Final Recap of Our Predictions for 2017

As part of our predictions for 2017, we also looked at some ongoing trends from prior years that we thought would continue into 2017. Here's our list and how we did.

Ongoing trends:

1.      NFL ratings will continue to decline. Whether it’s overexposure or kneeling, we got this right. Grade: A

2.      Drug pricing will get a lot of attention. We got this right, too. Grade: A

3.      Wearable tech will still not be as mainstream as people in the industry were hoping. Fitness trackers aside, this was true. Grade: A

4.      Progress to a driverless-car future will slow down. We thought the problem would be a combination of needing to solve some technical issues as well as liability issues but we were wrong. Seems driverless-cars are moving forward quickly. Grade: D (because liability issues have not been resolved)

5.      3D printers will continue to proliferate in schools but remain unnecessary in the home. Still right about that. Grade: A

6.      Cord cutting will be expensive and complicated. There continue to be more streaming services but add up Internet access and lots of $10 monthly fees from many different providers (Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, CBS, etc.) and it will quickly add up to be equal to your regular cable bill and vastly more complicated to juggle from one service to another. Grade: A

7.      eBook sales will continue to plateau while traditional book sales increase slightly. Actually, eBook sales declined nearly 20%, according to CNN. So we got part of it wrong – but printed books increased. Grade: A

8.      e-Wallets still won’t be as widely adopted as some were projecting. We said, “they will go mainstream but not in 2017 or 2018” and we’re probably right but we’re seeing more retail terminals taking wireless payment methods even if most purchases we’ve seen are conducted with traditional credit cards. So, while not everyone has transferred all wallet items into e-Wallets, certainly it’s a growing trend that’s alive and thriving. But could somebody please, please tell school photographers that we haven’t needed 1x4 wallet-size photos of our kids, much less eight 1x4s, in at least a decade. We have all the photos we need on our phones, thank you very much. Not even grandparents want them. Grade: C+ 

You can check out our other recap here and the first five here.

Look for our predictions for 2018 before Christmas.

TrendReport 2017: Additional trends to expect

Each year we post our annual list of trends and predictions, as we did in Dec. 2016. We only posted our top five trends but, as usual, we actually identified many more. We recently added a new one about boycotts, with the twist being the boycotts were conducted by big brands not by consumers against those brands.

But each year, we typically identify more than a dozen trends, and we felt we should post the rest of these here (actually, we meant to post them a couple of weeks ago but have been busy).

Here are the rest of the trends we think will have an impact in 2017.

1.    2017 will be a tough year for traditional media. Financial sustainability used to be print media’s primary challenge. Not anymore. While still an issue, it has been replaced by the ascent of fake news, which has attacked traditional media’s most important value: credibility. In the last three months of the campaign, according to BuzzFeed’s Craig Silverman, fake news stories outperformed and were shared more frequently than real news. Publishers need to figure out how to re-establish their own credibility, make facts relevant and attract readers (and revenue) who may or may not care about whether news is fake or real. We expect to see declining circulations and revenues at real news organizations, followed by more layoffs and smaller papers.

2.    Social media addiction becomes recognized as a thing. It’s not just kids who can’t put down their devices. It’s everyone. We expect more stories (spread on social media) about how to break the social media/device addiction. Here’s the problem: You can’t live without your smartphone: You don’t know anyone’s phone number without it. You can’t text them without it. Meanwhile look at all you can do with it: pay for things, shop for things, turn on and off devices in your home, much less use it to not have to interact with anyone. Taking a break from your device is healthy but impossible, and we expect more content in 2017 about this as an issue.

3.    Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality still won’t be everywhere. Many newspapers feature VR content. And the NBA is now testing VR. But we don’t think VR or AR like the faddish Pokemon Go will be ubiquitous yet in 2017. Solvable problems include VR headsets that offer an improved immersive experience than the cardboard headsets (that resemble cereal-box prizes) distributed by some newspapers so readers could access VR content or the current high-end headsets. Providing a feedback loop from user to the headset/content could be around the corner – a real corner. As with other tech, VR and AR need more content to encourage people they need to have it.

