Trends to consider

From LLN

Trends to consider

Contents

This page includes notes on trends (whether trendiness or true societal trends) in general, not specific library trends (covered in various articles) or Technology trends, covered here. Notes by Walt Crawford unless otherwise marked.

Trendwatching

Trendwatching.com claims to have more than 8,000 trendspotters who "scan the globe for emerging consumer trends." The operation is all about consumers and trendiness; don't take the findings as gospel, but use them as one source for considering future possibilities for your library.

You can subscribe to a free monthly Trend Briefing. Notes below are on recent Trend Briefings.

Half a dozen trend neologisms for 2009

The 2009 Trend Briefing offers half a dozen over-the-top neologisms as a way to entice you to spend $799 for Trendwatching's 150-page 2009 Trend Report. Here are the neologisms and some quick (and slightly snarky) takes:

  1. Nichetributes: They say “Low-cost, practical tributes to the zeitgeist.” I say: an extended set of gimmicks appealing to your “niche lifestyle”—e.g., “iAnything” (gloves with metal dots on the fingertips), “social networking mobile phones” and, of course, more, more, more. We’re assured the trend is “important and recession-proof” largely because these are supposed to be practical gimmicks. (OK, there’s a clear marketing trend for 2009: Calling things you can buy, buy, buy “recession-proof” and desperately hoping that’s true.)
  2. Luxyoury: “In 2009, you define what constitutes luxury.” We’re told that luxury is based on scarcity. But good marketers should “focus on defining [luxury],” which says a lot about the idea that the individual defines luxury. Examples of the new luxury? A hotel with little “funky” rooms and shared bathrooms—but “fine wines, plush bedlinen, carefully curated art, and top-notch personal service.” What a concept: Lacking a private bathroom is suddenly luxury. (One paragraph of this description is a veritable goldmine of marketspeak and neologisms—perkonomics, premiumization, etc.)
  3. Feedback 3.0: “Think we’ve reached full transparency?” This seems to be about companies talking back on review sites—-and the example offered does not paint a pretty picture. (Someone using a pseudonym gives a truly bad review to a hotel. The hotel owner writes an even nastier response. Gotta say, the owner convinced me: I wouldn’t touch that hotel on a bet.) Non-snarky note: Minus the neologisms and market-happy nonsense, this is both a real trend and a good one: It makes sense for hotels, restaurants, etc. to be able to offer both apologies and other responses to reviews, and a fair number of sites are doing it.
  4. Econcierge: Oh, please. “Savings are the new green.” The idea’s not bad though: Firms and services that help households “go green.”
  5. Mapmania: “Why maps are the new interface.” I don’t know about all sorts of stuff coming together “in one orgasmic celebration of map-based tracking, finding, knowing and connecting” (direct quote, emphasis added, sounds a little…weird…to me), but sure, map-based stuff continues to be more important for online applications.
  6. Happy ending: What? A trend with an English name? “The silver lining of each downturn.” Somehow, even this one seems to turn into ways to sell, sell, sell.

"Off=On" (September 2008)

While in many parts of the world the new business quarter may be all about inflation and expensive oil and collapsing housing markets, the online world remains a hotbed of innovation and opportunity

That's the opening sentence for the September 2008 briefing.

Trendwatching doesn't go in much for subtlety. Here's part of the introduction:

When something previously deemed ‘emerging’ has managed to completely invade the mainstream, you know it's time to throw overboard any remaining doubts and inhibitions, and just get going to claim your shrinking piece of the pie.
Case in point: the near-total triumph of the ‘online revolution’ (1.4 billion people online, anyone?), which now has the ‘offline world’ more often than not playing second fiddle in everything from commerce to entertainment to communications to politics.

"Second fiddle" may sound a little overblown to those of us who, for example, still buy your food and cars in physical stores, but that's because some of us aren't sufficiently trendworthy.

