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

Today's look at our track record will set the stage for us to announce our trends for 2015. In the meantime here's the final set:

General news stories

• More interest in workplace diversity. Unfortunately, this topic did not generate as much ink as we expected. Grade: C

• Growing Hispanic influence. Except in terms of reforming our immigration policies, this did not generate as much as attention as we had expected. Grade: C

• Real estate market. This generate some attention but not as much as we expected. Grade: B

• The new Thanksgiving tradition is shopping on Thanksgiving.  As much as we don't like it, this was definitely a thing in 2014. Grade: A

• Stock market and the biotech bubble. While we didn't see much about a stock market bubble, we did see more about a biotech bubble that didn't arrive. Yet. Grade: B-

Ongoing stories we’ll see covered in the media. Each year we provide a list of stories the media will continue to cover, which include:

• Obamacare and midterm elections will be the never-ending stories in 2014.  'Nuff said, really. Grade: A

• Deficits, spending cuts, taxes, etc.: This wasn't a dominant story line but it popped up fairly often. Grade: B

• Cybercrime and cyberwarfare: Still important.  Grade: A

• Privacy and security will continue to be issues that only experts care about. Consumers are generally ok with posting information about themselves to generate more followers, likes or subscribers or to get coupons or discounts. Grade: B+

• Bitcoin and cashless payments will continue to generate interest. BitCoin is not yet broadly used by consumers. But the advent of Apple Pay, its e-wallet app, now available on any Apple devise using iOS8.1, it could be bigger in 2015. It did generate a lot of coverage at the start of the year. Grade: A

• Star Wars: Not something our clients could leverage -- B2B enterprise software is not often discussed in that galaxy far, far away -- but there's huge interest, even a 80-second trailer is endlessly analyzed for clues. Grade: A

Ongoing Tech Trends we expect to continue:

• The battle of tablets: Grade: A-

• Mobile everything will be important, including mobile search and mobile recommendations. Grade: A

• Crowdsourcing will continue to be a source of investors and a marketing boost. But that will primarily be for consumer-oriented products, not B2B technology. Grade: A

• Virtual startups in otherwise unlikely fields. Grade: B+

• 3D printers are still not yet ready for prime time. Grade: B+

• Big data: Grade: A

• Consumerization of enterprise apps: Grade: A

• Second screens: Grade: B+

• Cognitive and context computing:  A bit early on this. Grade: B

Overall, we did pretty well this year. If you have questions about these grades and how we settled on them, please let us know. We tried to be fair and accurate. 

In the meantime, get ready for our 2015 trends!

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.

Track Record of Our 2014 Predictions, Part IV: Technology Trends

Here's how we did based on the predictions we made about Technology Trends:

• Cloud computing will still be the big tech trend. A no brainer but still true. Grade: A

• 2014 is the year people experience Tech Fatigue. We didn’t see a lot of stories about this but we feel it’s somewhat true based even on the reaction to the unveiling of new versions of smartphones. Because those smartphones are only incrementally better – A better camera sensor, big deal – people are disappointed. Grade: B

• Cars and clothes will increasingly include design features for smartphones. Have definitely seen this in clothing but has not hit yet with cars. But it will. Grade: B+

• Upgrading the retail experience. This was true but the bigger story seems to be same-day delivery of online purchases, whether by messengers in big cities or by drones in the future. Grade: B+

• Drone deliveries will not take place in 2014. We’re right but same-day deliveries became a big deal in terms of buzz. Grade B+

• The continuing battle among huge companies. Google v. Apple v. Samsung v. Microsoft, Oracle v. Everyone Else. Again, continuing a trend from prior years. Grade: A

• Wearable technology is still ahead of the curve but will generate some coverage as part of the Internet of Things. Google Glass fell off the cliff relatively early in 2014 but the Apple Watch (coming in 2015) validated the category, as did fitness trackers. Grade: B+

How did we do with Consumer Trends? Find out tomorrow.

