Track Report 2020: How Accurately Did We Predict Key Trends for 2020, Part 3

Here is our final list of ongoing trends that we predicted would be significant in 2020. (Part one is available here and part two here.)There's not as much description of the trends because we think, since they're ongoing, they need no introduction. Our point in highlighting them is that some trends don't immediately fade away. Obviously some trends disappear. But just because a trend went mainstream one year does not mean it goes away the next. 

These ongoing trends can continue to be relevant in subsequent years. That's why we always identify ongoing trends, and why we think it's worthwhile to look at which ones made a difference.

 Here are grades for 21 ongoing trends.

1.  Robocalls won’t go away. Grade A.

2.  More home exercise equipment will offer at-home streaming classes. We didn’t anticipate the huge growth in the sector but we were right about at-home streaming classes. Grade: A.

3.  News fatigue. Even reporters complained of being overwhelmed by too much news. Grade: A.

4.  Short news cycles. In Oct. alone, there was so much news that there wasn’t enough time to process everything before being overwhelmed by some other news item. That happened all year. Grade: A.

5.  Fake news and disinformation will continue, probably increase in 2020. We shouldn’t have hedged our bet by including the word “probably.” Grade: A.

6.  The credibility of news media is under attack. This remains a problem for marketers. And also for the hope of bringing people together to heal our country. Grade: A.

7.  Social media will continue to undergo scrutiny and it won’t look good. We expect more scrutiny in 2021. Grade: A.

8.  Cord-cutting will continue to attract the media's attention. Not sure it did. Grade: C-.

9.  Most tech reporters at newspapers will continue to focus on FAANG: Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google. They also discussed Zoom and accessories to help you work from home. Grade: B+.

10. Elon Musk and Tesla will continue to attract undue amount of media attention. Probably true. Grade: B.

11. Driverless cars still won't be ready. True. Grade: A.

12. Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality still won’t be everywhere. But the pandemic may accelerate adoption. Grade: B.

13. Blockchain and bitcoin will continue to get media coverage but most consumers still won't have much contact with bitcoin and won't understand how Blockchain affects them. Probably true. Grade: B.

14. Corporate boycotts & consumer boycotts will continue. Corporate boycotts are when companies pull their ads from specific shows, hosts or networks to protest something said or done. This did happen in 2020. Grade: B.

15. 3-D content and 3-D printers will still not be as popular as they are cool. True. Grade: A.

16. Student debt and healthcare will continue to be big issues. Student debt did not get the attention we expected while healthcare was significant. Grade: B.

17. Climate change will be an issue. This got attention, in the wake of fire storms and other natural disasters. Grade: B.

18. Drug pricing will continue to get a lot of attention. Also, we all learned about the cost to develop and manufacture COVID-19 vaccines. Grade: B+.

19. STEM will continue to be important. But there didn’t seem to be as much media coverage of this. Grade: C.

20. More small colleges will merge or close. We expect more of that in 2021. Grade: B.

21. The future continues to look cloudy – as in cloud computing. Cloud computing was a big help during the pandemic. Grade: A.

We did pretty well with this set of predictions. We think many of these trends will continue to have impact in 2021. 

Let us know what you think. We are preparing our trends and predictions for 2021 and will issue them in early November. 

20 Ongoing Trends That Will Continue in 2020

Each year we identify a set of ongoing trends that have a longer shelf life and will impact the following year.

Here are the ones we think significant for 2020. In some cases, the trends below will have a paragraph of explanation and in other cases, just a headline is enough.

1.   News fatigue. We typically stay away from making predictions about politics but as the election gets closer, Americans are likely to feel overwhelmed by hourly news notifications on their phones and Fitbit or Apple Watches -- the term we've seen is "ringxiety" -- to the extent that they will shut down and look for content that will distract them. There will also be a contingent who will be more motivated to seek out updates but we haven't identified a clever term for them. We don't think there will podcast fatigue in 2020 but that could come, since the glut of podcasts, no matter how compelling, does not yet seem to be abating.

2.  Short news cycles. In a recap of news from 2019, an article mentioned the longest government shut down that ended Feb. 2019. But so much happened in 2019, that a bunch of us in the office had forgotten about the shutdown. Shorter news cycles mean that a lot of news that would have once been significant and memorable gets forgotten as we get hit by more recent news.  

3.  "News deserts" will continue to grow as more news outlets cut back the amount of news they produce, lay off staffs, reduce the number of days they print, etc. News deserts were once limited to rural communities but now large cities are feeling the loss of some outlets.

