The national dish here is not curry, but take-away – in any form.

New York City has long been famous for its 24-hour mentality. But technology today has added another dimension to this 24 hour society; more, social media has made instant access – all hours access – available to everyone, not just in the city that never sleeps. The End of Adventure is playing out quite nicely on the streets of America today.

One of the biggest differences I’ve noticed jumping the pond from the UK to the US is just how much more social Americans are – but not in the traditional sense. While mobile platforms and their functionality were adopted far more quickly in the UK and Europe initially, Americans are more actively involved in the everyday, on-the-ground use of social media via their phones as they go throughout their day.  Using every form of social media not just to show the world what they are doing and who they are doing it with, but to find the information they need.

Yelp, in particular, is not a new concept. It has been around for ages, but pray for the business that receives a bad review -  their end may be night.  Be it because no one wants to waste their hard earned cash on a venue or experience that is only, well OK; or because our time is too precious to be spent at any place other than the best of venues, with an excellent happy hour, the best flat white in the city or food which worthy of an instagram mug shot  -  in New York, cafes, salons, Laundromats live and die by their Yelp review.

If there were ever any doubt that transparency is now integral to every business-consumer relationship, this is it.  There is simply too much choice and too many new venues to wade through – very little is now left to chance. If walking down the street and in need of a quick coffee, bite to eat or a spur of the moment mani-pedi where do I turn? Even in a hurry, mediocre will just not do. So I don’t leave it to chance, I leave it to Yelp.

In fact today, not only did I look up the nearest  mani-pedi salon to my home; I ensured it had received no bad reviews in the last 6 months, on any site  -  because you are only ever as good as your latest review. In the last week I have used online review services (why ask a friend when I can ask my phone?) to book my hair appointment, find a venue for happy hour, book dinner, “discover” a quiet, cool cafe to spend my Sunday morning reading the paper, and found a gym to join (who have very kindly provided me with a free one-week trial while I determine whether or not to jump on board). The list, as you can tell, could go on.

But these habits speak to a bigger social trend -  the need to share. It is my fellow citizens – the collective of New Yorkers and tourists alike – who are banding together to make sure that not one of us need have a bad experience. Or that we are at least warned of the possibility ahead of time.

What consequences does this have for businesses? How must they now interact?  Now that consumers are talking to each other, brands need to join the conversation -  and they must offer complete transparency.  You’ve heard this, we know.  But getting the response right is critical.  Brands must acknowledge where they have gone wrong, answer questions and reply to bad reviews. Talk to your consumers like friends, not as a potential sale.

People are social. Brands need to get involved.

For more on nVision US or our NY office, please contact Heather Corker – heatherc@futurefoundation.net

In time for the Future Foundation conference on 14 May, we spoke to a couple of emerging tech companies to explore where technology is coming from, where it is heading, and why our modern world is just so ripe for the raft of innovation we’re currently experiencing.  Resident tech-head Will explains.

As part of our nVitro research, we are constantly keeping our finger on the pulse of emerging technology and the trends driving it. It’s important to imagine how current trends will evolve in future technological environments, as well as to envisage some of the totally new trends forced upon us by these new technologies.

We began our journey with a trip to London’s Google Campus, where we met a few of their startups-in-residence. We also travelled outside London, meeting international entrepreneurs at the Gadget Show Live in Birmingham and visiting Silicon Fen in Cambridge. From this, we have identified 4 ways that the technology of tomorrow will change everything.

1)      Connectivity: we spoke to London-based EVRYTHNG about the future of the internet. If the last ten years have told the story of getting every person online, the next ten years will be about getting every thing online. Their product is an engine designed to allow all manner of objects – from your wristwatch to your steak – to gain a digital identity.