Track Record of Our 2014 Predictions, Part III: Marketing Trends

Here's our look at Marketing Trends:

• Thought leadership will continue to be important to B2B companies. This is going to be true for at least several years to come. Grade: A 

• Sales and marketing need to be more integrated. Perhaps this seems like a no-brainer but we’ve seen this doesn’t happen enough. Sales and marketing need to work together on direct marketing, web content, marketing automation, advertising, social marketing and PR to generate qualified leads and move them through the sales pipeline. Grade: A 

• Social media tracking services will hit it big in 2014. More measurement We probably overstated this. They’re important but there are too many different solutions measuring too many different variables. And even when they’re measuring the same variables, the algorithms generate different results that it’s hard to know what’s accurate. Grade: B

• CES is no longer the top tech convention. This is continuing a downward trend. Grade: A

• PR Spam will still be an issue. Now there’s concern that too much social media content is just repurposed press releases. We believe that’s more true than we’d like. Grade. B+

Tomorrow, we'll look at how we did based on the technology trends we predicted. 

Track Record of Our 2014 Predictions, Part II: Media & Social Media Trends

The first set of trends we'll review are: Media & Social Media Trends

• The media business has not stabilized.  Unfortunately we got this right. The New York Times just completed a buyout program of 100 newsroom employees that saw some prominent reporters like Stuart Elliott, a leading advertising columnist, and Bill Carter, author of several best sellers about the TV industry, leave the Grey Lady. Yet the Times claims that it still has approximately the same number of newsroom employees – just different mix of skills. Grade: A

• Journalists continue to use social media to announce and report – and broadcast reporters often recap the mood on Twitter. Reporting on what celebrities are Tweeting about a news incident is not, by our definition, news but we’re seeing a lot of that on broadcast news, even online – when, if I want to see what at celeb is Tweeting, I can go right to that celeb’s Twitter ID. Grade: A

• Traditional media will be burned in 2014 by jumping on a social media trending topic. This feels true even though we can’t point to a specific episode. Grade: B

• Native advertising will be big in 2014. Clickbait or Native Advertising is a big deal in 2014. A lot of people don’t seem to like it but it seems like it’s here to stay for the near future. Grade: A

• Marketing via flash mobs will seem so 2009. We were right about this.  Grade: A

• Instagram and Pinterest will remain important sources for recommendations and inspiration.

o  Neither site was dethroned in 2014 but Tinder may have captured the prize for generating the most buzz in 2014. Grade: A because we were right about the importance of Instagram and Pinterest as well as a growing awareness that there is a disparity between what people post and the lives we actually live, and that marketers need to make sure they develop easy-to-capture-and-share content, particularly with regard to video and still photography.

Stay tuned for a report on Marketing Trends, tomorrow.

Track Record of Our 2014 Predictions, Part I

For more than a dozen years, Birnbach Communicates has compiled an annual list of media trends for its clients, who operate across a range of industries, including technology, financial software and services, unified communications, storage, security, biotech, healthcare, clean tech, senior services, consumer, social networking, nonprofit and education sectors.

There were a lot of big stories, many of them international and tragic in scope, in 2014 that we did not predict including: Malaysian Airlines Flight 370; the Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa and patients in the U.S.; Ferguson, the police killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, protests and the racial divide; domestic violence, Ray Rice and the NFL; ISIS, the beheading of kidnapped Americans and the re-engaging by the U.S. in Iraq and Syria; the kidnapping of Israeli teens that sparked fighting in Gaza; the Crimean crisis; the heroin epidemic; e-cigs and vape; the deaths of Robin Williams and Joan Rivers; the fall of Bill Cosby and the senate report on torture. There were also a lot of positive news we didn’t predict including: the Noble Peace Prize to Malala Yousafzai; the Ice Bucket Challenge and ALS; LeBron James returning to Cleveland; the identification of King Richard III’s remains; the Rosetta Mission landing on a comet; the amazing cultural phenomenon of “Frozen”; and the worldwide, non-ecumenical appeal of Pope Francis (could he be Time Magazine’s first consecutive person of the year?).