4.   Fake news and disinformation will continue, probably increase in 2020.

5.  The credibility of news media is under attack. For marketers, reaching customers while they are overwhelmed by disinformation/fraud and when the media is not seen as credible (whether on the right or left), will become harder and more complicated. This is not a political stance. The point is that marketers are going to need to find more effective ways to reach customers at a time of fragmentation and low trust.

6.   Social media will continue to undergo scrutiny and it won’t look good. 

7.   Cord-cutting will continue to attract the media's attention. With so many streaming services, cord cutting won't be cheap but will be a bit easier due to TVs that make it easier -- but not yet seamless -- to binge on the shows you want, regardless of which streaming services you subscribe to.

8.  Most tech reporters at newspapers will continue to focus on FAANG: Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google.

9.   Elon Musk and Tesla will continue to attract undue amount of media attention. 

10. Driverless cars still won't be ready. 

11.  Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality still won’t be everywhere.

12. Blockchain and bitcoin will continue to get media coverage but most consumers still won't have much contact with bitcoin and won't understand how Blockchain affects them.

13. Corporate boycotts & consumer boycotts will continue. Corporate boycotts are when companies pull their ads from specific shows, hosts or networks to protest something said or done. 

14. 3-D content and 3-D printers will still not be as popular as they are cool.

15. Student debt and healthcare will continue to be big issues.

16. Climate change will be an issue. Especially in the wake of the wild fires in Australia and elsewhere.

17. Drug pricing will continue to get a lot of attention. 

18. STEM will continue to be important. 

19. More small colleges will merge or close. Nearly 20 small private colleges in New England have shut down in the past five years, and we expect more as education goals evolve due to declining enrollment and resulting budget problems. There’s also more competition for better-known colleges. Expect more colleges to emphasize career readiness. (Probably because the cost is so high, it’s hard to justify pursuing fields that don’t lead to a career.

20. The future continues to look cloudy – as in cloud computing.

There certainly are more ongoing trends. Let us know us know if you think we left out anything significant. If you want more detail about some of the trends for which we did not provide detail here, check out our blog, where have mentioned some of these quite a lot.

Track Record: How We Scored on Ongoing Trends

We identified 18 ongoing trends for 2018, and we think we did well with regard to most of them. 

1. The news cycle will continue to speed up. People are experiencing news fatigue because so much is happening daily. (By contrast, there were only a few stories — like the rescue of the Thai soccer team — that had the staying power to dominate the news cycle over a period of days. Otherwise, most stories, even some that previously would have dominated for a week or two disappeared, often without having much impact in 2018. This will continue in 2019. Grade: A+.
2. 2018 will be tough for traditional and online media. Unfortunately, true. Grade: A+.
3. Fake news won’t fade in 2018. Unfortunately, true. Grade: A+.
4. Cord cutting will continue but still won't save money: Netflix dominated news coverage and more media companies are offering streaming services but we did see an uptick in coverage that cord cutting is complicated and expensive. Grade. A.
5. Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality still won’t be everywhere. Both VR and AR are making progress but neither is there yet. Grade: A.
6. IoT will continue to be victim to cyberattacks. This did not get as much attention as we expected but that may be because IoT and Smart Homes have not been broadly adopted yet. Grade: C.
7. The future is still looking cloudy. This may be the one tech trend that has yet to experience a backlash. Grade: A.
8. Driverless cars attract significant coverage. Got lots of coverage in 2018. We think it’s going to take longer than most people think for driverless cars to get wide approval. We also said we think electric cars will generate more media coverage. Tesla certainly got tons of coverage in 2018, not all of it positive. Grade: B+.
9. There's never enough cybersecurity/privacy. Unfortunately, true. Grade: A+.
10. NFL ratings will continue to decline. We were right for the 2017-2018 season, because overall, ratings were soft. The 2018-2019 season seems to be rebounding (which we realize is a basketball term). Grade: B-.
11. Corporate boycotts & consumer boycotts will continue. We saw some high profile boycotts from brands that pulled their advertising from controversial hosts. This will continue in 2019. Grade: B+.
12. Drug pricing will continue to get a lot of attention. And we said, “But there won’t be an easy solution so don’t expect much except outrage.” Grade: A.
13. Wearable tech will still not be as mainstream as people in the industry were hoping. True, which is why we did not see much media coverage about wearable in 2018. We still believe wearable is making progress but 2018 was not its year for media coverage. Grade: B.
14. STEM will continue to be important. STEM is important but isn’t getting the media coverage it used to generate. Grade: C+.
15. 3-D content, 3-D TV and 3-D printers will still not be as popular as they are cool. Correct (we still think). Grade: A.
16. Artisanal will still be a hot concept. True as far as we can tell but that doesn’t translate into media coverage. Grade: C.
17. e-Wallets still will gain traction in 2018 but mostly for Millennials as opposed to their parents. True as far as we can tell but that doesn’t translate into media coverage. Grade: C.
18. Content management remains king.  True as far as we can tell but that doesn’t translate into media coverage. Grade: C.