4.    Expect a cloudier 2017. Cloud computing has been a full-fledged trend for several years now. But we expect that it will evolve, to reduce the costs of cloud computing and to enhance capabilities.

5.    Artificial intelligence will continue to surge. AI become the big tech trend covered in the media in 2016. While there is overblown fear that AI-enabled robots will take over humanity, we expect to see AI built into all sorts of consumer and B2B environments – and to be featured in more Hollywood movies and TV shows.

6.    Drones still won’t take off. Consumer drones look like fun – for a couple of hours. We think the real market will be B2B, not just for deliveries (which we think is still a couple of years off). We expect B2B drones to help do things that are hard or risky for humans to do such as checking train tracks or oil pipelines in rural, hard-to-otherwise-reach locations. B2B use of drones, like B2B use of robots, will drive the market.

7.    Globalization will be a hot topic. From free trade agreements to tariffs, job losses, Brexit and the U.S.’s relationship with other countries, and the nature of globalization itself will be a very hot topic in 2017 and beyond. 

8.    Interest in voice speakers will turn up. Farhad Manjoo at the Times says gadgets are dead but there’s one area that he’s wrong: digital voice assistants like Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Home. These two assistants/speakers are designed to be more helpful than digital assistants, and we believe this will be a big year for them, and that IoT connectivity will likely operate through them. Alexa and Home are the killer app for smart home technology in the living room, like lighting, home Wi-Fi networks, and thermostats but also may be the key to IoT in kitchen appliances.

Ongoing trends:

1.  NFL ratings will continue to decline.

2.  Drug pricing will get a lot of attention

3.  Wearable tech will still not be as mainstream as people in the industry were hoping.

4.  Progress to a driverless-car future will slow down – but not for the reason you might think. The closer we get, we will recognize that aspects of driving that we took for granted are more complicated to solve when a human is not driving. These tech issues must be solved even before we get to solving liability issues.

5.  3D printers will continue to proliferate in schools but remain unnecessary in the home.

6.   Eventually consumers will realize they can’t easily, more efficiently or more cheaply cut the cord to cable – since the bandwidth comes from the cable company. But it might not matter. People watch on many devices – but usually not on their TVs – so streaming services will continue to be popular, even if duplicating cable offerings.

7.  eBook sales will continue to plateau while traditional book sales increase slightly. (Meanwhile, sales of vinyl records will continue to climb but will remain a niche market.)

8.  e-Wallets still won’t be as widely adopted as some were projecting. They will go mainstream but not in 2017 or 2018.

This now completes the list of most of the new and ongoing trends we identified in December. We purposely did not want to add new trends that came to light as a result of changing global political realities or predictions that only would have been obvious after the fact (like Bill O'Reilly's departure this week from Fox). 

Let us know what you think about our list -- what we missed (not including political or unlikely predictions like one about O'Reilly). As always, we will issue a report card on these trends later in November.

Key Predictions for Trends in 2016, Part III

Here's our third set of trends that we expect to have an impact in 2016:

1. The market for wearable tech and for IoT will continue to grow. Expect IoT-enabled tech to be a big story at CES.
2. 3D printers will be popular in schools.  Getting students comfortable with 3D printers is a great for seeding the market, but don’t expect them in every home just yet.
3. The importance of a college education will continue to generate media interest. The media will continue to look at whether a college education is worth the student debt loads as well as what kind of education we should provide our students. In an age of instant access to facts, memorizing certain facts may not be as helpful as actually understanding the underlying issues around history, science, literature, etc. and may not be indicators of future career success.
4. Crowdfunding will lose buzz. With even Hollywood A-listers turning to crowdsourcing their projects, we expect the novelty of crowdfunding to fade, which will make it harder to raise money this way.
5. eBook sales will plateau. After years of growing sales, eBooks’ momentum stalled in 2015. eBooks aren’t going away but they won’t totally replace traditional books, as some had feared or predicted. Increasingly, buyers may demand the ability to make a cross-platform book/eBook purchase, much as already happens with music purchased from Amazon, where you can the actual CD and direct download to your phone. 
6. Drones may start falling back to earth. Like Icarus, drones may be flying too close to the sun – and airplanes -- but there problems go beyond that. While Amazon has unveiled a possible drone to help it make deliveries, consumer drones may be the cool gift that sits in a corner until they answer this question: What do you do with a drone after you’ve taken aerial photos of your house? 
7. Will FinTech shake up traditional banking? Apps that support banking and financial services, like Apple Pay, Google Wallet and others, will generate a fair amount of business press coverage under headlines questioning whether FinTech will disintermediate traditional banks. FinTech will make inroads but won’t go broadly mainstream in 2016. That includes Bitcoin, about which there was much buzz in 2014 and almost nothing in 2015 except when some reporters thought they had uncovered the real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the apparent mysterious inventor of Bitcoin.
8. China may live in interesting times.  There’s a lot going on that will get coverage here. Expect coverage about the environment, including Beijing’s epic pollution and a lot of coverage about its economy, including the impact of the Renminbi being named by the International Monetary Fund as a main world currency, rising wages and an aging workforce, all leading to a possibly slowing economy. And continuing from prior years, there will be a lot of coverage about intellectual property infringement and Beijing-sanction hacks against U.S. companies.
9. The concern about cybersecurity, privacy, encryption and government surveillance is already changing. Due to the tragic events in Paris and San Bernardino, many will take a 180-degree turn on government surveillance, and demand the government to do more, not less. Expect more coverage about cybersecurity and privacy – especially as the EU enforces stricter data privacy rules (which will have an impact on cloud provides likes Amazon Web Services). Interestingly, despite the Vtech hack, which may have made children’s information available, we don’t expect much coverage about smart toys and privacy.
10. A big issue with driverless cars won’t be the technology or safety record. It will be the insurance requirements and state laws. California recently said that driverless cars will need a steering wheel and a person who is certified to drive – even as Google has designed a driverless car without a steering wheel. (The reason: it will be the transition from driverless to driver when accidents could occur.) But auto insurance will see that premiums will go down as accidents decrease – and that will change one dynamic of driverless cars (perhaps not theft, however). 

Let us know if you agree or disagree.

Please note: We're going to take a break for Christmas and New Year's -- which isn't to say we won't be working, just not blogging.

Happy Holidays, and see you in 2016!

Birnbach Communications' Top Predictions for 2013, Part VII

 Premature deathwatch of things that are very much alive, Part I 

·         One type of story reporters and bloggers like to write is the purported death of various, usually popular items, devices or technology. PowerPoint to email to texting and beyond have been proclaimed dead, even as those technologies continue to be used. We suspect these death wishes are a backlash to ubiquity combined with enormous frustration with the tech itself. The list of tech whose reported death is an exaggeration seems destined to grow larger with every year so here are candidates for 2013:

o    e-Readers: Just as ebooks are outselling hardcopy books, we expect a backlash affect saying that e-readers are dead because of the iPad and the iPad Mini. Yet we think e-readers will continue to sell because they weigh less and are easier to hold than tablets and because their screens are designed to be read in full sunlight (something you can’t do on an iPad).

o    Flash: Because of the popularity of Apple devices that are designed not to use Flash, some people have predicted Flash’s death. But there are still a lot of PCs out there that can use Flash. We say it’s not dead yet.

o    PCs: Last year, we said we expected that Post-PC would be a term we’d hear a lot – and we did – but though PC sales are declining, there’s still some life in PCs yet. There are still some things that you can do more easily and efficiently on a PC than a tablet so don’t write them off – just yet.  We think Ultrabooks and devices like Microsoft’s Surface Pro (part-PC/part-tablet) will continue to be in use through the end of the decade.

o    Cable TV: With all the articles about cord-cutting, you’d think all households were abandoning cable. That’s not the case, exactly. There are still programming like sports and local TV that you can’t easily get via Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, etc. And if you have to pay for all the streaming services to replicate cable, you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated when you cobble together different services and that you’ll wind up paying several hundred bucks a year. 

