The volatile world
Henry Tucker writes:
The Futures Company has recently released the latest edition of Global MONITOR, our large scale syndicated future-focused Insights Programme. Global MONITOR’s analysis is underpinned by a survey of 27,000 respondents in 21 markets, and its research underpins much of thinking about social, cultural, and consumer change. Over the next few weeks we’ll be running a series of blog posts on themes from this research.
One of the most important themes of Global MONITOR 2011 is about consumer volatility. Three years into the financial crisis, those in richer nations have experienced long periods of austerity, unprecedented since the last World War. Eleswhere, pressures of growth are causing their own problems, from pollution to poisoning, in the case of China’s food scandals. This has made consumers feel both vulnerable and vigilant. And some of the data are striking:
- 42% agree that they ‘usually buy the cheapest product available’
- 51% of consumers, globally, agree that they are making more of an effort to buy less than they did before.
- 62% agree that ‘the world feels like an increasingly hostile and uncertain place’ (a high level of agreement for such a strongly worded question).
These tensions are expressing themselves culturally as well as economically. In most markets, the proportion of those agreeing with the statement ““I appreciate the influence other cultures have on our way of life in this country” has fallen quite sharply over the past two years. People are drawing in.
What we’re seeing as a result is that consumers are becoming as self-reliant as they can, reducing their exposure to an uncertain world wherever possible. Of course, ‘self-reliance’ conjures images of people storing clean water and tinned food in their cellars, but the emerging trend is, instead, about networked reliance. People use social connections, both to find new information, to look for deals, and to lean on each other for support. As they do so, their expectations of what business should be doing for society have become sharper. The proportion agreeing that “Companies have a responsibility to help support the society in which they operate” has seen a significant jump year on year in many markets. It’s another layer of complexity that many businesses could do without in tough times. But get it wrong and consumers will punish you for it.
The picture at the top is from Global MONITOR, and shows people’s perceptions of how their countries are doing and also how they are doing.
Global MONITOR is an innovative, strategic, future-focused Global Insights programme for clients and agencies. It identifies the key dynamics shaping the world and the consumer marketplace, as well as potential implications for your clients’ businesses. If you want to know more about Global MONITOR, please call Simon Kaplan in the United States, or Deniz Erdem in Europe.
18 November 2011 at 10:47 am thenextwavefutures Leave a comment
Getting to the Big Society
By Alex Oliver
One of the more-commented on features of David Cameron’s Party Conference speech in Manchester was how little he mentioned the ‘Big Society’. Twice, in fact. You could easily have missed it. But maybe this is less surprising when you learn that the most recent figures from the government’s Citizenship Survey show volunteering and community participation rates at a ten year low. These are tough times economically and socially. People’s resources are being squeezed. The scope for community involvement is reduced as a result.
However, in our research this year on volunteering, a programme conducted for our public sector think tank the IIPS, we found that belief and interest in the concept of community involvement is still strong. 33% agree “I would like to become more involved in my local area”, a rise of 3% since 2010[1]. People cite a whole range of reasons for involvement – from social benefits, to gaining more control over important local issues to directly self interested motives like gaining work experience to get ahead in a competitive job market.
But the barriers to involvement previously identified in IIPS research remain high: lack of time and energy, low levels of confidence, a fear of being excluded or not fitting in and perceptions of red tape.
And this year, more than ever, we saw a growing suspicion – even hostility – regarding the motives of ‘Government’. Any suggestion of overt incentives, or even too much encouragement from government in the form of benefits, tax rebates or (heaven forbid) mandation, were roundly rejected by our respondents. So perhaps it’s not surprising that community members leading local clean-up operations after August’s riots (cited by David Cameron in his speech as a great example of a ‘social movement’), rejected the Big Society label.
So should the government should forget about the Big Society and stop investing in the range of initiatives kicked off to make it a reality? Well, not necessarily. Our research clearly shows that there is a real need for more facilitation to get a wider range of people involved – particularly beyond the so-called ‘civic core’. The Evening Standard’s Get London Reading campaign is an example of how inviting people to get involved has resulted in large numbers of new volunteers from previously under-represented groups like younger men. And there’s still a need to reduce bureaucracy, create structures and share information to support and enable those willing to get involved. Government at all levels could have an important role to play here – along with other public service providers and indeed the private sector.
