Future Thoughts

Future Foundation conferences always inspire debate – and our last one, held on May 3^rd, was no exception.  Although our fantastic host, BBC Home Editor Mark Easton, fielded as many questions as possible, ideas  continued to stream in via our Twitter feed and text service.  So the panel have regrouped to answer the additional questions.

Lena Roland via Twitter (@RolandReckons): Are mobile payments and the consumer data behind them really secure, not just today but long term?

Kerry Rheinstein, editorial analyst replies: Lena thanks for the question. You are right; currently, security of mobile payments remains a prominent issue for many people. Our data shows that only around 18% of all consumers think that, “mobile phones are as safe as computers when it comes to securing your personal information.” However, the proportion of people who agree with that statement rises to 31% when looking at 16-34 year olds. This shows the impact that young people’s greater familiarity and trust of smartphones have on perceptions of smartphone security and mobile payments.

Quantifying this point, our research shows that 47% of all consumers and 69% of 16-34 year olds would be interested in using mobile payments if it was safe and easy to do so. Therefore, we suggest that in the long term as familiarity and expanded use of smartphones amongst more people and more activities grow, more people will trust smartphones and not just interest but also use of mobile payments will grow too.

Megan Bannon via Twitter (@anthromeg): How has the recession contributed to Everyday Exceptional? Have people sought out reasons for celebration to get through?

Heather Corker, Editorial Analyst: The recession has had an impact on people wanting to experience happiness/ exceptional things in smaller, more affordable, packages; and perhaps to do so bit more often as an antidote to the financial gloom. It might not be the case that people are consciously or intentionally seeking out reasons for celebration, but rather carrying a “why not?” mentality, living for the day and not waiting to experience some frivolity (in case things get worse…). Our position is that this behaviour has become (or is becoming) a more normalised way of living and extending to more and varied areas.

Truth Central LDN via Twitter (@TruthCentralLDN): Does avoiding bad experiences really mean avoiding new experiences? Surely even with Eat Social they would vet restaurant

Parimal Makwana, Senior Editorial Analyst, says: Our increasing ability to vet our consumption does mean we can more easily avoid bad experiences when we are actively seeking new experiences. But we know from our research that seeking new experiences is something of great importance to consumers… so rather than discouraging us from trying new things we are witnessing the rise of managed discovery – where consumers prefer to carefully manage their path to discovery instead of taking a leap into the unknown. We still want to try new things but prefer to be reassured that our new endeavours will please.

At the same time by living vicariously through others’ reviews, research and ratings our expectations of any new experiences are always pre-set – creating new challenges for brands to both uphold these expectations and to try and create genuine surprise and excitement for consumers.

By text: Does everyday exceptional not habituate people so that exceptional becomes every day?

Jim Murphy, Editorial Director, replies:  This is an interesting reflection on Everyday Exceptional. Maybe the deeper story is that people and markets alike are now programmed to make life special in all kinds of contrived and deliberately framed  ways. What was exceptional in the past can indeed become banalised - but for that very reason we will all try to redefine “exceptional”. Hence the energy in the trend.

Megan Bannon via Twitter (@anthromeg): Will the 2012 localism campaign have any more joy that 1968′s less than successful ‘I’m backing Britain’?

Jim Murphy, Editorial Director, says: This all depends on all the glorious unpredictables of 2012 : the success of the Oly-opening ceremony, the medals tally, the Thames sail-past for the Jubilee not being ruined by rain… We should assume that quite a lot of positive pro-Brit energy will be released but how long will it last? Consumer respect for Made in Britain is not negligible  -  but will it survive economic recovery (when it happens), the onward march of globalisation, the fragmented regional identities of the UK…?  Or turn into something different in the years ahead  -  something not as easily exploitable by business?

Idiology via Twitter (@idiologists): Have consumers given up on personal responsibility for the environment? We now see that govt should act before individuals

Jim Murphy, Editorial Director: Consumer motives towards green agendas have held together pretty well across the economic difficulties of the last 4 years. But it is indeed true that consumers want companies and governments to do the heavy lifting. One related question is : what happens when so many scientific innovations  – in the field of fossil fuel exploitation and use, for instance  – create more eco and more guilt-free consumption?  What happens when transports systems become so green that active pro-green consumer engagement is not required?  This is the world we are entering.

Sue J via Twitter (@spartaksuze): How far will professionalised lifestyles go? Will our iPhones tell us when we should go to bed soon?

Jim Murphy, Editorial Director, comments: Well, this might be a scary way of putting it but the End of Inefficiency trend is very much the way we live, not now but soon….

