In 1901, Wilbur Wright told his bother Orville that man wouldn’t fly for at least another 50 years. He gave up making, or trusting, predictions soon after. And yet more than 100 years later forecasting is big business. Trendspotting is a recognised sub-branch of marketing. Consultancies have sprung up across the world, taking clients’ cash for a promise to peep into the crystal ball and identify future habits of consumers. But does the amount of information available instantly make us any better at predictions than Wilbur Wright?
The predictions game is about harnessing two opposing forces: you must be vague enough to be sort of right most of the time and specific enough to be spectacularly right now and again. So we asked writers, thinkers and trendwatchers to forecast what they think will happen in 2010
The Thinker
Jo Owen, entrepreneur and author
This is the time of year when we are meant to gaze into our crystal balls. We should approach the future with hope and humility, keeping in mind what great experts have predicted in the past, only to be confounded by rapid technological change. Referring to telephones, US president Rutherford Hayes said in 1876: “An amazing invention, but who would want to use one?”
Having made my excuses, let me make my predictions for the Chinese year of the metal tiger, or 2010 as most of us will think of it. The biggest change of the year will be that Gordon Brown spends more time with his family.
In practice, this means that it will be a football manager’s year: a year of two halves. In the first half, before the general election, you will hear the sound of huffing and puffing as Labour tries to inflate the bounce-back bubble economy. In the second half, after the poll, the government will be anxious to get all the pain out of the way. Welcome to the treacle economy: it will be very sticky indeed.
This is what it will look like: public sector spending will be reined in, amid much wailing and gnashing of teeth; the Bank of England will stop printing electronic money; and the banks will be required to start recognising some of the bad debts that they have been sweeping under the carpet for the past 18 months. None of this is good for demand or for credit conditions. Weak businesses will go under faster than is usual. But great businesses will grow, whatever the conditions.
Internationally, the eurozone will do better than the UK. It depends less on financial services and has a smaller structural deficit problem. The US will continue to boost its economy as hard as possible ahead of mid-term elections, where president Obama will start to feel vulnerable. He is finding out what all business people know: promises are easy, delivery is hard. China has come far since the last year of the metal tiger in 1950: the People’s Republic was a few months old and the Korean War had just started. China will truly be riding a tiger as it tries to sustain growth and deal with rising expectations and inequality.
My outside bet for 2010 is that the great Tokyo earthquake, which happens every 70 years and is almost 20 years overdue, finally happens. The massive reconstruction spending required means Japan will stop buying US government debt, the yen will soar and interest rates will rise, making the treacle economy even more sticky.
The earthquake prediction makes one simple point. As business people, we cannot predict the future. We have to make our future: if we claim responsibility for our successes we cannot blame the world for our setbacks.
Elsewhere, in fashion black will be the new black. In football, Brazil will beat Spain in the World Cup final and I will lose money backing my judgement. But I confidently predict that my new year’s resolution will last until at least 17 January.
The marketer
Tammy Smulders, co-founder of SCB Partners, a strategic marketing consultancy
At SCB, we look at trends affecting our clients’ businesses. We identify how they can capitalise on these developments to grow the market and increase their share. Our focus is consumer behaviour. Here are five general trends that we see taking hold next year:
New product avalanche
Expect to see launches in the fast-moving goods sector, as well as in drinks, food and other non-technology areas. Products due to be launched last year were held back until companies had sufficient marketing budgets for releasing them in 2010.
Rise of cloud computing
The elimination of office-based servers, and the storage of files in a cloud (or external) site that can be accessed from anywhere, will gather pace. The result will be lower hardware costs for companies, and increased flexibility for employees around where their work. WiFi connectivity will also spread to aircraft, high-speed trains and rental cars, boosting the opportunity for business on the go.
Segmentation
Companies are looking again at existing models for segmenting consumers, and examining ways to communicate with them in their day-to-day lives at the point of sale. They aim to build long-term relationships with them through strengthening this process. Businesses are working with agencies to identify these moments to drive product innovation and create more effective marketing programmes.
Growth of video conferencing
Companies that cut back on travel costs as the recession deepened began investing in videoconferencing solutions and sophisticated webcast technologies to replace sales conferences. This trend will become even more potent in 2010 and beyond.
Corporate volunteering
The culture of caring about people has returned. There will be organised opportunities for companies and their employees to give something back through volunteer days. This practice has been part of the fabric of businesses such as Goldman Sachs for years. Now leaders of companies without such a tradition realise their staff want a way to contribute and work together for the greater good.
The trendspotter
Liesbeth den Toom, senior editor at Springwise and trendwatching.com, spotlights 10 business trends for 2010
1 Business as unusual
In mature consumer societies companies have to do more than just be good corporate citizens. They need to move with the culture. This means greater transparency, having conversations as opposed to one-way advertising. Look at Google, Amazon and Zappo to get a feel for “business as unusual”.
2 Urbany
In the past two decades the urban population of the developing world has grown at an average of three million people a week. This extreme push towards urbanisation we call urbany. The growing number of demanding, super-wired urban consumers are snapping up more goods, services and experiences.
3 Real-time reviews
With even more people sharing everything they do, buy or watch, 2010 will see consumers tapping into first-hand experiences from fellow consumers. As more people contribute, the mass of opinions will lead to a stream of information, viewable to all.
4 (F)luxury
What luxury means will remain in flux. Focus on defining it by finding the right status trigger for an audience. The end is nigh for anything too affordable, too accessible or too well known. Introduce something that appeals to the in-crowds ready to jump ship.
