Trend #3: Back to basics

Bye bye complex financial products — at least for a while. Following the sub-prime fiasco, simplicity, transparency and products that are not over-engineered or overly complex are back in vogue. So too are local lenders where what you see is what you get. But this swing back to the old skool doesn’t just apply to financial services. Uncertainty and anxiety are driving people towards people and products that they know and understand in all spheres.

Implications

If people are strapped for cash they will do many of the things that they did the last time there was a major recession. Therefore expect to see a resurgence of fresh home cooked meals (because cooking from scratch costs less money but also because home cooking tends to pull the immediate family back together). We should also see more people growing their own food, mending their own clothes, cleaning their own houses and fixing their own cars. At least we will for a while until people remember how difficult and frustrating some of these activities are and revert to previous behaviour.

Trend # 4: Digital Diets

People are drowning in digital data. For example, according to an Australian survey, 63% of people feel that they are overloaded with information and 40% have difficulty remembering more than 3 phone numbers. People are also realising that being less connected can actually be a good thing. For example, some people are starting to find out that you can have too many digital friends. Hence not responding to friendships requests or dropping out of social networks will become commonplace. Similarly people are slowly waking up to the fact that they waste an extraordinary amount of time and money on technology that doesn’t make their lives any easier or better. Thus unplugging on a general level will become popular as a way of rebalancing frantic and frenetic lives.

Implications

In many instances this trend will be driven by necessity. It is a way of saving money or reclaiming personal or family time. However, there is also an aspirational element to this trend. In the same way that owning a mobile phone was once seen as a mark of sophistication, not owning one (or using one sparingly) is becoming a signal that a person has sorted out their priorities or has rebalanced their life. People may also decide that in some instances the old ways were the better ways and will start to use products and services that do not require power or are an antidote to fast digital alternatives.

Expect to see a growing interest in analogue products. For example, fountain pens, letter writing, wet-film photography and vinyl records.

This trend is taken from some work I’ve been doing on scenarios for 2009.

Trend #5: Enoughism

People are becoming alarmed about the health of the planet and especially the pervasive influence of materialism upon their lives. Some people have therefore decided to take personal responsibility and do something about it. Enoughism is about switching things off, buying less stuff and seeking to reconnect with the simpler pleasures of life. It is a world where quality counts. People are still prepared to pay for things but they expect them to last. The trend is best summed up by Tom Hodgkinson in his book ‘How to Be Free’, who talks about the shift from finding out what you want to discovering what you can do without.

Implications

Organizations will become increasingly values-driven. They will also become more connected with their communities, be it geographic are or the wider community of employees, customers and suppliers. People will be spending more time with their immediate family and friends too. This is an opportunity because people will be interested in things that enable this or tap into the need to slow things down a little. However, using technology to give people superficial or remote access is liable to backfire.

Links with down-shifting, work/life balance aspiration, the search for meaning and the rise of spirituality.

Trend #6: IMBYs

People are becoming disillusioned with the effects of globalisation. Thus we are starting to see the development of campaigns to make production and consumption more local.Hence IMBYs (In My Back Yard). This trend is the opposite of the previous NIMBY trend (Not In My Back Yard).

This links with environmental concerns but is also driven by a desire to control outcomes. Thus, in the same way that people once campaigned to stop things happening locally, there will now be campaigns to ensure that everything from factories to schools are built around the corner and support the local community.

The trend is most evident with food where localisation and provenance are already important but the trend will move beyond this to affect everything from politics to business.

Another one in the series of trends for 2009…

Trend # 7: Serious Media

In times of serious economic upheaval individuals have two options. The first option is to bury ones head in the sand and go somewhere else (everything from escapist movies to virtual worlds). The second route to find out what’s going on. Serious newspapers and magazines such as The Financial Times and The Economist are seeing increases in circulation and they are being joined by a plethora of steadfastly old fashioned ink-on-dead-tree titles such as Prospect, The Weekly Standard, Harper’s, The Atlantic and The Monthly.This trend is primarily evident within newspapers and magazines but the same affect can be seen with non-fiction books.

Implications

There is undoubtedly a large market for information and entertainment that is dumbed down and served in small bite-sized chunks. However, there is also a large market for the analysis of complex issues and ideas. Outside of media expect things to become more serious in other areas too. Fashion will become smarter and more formal (at least at work) and also watch for the disappearance of dress-down Fridays (replaced by no-email Mondays and no Blackberry Bank Holidays).

One outake here is that people rarely live exclusively in one world. People commute between high culture and flippancy and will happily read Nuts or Maxim magazine one minute and the New York Times another. Do not fall into the trap of categorizing people with simplistic labels based on age, sex, race, income, profession or geographic location.