It seems that there might still be life in the Big Society, even if some of the language has been wrong. But it will take some commitment from the government, as well as citizens, to make it work.
[1] The Futures Company Global Monitor UK only, 2011
The image at the top of the post was shown as part of a presentation on citizens and the Big Society at The Futures Company last month. It is shared here under a Creative Commons licence: some rights reserved.
Some notes from Stream
Andrew Curry writes:
Stream, WPP’s annual tech ‘un-conference’, held by tradition at a former Club Med resort near Athens, has just finished. I’m going to try to catch a snapshot of some of the things I learned while I was there.
3D printing is a slow train coming
We’ve been talking to clients for a while about the potential of 3D printing, or ‘fabbing’, and a discussion led by Steve Sammartino of Grey got into some of the complexities of this. The principle of 3D printing is that you send the code and a machine makes the object locally – possibly even in your home. Costs are falling quite fast, with the ‘hobbyist’ fabricator kit, Maker Bot, now less than $1,000, although the professional machines used by designers are still above $10,000. The other limitations are materials and time; a machine is set up to use one type of material, and making an object, even a small one, is slow. A designer taking part in the discussion showed a tape dispenser made on his printer which took ten hours to produce. Is this a new industrial revolution? Probably not. But over the next decade it could transform the way we repair things, prototype them, and also change the way we think about manufacturing.
The new high level internet domains will be a lawyers’ paradise
You may not have noticed, but ICANN, which regulates the Internet’s top level domains (.com, .edu, .uk, etc) is quite a long way down the road on a radical transformation of the domain system. Instead of the current relatively constrained architecture, it’s proposing to let people buy words instead; ‘.cheese’, say, or ‘.health’, or ‘.yahoo’. In practice, this means that large companies will buy them, if they so choose, since the application costs around $200,000, and preparing the application another $300,000.
The thing is, it’s hard to see who benefits: the internet becomes a sea of noise, and businesses are faced with a sea of unprofitable competition for domain names. Esther Dyson, who led the session, described it as “a tragedy of the commons”. But intellectual property lawyers should do well for themselves. The only saving grace is that the decision hasn’t yet been ratified; pressure on ICANN might yet prevent the change.
What we mean by ‘news’ is changing before our eyes. The idea emerged from several different sessions. Vice presented data which showed that the average age of the US audience for mainstream TV news was 60-something, compared to the far younger audience for Vice News. Peter Hirshberg, the urban data pioneer, suggested that “you really need to be able to understand data to tell stories in the 21st century”. The Guardian, challenged by its editor, Alan Rusbridger, that “the public is not interested in what’s in the public interest”, is launching the ‘Finance Game’, off the back of an anthropological investigation of the City of London’s bankers, to see if this leads to new ways of understanding, researching, and presenting complex stories (and potentially to different audiences). But in his platform interview, WPP Chief Executive Sir Martin Sorrell observed that if – as a society – “we value professional journalism, we’re probably going to have to subsidise it”.
The picture at the top of this post was taken by Andrew Curry. It is published here under a Creative Commons licence: some rights reserved.
16 September 2011 at 8:24 am thenextwavefutures Leave a comment
Goodbye to all that
Eleanor Cooksey writes:
It’s a month since I left The Futures Company after first starting working there in 1998, and during my final weeks I reflected on some of changes in the business over that time.
The first one seems obvious, although you still have to pinch yourself at the scale of the changes. In 1998, the internet was tiny (9% of UK households had internet access, and the web itself was far smaller). Instead, researching facts and figures was an activity valued in itself which required considerable effort and some expertise. The Henley Centre (as it was then) subscribed to many publications, which would arrive in the post and then be carefully filed in an extensive library, supervised by the company’s librarian. And when this wasn’t enough, off we would trot to public libraries to pore over more specialist titles.
Secondly, personal communication technologies were far less ubiquitous. People didn’t necessarily have a mobile phone of their own, and, indeed, there were several ‘office handsets’ one could book out for the day if necessary.