Portions of the section headings and commentary:

  1. Online symbols turned objects - Such as a temporary art installation "inspired by QR-code patterns," which the briefing describes as "well-known digital visuals." Also Google-branded retail goods in Japan, a Pixel Couch with lots of square colors (the designer says "the pixel is the icon of our time"--have you iconized a pixel lately? have you seen an individual pixel lately?), a "Cat 5 compliant wedding set" (you'll just have to see this one for yourself).
  2. Born online - Products that "start out online-only, then find their way into the offline world." That's right--you can buy H&M outfits that first appeared as Sims2 outfits!
  3. Digital lifestyle lubricants - Lubricant? "A traditional product that incorporates functionalities and enablers to make it more compatible with the online world." Examples: Camcorders with one-button YouTube uploads (and that won't record anything longer than 10 minutes!), stuffed animals with "secret codes" to get to the toy's virtual world; solar-powered bags and more. (Including, of course, even neater ways for auto drivers to avoid concentrating on boring old offline driving.)
  4. Mirroring online behavior - A chocolatier (from the founders of Wired!) that creates "limited-run 'beta editions'" of chocolate bars.
  5. Speaking "online" - And here we get some verbiage to clarify the utter sincerity of this exercise:
    • "Remember our tips on how to apply a trend? The easiest one suggests that you babble away in the language of those consumers who are already 'living' the trend: show them you get it,* show them you know what they're excited about—this really is marketing, advertising and PR in its simplest form." [Emphasis added.]

And yes, ON=OFF, too

"Just as there’s immense value in incorporating online into everything you do if you're a predominantly offline brand, there’s also brand equity in being visible in the bricks-and-mortar world if you're 'from the web.' In fact, expect ‘online’ to enjoy being 'offline' more than ever."

Trendwatching's "three quick sub-trends":

  1. Visibility - "Reality check: many consumers still value the physical over the virtual (and...even the very wired are venturing out more, not less). So online brands want to be seen and want to be part of the real world to add visibility to their brands. Not to mention that despite the rapid growth of ecommerce, consumers still spend the majority of their budgets offline." So an online t-shirt design business now has a retail store and msnbc.com has a digital cafe. And let's not forget the print version of the German Wikipedia!
  2. Warm bodies - "The more people connect, date, befriend, network and socialize online, the more likely they are to eventually meet up in meatspace. Why? Because people actually enjoy interacting with other warm bodies." (And yes, the set of examples includes a casual-sex site.)
  3. Mobile mania - "OK, it's really happening now." You know, we're all going mobile for everything any day now: "Get ready for a generation that is (finally) always online while offline. And vice versa."

There's a set of ten ways to apply all this (shortly after we're told we'll "inevitably" end up at Kevin Kelly's thinking). Read them yourself--but here's the astonishing tenth one:

"10. Look beyond the next 6 to 12 months and dive into leading online gurus' visions. After all, even if their exact timing is sometimes off, their predictions so far have all come true." [Emphasis added.]

Except for all of those that haven't, of course.

The expectation economy (February 2008)

Here's the highlighted quote from the briefing:

The EXPECTATION ECONOMY is an economy inhabited by experienced, well-informed consumers from Canada to South Korea who have a long list of high expectations that they apply to each and every good, service and experience on offer.
Their expectations are based on years of self-training in hyperconsumption, and on the biblical flood of new-style, readily available information sources, curators and BS filters. Which all help them track down and expect not just basic standards of quality, but the 'best of the best'

Consider the long list of sites for "hyperconsumers" (how many of them have you heard of? Would they matter to your community?) and such subtrends as "consumer info as entertainment," where people--or, rather, consumers discuss the "best of the best without feeling the urgent need to actually purchase anything."

Editor's note: If you find the whole briefing appalling, you're not alone. That doesn't mean it's not worth spending a few minutes reading. You'll get a fair dose of advertising for Trendwatching.com's paid services--that is, of course, how you get "free everything."

Free love

Speaking of "free everything," that's the theme of the March 2008 Trend Briefing:

FREE LOVE: the ongoing rise of free, valuable stuff that's available to consumers online and offline. From AirAsia tickets to Wikipedia, and from diapers to music.
FREE LOVE thrives on an all-out war for consumers' ever-scarcer attention and the resulting new business models and marketing techniques, but also benefits from the ever-decreasing costs of producing physical goods, the post-scarcity dynamics of the online world (and the related avalanche of free content created by attention-hungry members of GENERATION C), the many C2C marketplaces enabling consumers to swap instead of spend, and an emerging recycling culture.
Expect FREE LOVE to become an integral if not essential part of doing business.

Editor's note: Libraries have been doing "free" for a long time--but supported by taxes or parent institutions instead of a constant barrage of ads and marketing messages. As you ride down the road in your free Prius or use your free notebook while drinking your free latte, consider the wonderfulness of this message...and in the spring of 2008, the "post-scarcity economy" should excite you all the more. By the way, the photo on the briefing front page may not be safe for those with weak stomachs.