And some business stories we didn't expect, such as the competition between Uber and Lyft, along with Uber's probably over-the-line aggressiveness or the rise of Snapchat supplanting Facebook (which, in a kiss of death for teens, is more popular with middle-aged parents than with their kids).

The trends and topics we identify help the agency work with its clients to engage more effectively with reporters, producers, bloggers and other influencers. We also look at the way topics are being covered by media and in social media, and at how those stories are told. We continue to see that the way stories can and should be told is shifting.

 
What follows over the next few posts is our annual report card of how we did with our 2014 predictions.

Check back on Monday, to see how we did.

Wall St. Journal & Boston Globe Validate Biotech Bubble Trend

The validation is coming in fast and furious regarding our biotech bubble prediction. We said:

Stock market and the biotech bubble. 2014 will be marked by concerns about the health of the stock market. Of the different sectors, rising biotech shares will generate growing concern of a biotech bubble. That concern will affect all parts of the industry, especially startups as VCs start getting nervous about their portfolios. Implications: There’s not much publicly held companies can do – except, as a Forbes reporter once told us, have you company “do better…and boost its share price.” We just think it’s important to understand how editors allocate their resources (reporters’ time and the outlets’ news hole).

The Wall St. Journal validated that with an article, "Hot New Biotech Knows Roller-Coaster Feeling" and the Boston Globe validated it with "After boom, 2014 repeat for biotech is uncertain."

We know that talking about bubbles can take on a certain air on inevitability, becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. We hope we're wrong in this case.

More Validation from NY Times about Privacy and Security

"Stop Asking Me for My Email Address" and "Tech Security Upstarts Enter Fray" by Nicole Perlroth (@nicoleperlroth) at the New York Times are just two more examples of coverage that validate our predictions about ongoing interest in privacy and online security. 

Apparently the security market for software itself will generate $67 billion.

These are two themes that will continue to generate coverage over the rest of the decade. As self-driving cars (SDC) get ready for prime time (is it time to retire that phrase? -- probably), expect privacy and security to focus on new issues related to cars, like in this recent Times article: "The Next Data Privacy Battle May Be Waged Inside Your Car." There will be privacy reporters concerned about the ability to track other people's cars -- whether you're joining them at an event and want to know where it is or when they're getting their or if you're stalking them -- and security reporters concerned about the ability to hack and take over someone else's car. 

Bonus Prediction for 2014: Olympic Coverage

We left out one topic in our list of general news stories in 2014. It's the 2014 Sochi Olympics, which run from Feb. 6th through Feb. 23rd.

There will, of course, be a lot of coverage building up to the Olympics, including stories about somewhat obscure sports like curling (see "Curling: How Hard Can It Be?" in the Wall St. Journal). There will also be a lot of ads featuring Olympic athletes (including from employers showing how great they are to work for -- especially if you're an Olympic athlete) or Olympic-themed story lines. After all, the Olympics aren't just about world-class athletics and peaceful competition among countries. The games are also a world-class marketing opportunity.

We can also expect a lot of coverage of Russia, including its anti-gay laws, the security protecting the Olympic village, and the state of Russia today, its economy, its freedoms, and more about Vladimir Putin.

We probably have no excuse for omitting the Olympics -- except that we expect coverage to end on Feb. 24th.

Let us know if you think we missed anything else.

Wall St. Journal Validates Our Privacy Predictions

As part of our measurement process in looking at our annual forecast, we keep track of how we do -- did we get things right? Did we miss things?

As part of the ongoing news stories we think will generate coverage in 2014, we picked privacy along with cybercrime. The ever-increasing numbers of Target customers affected by the hackers -- well, that unfortunately validates the cybercrime story angle.