Thirdly, the company invested considerable resources in knowledge venturing – our thought leadership programme - and developing proprietary content. This is one area where there has been some continuity, but with twists and turns along the way. Back in 1998, much of this content was published regularly in print editions and sold to clients. Over the past decade, knowledge venturing has remained critical, but publishing it commercially less so. Interestingly now we see a return to publications, but for our time. Instead of the book, one size fits all, there is Global MONITOR, with its searchable syndicated insight, customised to the profile of a particular client.
Finally, there is one small change which, from a personal perspective I regret. In 1998, the company strapline was ‘Seize the Future’, which I must confess to preferring to our current version of ‘Unlocking Futures’. But then, all things must pass.
The image at the top of the post was taken by our design manager, Stacey Yates, and is published here under a creative commons licence: some rights reserved.
8 September 2011 at 8:41 am thenextwavefutures Leave a comment
The taking part that counts
Alex Oliver and Lawrence Wykes write: As the wave of Olympic test events comes to a close in London, it seemed a good moment to think about the other half of the sports equation – participation by people who just get involved for fun. As it happens, we recently brought together a number of cross-sector experts from different disciplines for a sports roundtable, to try to answer one question: as a society how can we get more people physically active?
Staggeringly, almost half of us in the UK don’t participate in any form of regular exercise. Men are more active than women and participation levels vary significantly by region, often with a worrying correlation to deprivation.
All the experts who participated in the roundtable, in one way or another, had an interest in getting this missing half of the population more active.
So what was their view? Well, the point was quickly made that the missing half weren’t just missing from sport – they were missing from the room. At The Futures Company we’ve done a lot of research for sports clients over the years, and in the course of this research we’ve learned that any plan to get people more active has to be co-created with the audience it is intended to benefit.
And this brings us to the s-word. A key theme that came through in the discussions and one which is mirrored in our own research is that for some people a word like ‘sport’ can itself be a barrier to participation.
But when we talk about getting people active, we don’t just mean formalised sports, of the kind promoted by the National Governing Bodies and lined up for the Olympics. Increasing the population’s physical activity can also mean getting parents off the park bench to run around and play with the kids, or cycling to the station instead of driving. Whatever we want people to do, we need to make sure we don’t put them off before we even start with the language we use. This again means getting to know the people you’re engaging
If we want to have a long-term impact on participation we have to plan for tomorrow and act today. Our experts round the table agreed that above all sport needs to be fun, accessible and normal – something for everyone and anyone. People need to feel that they can take part regardless of what they wear, where they live, who and what size they are. So what new ways can we find to involve people in ‘sport’ in a way that works for them – in schools, in parks, in streets and at the sports events themselves?
The image at the top of this post is a still from the T-mobile ‘Life’s for Sharing’ dancing at Liverpool Street Station website, and is used with thanks.
1 September 2011 at 5:10 pm thenextwavefutures Leave a comment
From cash to commitment
Amy Tomkins writes:
Tackling climate change requires collective action. Yet inspiring consumers to change their behaviour is tough. Lack of engagement, lack of understanding and a sense of powerlessness can all prevent people from taking steps to reduce their carbon footprints.
So I was interested in the presentation that Hermione Taylor, founder of The DoNation, gave when she came into the London office recently. Her new sponsorship site seeks to replace cash with action and help people inspire their friends to live more sustainably. By harnessing the social and viral nature of sponsorship, The DoNation encourages people to engage with environmental issues and take action to change their behaviour. As her diagrams above show, this changes the traditional sponsorship model and makes the whole transaction more direct and efficient. To sponsor a friend, you have to commit to at least one of a number of Do-Actions, or carbon-saving pledges, instead of giving money. Actions can be small steps, such as reducing the amount of meat you eat each week, or more significant, such as committing to installing solar panels.
By using friends seeking sponsorship as messengers, The DoNation aims to reach people who know they should do more for the environment, but need a nudge to inspire action. Sponsors have to commit to their action for two months, with the hope that it will become an ingrained habit. Early indicators suggest that some longer term behaviour change has been prompted, but time will tell if Hermione’s vision is realised.
