Predicting future trends
In times of economic uncertainty, having your finger on the consumer pulse becomes even more important to ensure you’ll be making/selling/marketing the products and services consumers will be buying in the future.
Step up The Future Laboratory which has extended their popular Future Reports and Trend Briefings into a one-stop portal called the LifeStyle:News:Global network.
LSNglobal.com is your virtual team reporting back on whats hot and happening across a range of sectors all over the world. Reports can cover anything from new consumer tribes (e.g. “Bleisure” seekers bluring the boundaries of business and leisure, demanding convergence from mobile devices to travel) to Parisian home living.
I joined the portal after participating as a speaker at one of their events on The Future of Social Media and am constantly sifting through it for inspiration. Membership is a good investment for businesses wanting to ensure they’re future-proofed, from my perspective particularly useful when it comes to the evershifting technology landscape.
I’d like to see the reports evolve to harness up-to-the-minute digital trend insights technology in the future.
The personal blog is back
Nothing sums up blogging like Gaping Void
Ok, so I don’t have any quantitative research or expert opinion to validate this statement but I’m declaring… The Personal Blog is Back.
Here’s why I’m thinking this:
Reason One: It seemed like some of the original bloggers were quiet for a bit while we media types were navel gazing about the zeitgeist and saying ” But whhhhyyyyyy do they blog? What’s their motivation? Defiiiine them. Raaaank them”. But it’s safe to come out now. Promise.
Reason Two: Twitter is not the new toy anymore
Reason Three: Less techy types warmed to the idea that writers of “weblog diary thingies” are not a bunch of socially inept saddos. Ask your mum if she knows what a blog is. (Or if she’s writing one)
Reason Four: I personally got a little bored opening my reader and seeing the same old search hungry “Top 10 tips …” being generated by some commercial blogs. I started looking for blogs I could enjoy and learnt more about what makes entertaining media by being entertained
So that’s it really. Of course personal blogs never went away. There’s probably no data to show a dip in posts etc. My gut just says it feels like we’ve been through a period of learning and now it’s like the school holidays and we can read & write for pleasure again.
Here’s some that I’m loving.
Treasure Hunt campaigns
Vodafone's Live Guy
I’ve seen two really good campaign ideas recently around Treasure Hunts.
Find Me
- What is it? Objects were hidden round London with clues to their location on blogs. Each object contained a letter which spelled out a question. The object locations were plotted, via map markers, to create a communal artwork
- Why? To promote American photojournalist James Nachtwey’s campaign to raise awareness of extremely drug resistant TB
- Results: for a short time it felt like this was all over the web, the hunt was solved in 36 hours, loads of participants = success!
More:
- Official moblog: moblog.net/findme/
- Campaign site: XDRTB.org
- BBC article
Vodafone Live Guy
Social Media Heroes and Villains
Love Facebook? Hate Facebook?
Love Twitter? Hate Twitter?
Too confused to know? Well apparently even ’leading online opinion formers’ aren’t quite sure. Their thoughts on everything from what they love and hate, to what they wish they’d known a year ago, have all been included in a new ShinyRed report Social Media and Brands 2009. You can download a copy of the report and decide for yourself.
Hghlights of the report? Well, um, a certain little grapevine *ahem* was included alongside big bananas like Charlene Li, Antony Mayfield and Neil McIntosh. Thanks for allowing me to participate guys, loving your work!
Other contributors:
FRUKT Sessions 001: What did we learn about Generation Free?
Last week I attended the inaugural FRUKT Sessions. I promised to drop a few notes down so here goes.
Dan Southern: Xtreme Insight
Dan kicked off with some interesting vox pops showing that if you ask people what they get for free they can’t recall exactly. Of course we’re accessing a huge range of free services & content everyday (particularly on the internet) but this has become so normal, especially for the young folk, we’re seeing ’Generation Free’
Dominic Hodge: FRUKT
Dominic listed some of the trends which have been driving the culture of free in music:
The iPlatform will change online communities
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I couldn’t possibly explain what iPlatform does, I’ll leave it to the video above and their website to do that. However I would like to say that I think the iPlatform is very very exciting and will make a major impact on online communities for consumers, brands and marketers.