Megan Bannon ‏via Twitter (@anthromeg): Is Digital Detox tourism the next trend in travel? Might be some opportunity there for those of us who can’t turn off?

Barry Clark, Account Director says: No, I don’t think so.  As Parimal’s presentation on End of Adventure and my presentation on Performative Leisure made clear, digital is a big part of organising and enjoying trips.  However I think we will see some smaller and more independent operators using accidents of geography (such as poor reception areas and infrastructure) to their advantage.  Indeed we have seen hoteliers in France and other countries promoting their premises on such a basis.  Digital detox might be the next niche trend in travel.

Rachael Lake via Twitter (@rachaelLake): If cheese was an antidote to globalisation, how will we rebel against digital maximisation?

Barry Clark, Account Director has a two part response: 1) Is cheese an antidote to globalisation?  Perhaps.  In the example you reference cheese appeals to us because we’re highly involved in it; we’re interested.  Cheese also appeals through localism, heritage, tradition and its multi-sensory nature.  All of these factors are powerful motivators to consumers and cheese is acting here as the antithesis of globalisation.  So if we extend the logic to digital we’ll be looking for something that is the polar opposite of computing and the internet; getting back to nature perhaps, gardening, country breaks, traditional skills, the National Trust…

Answer 2) Maltesers.

Keep the debate alive – add your own comments and ask us questions!

Future Foundation conferences always inspire debate – and our last one, held on May 3^rd, was no exception.  Although our fantastic host, BBC Home Editor Mark Easton, fielded as many questions as possible, ideas  continued to stream in via our Twitter feed and text service.  So the panel have regrouped to answer the additional questions – split into two posts.

Matt Taylor via Twitter (@DJMDT): Richard, is it possible for the Jubilympics Summer to positively influence consumer confidence? Will that have any effect?

Economics Editor Richard Nicholls says: Matt – analysis of previous Olympics reveals no conclusive short term pattern on overall GDP growth (e.g. Spain in 1992, Australia in 2000, Greece in 2004, USA in 1996). Similar for consumer confidence for recent European games. This is the topline though. Below the surface, different sectors will see very different fortunes with a huge boon for some obvious sectors, commercial opportunities for others, and perhaps a short term hit for e.g. manufacturing.

Jubilee? Little overall effect on consumer confidence from either the Golden Jubilee in 2002 or the Royal Wedding in April last year. Retail sales were strong in April 2011 – though this was partly also a function of the weather.

By text: To what extent are the trends and forecasts raised today entirely dependent on economic recovery?

FF Economics Editor Richard Nicholls says: That depends on the trend! But most of those showcased at the conference are not recovery-dependent (or only in detail rather than direction).

In late 2008 as we went into recession, and then in 2009 as we came out, we did some analysis of trends that we being boosted, hampered and impacted in a non-directional sense by the recession as part of our Recession Central Scenario and New Normal documents. Much of the reasoning for this still holds. Examples: many technological trends are largely independent of downturn. Sales of smartphones have soared despite a fall in disposable incomes. So Performative Leisure, Murdered by Modernity, The Quantified Self, etc. are driven by non-economic factors. The same is true of demographic or social trends like The Ageless Society.

Maximising has been driven by downturn (but also by technology – and we don’t expect it to fade away immediately on lasting recovery).

Megan Bannon ‏via Twitter (@anthromeg): If the Internet is impacting how we think, then how is it impacting our culture?

Jim Murphy, Editorial Director, replies: Goodness, what a powerful question. Not easily answered in a bite. But, for example, the internet has revolutionised the whole culture of human contact and indeed intimacy. (Consider how hard it is these days to lose contact with a friend). Whether this is a good story or bad news all round speaks to how one views the Murdered by Modernity trend. But we could talk about this theme all day!

Sue J via Twitter (@spartaksuze): If most brands are offering loyalty rewards and personalised offers, does that devalue loyalty as a concept?

I don’t know if it does.  I’d argue that being treated with – genuine – personalised offers that we find helpful or interesting can only make us more loyal.  I’m sure that Amazon have won loyalty by acting as a choice-editor for many people and leading them to interesting products that they may not have found themselves.  As is so often the case in marketing, it all depends on the quality of the execution.

I think we also need to be careful to distinguish genuine loyalty from people who can’t be bothered to change supplier.