Looking to the future, The DoNation raises an interesting challenge – does the key to environmental behaviour change lie in making it personal? Whether it be supporting a friend; saving money through energy efficiency or improving your immediate living environment, providing a personal connection point seems essential if people are going to reappraise their own behaviour and start to live more sustainable. Governments, companies and third sector organisations need to understand better the personal motivations to being more environmentally aware if they are to help achieve a sustainable global future.
You can visit The DoNation at http://www.thedonation.org.uk/
19 August 2011 at 4:19 pm thenextwavefutures Leave a comment
Messengers and memes
We hadn’t planned to return to the subject of social networks so quickly after introducing our latest thinking on the subject here last week, but a week of disorder in England has thrown up big questions about the the relationship between online social networks and real social tensions. It seemed worth coming back to it. – Andrew Curry.
Alex Steer writes: We think of riots as disorderly. We observe the way in which an initial silent protest outside Tottenham police station, seeking answers from the police over the death of Mark Duggan, burst first into focused violence, and then into crime and looting that was more dispersed, less explicable, less clearly connected to its initial cause. But riots are also a form of social networking activity, an impressive (though intimidating) coordination of individuals, each self-motivated but guided by a set of common practices and ground rules, even in the absence of clearly articulated goals.
Sound familiar? In social networks, ideas are transmitted by memes, not manifestos. The Metropolitan Police made much of its impressive ‘command and control’ structure. But the rioters didn’t need one. Since the uprisings of the Arab Spring (far more coherent, and legitimate, in their orientation), it’s become fashionable to talk about ‘leaderless’ revolutions. While the lack of chains of command has been exaggerated, in both the Arab demonstrations and the London riots, it’s good to see more attention being paid to our ability to ‘organize without organizations‘ (in Clay Shirky’s memorable phrase).
From a technology perspective, the story has been the role that online social networks have played in the coordination of the riots. The media – and perhaps the authorities? – found themselves blindsided by a misunderstanding of how consumer decisions shape their use of online social networks. (We can say with some confidence that these looters were acting as consumers, though not ones bound by the usual laws of market exchange.) When the riots began, and as they spread, it became obvious that they were being coordinated online, as people used their social graphs as a recruitment mechanism to get more people onto the streets – and, in the days that followed, to pre-arrange tactical looting in towns and boroughs. The media’s attention turned immediately to the big, familiar social networks, Facebook and Twitter.
Using our Pivot Points framework, we can describe these as ‘Big Net’, ‘Open Hand’, ‘Turn On’ networks. They are built for scale, openness, and immediacy – as you know if you’ve ever tired of having a thousand ‘friends’, accidentally left compromising pictures visible to the wrong people, or tweeted in anger. They are the perfect tools for commenting on emerging events, as we’ve seen, and even for organizing legal activity, as the mass ‘riot cleanup’ operations of the last few days have shown.
For organizing rioting or looting, though, Big Net/Open Hand/Turn On networks are a disaster. You want them to be ‘Turn On’ networks, of course – they have to work in real time – but scale and openness are perilous if you want to avoid the attention of the police. It took the rioters less time than the media to figure this out. In our framework, the opposite of ‘Big Net’ is ‘Tight Knit’ – smaller-scale, more intimate networks which revolve around connections with a few close friends. The opposite of ‘Open Hand’ is ‘Closed Fist’, where privacy and secrecy are paramount.
Under the radar of mainstream attention, BBM has seen a huge growth in popularity among teenagers and young adults. In part this is because it’s free; in part, because its PIN authentication system, and RIM’s strong pro-privacy stance in other countries, give a reasonable guarantee of secrecy. We know that intimacy and secrecy are of interest to British teenagers, especially poor ones on the fringes of hyper-localised gang cultures, so it’s no surprise that the perfect Tight Knit/Closed Fist/Turn On network was already in their hands – private group texting and instant messaging smartphone apps, and especially BlackBerry Messenger (BBM).
When we focus on the obvious, we can miss a lot. The Pivot Points framework is designed to test our assumptions about what the shape – or shapes - of the social networks of the future. By concentrating on the types of networks they knew, journalists misunderstood how London’s, and England’s, disorder was spreading.
