It's always a tough task doing annual predictions.
Aim too high and you're way out - 3D printing, the Internet of
Things in 2012 anyone? - but simply stating that Facebook is likely
to grow renders the whole exercise quite pointless.
Instead, here at Amaze PR we aimed somewhere in between. Here are
the predictions from our experts at Amaze PR for what will become
mainstream in 2012.
1 - Multiple device strategies become commonplace…
In 2011 we saw lots of worthy chat in the user experience
community about developing device-sensitive design, but what this
usually boiled down to was making sure a desktop website didn't
break the minute you tried to view it in any other context. We also
all got a little distracted by our infatuation with the shiny and
oh-so-pretty n' slick Responsive Web Design trend that rose up this
summer.
What 2012 may see the firm arrival of is the logical extension
of this; multi-device strategies. Again, this is not new, but it is
not practiced widely enough yet to be considered old hat
either.
A digital solution has multiple lives, so design teams need to
focus on making one that works in a variety of bespoke ways, each
tailored specifically to a given context. A desktop browser can
display something big, beautiful, expansive and broadband-enabled,
a mobile device has an address book, GPS service and camera,
a tablet can display lick-ably gorgeous media to someone
slumped on a sofa or standing in a crowded train, whilst a
touch-screen kiosk is great for localised practical
information.
Next year will see responsive design of one solution become
commonplace, but only 2012's more inventive and resourceful digital
solution providers are going to go the extra step and create
bespoke solutions for multiple device contexts simultaneously.
2 - Search is on the move once again…
One of the most crucial things for marketers to consider when
planning their 2012 search strategies is mobile. Mobile search is
not simply another channel, but a totally different mindset. The
latest research from Google tells us consumers are looking for
local content, are on the move, and are primarily performing
task-orientated searches. With this in mind, marketers' mobile
search strategies need to be tailored to the customers needs rather
than simply porting their web search strategy to mobile.
How Google develops in next year will also be crucial, in
particular with its personalised search functionality. Personalised
search relies predominantly on being logged into Google, which is
estimated to be between 10% and 30% of all users at present. This
is growing through the integration of Google+ and, for SEO, could
have a significant impact on how campaigns are planned and
forecast. One important side issue to this is Google's decision to
encrypt searches conducted whilst logged in, making it extremely
difficult to prove the ROI from any SEO activities.
Two other key initiatives we're likely to see from Google in
2012 will be social signalling as a key factor in how your site
ranks. Social advocacy in the shape of +1s will have an increasing
importance in determining which sites rank where, but the core
factors are going to be primarily related to Google+ and other
social sources Google uses to determine social signalling.
3 - The age of the Third Eye
At Amaze PR, we know augmented reality (AR) is not new; in fact
it dates back to 1968! However, in 2012, we believe it will finally
become mainstream.
Until now, AR has been a bit gimmicky with spinning cars and
cute monsters, but as Aurasma's Director, Matt Mills, put it, "We
are at the dawn of the age of visual browsing… it's sort of like
where television was in the 40s."
TV, at least in the UK, took off with our Queen's coronation.
The equivalent for AR could be the Amazon Flow application and the
coming age of markerless AR. It may not be as regal or historic as
TV's watershed moment, but we live in consumerist times.
Expect to see more and more brand collateral, such as adverts,
OOH and products, augmented with a wealth of digital content,
giving the viewer access to product demos, reviews, social
commentary, comparisons, configuration tools an so on.
In ten years time, we will probably wander around in our AR
glasses or contact lenses, looking back and laughing at the
'primitive' AR of 2012 - but, for now, it will seem very cool and a
lot more useful than it was in 2011.
4 - Cookie monster unleashed in 2012…
In May 2012, the local state representative (in the UK the
Information Commissioner's Office) will begin enforcing the
European Privacy Directive on cookie usage. How the directive is
implemented is still open for debate, however, unless it is
significantly toned down, the implications are huge.
The first is user experience, which could be impacted as users
are asked to opt-in to each individual cookie! The second is loss
of data. When this new approach was tested there was a 90% drop in
the amount of data collected. As a channel that's main USP is data,
offline marketers could be rubbing together their hands with
glee!
The second major trend will be how companies leverage the 'big
data' question. Businesses that are able to organise and make sense
of all the data now available will be at a major competitive
advantage in terms of customer insight, productivity and business
insight. Google recently launched its Social Media Data Hub with
the objective of creating a standardised way of tracking social
data from all of your customer touch points. Next year we can
expect to see more in the way of standards being applied to data
although until Twitter and Facebook are on board, fragmentation
will continue to exist.
Amaze PR experts also expect to see more intelligence data
modelling from attribution modelling, as well as mobile data,
customer data modelling and in analytics, from lifetime value
through to cohort analysis. In tandem with this, data visualisation
tools are going to become increasingly prevalent, streamlining the
ability to model data and providing actionable intelligence to
marketers.