Please head over there now, learn more and get on board sooner rather than later.
Recruitment 2.0
Ever been out of work and had the old stat 6 of 10 jobs are not advertised quoted at you? It used to not feel true but social media is starting to show that stat in action.
Over the past few months I’ve seen:
- BIMA recruiting for a PR via Twitter
- ShinyRed recruited a grad placement via The Official Facebook Public Relations Group
- Jobs sent out via my contacts on LinkedIn
- PRBlogger advertising a digital AE via his blog
Those are just the ones I can think of right now. Ignoring the obvious “what if they see my drunken pics on Facebook/MySpace” hype which hopefully everyone has a handle on now, I’m wondering if social media communities are going to replace the recruitment agency?
Social media just provides the tools to tap into your own or others’ networks which were harder to mass broadcast to before Web 2.0 technologies.
Working your community:
Women and Technology: who’s leading conversations?
The Blackberry Women and Technology Awards were last night and I wondered how I totally missed this tech event. I didn’t even spot a random Tweet about it this morning.
A quick scan of the official site revealed, disappointingly, that perhaps this wasn’t the techiest event of the year. The nominees and winners hadn’t even been posted 18 hours after the event began (an age in online news terms).
This got me thinking about the benefits of this type of brand association with an event. It’s not a bad idea at all. If you caught the Saatchi & Saatchi ‘Lady Geek’ research last year you’ll have seen there’s a huge missed opportunity to market technology to women (around £600m worth).
So I did a rudimentary Trendpedia search to see who might be “owning conversations” around women and technology. First off I scanned through a quick Google search to see if there were any stand out brands in this space. There weren’t so I just used:
- Blackberry: A product like the Pearl was squarely aimed at women. I also wondered how an event like this was giving them ownership of ”women and technology” conversations
- Philips: Last year I was lucky enough to work on their Aurea campaign which, via fashion partnerships with the likes of Lanvin and media spend in Vogue, should’ve brought them into the female tech consumer conversation
- Saatchi & Saatchi: With their research I wondered if the brand had gained a presence in these types of discussions. I also thought it would provide a realistic contrast against the other two brands.
The search terms I used were [brand] AND women AND technology.
The results:
Podcasting: where’s it going?
I don’t think I’ve put podcasting high enough on my radar. Part of the problem is that I’m not someone who listens to the radio, but I realise I’m in the minority with 51% of people identifying themselves as regular listeners. So, are podcasts just a fad? Will voice just be surpassed by video or vodcasting?
On the video front, while growth in the digital space is rapid I reckon the desire for audio only will always remain. It’s a similar behaviour to choosing to put on a CD or watching music videos. Sometimes you just want to listen to something.
There’s great growth potential for podcasting. Radio has been an enduring medium, even with the advent of digital technologies, and I see the podcast as simply providing a form of “on-demand radio”. Uptake may be slow, but awareness is growing, suggesting that podcasting suffers from the same challenges as on-demand TV services; if good content exists, it’ll just take time to ensure the delivery model is in place and help the consumer adapt.
TV: market insights and industry reports from Thinkbox
I didn’t attend the ‘New TV Insights from Thinkbox’ event the other week but they dropped me a note to point out they have a load of useful downlaodable content on their site. I’m getting particularly engrossed in their Generation Whatever section which has research and presentations on how marketers can target the “yoof” audience.
Also visit the beautifully titled ‘Nickable Charts’ section which has all the facts and figures on TV audiences you could ever wish for; your next powerpoint presentation will thank you for it.
About:
I'm Darika Ahrens and I help brands develop marketing strategies for Social Media. My background is in Public Relations for companies like Orange, Microsoft, Philips, HTC, Yell.com, and Estee Lauder. I've worked with and trained some of the UK's top agencies.