New Prediction: Age of Anxiety to Continue into 2019

We generally wait until all predictions are ready (we predict the list will be ready by early December) but we want to discuss a trend we identified for 2018 that we feel will be a key trend in 2019 and beyond.

Until about mid-2016, we didn't truly understand the apparent (because there's no proven source for it) ancient Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times.

Now, of course, we live in extremely interesting times. 

We've said it before: the news cycle is broken. Once, a major news stories would break and that would be the top story for the next few days, as the country would come to terms with whatever the event/incident was.

Today, major news breaks hourly. We learn about it by notifications on our phones. By what's trending on social media. And then that story is replaced by another story. With no time to process or assess the implications.

Yesterday, for instance, we had five major news stories:

1. The follow-up from the midterms and sorting out winners, losers, races-to-close-to-be-called and lessons.
2. Sessions resignation/firing as AG in an undated memo and the naming of an unconfirmed-by-the-Senate acting AG and the implications for the Mueller investigation.
3. Trump's combative press conference, including the White House's withdrawing of CNN's Jim Acosta press pass and access, along with implications for free speech and the freedom of the press.
4. The tragic shooting last night in Thousands Oakes that left 12 dead including the shooter and a sheriff's deputy, and trying to ascertain the shooter's motives.

Today, there's more news about the latest shooting and Ruth Bader Ginsburg's fall -- and that was before 11am.

The chaos of our current politics and the impact on our society of a constant stream of news is having an affect on Americans. 

We're seeing news fatigue because we're all overwhelmed by trying to stay on top of the news. (There was a front-page New York Times article,"The Man Who Knew Too Little, The most ignorant man in America knows that Donald Trump is president — but that’s about it. Living a liberal fantasy is complicated," about an Ohio man with a self-imposed news blackout since Trump won the 2016 election; and he seems happier than the rest of us. 

We think the age of anxiety will continue into 2019 and throughout Trump's administration because of his governing style. And that this is not a Democrat or Republican thing. 

The age of anxiety is bipartisan (and we think it will continue past his time in office, unfortunately).

Technology definitely abets our anxiety levels because many of us are now trained to click on the latest notifications. Some of which isn't really news, like the latest celebrity insult or feud, which is designed to make one side or another get upset. 

Social media plays a key role because -- while politics was once something people were told not to discuss (along with salary/wealth/money and religion) -- that's no longer true. People feel the need to express themselves (as we are doing now, so we're part of the problem, too) on social media or in blogs about their perspectives.

And there's great commonality, actually, across political believes, and that is this: we all believe the other side is stupid, short sighted, biased, closed minded, etc. Take your pick (and there's more, we realize). Social media fuels the spread of anger. We read something that we don't like, and then feel compelled to not give the other person the benefit of the doubt -- like their post was intemperate, poorly worded, doesn't really reflect their thinking -- and then post something in opposition; then the other person sees our response, and feels that it is stupid, hateful, condescending, out of touch -- pick your choice -- and posts a snide comment to our snarky post. And so it continues.

We've seen angry, bitter comments to tweets from @RealDonaldTrump and @PressSec as well as to @JakeTapper, @PeterBakerNYT and @Acosta and many others in between. Many are truly nasty and unpleasant, no matter which side you're on. What's worse: you can't always tell what's being posted by real people and what's coming from trolls. (And we're trying to not to provide false equivalencies here.)

The point is this: after the midterms, with a divided congress, the likelihood of continuous dysfunction and internecine battles across the aisles in the Senate and the House, threats of investigations into White House activities and counterthreats of a "warlike posture" against Democrats and retaliations -- we expect that the age of anxiety will continue well past 2019.