5 - Fragmentation x 10
We are living in the age of what Forrester calls the
'Splinternet' - an age of unprecedented digital fragmentation, with
the number of channels, platforms and operating systems seeming to
grow day by day. In 2012, as these continue to rise, we can only
expect this splinter effect to get worse.
Will Facebook bring out an iPhone? How will the tie-up with
Windows and Nokia work? Will there be further shake-up in the
tablet market? What about the Kindle Fire, should we all start
developing in HTML5, or is it too early?
One response to this ongoing digital 'mess' that we can expect
to see from savvy brands is a lot more customer research. The days
of crunching data from the Target Group Index and you're done are
gone - the ever growing number of brand touch points and increasing
complexities of consumer behaviour require a much deeper,
longer-term commitment to consumer research.
Recession or no recession, brands need to get very close to
their consumers, so we will see spend on ethnography (real and
virtual) and private communities rise in 2012, as brands do
everything they can to stay aligned with their customers.
6 - TV goes social again
We all know the scene, sitting alone at home watching TV and
checking our emails, Facebook status and Twitter streams. We
currently 'hack' these together, but in 2012 we will see more
dual-screen experiences via shows with intelligent online
companions.
Apps and rich websites will allow viewers to join viewing rooms
with their friends to see, for example, what they think of the
show, as well as access additional metadata. Dedicated iPad apps
will sync our social and viewing profiles, allowing us to watch
shows on either or both screens. And this won't be limited to
scheduled programs, as we'll also see catch up on demand services
introduce social elements next year.
According to Nielsen, 70% of (US) tablet users are using them
whilst watching TV, and recent figures from Twitter show that usage
activity spikes with TV commercials. Interestingly, at a time when
tablet penetration in the UK was still quite low, Endemol revealed
that its peak 'play-along' audience for Million Pound Drop reached
8.6%.
With new technologies being developed, such as those that allow
mobile devices to recognise a TV show's audio footprint (the Shazam
of TV), and connect viewers with the contextual content around that
show or its social fan community, big brands and advertisers are
understandably eyeing up this space.
This second screen 'connection' represents a seismic shift for
broadcasters turning the traditional one-way TV into a
bi-directional channel, way beyond anything that the 'red button'
currently offers. We predict that TV is going to go social once
again in 2012.
7 - Intelligent Life Management
A good decade into our digital lives we've arrived at breaking
point… we've read, bookmarked, blogged, reviewed, liked, poked,
bought, commented and consumed more content than we will ever be
able to remember. So, what do we do with the hundreds of logins,
accounts and profiles that we've either forgotten about or don't
have time to return to?
The answer is a new breed of services, we've termed Intelligent
Life Management (ILM), that we expect to grow significantly in
2012. Instead of simply facilitating consumption and
entertainment (like Flipboard. Pulse etc) these cloud-based ILM
tools will help us to manage our lives better by organising photos,
calendars, financial accounts, subscriptions, social graphs,
content feeds, and so on.
There are already services out there, such as About One, Manilla
and Primadesk, but we will see one or two gain real traction in
2012 with an increasing number of consumers beginning to use the
cloud to help organise their lives.
Looking ahead even further, with the 'Internet of Things'
expected to have a significant impact from 2013-14 onwards, these
ILM services will become completely embedded in our lives, hosted
on our mobile devices and communicating with the world around us in
real-time.
In a few years time, your ILM service will manage your home,
work life, social calendar and financial commitments - all without
you having to do anything.
8 - The rise of global local
Amaze PR knows that an increasingly diverse use of the internet
across the globe has lead to both a fragmentation of how people use
digital and a diffusion of cultural and social trends, identities
and ideas around the world. 'Global-Local' will be a defining
feature of 2012 as online consumers increasingly adopt global
cultural identities and ideas.
In 2011 we saw a tremendous solidarity between nations as we
watched both the Arab Spring and 'Occupy' movements play out in the
US and Europe. This week's ethnic riots in Russia will no doubt
play into this theme, driving debate and opinion across the world
as we follow the official and unofficial sides to the story and our
perceptions are influenced.
The improvement and standardisation of content, rise of mobile
internet and explosion of social media and user generated content
in all its forms are driving far quicker and wider access to
cultural trends, content, insight and politics, and these are
finding their way into our psyche.
Location has already become subjective with consumers no longer
expressing their identities in relation to a single place.
The internet can be seen as a catalyst in today's global society.
Ideas can spread like wildfire and, as a consequence, we are seeing
a greater social conscience develop in reaction to world events and
our access to information.
9 - Gestural interfaces go mainstream
Gestural interfaces have been featuring in predictions for a few
years now. The seminal UX book about gestural interface design is
three years old this month and now in its fourth edition. And yet
we've not made the leap. Even with the Wii and Kinect firmly
established as high-street staples.
The potential for such interfaces remains obvious, however, and
2012 will doubtless see advances in the field. Particularly as
we're starting to see their incorporation into mobile apps, which
were always likely to prove the most effective catalyst for pushing
gestural interfaces beyond being seen as suitable only for "gamey"
solutions.