"Six important forces" from Ross Dawson

Dawson is a self-identified Very Big Deal, “globally recognized as a leading keynote speaker and authority on business strategy.” These six “forces” (his trends, my commentary except for quoted material) appear in a December 16, 2008 post at Trends in the living networks

  1. Constant partial attention: People “consuming 20 hours or more of media a day.” “Over two-thirds of people watch TV while reading.” “To be successful, we need to thrive on constant interruption.” [Emphasis added.] So CPA is essential to succeed (and presumably leads to the best-quality thoughts and products)? Apparently, if you believe Dawson. (A commenter pushed back, noting “multitasking has proven to be less efficient than concentrating on one task at a time”—and Dawson says “it’s inevitable that our attention will fragment” and calls those of us able to focus “meditators.” I don’t see the difference between CPA and multitasking.)
  2. Half of us expose ourselves; the other half watches. Dawson really believes “half of us” will be “sending video updates of our every move” in 2009, and that people “living their lives online” will be the norm. Oh, and those of us who haven’t become exhibitionists will become voyeurs. I feel safe in saying this one is nonsense, at least at those levels. (Apparently Twitter’s rapid growth in 2008 is the basis for all this. Anyone else notice a Twitter backlash? If so, let me know.)
  3. Gen Y wakes up to Gen Z: Dawson defines Gen Y as those born in 1979-1990 (too bad—that won’t make it the largest generation ever, at least not in the U.S.) He also defines it as the “me generation,” whereas “Gen Z” (people no more than 19 at this point) is “sophisticated and with a social conscience.” I think it’s all gen-gen and increasingly divisive nonsense.
  4. Outsourcing for the masses: We’ll be using “assistants in India or Hungary to make travel bookings, set up a personal website, or design a flyer for the school fete.” He does mean we-—not companies but individuals in America and Australia. Dunno about you, but there’s a semi-retired 63-year-old guy in Mountain View who does my travel bookings (other than cruises), and would do so even without paying attention to real-world budgeting. Is anybody really going to pay for and cope with issues involved in passing such trivial stuff off to India and Hungary?
  5. Companies become social: “In 2009, companies will truly embrace social networks, blogs, and other Web 2.0 tools…” Somehow Dawson believes that corporate Facebook profiles and blogs will lead to “a transformation of how we work.”
  6. Media industry shatters: Ah, but “journalists themselves will prosper.” Really? Yes, it’s probably true that some media companies will go under (since that’s always happening). It’s still also true that most local newspapers still earn healthy profits. How do journalists make money without salaried outlets? Blogs? Really?

Top ten IT issues in higher ed: EDUCAUSE 2008 survey results

by Leslie Dillon from Leader's Digest May 2008

From the press release:

The 2008 survey gathered responses from 32 percent (589) of the 1,845 primary representatives of EDUCAUSE member institutions, representing public and private, and associate through doctorate-granting institutions of all sizes.

Three findings merit special mention:

  1. Since 2003, the top three issues in terms of strategic importance to the institution have been, in various rankings, Administrative/ERP Information Systems, Funding IT, and Security. Funding IT was ranked number one for three straight years, 2003–2005, until 2006 when Security and Identity Management (a single issue then) emerged as number one. In 2007, Funding IT moved back into the top spot, with Security as number two. This year, Security is number one, Administrative/ERP Information Systems is number two and Funding IT has dropped to number three.
  2. Change Management appears in the top ten list for the first time. This issue has two dimensions, one in the larger sense of fostering culture change and the other in the sense of developing a process for handling IT changes that are made on a regular basis (e.g., patches, upgrades, replacements) and that can be very disruptive if there is no change management process in place.
  3. Staffing/HR Management/Training emerges among issues of strategic importance for the first time since 2001. There is a renewed awareness among CIOs of the challenges of recruiting, remunerating, and retaining a skilled IT staff.

The 2008 Current Issues website offers the following resources:

  • Recommended readings for each of the top-ten issues
  • Links to EDUCAUSE Connect resources for each of the top-ten issues
  • Downloadable PowerPoint presentation on the 2008 Current Issues Survey and multiyear trends
  • HTML and PDF links to the EDUCAUSE Review and EQ articles
  • Tables with detailed demographic survey results

(EDUCAUSE, press release, May 7, 2008 via OCLC Abstracts, May 12, 2008.)

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