2)      Information: why do we want a connected world? Because, with the information generated by every one of our possessions, we will start to gain genuinely useful insights into our lives. This isn’t just about eating enough omega-3, or getting your 30 minutes of exercise – Narrato, at the Google Campus, are building a tool with which to analyse ALL our data in one place. This is about moving from the Quantified Self to totally informed decision making, driven by real-time knowledge of your financial status, your health status and even what influences your mood. There is so much room for brands to enter this real-time data-mood-experience exchange.

3)      Wearable Tech: doesn’t all this data-mood-experience sound a bit Brave New World? Maybe, if we were constantly reading our smartphones, trying to interpret our metadata. But we won’t be – in fact, we won’t even notice that we’re being monitored until some fantastically useful insight is revealed to us, such as “alcohol level still too high to drive”, or “before you go through the ticket barrier, have you forgotten that the Piccadilly Line is closed?”. Wearable tech bears our digital identity around smart environments, but also opens up context-sensitive interfaces that are far quicker and easier to use than a touchscreen smartphone: this is one of the reasons behind Hoverkey (also at Campus), an NFC security card developed to physically “log in” to smartphone apps. No to usernames and passwords. Yes to seamless digital environments.

4)      New interfaces: every surface has the potential to be interactive. And this doesn’t mean wall-to-wall touchscreens. It means hidden technology that only becomes visible when needed, when actually useful. The Xbox Kinect showed how any space can be made into a control mechanism. Novalia, based in Cambridge, has designed processes that make paper interactive. The best part is that, unlike say, a tablet, when you’re not interacting with these surfaces, they don’t become dead weight – they just go back to being good old useful paper.

The bottom line? A lot of people see Google Glass as another step on the path to Murder by Modernity, bemoaning new tech, constant updates and the demands for instant information. But there is another way out: make the tech better.  Pretty soon, kids won’t be checking texts at dinner time or taking phone calls in the cinema: tech will certainly be everywhere, but it won’t be interrupting our lives. In our conversations, we’ve realised that the future will have fewer screens, fewer distractions. Computers are learning human – tomorrow won’t have wires, buttons or charging docks. In fact, we think the future will look more like the past. That’s why we’ve started calling it Yesterday’s World.

After much speculation surrounding the Facebook phone, the social networking giant unveiled Home a few weeks ago.  The app installs a new home screen onto your Android phone and more fully integrates Facebook into its functionality; indeed according to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook Home is a step towards designing a phone around people rather than apps. Home’s official site reads, “From the moment you turn it on, you see a steady stream of friends’ posts and photos on your home screen. Upfront notifications and quick access to your essentials mean you’ll never miss a moment. And when you download Facebook Messenger, you can keep chatting with friends when you’re using other apps.”

To date however reviews have been fairly poor. At the time of writing, Facebook Home has an average rating of just 2.3 on Google Play, with 9,261 of  17,742 reviews giving it just 1 star – and given that Facebook has had five weeks since the product launched, improvements have yet to be made to the service to boost its appeal. In fairness to Facebook, if the short lived outrage caused by switching users to Timeline is anything to go by we can probably get a good indication of how opinion could shift on Home once a few tweaks are made.

Thinking in the context of mobile advertising which I wrote about last month, could this be the type of game changer the industry needs? Though nothing was mentioned at the Home launch in relation to advertising, certainly this will add a new dimension to mobile ads. The information Facebook has the potential of accessing through Home is certainly appealing (or worrying depending on which side of the fence you’re sitting) and could provide opportunities for mobile advertising to be more genuinely native than Facebook currently claims it is. Additionally, it provides an opportunity for location-based targeting to appear in a less interfering manner. Thinking of how the chat heads and notifications features on Home work it’s not hard to imagine targeted ads popping up on screens without users having to navigate away from what they are currently doing, and more importantly allowing them to swipe it away if it isn’t of interest.

Obviously this opens up a raft of privacy issues. While a majority of consumers agree that their “definition of privacy is changing due to the internet and social media”, an even higher number say they would like greater control over their personal information and have the power to choose when they exchange it. Presumably Facebook plans to stick to its tried and tested approach, wait until it has achieved the scale needed to ensure users won’t leave before monetising Home. Still, when they do let’s hope they get it right.