5 Mass mingling
Social media and mobile communications are fuelling a mass mingling that defies clichés about diminished human interaction. The same technology that used to be condemned for turning generations into homebound zombies is getting people out of their homes.
6 Eco-easy
To reach sustainability goals, companies and governments will have to make it easier for consumers to be greener by curbing alternatives. This is “eco-easy”. Results will depend on making products and processes sustainable without us noticing. Look out for a ban on plastic bags.
7 Tracking and alerting
Tracking and alerting will become the new searching. Everything will be tracked and alerted on: from friends and enemies to fuel prices, and from flights to personal brand reputation. Tracking and alerting is creating something consumers need, that delights them and that they crave.
8 Embedded generosity
Embedded generosity, which incorporates initiatives that make giving and donating painless or automatic, will be popular. Expect lots of corporate giving schemes that involve customers by letting them co-donate or co-decide. Ikea’s Sunnan solar LED desk lamp, is an example. For every unit sold, another one will be donated to Unicef.
9 Profile myning
Hundreds of millions of consumers now nurture an online profile. And this year will be a good year to help them make the most of it. We’re putting our money on data- and profile-mining by consumers. Hence myning, not mining. Expect a burgeoning market for services that protect, store, and, in case of emergencies/death, arrange handing over of one’s digital estate.
10 Maturialism
Audiences in mature consumer societies no longer tolerate being treated like the uninformed, middle-of-the-road consumers of old. We call this mature materialism—or maturialism. How far should you go as a brand, when mirroring societal beliefs? Are you afraid to offend and to risk losing customers when jumping on the maturialism wagon in 2010?
The analyst
Malcolm Craig offers tips and trends from the London stockmarket
My forecast for 2010 is that the stockmarket will continue trading sideways around that universally quoted measure of the market’s health—the FTSE-100 index at around 5,000. We saw the all-time high on the last trading day of 1999 when the Footsie hit 6,930. My selection of two shares that may do well this year are chosen for their high bid potential, which will deliver a hefty capital gain in a flat market.
J Sainsbury, the supermarket group, is doing well on the trading front, and has a massive and valuable property portfolio. Standing in the wings, with a 26 per cent equity stake, is the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) in which the Qatari royal family has a major interest. A bid was launched three years ago, but was aborted due to the global financial collapse. I expect QIA, or another Arab-backed investment fund, to launch a second bid, which will provide a windfall property gain for lucky shareholders.
Sainsbury’s is pushing forward with a major expansion plan. This will double the number of UK shoppers who live within a 15-minute car journey of one of the group’s store over the next five years. Fifty new stores are to be opened by 2011 and will be sited in areas such as the north-east and Scotland, where Sainsbury’s supermarkets are thin on the ground. Over the six months to October 2009, the group recorded pre-tax profits up by a third to £342m.
My second tip is Shire Pharmaceuticals, left, the target of a potential bid from AstraZeneca. Shire is the third-biggest pharma/biotech company in the UK. The key reason that Shire is tipped for a bid is the excellent list of drugs being developed by its research and development division.
AstraZeneca, the second-biggest pharmaceuticals company, has a weak pipeline of drugs in its R&D operation. It makes considerable business sense for AstraZeneca to make a bid for Shire to try to bolster its portfolio.
Buy both shares at the best price, with a stop/loss trigger of 20 per cent to protect you against any major market fallbacks.
Stockmarket and alternative investments can fall as well as rise in value. Readers should consult their own professional advisers.
The futurologist
Magnus Lindkvist, trendspotter, author and lecturer
One word will tower over everything else in 2010: growth. After a long recession, consumers will start to spend again, companies will begin investing and financial markets will wake up. The pace will be slow but look for some record-setting figures regarding corporate growth towards the end of the year. Here are some terms that will become more widely used:
3D printing: Around the world, so-called “Fab Labs” are opening where anyone can create just about anything they’ve envisioned. At the heart of these labs are 3D printers that promise to do for manufacturing what the laser printer did for desktop publishing. The technology is about to get its big breakthrough since it’s becoming cheap and simple enough for anyone to use, whether it’s for designing a new vase, printing out a spare part for a car, or designing something the world has never seen before.
Profit for effort: Forget “value for money” and other trite clichés. With the rise of creative consumers—bloggers, Twitterers, iPhone application salesmen and so on—what you really have to offer your customers is a piece of the action. If they create something for you, whether it is a viral online campaign or innovative ideas to improve your service, you need to reward them with recognition or money, or both.
High-octane bacteria: The debate on fuels and energy is blown out of proportion. We are close to solving energy needs in a way that will make our children enjoy cheaper and more efficient energy than what we see today. New ways of generating and transmitting power will make discussions of “peak oil” and “energy apocalypse” a cute reminder of the pessimism we’ve seen in the past few years. One of the more exciting technologies is genome pioneer Craig Venter’s work on developing new bacterial strains capable of eating CO2 and producing fuel.
Rowe: We’ve talked about our ability to work where we like for a few years, but with the same conservative management in place, most of us still trudge to work at rush hour to serve eight hours or more in an office. This is about to change. More and more companies are adopting the Rowe model for working: the Results-Only Work Environment. Work where you like, when you like, in whichever way suits you best but produce the agreed-upon results. This solution will turbocharge the knowledge economy since it forces companies to set clear, bold yet realistic goals and then adapt them to function as personal-result targets.
Magnus Lindkvist is author of Everything We Know Is Wrong: The trendspotter’s handbook (£9.99, Marshall Cavendish)