Examples of the shift to seriousness include the rise of documentaries, the popularity of Intelligence Squared Debates (now London/New York /Sydney) and TED Conferences on YouTube.

Here’s number eight in my list of new trends for 2009.

Trend # 8: The Brain

With neuro-enhancement around the corner the brain is becoming sexy and is set to become the media’s favourite organ in 2009. This is links to developments in neuroscience, most notably MRI and fMRI technology. It also links with the fact that digital interfaces are starting to penetrate human flesh and brain implants are being developed to treat serious diseases such as epilepsy. The starting point for this trend will be developments in technology, especially within medicine, but the impactions go far beyond treating disease.

Implications

Expect to see a rush of books on the inner working of the human brain and how this relates to everything from our appreciation of music to work and human relationships. On the less serious side there will be a rash of products and services aimed at helping people to exercise their brain and also a bunch of pseudo science surrounding the use of brain scans to understand customer behaviour and to refine commercial messages. There will also be a continuing interest in brain-enhancing foods, brain-enhancing drugs and brain-enhancing games, especially for the over-55s.

In terms of threats, brain scans could replace lie detectors in an effort to see what we’re really thinking. The implications of this are extremely significant and ultimately boils down to who owns what’s inside your own head.

Here is trend #9 from my list of top consumer and business trends for 2009. It is perhaps worth mentioning that several people were writing about eco-cynics last year (and my own list of top trends for 2008 included eco-exhaustion). However, I think we were all a year too early and it will be 2009 that eco-cynicism really starts to bite.

Trend # 9: Eco-Cynics

People are becoming increasingly fed up with being told how to behave, especially from hypocritical and holier than thou politicians and celebrities that are driving a Toyota Prius one minute and stepping onto a private jet, wearing a fur coat, the next. There is even a UK-based arms manufacturer that is using lead-free bullets because they are kinder to the environment for heavens sake.

None of this is to say that acting on behalf of the environment is a bad thing. Far from it. It’s just that in many instances this new found environmental friendliness is nothing more than marketing hype and public relations spin — something green that’s cynically added to products and people to make them appear whiter than white.

I know of one US firm that uses the term ‘green plays’ for example. This could be an innocent phrase but I doubt it. A green play is more than likely one of many ‘plays’ that the company is trying out in the minds of mindless customers. Or how about the theme park in Australia with an Environment Shop. What’s inside this shop you ask? The answer is cute toy animals, largely made in China, largely from plastic and largely landfill within 12-months. In short, simplistic, tokenistic and opportunistic ‘solutions’ are driving ever increasing levels of eco-cynicism.

Implications

People are slowly waking up to the fact that climate change is a very complex issue and that nobody (including the experts) ultimately knows what will happen in the future. A degree of caution is obviously prudent but so too would policies that avoid faddish and shallow responses to the ‘facts’. Shonky carbon labelling and carbon offsetting schemes should therefore be thrown out in favour of better thought through alternatives. For example, investment in low-cost energy efficiency programmes (ways to use less energy) would almost certainly do more good than most of the expensive schemes currently under development.

I’m going to post my top ten trends for 2009 every day for the next 10 days (at least that’s the theory). Here’s the first one…

Trend # 10: Fear of the unknown

The point of this trend is merely to push home the point that the future is ultimately unknowable. Yes you can see general patterns and make well-educated speculations about next week and next year based on partly on past events and human behavior. But if history teaches us anything it is surely that totally unexpected ideas, inventions and events (the so-called ‘Black Swans’ in 2008 speak) have a habit of ruining logical and well laid-out plans. Uncertainty also links with ideas surrounding anxiety and complexity and it is interesting to note that during previous periods of rapid change and upheaval, superstition and dogmatic religious beliefs both flourished.

Implications

Anything can happen and impossible is nothing. Having said this there are clearly things we know. There are also things we know we don’t know and there are things we don’t know that we don’t know. Trend #10 is about the second group of unknowns (highly improbable but highly impactful events that tend not to follow trend lines or logic – those Black Swans again).

This trend (OK, it’s really more of an idea or observation) is about how when something big and unexpected happens (e.g. a financial crisis) we overreact after the event. We assume that the same thing will happen again and make plans to stop it happening again. For example, if terrorists take over two planes and fly them into buildings we assume that they will do it again, in almost exactly the same way and possibly even on the same date. The big link here is with our aversion to risk and the (largely false) idea that we can totally control risk or live in a 100% risk free environment.