What do you think?  Is Facebook Home going to make mobile advertising more relevant and targeted?  Will the move to a dedicated phone prove to be seamless?  Will anyone actually use it?

Panellist and media commentator Roy Greenslade made the distinction between the business of journalism (the digitally disrupted area in question) and the journalism business. In addition, he broke down the ‘disruption’ into three phases: disbelief, panic and exposure of the difference between the platform and the journalism itself.

Laurie Benson, founder of Upnexxt, emphasised that there have already been 20 years of disruption, mostly consisting of disbelief and then panic. Media expanded exponentially in the 80s thanks to the lucrative ad revenue model; and when disruption hit, the press stubbornly stuck to the idea of remaining as monolithic entities, worrying only about traditional rivals and disregarding the growing influence of social media.  There was a race towards digitisation – putting content on the web and offering it for free (if CNN or TIME went online, so did Newsweek and Fox and vice versa) but social media remained very much a poor cousin.

So what comes next? Digital strategist Nic Newman believes that we are in the midst of a second wave of disruption, one with mobile, social and visual components. Mobile Living will drive the atomisation of content and compression of news as articles will need to be resized to fit phone screens and three minute videos are becoming too long. Social media is also changing how we find news: 63% of 16-24s are social networkers via mobile phones or smartphones and 3 in 10 claim they are using social networks more than they used to in order to communicate. Networks such as Twitter and Facebook are also becoming major platforms for news recommendations. In terms of visuals, the web was once about text and pictures – but now anything from real-time to animation is available for storytelling on a browser.

Is this a downward spiralling chute for print media? Clive Jackson, CEO and Founder of Victor, sees these developments and the digital disruption overall as an opportunity. He projects that in five years time Consumer Capital will be the name of the game, where consumers will dictate how brands, news, etc. will engage with them. Loyalty will also be earned by added value given; the issue right now for the press is how to commercialise what they create and show why consumers should value (and potentially pay for) it. As such, the future of media is not about finding an alternative to the ad revenue streams, but rather about finding a solution outside the status quo. Rob Grimshaw, MD of FT.com, believes that the digital disruption will continue because of the push of an outdated business model and the pull of new opportunities, and the only way up that ladder is revolutionised customer engagement. The FT debuted on Flipboard last week, and there is more to come.

Following last week,’s announcement that the United States economy was bouncing back, with employment rising by 165,000 and unemployment dropping to 7.5, our Head Economist Richard Nicholls ponders the resilience of the US consumer and the potential impact this will have on the global economy…

Last week’s good employment statistics were the latest sign of resilience from the US economy and the American consumer.  Employment rose by 165,000 in April, well ahead of population growth; and while the number of government jobs fell by 11,000, the private sector created some 176,000 jobs. 73,000 of these were in professional and business services.

This follows good data on consumer spending in 2013. Despite the increase in payroll taxes as part of the fiscal cliff deal, and now the government cuts mandated by the Sequester, consumer spending has kept rising in real terms month-on-month (0.2% in January, 0.3% in February and 0.3% in March). This is despite aggregate real disposable income falling by 3% since the end of 2013, largely a result of tax increases.

What has happened? A fall in the saving ratio – this now stands at 2.7% as of March, down from an average of 3.9% in 2012. The American consumer so far has absorbed the payroll tax increase. (In contrast, the saving ratio in the UK is around 7%.)

The continued resilience of the American consumer will be crucial to global economic prospects – while more work is needed, there is growing evidence that the US economy is slowly recovering.  Only time will tell what impact this has on the global stage – but this could well be a time for cautious optimism.

For more US, UK or global economic data or predictions, including country-specific economic snapshots please contact the Future Foundation on 0203 008 4889.