Idiology via Twitter (@idiologists): Have consumers given up on personal responsibility for the environment? We now see that govt should act before individuals

Jim Murphy, Editorial Director: Consumer motives towards green agendas have held together pretty well across the economic difficulties of the last 4 years. But it is indeed true that consumers want companies and governments to do the heavy lifting. One related question is : what happens when so many scientific innovations  – in the field of fossil fuel exploitation and use, for instance  – create more eco and more guilt-free consumption?  What happens when transports systems become so green that active pro-green consumer engagement is not required?  This is the world we are entering.

Keep the debate alive – add your own comments and ask us questions!

In the first of a series of posts from distinguished guest bloggers, Matt Taylor, head of future and trends insights at O2, explores the future of choice and content curation.

We have an uneasy relationship with the infinite.  For instance, we all know that there are infinite integers (whole numbers like 1,2,3,4…) but we also know that there are more fractions than integers.  So infinity for fractions therefore must be larger than infinity for integers.  But that doesn’t make any sense…

Perhaps instead, you consider an hotel with infinite rooms, all of which are occupied.  Another person arrives.  The receptionist instructs each guest in the hotel to multiply their room number by 2 and move into that.  So the guest in room 1 moves to room 2, room 2 moves to 4, room 3 moves to 6 and so on.  This frees up all of the odd numbered rooms and we can now move an infinite number of guests into these empty rooms.  Even though the hotel was fully occupied originally…

The human brain enjoys structure because it helps us make sense of the world.  In fact our evolution probably came about as a consequence of developing pattern recognition as a survival instinct – we were able to understand the link between a rustle in the bushes and a predator jumping out at us.  It does not, however, particularly enjoy the concept of infinity because it’s counterintuitive and often paradoxical.

So what do we do?  It seems to me than when we come across anything that we perceive as infinite, we seek to impose a structure on it in order to make sense of it.  I have always thought that this is where religion comes from – when faced with the infinite landscapes of biology and cosmology, we impose a structure on them that helps anchor us in the familiarity of pattern recognition.  X happens because Y is displeased.  A happens because B asked for it.

It is interesting to find this behaviour now manifesting in digital too as value shifts to curation.  At their UK conference last year, the Future Foundation showed some 30 year trends on values and aspiration and demonstrated that what is important in our lives has remained incredibly static over that time.  One of the great exceptions there was creativity; the number of us who admit that being creative is important tripled between 1980 and the end of the 00s.  It’s no coincidence that this period also saw the rise of the web, a universal platform for people to express themselves.  The problem now is that the vast scale of information and content being created means that the marginal benefit of creating more decreases exponentially and so we revert to that evolutionary instinct of imposing a structure on it.  For me, this is the motivation behind the curation vs creation debate.

Websites like Tumblr and Pinterest have exploded onto the scene because they fulfil these needs.  They allow us to make sense of the infinite ocean of content online by collecting those fragments of it that best reflect ourselves (whether that be recipes we like, clothes we wish to buy, illustrations we admire or people we aspire to).  Curating content like this helps us filter the web, define ourselves and feel grounded in the face of infinite creativity.  With hindsight it makes sense too, as the number of people for whom expressing their creativity increased and as the platforms for them to do so proliferated, of course there would be an increased demand for services that help us make sense of it all.

We are not saying here that the role of content creation will change; consumers will continue seeking new and innovative ways to create content and brands will still be looking to harness that through co-creation and open innovation.  But there is increasing value in simplicity, curation and in helping people not feel adrift within infinite choice.

As I’m sure you’ll all have seen, the UK is in a double dip recession. The 0.2% contraction in GDP in Q1 2012 was the second consecutive quarter of negative GDP growth, meeting the technical definition of a recession.

A caveat: these are initial estimates only. The ONS’ first estimate of GDP growth is made from only about 40% of relevant data and so might be revised up or down in later publications. Some economists were surprised at these figures and expect it to be revised upwards.

The overall picture, though, is not one of sharp decline but of a completely flat economy. The level of real UK GDP is the same in Q1 2012 as in Q1 2011. We don’t expect this to change in the next few months because there are simply very few drivers of growth. Consumer and business confidence is weak. Inflation is still running higher than the rate of earnings growth, underlining the need for inflation to fall to 2% or below. There are some positives: unemployment has fallen recently and the UK is exporting more to emerging markets.

Meanwhile the Eurozone is in no position to drag the UK out of growth. Half of British exports go to the EU so their fortunes are closely tied to the UK’s. To give you an idea of how closely the UK’s fortunes are tied to the continent, UK exports to Belgium alone equate to 1.7% of the UK’s total economic output.

The economy needs some positive surprises  -  such as a rapid fall in inflation or good news from abroad.