The news cycle will continue to hit many times a day; the stories will be supplanted by the next breaking news to grab our attention, and so on. And that social media will continue to fuel anger and incivility so that neither side can talk to the other. The fact that few are able to talk or listen to people with opposing views -- whether in real life or, especially, on social media -- is a real problem that adds to the distrust and fuels anxiety for this other reason: we can't even agree on the same set facts. Was a video that the press secretary posted doctored or not is a question that fuels what the tech industry used to call FUD: fear, uncertainty and doubt. And this is true whether you believe she did just as much as it does for those who believe she did not.

Knowing that we're living in interesting times -- aka, the age of anxiety -- is important for marketing and PR functions because we are dealing with a polarized society, where withdrawing advertising from controversial media may spark a counter boycott/protest. (We saw that happen in starting 2017 and continuing in 2018 and beyond, which was another prediction we made.) Consumers are looking for less stress, and we expect articles about unplugging and de-stressing. We also expect that companies that can position their products or services as helping to reduce stress, will see those messages resonate with consumers (even if that approach is not necessarily newsworthy on its own, i.e., it might not generate media coverage even as that approach could be effective). 

At the same time, we think consumers will look to purchase from corporations that share their values -- so it will be important to figure out what your values are and how to navigate an increasingly polarized consumer base. We do expect a growing chorus of people asking for more civility in public and online communications.

In the next several weeks, we will post other predictions, hopefully some of those will be more upbeat.

In the meantime, let us know what you think about this. (We just as that you be civil, whether you agree or disagree.)

The Intercept Validates Our Prediction about the Battle over the First Amendment on College Campuses

Each year, we issue a set of predictions for the following year, and at the end of that year, we evaluate the accuracy of our predictions. Our perspective is a very media-centric; since our goal is to advise our clients on how the media will be covering various topics, we judge how successful we've been by looking at the amount of media coverage on each topic.

For 2018, we had predicted that many companies would offer new services and products geared to millennials. We did not see a lot of media coverage of that trend but we continue to believe that millennials will help change how things are being sold and marketed. But without significant media coverage, we considered that prediction to be somewhat of a dud.

One of the other predictions we think turned out to be a dud was about battles about free speech on college campuses.

As background, in 2017, we predicted:

The first amendment becomes a battle-ground issue. Between campus culture wars(regarding who can speak on campus and who can disrupt those who try to speak on campus),varying definitions of hate speech and the more-open expression of bigotry, the fight to protect free speech will generate coverage in 2018. Part of the challenge is a polarize climate is finding the balance between allowing free expression and preventing bigoted express.

In February 2018, we felt this New York Times' article, "Republicans Stuff Education Bill With Conservative Social Agenda," confirmed that as a trend. The article included pullout text that described a "590-page higher education bill working its way through Congress" as "a wish list for those who say their First Amendment rights are being trampled."

But we didn't see significant coverage beyond that so when we graded all our predictions, we graded harshly. We gave ourselves an F.

But in a recent article in the Intercept -- published by Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill to cover "national security, politics, civil liberties, the environment, international affairs, technology, criminal justice, the media, and more" -- that looked at false media equivalencies in the wake of the white supremacist violence of the last 10 days, made the case that free speech on campus has generated significant media coverage this year.

As a false equivalency, the Intercept article points to a "pattern of both-siderism...and false equivalencies  after any of the 18 deaths caused by white supremacists violence in 2017." As an example of false equivalency, the article noted that:

Instead, rivers of ink have been spilled condemning the disruption of Republican dinner plans and neo-Nazi speeches; according to FAIR, the New York Times alone featured 21 columns and articles this year expressing concern for right-wing speech on campus. 

We already issued our grade so we're not going to go back in and boost the grade. But we feel like 21 columns and articles is a fair amount of coverage on the topic, and that we did a good job on that one after all.

Also, earlier this week, the Wall St. Journal reported that "Amazon in Late-Stage Talks With Cities Including Crystal City, Va., Dallas, New York City for HQ2." We had predicted that Boston would not be picked, and unfortunately, we were right about that, too. At least we won the 2018 World Series (in a prediction we did not make).