Let us know if you agree or disagree with our grading or if we missed an ongoing trend in 2018.

Track Record for Predictions for 2013, Part III

Here's Part III of our report card:

• The three most important aspects of the future of tech in 2013: mobile, mobile, mobile.  We may have overstated things when we said to look for the rise of a new CMO – not chief marketing officer but chief mobility officers – but mobile continues to be important. Grade: A-.
• Forecast: cloud is everywhere. From predicting that more companies will rely on the cloud for access to proprietary information in 2013 (a notion that would have been inconceivable just a few years earlier) to expecting a few outages this year but that they won't have much impact on the cloud's momentum, we nailed this one. Grade: A.
• Bring Your Own Device to the office (BYOD) will be go mainstream. Our main prediction was that BOYD would be so mainstream that that “the media will be able to refer to it without having to spell it out.” And that turned true. Grade: A.
• Mobile search: Still important but we probably overstated it in terms of media coverage, particularly about mobile search firms competing with Google. Grade: B.
• Jobs, unemployment, and recruiting and the need for specially-trained employees for specific industries will be a big story. The Boston Globe validated this with a story in April "Demand rockets for visas to bring in foreign workers." There were other articles, too. Grade: B+.
• STEM will continue to be a push by businesses. Coverage about STEM continued in 2013, including recent editorials in the New York Times about the need to attract more girls into STEM. Grade: A.
• App burnout: This continues to generate some coverage but mostly in the form of concerns about being over-connected. Grade: C+.
• Robotics will generate buzz. We said to expect that advances in robotics will generate coverage in even the more staid business publications (beyond Wired and Fast Company).  We saw some coverage in the New York Times. Grade: B+.
• Biotech consolidation. Mostly there was concern about a possible bubble among publicly held biotechs but that’s not the same thing as consolidation (even though that could be the side effects of a bursting bubble). Grade: C-. 
• Regulatory changes will continue to impact financial services firms. We said this would be an important story that might not get a lot of attention because “the work involved is so technical.”  We were right about that.  Grade: B.

We'll post Part IV tomorrow. Also check out Part I and Part II.

Birnbach Communications' Top Predictions for 2013, Part V

Today, we'll look at some tech trends:

·         Jobs, unemployment, and recruiting and the need for specially-trained employees for specific industries will be a big story. There will be a lot of coverage on the impact of ObamaCare, regulations, taxes, and spending cuts on job creation and job growth -- with prescriptive op-ed articles in the New York Times taking drastically opposing perspectives from those appearing in the Wall St. Journal. Expect that immigration reform, particularly H1B visas needed by skilled foreign employees to work in the U.S., will also get a lot of coverage. Interestingly, while unemployment figures remain higher than either party would like, high tech and biotech companies are having difficulty finding qualified job candidates to fill open job -- making H1B visas an important issue. Expect that some to make the argument that the way to solve the job creation issue is a matter of addressing priorities within our education system, such as our lack of science and math teachers, which decreases the number of students interested in science and math. (However, in our polarized environment, expect opposition to spending more on education and job training.)

·         STEM will continue to be a push by businesses. Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) probably won't generate a lot of media attention but we think it will continue to an important trend. More schools are focused on STEM projects (to the extent that few media articles actually feel the need to spell out what the acronym stands for), and more far-thinking businesses in related fields are realizing they need to support STEM projects in order to nurture future employees. FIRST, a robotics competition founded by inventor Dean Kamen, is flourishing because its LEGO-based robotics competition for elementary students is popular while its robotics competition for high school students draw increased support from businesses, executives who agree to mentor, etc. (Disclosure: we have done project work for FIRST.) STEM may not generate much coverage in 2013 but we still think it is an important trend.

·         App burnout: There are probably a million apps now on iTunes, Android Market, Google Apps Marketplace, Windows Phone Apps Store, but most of us use only a fraction of the apps we downloaded. Just because there’s an app for that, doesn’t mean people actually use the app after downloading it. One implication is that it will start becoming difficult to get potential users to download new apps.  We expect more coverage of this trend – way more apps than users – discussing the implications for app developers and the smartphone environment.   

·         Robotics will generate buzz. We're not at a point of having humanized (if fussy) droids like C3P0 but we expect that advances in robotics to generate some coverage in even the more staid business publications (beyond Wired and Fast Company).

Let us know if you agree or disagree. Check back tomorrow for additional predictions or click here for Part I, Part II, Part III or Part IV.