]]> http://blog.futurefoundation.net/2013/05/the-resilient-american-consumer/feed/ 0 http://blog.futurefoundation.net/2013/05/the-unbearable-lightness-of-working/ http://blog.futurefoundation.net/2013/05/the-unbearable-lightness-of-working/#comments Wed, 01 May 2013 10:27:15 +0000 Karen http://blog.futurefoundation.net/?p=1656 We’re becoming more and more obsessed with professional happiness and motivation. A snapshot to illustrate my point:

- I have just finished reading yet another excellent article in Fast Company about how the greatest business leaders achieve their legendary greatness (generally by ignoring the detritus that tends to drag lesser mortals like me down a slippery slope of Lol Cats and women putting cats in bins)

- I went to a conference last week which focused solely on understanding motivation, happiness and sustainable innovation (although we had to pretend we were doing yoga on a beach and stare into strangers’ eyes, which made me realise how deeply rooted I am to Powerpoint and not looking into strangers’ eyes)

- I have a range of new books on my desk – one of which is entitled “Happy Hour 9 To 5: How to Love Your Job, Love Your Life and Kick Butt At Work”, and all of which are part of a growing trend towards helping people break out of the unhappy cycle of Work Life Tension.  I will read this book one day – if I find the time…

So what’s behind this trend?  FF trends like Brainstorms at Bedtime and The Power of Quiet speak to our increasingly digital, connected lives – we’ve pretty much all got smartphones, tablets and laptops and – other than small (but valuable) innovations in things like apps to help manage the clutter – the general move is very much towards a world in which we’re permanently switched-on, able (and encouraged) to work 24/7 and checking emails while lying in bed/ on a beach in the Seychelles.

But there are other, less tangible facets to the trend trajectory.  For example, the trend we call Personal Net Growth, in which we see workers harnessing online channels like LinkedIn for personal and professional development, accruing new skills, broadcasting expertise and building a picture of themselves as thoroughly employable people.  It’s a variation on Performative Leisure – we want to show ourselves in the best light at any given time; we want to be the most motivated and innovative employee imaginable; we want to be admired.  Social platforms give us the exposure we crave – and for the 50% of 16-24 British year olds who say they enjoy talking about their career to their friends, this is clearly a trend on an upwards curve.

Another trend we could draw on is the Myth of Decline – there’s a general sense among every generation that they are the most deprived, the unhappiest, the least wealthy consumer tribe; that things were better before.  This applies tangibly to our work lives – we think we work longer hours than ever (in fact, the working week is almost exactly the same as 20 years ago ); we’re spending less time at home/ with our families (probably but for a variety of reasons); we’re being pushed harder than ever before in an increasingly competitive environment.

The last point is, I think, the crux of this.  Workers are operating in a global labour market where competition is fierce, the skilled workforce is growing, education is more expensive, digital platforms give anyone the chance to work from anywhere and social media gives them the chance to tell everyone about it.  This isn’t an environment where anyone can afford to relax.  No wonder we’re obsessed with being the most motivated and innovative – we have to be to survive.

This is life, professionalised.

We’d love to hear your thoughts.  Are employees feeling the pressure of a global labour market? What about the employer’s role in all of this?  Where does trust sit within this?  Remuneration?

In the 10s, ever more intelligent use of our online data has added an extra element of concern into the mix: for many consumers, Big Data is a Big Problem. The vulnerability of sharing information with third parties has become more widely publicised and many – if certainly not all – consumers are gaining greater awareness about the extent to which companies can access and indeed harness their data.

As we write, about 60% say they are worried about who can access their data and that they would be interested in an online store which deliberately did not keep a record of their previous purchases. The desire for greater control is still more profound; 9 in 10 who say they are more concerned about privacy than they were five years ago want more control over how their personal information is used by companies.

It seems inevitable, then, that many of us will want to get smarter and savvier in how we conduct ourselves online. And here we can note the emergence of tools such as DeleteMe – an app in the US which offers an easy and simple way for consumers to keep their private information private. Acting as the online investigator, it searches some of the largest databases in the US to find and remove any details about the consumer in question.