But the Wall St. Journal, which closely following the privacy story over the past two years, continues to think it important to understand the crossroads between marketing and privacy. The latest article validates our privacy prediction. Check out "What Secrets Your Phone Is Sharing About You; Businesses Use Sensors to Track Customers, Build Shopper Profiles."

So far, looks like we're doing well in terms of our forecast. Of course, we did not identify a scandal involving the Christie Administration and traffic shutdown on the George Washington Bridge so we do miss some big stories.

Let us know what you think about privacy, cybercrime or any other trend.

Bitcoin Already a Hot Topic in 2014 -- Validates Another Prediction

In our annual trends and predictions, we identified Bitcoin as being a hot, ongoing topic in 2014.  We said:

Bitcoin and cashless payments will continue to generate interest. We’ve seen a rise in interest in bitcoins, and it appears bitcoins may be on the edge of going mainstream. We don’t think that will happen in 2014 but we do think the topic will get discussed.

But more retailers are evaluating whether or not to accept Bitcoins for payment, and already there's been a lot of coverage about bitcoins: such as:

• Yahoo Tech: "Okay, Seriously: What The Heck Is Bitcoin, And Why Do So Many People Prefer It To Dollars And Cents?"
• Bloomberg BusinessWeek: "Bitcoin Woos Washington to Ensure Lawmakers Don’t Kill Industry"
• Forbes: "Taxing Bitcoin: IRS Review Has Big Implications For Investors In Virtual Currency"
•  USA Today: "Ask Matt: Should I invest in Bitcoin?"

And those are just within two hours of when I was writing this post.

We still don't think most consumers will pay with Bitcoins in 2014 but more retailers will announce they accept it for payment in 2014 -- as a way to highlight their being on the cutting-edge.

Meanwhile, we also saw another story prediction get validation. In our list of ongoing tech trends we identified cognitive computing, led by IBM Watson, to score coverage. Here's a recent Wall St. Journal article: "IBM Struggles to Turn Watson Computer Into Big Business;Revenue Is Far From Company's Ambitious Targets."

New York Times

In our annual look at general news stories that will get covered by the media, we identified two story-angle predictions that have already been validated:

1. More interest in workplace diversity. Spurred by SNL's hiring of two black women comedians (at press time SNL had not hired any black comic/actress this season but we expect they will hire two black actresses), we think there will more attention paid to diversity in TV shows and movies, and that this could lead to a larger discussion about diversity in the non-celebrity-filled workplace. 
2. Growing Hispanic influence. This is a demographics story, one that will get mentioned a lot in the run up to the midterm elections, especially if immigration reform gets discussed.

The first prediction was validated by articles like "‘S.N.L.’ Hires Black Female Cast Member" when SNL hireed Sasheer Zamata, "a young sketch comedian who has been performing in the New York area for the last four years," according to the Times. We expect more coverage when Zamata makes her debut. We continue to think SNL will hire a second Black comedienne. Further, we think the media will continue to ask questions about on-screen diversity. 

Also, earlier this week, the Times reported on a "New Agency, a Spinoff, Will Aim Its Message at a Hispanic Audience." We continue to expect to hear more about the importance of Hispanics as coverage of the midterm elections cranks up.

Please let us know if you disagree with any of our predictions for 2014 or if we missed something important.

CES and Wall St. Journal Validates Our Prediction about the Internet of Things

In our annual set of predictions, we said that the Internet of Things -- Internet-connected devices -- will get attention in 2014. Check out our prediction here.

If there's a theme for this year's CES, it seems to be the Internet of Things. Check out this Wall St. Journal article: 'Internet of Things' in Reach; Companies Rush Into Devices Like Smart Door Locks, Appliances, but Limitations Exist and Smartwatches Pop Up All Over CES; Electronics Show Has New or Updated Devices From Pebble, Kreyos, Archos and Samsung.

Also the Journal validated our prediction about cybercrime: "Companies on Guard for New Legal Pitfalls;Cybercrime, Labor Rules, Financial Penalties Add to General Counsels' Concerns."