other games onto TV platforms)

IMPLICATIONS FOR BRANDS• Keep up
to date with what is happening in China• Look on China as an innovation leader in human behaviour in technology usage, particularly mobile. What works in China today may be popular in the West soon• Monitor what services are available within technologies like WeChat – they may soon emerge elsewhere

ACQUISITIONS• A scary statistic: four
billion dollar software companies are created every year in Silicon Valley• Many companies are created with the aim going public, but since the recent IPOs of companies like Zynga, Pandora and Facebook many of these companies will be put off from taking this route (& find it hard to get underwritten) so there is likely to be a wave of large acquisitions

ACQUISITIONS• Many of the new
companies are more single purpose & specialised than previous companies• For example Facebook wanted to cover all of the most used parts of the web (mail, pictures, video, instant messaging), but Pinterest does just one thing very well• Specialist single aim companies seen often as ‘better’ at particular service than generalists, so can be targets for takeover

ACQUISITIONS• Many companies from a
few years ago left it too late to be bought – Digg was rumoured to be worth $200m in 2008; in 2012 it sold for under $20m• Google tried to buy Groupon for (a reported) $6 billion – now Groupon is missing revenue targets and investors are unhappy• The dream for many start-ups could now be to ‘do an Instagram’ rather than to float – get an exit without having to struggle for monetisation

IMPLICATIONS FOR BRANDS• Lots of
the start-ups from the past few years are likely to become part of bigger companies, specifically the big 5 of Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft• These companies will see their technological footprint grow; decide whose side(s) you want to be on

TARGETING• There are now lots
of new targeting options from individual sites like Facebook and Twitter, and ad exchanges, based either on real data or assumptions• Sites with lots of data on consumers are getting better at processing it and selling on it, but advertising has to work harder

TARGETING• Facebook and Twitter both
introduced lots of new targeting options in 2012, and will introduce more as they push for more monetisation• This is part of a move in planning from proxy-based (e.g. demographics), to cookie based, to self-declared data• Akamai & Quantcast are now offering targeting across networks based on audience characteristics inferred from very high sample sizes• Lots of online display advertising is now created dynamically – the audience attributes determine the message, the images and the colour of the ad from a range of options• Even direct mail is changing – retailers can now work out so much about us from what we regularly buy, and put the right vouchers and offers into mail shots

TARGETING• Facebook is going to
have a great year, based on its new powers of targeting• It can already target across its site on declared and demographic data, as sold on its ad exchange• It can also tracking events (e.g. purchases) on third party sites back to the ads it shows, and can target on email addresses, for example to allow online retailers to advertise to its subscribers when they log in to Facebook.• It is likely to start to monetise Instagram (which also has lots of user data)

IMPLICATIONS FOR BRANDS• Get to
know your audience and try to find characteristics that define them• Think about new ways of targeting, based on habits, preferences, what else they buy, where they go, and more

NEW CURRENCIES• People are now
leveraging their social influence as a currency• Measurement helps brands to understand the benefit of personal endorsement, so there will be more ways to encourage this by giving people with influence incentives to try goods

NEW CURRENCIES• Amazon offer free
product through their Vine programme to valued reviewers, on the understanding that they will write an honest review (positive or negative)• Services like Klout, Peer Index and Kred allow brands to assess audience value through influence & more• Kellogg’s let customers pay with a tweet – one tweet about the product got a box of their new Special K Cracker Crisps• But… Trust is an essential part of any social currency, so over-use will lead to expectation by the influencers and the benefit will be lost

NEW CURRENCIES• Mobile credit is
also emerging as a new currency• In Zimbabwe mobile credit is being given by YoTime instead of change for small amounts, as it is easier than printing currency• British virtual mobile operator GiffGaff rewards its users with free credit when they recruit new customers

IMPLICATIONS FOR BRANDS• Understand your
audience, and the influence they have over others• Is it worth rewarding the ones who recommend you? Will they do it more often, or will it devalue your brand?• Can you reward your most passionate fans on other ways if not with your own products?

THE WOW FACTOR• Brands will
do more and more breathtaking things

THE WOW FACTOR• Felix Baumgartner’s
Red Bull Stratos jump was a genuinely breathtaking piece of marketing that was watched like on YouTube by 8 million people. The highlights have been viewed 30 million times

THE WOW FACTOR• Microsoft is
working in a real time voice translation• It will translate voice in (very near) real time – it’s been demonstrated with English and Mandarin

THE WOW FACTOR• But other
‘wows’ are lower tech, for example the Popinator voice controlled pop-corn machine, made by snacks company Popcorn Indiana• Which leads us back to ‘Makers’

IMPLICATIONS FOR BRANDS• Be original,
unusual, and unique• Budgets don’t have to be enormous, but do or make things that really capture the imagination