The problem, though, is its price tag: $129 for a one-year subscription. Certainly, some of the most nervous surfers might think this a worthwhile investment but we have to question its appeal for the typical consumer. This does, however, point to one of the obvious opportunities emanating from this trend: services offering data-protecting credentials but in an effort-lite and inexpensive package are surely poised to do well. As are brands that acknowledge consumer concern and provide solutions which are quick and hassle-free for people to adopt.

‘Nomophobia’ is apparently the word to describe the fear of being out of mobile phone contact – OCD-related behaviours such as angst as to how little battery is left, the pocket pat followed by a panicked increase in heart rate when realizing it’s not there, a phone within arms reach of the bed pillow – and many more recent behavioural phenomena that I’m sure most will associate with.  What’s going on!?

Well, we have every single family member, friend, colleague and vague acquaintance we have ever met within our pocket; we have the internet and more information than a President had access to less than a decade ago in the palm of our hand.  We have our life PA and 24-7 entertainment at the touch of a button; a curious constant companion for our down-time and our up-time.

Plus new advances are fundamentally changing not only how we engage with each other but with the physical world around us. How much more indispensable might the phone become as it continues along its evolutionary path of becoming an extension of our physical senses…? Audio discovery started this trend, enabling the phone to ‘listen’ and act like our ears – interpreting sound into a response. High resolution cameras, powerful processors and trends like QR codes have extended it into the realm of sight and with Near Field Communication (NFC) coming soon – we’ll soon be touching things with our devices, to pay, to register interest and to find out more…

Blippar grew out of this trend, and in particular the sight extension, with the evolution of a exciting ‘markerless image recognition’ technology – which has removed the need for codes, watermarking or any digital manipulation of day-to-day images and objects.  Now, simply ‘looking’ at something can bring it to life with interactive content experiences and the future implications of this are pretty mind-blowing.   This revolutionary trend effectively ‘digitizes’ the 99.9% of the static world around us that could previously only feed us old (inherent to print), static, one-way information.  Whether a product, a poster, a newspaper, a t-shirt, pub coaster, shop signage, piece of art, school text book – we can now interact with them all in ways we have only just started to scratch the surface of.

Blippar’s technology was the brainchild of Ambarish Mitra and Omar Tayeb – CEO and CTO respectively – who met whilst working on innovation projects at AXA insurance and stared dabbling with the tech in their spare time.  The ‘eureka’ moment came in late 2010 whilst playing with a £5 note and managing to augment Rish’s head over the Queen’s …  and so the verb to ‘blipp’ was born.  In the spring of 2011, I joined them and our other co-founder, Steve Spencer (Chief Creative Officer) to start marketing this powerful new tool to marketers and media owners, and through them, this exciting new behaviour to consumers.

Since our first campaigns that summer with Tesco, Cadbury and Heinz, the business has grown dramatically – with nearly 2 million users, a staff of 35, offices in London and NY, a seed funding round from Qualcomm Ventures and client relationships with many of the leading global brands in the worlds (including Coke, Unilever, Nestle, L’Oreal, Warner Bros, Sony and many more).   Most fundamentally, we have been the first to successfully ‘de-tech’ this most technical of fields – evolving it into a consumer friendly verb – to ‘blipp’ –  and focusing tirelessly on the content value of what this as a content medium, can deliver the smart-phone owning consumer.

So onwards and upwards in our task to get the world ‘blipping’ and turning everything physical into an interactive trigger for content experiences – and our apologies to all those nomophobes whose plight we may inadvertently exacerbate in the months and years ahead…  (My name is Jessica and I’m a nomophobe).

Huge thanks to Jess for contributing – you can read more about Blippar on their website http://blippar.com/.  Blippar is the world’s first image recognition platform for mobile and tablet devices targeted specifically at customer-brand interaction.