My Millennial generation
Lawrence Wykes writes: The idea of the generational cohort as a unit of social research and analysis goes back to the definition of the ‘boomers’ – America’s immediate port-war generation, now clipping to retirement. Since then we’ve had waves of new cohorts, from Gen X, to Gen Y, to the latest addition, Millennials. Millennials (the people, not the label) were born in the late ’80s, or so, approaching adolescence or adulthood by the turn of the century.
But the question of whether the Millennials are a coherent cohort is still open – the data has never quite added up. And our recent analysis, based on our Global Monitor data, suggests that as a group the Millennials are a fragmented cohort, refracted by technology.
In fact, we found four different groups (although more may have been lurking in the data) and these already suggest a more fruitful way of thinking about this generation.
- Striders have been relatively unscathed by the recent economic downturn; they are marching forth with enthusiasm, and keen for success and all the material frills they perceive will come along with it.
- Steppers have been hit hard by the downturn, which has left them price conscious and feeling negative about their future. They are cautious, considered, and want to make the most of what they’ve got.
- Satellites are optimistic about the future and know how to use the resources available to them, especially technology (they are tech-mad), to get what they want.
- Spirits are poster children for the Millennials generation; they are socially conscious and interested in things happening at a global and local level.
So if Millennials are fragmented and so easily segmented by their differing technology use and attitudes, why do they look like a generation to researchers?
I think Millennials look like a generation because there is a social-technology breakpoint between their cohort and all previous generations. Millennials are the first generation to have grown up with modern technology proper – and this is manifested in the fluid way they use technology to construct their identities and manage their environments.
But, in terms of social analysis, defining a group by technology – rather than their underlying attitudes and values – has problems. Technology evolves and changes, and it seems unlikely that the Millennial generation will grow older while remaining as inventive with technology as they have been in their young adult lives. And the next generation – however they get labelled – may well turn out to be just as creative with technology as we were
More usefully, though, this does open up a promising research question: do the different uses of technology by these different Millennial groups reflect differences in underlying values and attitudes? In other words, will these groups remain distinct as they get older? It seems possible – but so far, we just don’t know.
The future of social networks #5
Andrew Curry and Andy Stubbings write: The Shell Oil futures guru Pierre Wack described his work as being about “the gentle art of reperceiving”, and the type of work that Alex Steer has laid out in his four blog posts this week on the future of social networks is about changing perceptions by improving anticiption. We can’t know the future, but we can improve our understanding of the present and our ability to respond to change. Better anticipation, in short, increases both the depth and the breadth of vision.
So what do the six social media Pivot Points (here and here), and the tensions they represent for users, tell us about the future of social networks?
The Future of Facebook
Looking first at Facebook, it says that the model at the heart of Facebook (One for All-Big Net-TurnOn-Open Hand) may not persist. Alternative futures, for example, include a version in which ‘One for Each’ emerges as more valuable and its Connect system becomes its biggest asset, the ‘invisible social layer’ which connects other web and mobile properties, a valuable utility, without maintaining a huge public presence itself. A less promising future sees Facebook losing out as users start to value privacy and specificity more online (Tight Knit-Closed Fist-One for Each), and drift away, leaving the social network as a legacy “first generation” social network. Somewhere in between these is a future in which Facebook is less of a warehouse, and more a series of rooms, in which the tensions between One for All and One for Each are more finely balanced. In this model, it becomes a series of smaller tighter circles, but with ease of movement between them. But of course, this is also the space into which Google+ has pushed itself into with its ‘Circles” model.
Innovation spaces
Interrogating the Pivot Points, combining them in ways which stretch thinking, also starts to throw up some interesting innovation spaces. To pick up a few here:
- ‘Big Net‘ and ‘Closed Fist‘ don’t appear, on the face of it, to be good fellow travellers. One is ubiquitous, the other about strong privacy concerns. But this is a potential future in which value accrues to the institutions which can guarantee security of digital identification; it may be a ‘citizens.net’, which gives access to public services which also confirming one’s online identity to third parties who are concerned about anonymous behaviour online. And it might also be the gateway through which we manage our personal ‘official’ data, or volunteer, or alert public services to repairs or improvement.