Two other articles validate predictions we scored low. Both "Making Talk TV for a Post-TV Generation: 'Busy Tonight' and 'Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj' are two different takes on what the talk show can be in the age of Instagram and Netflix" in the New York Times and "Office Workers Have a Major Hang Up—Their Desk Phones" in the Wall St. Journal, report on the impact that millennials are having on products and services. We gave ourselves a low score because we didn't see a lot of coverage on this topic but it occurs to us, now, after we initially grade our predictions, that some of the millennials-bring-change stories have been more subtle in pointing out the reasons for how and why some products and services are changing.

Track Record for Our Bonus Set of Predictions

Here's what we're calling our Bonus Set of Predictions:

1.  The media landscape will change in 2018. We got some details wrong, very wrong. We expected the AT&T-Time Warner deal would not go through (it did, despite a DOJ lawsuit) and we expected the Sinclair Broadcasting purchase of Tribune Media to get approved (it did not). We got one deal right: Disney’s acquisition of Fox’s TV and movie studios (but not Fox News, Fox Sports and Fox TV channel). The media world changed in another way, thanks to Netflix, which receives a lot of coverage, attention and awards. We expect more consolidation in the media world, more attention to Netflix and other streaming services, and more layoffs and closings among local media. Grade: B-.

2.  Artificial Intelligence and robotics, now interconnected, will continue to be “hot.” We got this right. A.I. and robotics got a lot of attention in 2018, and we expect that to continue in 2019 and beyond, including scare stories about a “robocalypse” in which A.I.-enabled robots replace human workers as well as more-reasoned articles that debunk the scare stories. We’re not as worried because there we think it will open other types of jobs, and that implementing A.I. seems inevitable because the potential benefits could be so significant. Grade: A.

3.  Innovation often will come via business models. We expected, for example, that upscale restaurants with a delivery-only business model (relying on mobile-ordering apps) would be a bigger trend than it turned out to be. There was some coverage of that sort of innovation – not so much of technology but in the use of technology – but it wasn’t a top story. Grade: C.

4.  Bitcoin and blockchain is hitting it big time. This was our surest best of any of our 2018 predictions. We do expect more bumps in the road for bitcoin and blockchain, but overall, it will continue in 2019. Grade: A.

5.  Is the internet dying? There have been articles about the internet dying, including in the October issue of Wired. But it really wasn’t a “thing” in 2018. Grade: C-.

6.  The first amendment becomes a battle-ground issue. We got this wrong. Grade: F.

7.  Millennials’ impact will change how companies market products and services. Millennials are having an impact on products and services but there wasn’t as much coverage of it as we had expected. The layouts of newly built homes is changing, for example, but it’s not entirely clear that the reason is due to millennials (it could be because of boomers, too). Overall we overstated the amount of news coverage this would generate in 2018. Grade: C-.

8.  Smart-Home automation will gain acceptance but still a niche offering. We said the biggest aspect would be intelligent personal assistants like Amazon Alexa and Google Home. Overall, we were on target for this. Grade: B+.

9.  The ranks of unicorn startups will grow but expect a backlash because unicorns are difficult to sustain. We didn’t see the term “unicorn” as much as we expected but in October, there was a big splash that Uber’s bankers value the company at $120 billion. We did see more articles about unrest in Silicon Valley between employees at startups and regular people who live there — so that’s something of a backlash. We continue to see the challenge as stated by New York Times tech columnist Farhad Manjoo is right when he said, a continued threat for startups is that just “fewer than 1 percent … end up as $1 billion companies” and that the Frightful Five (Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook and Microsoft) can out-pay key employees (an issue in the A.I. space), out maneuver or just invest in startups and co-opt them. Grade: C.

10. Religious nonprofits will be able to publicly make political endorsements, but doing so will change how they are perceived. We got this wrong for 2018. However, it may be a problem down the road, particularly with people who oppose the political endorsements made by a particular religious nonprofit.

