Justin Hayward`s SI Project

Happy New Year...

It's been a while.  But hey, New Years provide new leaves to turn over.  So here are some short-term and longer-term predictions to delight and deride:

• There will continue to be high-profile issues surrounding transparency in marketing with well-known companies in 2008 who still try to embrace social media activity without focusing on the conversation rather than marketing
• Actions will become more important in the development of brand and brand affinity in the consumers eyes.
• People will begin to tire with social networking sites and will move back to sites that allow them to keep in touch with their own social graphs (friends and connections)
• Big brands that 'get it' will become more successful in drawing people into their own content - whether it be the development of their own online worlds or sites - and some consumer companies will start to become experience companies
• IP will become increasingly more important for all companies as a) ingredients will become more scrutinised b) proof of things working as advertising becomes more regulated and people complain more about false advertising become more easy and c) there is an increasing move to being able to manufacture things in the home using home fabrication units. Not in 2008, but in a couple of years time, the ability to download schematics and create things in the home will change the shape of the world economy even further. Micro-manufacturing will change the way in which organisations are structured
• Content but also the ability to have conversations with your customers and personalise their experience will change the shape of organisations and distribution channels
• People will continue to want the choice of buying things, but more will happen over the internet than ever before
• New jobs, including online engagement and evangelism, revenue generation in virtual environments and R&D customer collaboration roles will develop as feedback becomes ever more important to brand reputation
• Internet addiction will become a mainstream illness
• Google search will become less dominant as new services with analytics built in will divert people away from unstructured results. However, Google maps will become more important as it becomes a channel for offline adverts driving people to real-life retail opportunities as Google maps for mobile becomes more pervasive
• Governments will start to consider charging a tax on internet usage or data travelling across networks as revenues decline as more people turn to the web for television programming as well as other content

• Posted by justinhayward on 02/01/2008.
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