- ‘Play‘ and ‘Turn On‘ obviously describes the world of immersive online multi-player games, but what if we add ‘Challenge‘ to that instead of ‘Confirm”? It becomes the safe space of the Fool or the Jokester, the place where one can challenge current assumptions without spurring revolution or retribution. Think of it as the ‘Carnival Incubator’, a space where communities of interest can engage with diversity or difference to innovate.
- And working through these in a short internal session at The Futures Company, we also saw an emerging world of ‘Hive Mind’, in which shared tags created created new associations between things and people, in which Delicious met location. Imagine a travel guide that reassembles itself in a thousand different ways, and has a hundred curators.
One strong possibility emerges from this overview: that marketers may look back at this early development stage of the social network with nostalgia, even amazement. It is not at all clear that the current dominant model, which emphasises mass engagement and openness, will persist at its current scale. In most of the futures which emerge from our thinking about the pivot points, marketers have to work harder, and smarter, to reach people who are more resistant to marketing.
Andrew Curry and Andy Stubbings lead The Futures Company’s thought leadership team on the future of media and technology. They are currently working on a report on ‘Technology 2020′. The earlier posts in this series on the future of social networking start here. The cartoon at the top of this post is by Jenna Cotton, was published by the Canadian University Press Newswire, and is used with thanks.
5 August 2011 at 12:00 pm thenextwavefutures Leave a comment
The future of social media #4
#4: Pivot Points – pervasiveness, utility, and worldview
Alex Steer writes: Yesterday I wrote about how different consumer decisions about scale, privacy and specificity create very different outcomes for social networking. Today I’m going to explore the other three Pivot Points.
Pervasiveness – Turn On or Tune Out?
Social networking has been driven by people’s enthusiasm for connectivity – yet many increasingly find themselves at risk of information overload. So will we want to be permanently connected to our networks, or to dip in and out as it suits us?
In a Turn On future, consumers will want to be “always on” in their networks, receiving updates and information in real time – a possibility made easier by the global mobile and smartphone boom. Buzzwords are real-time, context-specific and multiplatform, and marketers will be expected to feed the desire for constant novelty with content and deals designed to be acted on fast.
Tune Out futures, though, see consumers looking for ways to step back and manage the flow of information and complexity – good news for networks like Flickr or YouTube that function more like a library than an updates service. At this end of the axis, marketing activity needs to be opt-in, durable, asynchronous and polite – designed to be enjoyed wherever, but also whenever.
Utility – Plug or Play?
As we have said, social interactions online can range from the serious to the frivolous. But will consumers see social networks more as a useful resource or more as a form of entertainment?
In Plug futures, consumers look for networks that let them access information, opinion and tools without demanding too much attention. Application, utility and embedded socialization are our buzzwords, and brands which provide lean, useful branded tools will thrive.
In Play futures, though, entertainment is the name of the game. Consumers see networks as places to spend time accessing interesting and immersive content. Think interaction and fun – content creators seek to reward time, attention and sharing with sheer entertainment value, and don’t just push marketing messages.
Worldview – Confirm or Challenge?
Are social recommendation features and personalization a way to access the most relevant and interesting experiences – or are they trapping us inside a self-reinforcing ‘filter bubble’? Will we want social networks to confirm or challenge our worldview?
In Confirm futures, consumers want news, opinion and content filtered and curated by their social connections. Here, marketers make it easy and rewarding for consumers to share content, and target offers based on online habits and relationships.
In contrast, in Challenge futures, marketers provide exposure to new experiences and divergent points of view. Buzzwords are novelty, debate and surprise, and brands will thrive by standing out from the crowd, challenging, stimulating and offering genuine novelty and serendipity.
Using the Pivot Points today
These six Pivot Points are signposts, not predictions – by knowing the directions of people’s behaviour and preferences, we can quickly identify, and prepare for, different possible outcomes. They also offer present opportunities. They can be used to make better business and marketing decisions by tracking target consumers’ attitudes and values, and making sense of changing habits online. The Futures Company is already working with clients to show how to understand, measure and seize those opportunities. We hope that the Pivot Points provide a way to navigate an unstable landscape, and take control of an uncertain future.
This is the last of four posts on the future of social networking by Alex Steer. To read the earlier posts, click here. The image at the top of this post is from the New Medici website, and is used with thanks.
