Predictions for the Year Ahead
Huge’s strategists, technologists, UX designers, and creatives weigh in on what’s really relevant in 2018.
To look forward, we took a look back. What we saw informed the directions we think marketing, design, and technology will go. Naturally, we couldn’t ignore the political issues dividing our country, forcing everyone, brands included, to take decisive stands. This new social consciousness will continue, and as users continue to passionately pick ideological sides, brands stay neutral at their peril.
But 2018 won’t be just about politics. As in the past, technology, for instance, will continue to play a dominant role in our everyday lives, but perhaps in more subtle ways than we predicted before. Augmented reality hasn’t infiltrated our offices, but devices such as Airpods, improvements in mobile computing and mobile data, and the rise of smart environments that ambiently collect data about users may provide better customer experiences for everyone. Read more about these potential developments and other crystal-ball prognostications sourced from our colleagues at Huge.
Companies Build Mission-Based Strategies
Mike May, VP, Strategy
In many ways, 2017 can be categorized as a year of social consciousness: It began with over four million Women’s March participants creating the largest single-day demonstration in U.S. history; the most powerful sports league on the planet became an unwitting platform for civil rights; and Time’s Person of the Year was awarded to the Silence Breakers responsible for the #MeToo movement that is righting wrongs in Hollywood, Washington, D.C., and every place in between.
What does this mean for brands? Values matter.
Increasingly, shoppers and prospective employees are evaluating who they buy from and work for based not just on extrinsic qualities like price and paycheck, but intrinsic attributes like a company’s stance on social issues, actions with respect to issues like climate change and gay rights, and mission. In 2012, when Patagonia became the first California company to designate itself as a Benefit Corporation, tethering its business objectives firmly to its mission, its values-first approach was a meaningful point of differentiation. Today a clear value system is becoming a cost of doing business. Over 5,000 companies in a range of industries are now registered as Benefit Corporations, including Etsy, Warby Parker, and New Belgium Brewing. The last time I saw this much activity around an ascending strategic consideration was in the late 1990s, when brands were rushing to define their digital strategy. This year, brands will get serious about defining their mission-based strategy and weaving it into all layers of their business.
Winning Brands Incite Passion
Jason Schlossberg, Managing Director, Communications
Last year, we saw how our cognitive biases shape our perceptions of reality. Two people can see the exact same thing and interpret its meaning completely differently. What’s an admission of sexual assault to many is “locker-room talk” to others. Is taking a knee during the National Anthem an example of the type of civil disobedience that makes the United States great, or an insult to the U.S. flag and the soldiers that gave their lives on its behalf?
Increasingly, these divisions are playing out across political party lines. Experts call the phenomenon “affective partisan polarization,” or “the mutual dislike between Republicans and Democrats.” Not surprisingly, it has been cited as one of the primary drivers of the increasing gridlock in Washington, D.C., over the past couple of decades. But I think we can all agree on at least one thing: What we are currently in the midst of is something far more acute, and toxic, than just gridlock. Let’s call it affective hyper-partisan polarization — a.k.a. a shit show.
Brands are not immune to, or isolated from, these trends. In 2017, some big brands, including Kellogg’s, Audi, Starbucks, Target, New Balance, Nordstrom, Netflix, Neiman Marcus, HSN, Uber, T.J. Maxx, Keurig, and Patagonia (to name just a few) received both adulation and condemnation for making decisions that they deemed were in the best interests of their businesses. Negative reactions ran the spectrum, from calls for boycotts on both sides of the political divide.
Is the lesson to be learned that, in order to avoid courting controversy, brands need to work harder to appear neutral in 2018? Quite the contrary. In 2018, brands need to develop much thicker skins and be satisfied with not appealing to everyone. Brands need to understand that consumer sentiment around a particular issue has much less to do with facts and more to do with the tribal affiliations consumers choose to associate themselves with. This is not to suggest that brands should have carte blanche to do whatever they want, public opinion be damned. If a brand acts unethically, insensitively, or illegally, it risks long-term damage to its reputation. But brands can’t be paralyzed from acting in their self-interest or taking a stand on an issue simply because some people may disagree or not approve. In 2018, if someone doesn’t hate you, you probably aren’t very relevant.