Track Record of Our Predictions for 2018

Each year, before issuing a set for predictions for the upcoming year, we evaluate how we did with regard to the predictions we made for the current year. Without further ado, here are the results for our 2018 predictions.

1. Expect to hear about “the retailpocalypse" as a key consumer sector tries to fight Amazonification. Retailpocalypse probably was included in more headlines in 2018 than Amaxonification but pretty much any news story about the retail sector mentioned Amazon. It was a tough year for the sector, with two to three thousand locations closing, and 125-year-old Sears declaring bankruptcy in Q3. Unfortunately, we expect the brick-and-mortar stores to continue to have a tough time of it even as Amazon opens more retail locations. While the bad news for retail has been covered, did not capture the attention of consumers as much as we had expected. We expect that Amazonification will capture more attention in 2019, and the downward cycle continues, and expect calls for “doing something” to protect failing retail. Grade: A.
2. People will be more anxious and angry. We called this era the Age of Anxiety and Anger, and we got this right. In 2018, we saw lots of anger, much of it political, and lots of anxiety. There were many more references to people needing to take a break from their devices’ notifications. As of Oct., we expect more anger after the midterms — however things turn out — that will carry over into 2019 and people start focusing on the 2020 election cycle. We also expect that people will continue to be more anxious — whether due to politics or not — and that there will be more articles about how to de-stress. From a marketing perspective, look for some consumer brands to try to tap into the need to de-stress.  Grade: A.
3. There will be a debate about whether or not and how to regulate Facebook, Google and Twitter. We got this totally right, particularly when we said, “Expect Congress to continue to hold hearings on the subject – just don’t expect any agreement on the answers before 2018’s midterm elections.” With concerns about disinformation campaigns and data breaches, and claims of censorship-by-algorithm, expect this debate to continue past the 2020 election cycle. Grade: A+.
4. The labor shortage and the gig economy will spark think-pieces about the nature of work. The labor shortage and the gig economy did get some coverage but we didn’t see as many think-pieces as we expected. However, there were think-pieces about the potential impact on jobs that robots will have on the nature of work. We expect more coverage of the impact of robots on jobs in 2019, along with calls to better track and understand the gig economy’s impact on the economy at large. Because we expected more essays about the labor shortage than we saw, we will reflect that in our grade. Grade: B+.
5. Conversations about gender, sexuality and sexual harassment have changed – at least in the media. This was definitely true in 2018. We continued to see a big divide, and lots of anger, and unfortunately, both will continue next year. Grade: A.

Look for our predictions for 2019 before Christmas.

Meanwhile, tell us what you think. 

Bloomberg Validates Our Concerns That Store Closings Have on Real Estate

For the past year, we've been saying that the retail sector is in trouble, and that the potential impact of Amazonification and the retailpocalypse will be felt in other sectors. 

Our primary concern is that as big box retailers often support local newspaper through ads. So that as an expected 2,500 retail locations shut down through early 2019, there will also be a cut in ad buys in local newspapers. 

That downturn in ad revenue will likely hurt smaller local newspapers.

And that may lead to local newspapers either laying off staff, shifting from a daily to a weekly, or from a weekly to twice-a-month, or shutting down completely.

That could lead to an increase in what are being called new deserts -- communities that don't have access to local news. 

All of that has an impact on PR and marketing because there would be fewer outlets with which to reach key audiences.

But we've also been concerned that the number of store closings will also impact real estate, both at malls and in towns. At malls, we've felt the problem is that if an anchor location remains empty, the entire mail will be written off by consumers. And that precipitates more closings, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that leads to a downward spiral.

In a Bloomberg News article yesterday that was syndicated into a number of papers, including the Boston Globe, "Struggling malls at crossroads as Sears makes exit," reporters Patrick Clark and Justina Vasquez made that same point:

"As Sears shutters stores, landlords will have to overcome the perception that the entire property is failing or risk losing other tenants, said Burt Flickinger, managing director of Strategic Resource Group, a retail-advisory firm."