The real challenge from a UX perspective though, is how to
incorporate gestural control into everyday solutions in a way that
properly respects everyday circumstances. One of the key weaknesses
of both touch-screen and gesture controls is the lack of haptics.
The reassurance of physically sensed feedback is absent, so it is
much more likely that we will suffer uncertainty about a system's
status if it responds inconsistently to a command.
I'm particularly interested in notions not of movement, but of
light and shadow. Particularly for mobile devices, this seems to me
to be a more reliable trigger for an interaction. Using light or
shadow to control something adds a spatial dimension to the
equation - we move our hand to cover a sensor (say, a cameraphone's
lens) and can be more certain that we have performed the correct
action than if we merely waved at the device.
2012 will, I think prove to be a year in which such notions are
more widely explored within mainstream applications.
10 - Once Upon a Time...
In the eternal campaign for that most elusive of all brand
requirements, engagement, we'll see brands becoming far more
inventive. They have to be. A simple social presence is no longer
enough, advertising struggles to standout and websites are finding
it harder to be sticky. So how will they do it? I believe that
brands will spend more time telling stories and less time shouting
about their products. And, crucially, they will tell stories in a
collaborative way, allowing their consumers to shape and drive the
brand's story in the way they want.
This is, of course, already happening (BT's Adam and Jane
campaign is shaped by Facebook users), but we'll see more and more
of it. However, no brand wants to hand over complete control to its
users and so they will work hard to develop stories that are true
to their ethos. Only then can they hand them over - and this will
happen in social spaces. After all, if you're going to come into my
personal space, you'd better have a good story to tell or I'll go
and talk to someone else.
11 - Keep Out!
Personalised websites, web promotions, Facebook ads, emails…
where will it end? And when will the consumer say enough is
enough?
The technology behind personalisation gets ever and ever more
advanced - but we are only just getting started. As Eric Schmidt of
Google put it, "We know where you are. We know where you've been.
We can more or less know what you're thinking about."
Just two reasons why things are about to get more personal…
The rise of the interest graph:
We are moving into the age of the interest graph, "the expansion
and contraction of social networks around common interests and
events". But with interest graphs comes interest mining -
essentially brands mining our digital data so that they provide
ultra relevant and personal content, offers and enticements in real
time. Creepy or cool?
Facial recognition technology:
Google purchased PittPatt, Apple went with Polar Rose. Ok,
Google has pulled back from using facial recognition in the past -
but the prize is so large I am not convinced they won't reintroduce
it soon. You can use it to log in to your PC and phone, connect
with friends automatically on Google + via photos and video
uploaded by others - the potential convenience of facial
recognition is endless. And then there's Facebook - billions of
photos uploaded - and Mr Zuckerberg proclaiming the "age of privacy
is over". Scary?
In 2012, or soon thereafter, the fight-back will begin (and I
say this as a marketer who loves rich consumer data!). Expect to
see battle lines drawn and the consumer finally saying no more! At
the same time, people will take their digital privacy into their
own hands - we have already seen the rise of reputation
"protectors" such as Reputation.com and Profile Defenders. If you
are looking for somewhere to invest then look no further - there
will be an explosion (Stateside if not in Europe) in the usage of
such services as people look to protect their digital identity.
12 - The Social Backlash
Many brands (no doubt pushed and cajoled by their agencies)
continue to invest heavily in their presence on Facebook and other
social networks, persuading them that "you need to be where the
people are and that means Facebook/Twitter etc".
Don't expect this to continue in 2012 - I believe there will be
a major backlash in the offing. And if there isn't, there should
be. Here's why…
- There is already much talk of "Facebook Fatigue" amongst
industry commentators - and with some justification - as a number
of studies point to a reduction in activity on the social
behemoth.
- Social commerce is still largely unproven - in terms of both
acquisition and return on investment. Will this change? In selected
instances, yes - but social media has always been, and will remain
to be, primarily about communication, not shopping.
- Social users are still proving largely resistant to brands in
social spaces (for example, 61% of UK consumers do not want to
engage with brands in their social networks, according to a recent
TNS Digital Life report). Of those that do engage, the
majority is clear that their primary motivations for following a
brand are offers and discounts. Not the engagement nirvana promised
by many is it? We should be questioning whether consumers are
listening while brands are reaching out in their droves?
- Brands simply don't have the same level of control over their
social presence that they have over their websites - the
overarching user experience on Facebook for instance still can't
touch a well designed, content rich, website. Moreover, Facebook et
al can change the rules at any time - they control the game. And
does control still matter? Of course it does, don't believe the
hype.
Despite all of this, it doesn't mean social media is a waste of
time. Done properly, it remains an incredibly powerful means of
engaging with your customer and prospect base. But the panacea it
was heralded to be a year or two ago? No - consumers are too savvy
and cynical - particularly in the West.