Biometrics Create Personalized Digital Experiences
Thomas Prommer, Managing Director, Technology
We’ll see a surge in focus and discussion around what I call the offline cookie: using biometric attributes for personal-identity recognition at scale. Where Apple is currently leading the effort by leveraging facial and thumbprint information to give you access to your most intimate data, we will see technology organizations and marketers alike increasingly leverage different kinds of biometrics to deliver more meaningful and personalized digital experiences.
The imagined use cases are plentiful: Can the unique tones of your voice allow you to continue the morning conversation you had with Alexa at home with your CarPlay’s Siri while you commute to work? Can kiosk applications at fast-food restaurants remember your last order at any other restaurant based on your facial attributes? Can paying at a grocery store become as seamless as flashing a big smile to the cashier, as is being trialled in China’s KFC branches? Can your retina eye information fast-track you through more of life’s lines than the airport queue, as is currently being offered by the Clear airport screening product?
Strong security and privacy regulations will be vital in this world, but if history is any indication of the future, we can expect companies to take an aggressive approach and beg for forgiveness rather than ask for permission, with regulation entities needing more time to fully define the rules of this new game.
The Screen Starts Its Decline
Aaron Shapiro, CEO
Technology will become more ubiquitous in our lives, but we will spend less time staring at screens. This will be in part a reaction to how screens have taken over our lives, and in part facilitated by the success of devices like Airpods, improvements in mobile computing and mobile data, and the rollout of smart environments that ambiently collect information about you in order to give you better experiences and customer service. This will create major headaches for marketers and agencies, as so much of our focus for the last 50 years has been what happens on a screen in front of us.
Digital has taken over the world, but it’s been based in an “engagement economy”: a business model of encouraging and incentivizing addiction. This has left us all staring endlessly at our screens, scrolling through social feeds and clicking on things that make us less productive, not more. This year, we’ll see the beginning of the end of this era.
Data Ethics Becomes a Thing
Michael Horn, Managing Director, Data Science
In 2018, add “data ethics” to the job description of every data scientist. Why? Because even as we debate the future ethical programming of AI, we’re missing critical, immediate opportunities to ensure human intelligence respects user identity, health, and safety. Today, too often, aggressive marketing tactics, biased selection algorithms, and a desire for raw efficiency sacrifice respect for user needs and rights. Think of targeting and ranking that inadvertently uses race or gender as proxies, predatory lending to distressed consumers based on their credit profile, and call center and support automation that doesn’t actually solve customer needs. In 2018, organizations need to educate and incentivize their data-science teams to be as ethical as they are effective by establishing codes of ethics, training, and clear guidance on how to report concerns.
Wellness Goes Mainstream
Julie Minchew, Planning Director
The phrase “health is wealth” has taken on new meaning in past years. Wellness has become more of a luxury good for the privileged than an accessible way of living for the majority. The rise in designer athleisure, expensive workout studios, superfood bars, and wellness tourism has made fitness a status symbol — something the wealthy buy instead of something anyone can achieve. Two thousand eighteen will be the year this changes. Wellness will finally go mainstream and permeate everything from building design to business initiatives. Because, as Global Wellness Institute researchers note, “the future prospects of the wellness economy will be limited if it becomes a luxury segment that depends primarily on wealthy consumers.”
We’ve started to see the beginnings of this exclusive bubble bursting as Anthropologie launches a wellness-dedicated store, P&G acquires an aluminum-free deodorant brand, and traditional sports stadiums offer vegan fare and kombucha. A sense of wellness is something consumers will now expect from all brand experiences — asking how does this fit within my overall desired well-being? As marketers, we will need to think about how our products and brand systems contribute to a greater demand for balance of mind and body. Because as traditional health care continues to remain uncertain, the future of wellness will be made widely available with everything being seen as a way to take control of our health.
Make Way for the “And” Interfaces
Sophie Kleber, Executive Director, Product and Innovation
Two thousand sixteen was the year of VR. Last year was the year of voice. While the tech industry searches for this year’s next big thing, every UX designer knows that users are channel agnostic. As technology allows for more and more ways to interact with machines, users expect the interactions to become more and more intuitive, and the only solution we’ll explore in 2018 in user-centric design is “And” interfaces.
