Track Record of Our 2014 Predictions, Part V: Ongoing Consumer Trends

Here's a look at how we called Ongoing Consumer Trends affecting us in 2014:

• The Battle for the Living Room.  Grade: B

• Cord-cutting will continue to be a top story. Grade: A

• Consumers still expect Apple to unveil a new way to watch TV, but Apple will offer, instead, the iWatch.  We nailed this one except we got the name of the Apple Watch wrong. Grade: A

• Premature deathwatch of things that are very much alive. People love to predict the death of various, usually popular items, devices or technology. Here are candidates for 2014:

o        PCs: We said PCs are not dead yet and corporate sales kept the category from seeing overall declines. Grade: A

o        Cable TV: We said, “We don’t think cable companies will disappear anytime soon because they’ve made bundling – phone/cable and Internet – so indispensable.” Grade: A 

o        Press releases: Despite social media, there’s still a place and a value to press releases. Grade: A

o        Media relations: We said it would continue to be important, and we feel it still is, despite inroads from social media. Grade: B+

·     Actual deathwatch: Things we feel are actually dying.

o  The phrase “at press time”: Grade: A

o  Paper-based holiday cards: Grade: B

o  The words “authentic” and “artisanal”: As much as we’d like these words to die, they remained strong in 2014. Grade: C-.

Tomorrow, we'll wrap things up with the last set of trends we identified for this year.