“You’re going to see an epic hollowing out of the retail malls in America, especially the malls that are co-anchored by Sears” and another struggling large retailer, Flickinger said. “It’s creating an accelerating retail ice age and an economic Armageddon of unprecedented proportions in the US.” 

That's got us worried.

Retail is an important sector for the U.S., and not just to buy things. Retail can a communal activity whereas shopping online is not. And Bloomberg has reported on the negative impact on local towns in the U.K., when shops have closed on main street, and residents then have to drive thirty minutes or more to buy things they once could in their home town. Those towns suffer because there's literarily nothing holding people there.

So, a lot of doom and gloom -- and you don't have to be a big shopper to see that this can affect you. We don't necessarily have a solution. But we feel that raising the issue is important, that discussing this can help lead to awareness. If we ignore the retailopaclypse, it's not going to go away. 

6 Cues to Tell Fake News on Social Media from Real News

Hiawatha Bray, the long-time Tech Lab columnist at the Boston Globe, has an interesting article about fake news. Entitled, "Can computers tell if an Internet news story is mostly true or mostly false," Bray's article notes these common features of fake news on the Internet:

1. Lots of capitalized words or exclamation points.
2. Use of words denote extreme certainty such as “absolutely” and “always.”
3. Sentences that tend to be shorter and simpler. (Which makes them easier to read and forward.)
4. Fewer "love" or "laughter" icon clicks on Facebook. (Real news doesn't usually generate such emotion, apparently.)
5. The media sites where these articles originated don’t have Wikipedia entries about them. 
6. These sites, which may be similar to real news sites, have URLs that are long and filled with unusual characters. (Many reliable news sites are much cleaner.)

These are not all 100% accurate; after all the URL for the Globe's article's URL had a lot of unusual characters in it: https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2018/10/15/can-fake-news-goes-way-spam/UuiUfEmZGKxhMupoXV0AJM/story.html.

We can't wait or rely on algorithms to determine fake news, just as algorithms aren't 100% effective on spam. What we need is for people to take responsibility for what they share. This is important since new reports from the New York Times and others indicate that there will be more disinformation ahead of the midterms next month and ahead of the 2020 campaign. 

Disinformation campaigns at this level (perhaps any level) are anti-democratic, and we need all concerned citizens to take responsibility for what they share. So it's important to be aware of the six indicators for possible fake news.

More Doom & Gloom from the Retailpocalypse

We've been focused on the "Retailpocalypse" for about a year now because we feel so many sectors are affected, including real estate (when stores close and locations may or may not find new tenants), hiring (when tens or hundreds of employees lose their jobs), and local media (who had been relying on ads from those local retailers). 

We came to this topic by way of the impact on local media, which is directly relevant to our business.

Unfortunately, while there are new stores launching each year, and other retailers may be expanding, there seem to be more retailers shutting down locations or declaring bankruptcy. The latest is Sears, the 125-year-old retail pioneer, which on Monday filed for bankruptcy and said it will close 142 more stores. That's on top of the 46 locations it announced it was closing back in August.

The company, which also owns Kmart, will have 687 Sears and Kmart locations remaining. The company owed $134 million of debt that it could not pay.

At its height, Sears was the known as the "the everything store" and was the largest retailer in the U.S. In 2006, it had 355,000 employees; today, it has fewer than 140,000 employees.

One reason Sears is failing is because of Amazon. It's ironic that Sears, which started as a catalog business, has lost out to Amazon. Amazon is now "the everything store."

For more on Sears' legacy, check out this NPR story.

The retailpocalypse is not ending anytime soon, and will continue to have a significant trickle-down impact on a range of sectors in the U.S. economy. We don't know if there's a solution exactly, and certainly don't see how government could step in (other than to break up Amazon, which isn't necessarily a good idea). But the health of the retail sector is one that needs to attention paid to it. As we prepare our predictions for trends in 2019, the retailpocalypse will continue to be on our list.