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.

Track Record for Predictions for 2013, Part II

Here's our second part of our report card for the predictions for 2013: 

• The Battle for the Living Room.  We were right that there was a lot of coverage about the battle for the living room but we missed one part of the story. There was a lot of coverage about TVs in the first half of 2013 but in the last quarter, the battle hasn’t been between high def and ultra high def TVs. It’s been about Microsoft’s Xbox One vs. Sony’s PS4 (that’s PlayStation4 for those of you older than 35). Because we missed the gaming console part of the story, we’ll take points off our score. Grade: B+.
• Battle between different streaming services and cable’s embrace of streaming.  This got a lot of coverage but not in terms of specific comparisons across offerings and fee structures from Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu. Instead, the coverage focused on new original programming being developed by some of the streaming services, and the implications as those services evolve to better compete against cable channels like HBO and Showtime.  We expect more coverage in 2014 about streaming vs. cable as well as Netflex vs. Amazon Prime and cord-cutting. Grade: A.
• The battle among huge companies. Apple v. Google v. Samsung and Microsoft. Oracle v. Everyone Else. This is one of the great memes of tech journalism this decade. Grade: A.
• The Battle for Map Supremacy: Apple v. Google v. Nokia v. Microsoft v., Amazon. This got some coverage -- including a recent cover story in the New York Times Magazine section, Google’s Road Map to Global Domination -- but we overstated this. Grade: C+.
• Apple TV set and the future of TV. People may spend much time actually watching a TV but there continues to be interest in how Apple may revolutionize our TV-watching experience. Whatever plans Apple may have will be the continued focus of speculation in 2014. Grade: A.
• Automated home and smart appliances.  Media coverage started strong in the first half but dropped in the second half. Interesting that some trends are not strong enough to maintain buzz for an entire 12 months. This could be the result of a CES bump where some topics get off to a strong jump in January but fade when there’s not a lot of new products available. Which means, there could be more interest in smart appliances after CES 2014. Grade: B.
• 3D printers: Not yet ready for prime time. We said “2013 will be the year in which the media proclaims the arrival of 3D printers,” and that was on target. Still not seeing them widely adopted yet but we expect continued coverage about the implications for manufacturing. Grade: A.

We'll post more tomorrow and you can check out Part I here. 

Track Record for Predictions for 2013, 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.

In 2013, there were some big new stories that were not suprising – like Obamacare – and some that were totally suprising – i.e., twerking, the election of a new Pope, and Twitter going public. (We know we've lumped those three together but we do not mean to give equal weight to them.)

The trends and topics we identify help the agency work with its clients to work 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 continuing to shift.

Here's our annual report card of how we did with our 2013 predictions:

• The story still matters.  No question that story and messages continue to matter, even in an age of 140 characters. Companies may still not consistently tell their stories visually (using still photos, videos and infographics) but at least many are trying. We also said the information companies want to communicate must be customer-focused, and that is increasingly true in 2013, and will continue in 2014. Grade: A.
• Corporate values and personality matter. We said that “in 2013 and beyond, social media will multiply the impact of values and corporate personality. Companies need to be prepared to communicate not just their selling proposition but also their values and personality as they engage with customers via social media. Social media expert Paul Gillin validated this in a recent column, “The Power of Trust,” in which he made the point: “Marketers who understand this power are in a position to build bonds with their audiences that transcend market cycles because those bonds are based on shared values and interests.” Grade: A.
• Social media is relevant for B2B companies. We said 2013 would be the year that B2B companies realized they needed a social media strategy, too.  This was validated by a company that brought us in three years ago, asking for insights on their media strategy. When we told them they should consider social media, they sniffed, and said their engineering customers would not use social media to help them with their jobs. This summer, they called us back and asked about enhancing their social media strategy. Grade: A.

We'll post more tomorrow.

Five Challenges for Marketing in 2014

After reading "Segal reflects changes" in the last printed edition of BtoBonline, I think it's easy to take for granted the significant changes that have occurred in just the last decade (Rick Segal takes the perspective of 32 years in the business).

I don't agree with the first, entirely, but here are some of the challenges he identified:

• B2B is dead -- "What it comes down to is the way that work is just part of life. Individual people are so extraordinarily empowered by technology and by newly democratized models of management that people make little distinction between their personal and professional exertions and diversions."
•  The new model of marketing is humanity -- In the new model. "Individual men and women are actors in the task of business decision-making, which is one part of people's work lives. B2b, as I have lived it and known it, has always been arithmetic and rational, but humanity is geometric and emotional. I don't think we've begun to scrape the surface of the strategic, creative and tactical transformations required for the new model. I don't think an entirely new model has emerged yet, responsive to the dramatic changes that we're seeing."
• Big challenge is smaller targets -- "The degree to which everything has become smaller and more dispersed. The easy, almost instantaneous replication of value is a principal challenge all marketers face, whether they are in what we'd call b2b or b-to-c. It is very, very difficult to command positions of longstanding market or segment domination as was once the case."
• No more patience for patience --  "Marketing used to be about seeding and planting innovations that would grow into mighty oaks of market domination. Today's world has no such patience for that kind of processed growth."
• Technology has made marketing better and more difficult --  "We have all of these technologies and all of these tools that allow us to be more precise and measured and to reach more people. The fact of the matter is, all these things have made the task of marketing more difficult than ever. The good news is, there is more work to be done in more places, both in time and in geography."

According to Segal, "The opportunity for smart marketers to figure these things out" meaning how technology can be harnessed. That's the real challenge for marketers in 2014.