Marc Jacobs, Hermes and Gucci have two things in common : they all sell luxury goods and they are all making headway in China.

As the Chinese economy looks set to record a growth rate in excess of 8% in 2013, these brands have every reason to believe they are moving into fertile territory. However, it is not China’s growth rate per se that should be concerning Western marketers, but the composition of its GDP. There remain widespread concerns that China’s economy is too reliant on state enterprise and investment; and with official statistics reporting that private consumption accounted for just 35% of total GDP in 2012, these are not without justification.

It is against this cautious backdrop that I turn to recent calculations by Morgan Stanley, who found that private consumption actually accounted for 46% of total GDP last year - and this figure is rising. If correct, this points to a significant rebalancing of the Chinese economy and, potentially, to a wealth of opportunity for providers of consumer goods.

A small caveat is necessary at this juncture, however. Significant numbers of firms within emerging markets are also attempting to service middle-class demands, which is intensifying competition and saturating the market. Note here the success of Chinese brands Chery and Lenovo, who are both satisfying domestic appetites while also seeing their footprint grow internationally.

Those firms seeking to make a foray into China will do well to heed the challenges facing and opportunities awaiting them. For whilst The Rebalancing of Global Power is undoubtedly underway, brands must endeavour to speak loudly to aspiration if they are to appeal to the middle-class and High Net Worth psyche in this increasingly crowded marketplace. But for those deciding to undertake such a venture, rest assured that private consumption as a proportion of GDP in China remains a long way behind other mature markets, and this figure is only going one way.

If you are interested in finding out more about how to benefit from the high net worth global tribe, Future Foundation is hosting an event on this topic at the Financial Times’ offices on 26^th April. For more details, please contact Pippa Goodman (pippag@futurefoundation.net 020 3008 4889).

The largest economy – and consumer market – in the world. Home to a multifarious population of some 315 million people – and growing. A land mass to rival the size of continental Europe. The birthplace of so many of the world’s most influential brands and cultural icons. Welcome to the USA.

The Future Foundation is delighted to announce its expansion to the USA.   As well as opening a brand new office in New York City and relocating Heather Corker to become our first VP, North America, we are proud to be rolling out  an additional service for clients – nVision USA, a new and comprehensive consumer trends service designed with US-focused insight professionals and marketers firmly in mind.

nVision USA is grounded in an extensive proprietary research programme that has been systematically scrutinising US consumer behaviour and attitude for over 5 years. Combining quantitative and qualitative elements – including a growing network of on-the-ground trendspotters resident in over 20 major US cities. nVision USA is a robust, actionable and creativity-inspiring guide to the evolving US consumer as well as the economic, cultural and demographic context in which she lives.

Subscribers to nVision USA benefit from instant access to US specific future-focused trend reports, myth-busting data and qualitative research insights (including input from reputable third-party sources), the latest economic and demographic figures and forecasts as well as an extensive database of case studies showcasing commercial responses to the trends we monitor.

Meanwhile – and as existing clients are accustomed to – dedicated account teams stand ready to curate and tailor insights directly to clients’ individual needs – as well as to provide professional support when that last-minute pitch, strategy document or presentation to the board requires an insight upgrade.

Free stuff!

For a complimentary copy of our latest US report (Re)Made in America, a summary of US consumers’ attitudes towards product provenance and the “Made in America” tag, please contact Karen Canty: karenc@futurefoundation.net or 020 3008 4889.

If you would like more information about nVision USA and how it could be used by your organisation, then please do not hesitate to contact your nVision account team or the contacts below.

London, UK :
Pippa Goodman – Commercial Director
81 Rivington Street
Shoreditch
London
EC2A 3AY
T: +44 (0)20 3008 4889

New York City, USA :
Caroline Hunt – SVP, Sales and Marketing – USA
3249 Route 112, Suite 1A
Medford
New York 11763
T: +1.212.677.4582