o    3D TVs and 3D glasses: Though it was the much hyped tech from last year’s CES, 3D TVs never took off. The reason: There’s just not enough 3D content available to make it worth purchasing 3D TVs.  A year later, there’s still not enough 3D content, and it doesn’t look like much is being developed, except for some 3D movies, which also aren’t meeting expectations. But if 3D movies didn’t die in the 1950s, when they were pioneered, we bet that 3D isn’t completely dead. Another reason people proclaim the death of 3D TVs is the launch of 4K and OLED TVs, which offer ultra high definition screens the size of entire walls. However, those UHD sets are also ultra expensive so we don’t expect to see them in everyone’s living room for some time. Please note: we do think 3D glasses for living room use is dead.

o    Blu-ray machines and DVDs: Typically the deaths of Blu-ray and DVDs are proclaimed for the same root cause: people prefer to stream video rather than own DVDs that can be scratched and destroyed and can only be played on certain devices (like Blu-ray players) that you can’t easily take with you everywhere.  But the fact is lots of people own lots of DVDs, and we don’t think people are going to be willing to throw their collections into the scrap heap of history just yet. Besides, DVDs offer featurettes that you can’t access from streaming video sites, which is often why people buy DVDs of their favorite movies. Also, for some households, the easiest way to access the streaming sites is through their Blu-ray players so don’t them out just yet. On the other hand, you don’t need Blu-ray quality when you’re streaming video.

o    Radio: Funny thing is that radio was supposed to have died years ago. In 1979, the Buggles hit the charts with their one hit, “Video Killed the Radio Star,” referencing a time in 1952 when radio was supposed to have died. Yet radio continues on, even in an era of iTunes.  That’s not true of cassette tapes, as evidenced that no new cars come equipped with tape players and that last year Sony actually stopped producing the Walkman, its pioneering portable music player. We’ll know radio is dead when car manufacturers stop including radios in new cars. But until that time, consider radio’s death to be premature. (Sorry, Buggles, whatever you’re doing now, certainly not, as they sang, playing their VCR.)

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

2012 Trends Report Card, Part III

Here's Part III of our report card of how we did with our 2012 predictions. 

Media Trends

1.     More viewers will cut the cable cord. We nailed this one as articles appeared across the media spectrum (print, online, blogs, etc.) with reported and first-person accounts of “cord cutting” as Americans tried to replace cable TV service either as to save money or to try new watch-anywhere apps such as Hulu Plus and Netflix.  Media outlets covering the story included the Wall St. Journal ("Over-the-Air TV Catches Second Wind, Aided by Web," “Cable Firms Making Offers Cord-Cutters Can't Refuse,” “Cable Firms Making Offers Cord-Cutters Can't Refuse” & A Year Without Cable: Is it possible to survive on Netflix and Hulu alone?), New York Times (“Disruptions: TV Makers Ignore Apps at Their Own Peril” & "In Search of Apps for Television"), Bloomberg BusinessWeek (interview with Comcast’s CEO "cord cutting”),  and others. Grade: A+.

2.     Converging media will continue in 2012. We still think lines of cooperation and competition will continue to blur among media properties: radio stations now post photos and text articles on their website while newspapers feature video channels. And with cord-cutting, more people are watching TV shows on anything but a TV, mostly smartphones, tablets and computers. However, this was a bit topic for media coverage. Grade: B-.

3.     E-books will improve their experience by providing new interactive and multimedia content. We said that with “the growing capabilities of e-readers,… expect e-textbooks to include interactive exercises, and nonfiction e-books to include more video, photos, and audio, while fiction books will come packed with featurettes much the way DVDs are packaged.” Bloomberg BusinessWeek validated that prediction with an article, “Easier E-Books with Inkling,” that said, "E-books will improve their experience by providing new interactive and multimedia content." We still think this will happen but we were optimistic to think e-book featurettes would be a regular item in 2012.  We now think that will happen within three to five years.  Grade: C+/B- for being too ahead of the game on this.

We'll issue more grades in tomorrow's post.

In the meantime, let us know if you have any questions or comments.