Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Trends provide powerful answers to the huge question you’re wrestling with: ‘what will my customers want next?'

And if we have one secret, it’s the counter-intuitive insight at the heart of our trend methodology. To anticipate what your customers will want next, don’t simply ask them (faster horses anyone? ;). Don’t feel you have to study them obsessively (who has the time or money to do that these days anyway?). And don’t just crunch their data (no matter how ‘big’ your data, it’s best used for validation and optimization rather than to inspire truly disruptive leaps). Instead, look at the innovations – new products, services, campaigns and more – that consumers are lavishing attention on now.

Yes, that’s right. The key to actionable foresight lies in looking at the overwhelming onslaught of innovations that now whiz past our eyes and across our screens every day....

In the age of hyper-digital transformation, nine additional, incremental digital technologies join the eight from the previous age. These nine start with a relatively low level of importance today but increase by an average of 145% among digital leaders by the year 2020. These nine additional digital technologies reach the threshold of having an “important to very important” business impact among at least one-fourth of digital leaders:

Telepresence (Skype, Google Hangouts, etc.) (49%)

Digital currency (49%)

Artificial intelligence (46%)

Robotic process automation (software) (41%)

Sharing economy platforms like Uber (39%)

Nanotechnologies (35%)

Robots (hardware) (33%

Telematics (29%r)

Wearables (28%)

When combined, these seventeen digital technologies increase their business impact among digital leaders by an average of 112% between 2016 and 2020. The predicted business impact of these digital technologies mean that the business and IT organizations you operate today will need to look very different by 2020 in order to keep up and compete successfully....

Below, you’ll find a collection of innovations which are (re)defining customer expectations. These innovations – and the 5 big consumer trends they represent – show you glimpses of what your customers will want next.Understanding these trends will help you stay ahead of accelerating expectations, and lead you to actionable innovation opportunities.

Readers who are serious about understanding the direction of consumerism across multiple dimensions will have already spotted that these trends don’t sit in splendid isolation. They are a handful of near-future fragments of the Bigger Picture – more on that below.

But each one is also a killer opportunity to take to your team right now.So: read, think, debate. Then get going with building brands that matter, products that delight and campaigns people can't stop talking about!...