“And” interfaces combine various input/output methods to make a user interaction as easy and seamless as possible, while using each channel in the way it can provide the most value. Imagine you’d like to chat with your bank about reducing your spending. Ask the voice interface to run the analysis, then have the voice interface walk you through your options as a graphical user interface visualizes what you can do. The voice and GUI interfaces work together, giving the user the best of both worlds. Imagine giving feedback at a store by hitting a “Sad” button on a kiosk, then specifying what you didn’t like about the experience by speaking to the machine, instead of having to type or take a survey.
Last year, we saw some attempts to capitalize on the “And” interface trend with Amazon’s Echo Show. Unfortunately, the gadget failed on the integration front: Instead of making a tiny screen that looks like the first video telephone, Amazon should have integrated with the big screen that’s already in the house — the TV. Amazon’s approach of being “the AOL of voice,” the gateway to all voice interactions, just as AOL was the gateway to the internet, is short-lived in the new world of “And.” Ecosystems will have to collaborate not only on the software side, but also start opening up their hardware platforms to give users the freedom of interaction they expect, while brands figure out how to gather the data they need to adapt to user preferences.
Women Take Center Stage
Jacque Jordan, Director, Research
Finally, it seems, the voices of women are being heard. Rather than checking out after the last presidential election, women have become more energized and determined — leading the charge in many communities, boardrooms, and political and gender battles. Women are bringing others together, encouraging empathy, inclusion, diversity of thoughts, words, and actions. This year will be about and led by women, and the people who design for users first would be well advised to consider women in the decisions they make.
Brands Team Up to Battle the Behemoths
Richard Swain, VP, Brand Strategy and Identity
Collaboration will become a key strategic pillar in companies’ efforts to combat the dominance of Google and Amazon and the ever-present threat of Silicon Valley upstarts. Open APIs and shared data will fuel the creation of new consumer brands, such as the digital-payments network Zelle. Backed by leading banks and credit unions, Zelle connects backend operations to give users a single, digital-first interface designed around their individual needs. Or consider the retail technology network OneMarket (previously Westfield retail solutions), which is uniting retailers through the power of data, technology, and collaboration, with the ambition of reshaping the way the world shops. The ability of organizations to move quickly, co-create effectively, and act decisively will go a long way toward determining their future relevance in an increasingly unpredictable marketplace.
Ephemeral Content Is Here to Stay
Brad Wellen, Group Director, Social
Short-lived content is currently the norm for fans of Instagram and Snapchat stories but will become even more ubiquitous in 2018. Social messaging that is accessible for 24 hours or less taps into the FOMO effect and inspires audiences to act fast before premium content disappears forever. Brands can lean into this trend by designing posts intended to serve as teasers to preview upcoming projects or product releases, providing exclusive looks behind the scenes or offering exploding offers or promotions. The publishers who master ephemeral content will reach and engage their target audiences in the shortest possible time.
So Long, Brief
Jason Musante, Global Executive Creative Director
The agency brief is as old as the industry itself. Once typed onto a physical piece of paper, it was a formal contract of sorts, drawn up to ensure clarity and agreement around deliverables. That was helpful back when CMOs knew exactly what they wanted. But as they witness entire industries being disrupted, CMOs find themselves outside of their comfort zones. The myriad agency structures we’ve seen develop over the past couple of years— in-house agencies, consultancy-owned agencies, micro-agencies—is an attempt to figure out how to adapt. But the radical move needed to stay relevant in this vertigo-inducing era of change isn’t structural. It involves killing the traditional brief as we know it.
For brands to remain in business, CMOs will need to be open to answers even if they lay outside of their expectations, their budget, and maybe even their department. At Huge, we’ve seen examples where the answer to the client’s critical business issue wasn’t a new tagline or attention-grabbing retail television spots, even though that was the brief. Rather, the real solution was to provide users with a better in-store experience that would empower employees to close the sale, or reimagine the app experience, or build an AI-powered conversational interface. The decimation of the brief must also give way to a true collaboration, in which both client and agency are empowered to find real solutions to the often unasked questions critical to a brand’s longevity. Ultimately, this will require marketers to embrace unexpected solutions to their thorniest problems.
Magenta is a publication of Huge.
