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!

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!

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.

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.

Ever since 2008, British banks have been talking about how they can regain trust among consumers. They are not alone. Consumer trust in corporations is in decline and the Leveson Enquiry’s painful ongoing progress only serves to remind British citizens of the unprincipled, unscrupulous and unlawful behaviour of some businesses. Trust is at a premium.

But we wonder just how important trust is.

Consider this: our own research shows that significantly more consumers trust British Airways than budget operator easyJet. Yet easyJet carries more passengers each year than BA. And this is in a market where trust matters. You are, after all, inserting your frail human frame into a pressurised aluminium tube travelling six miles above the surface of the Earth at eight-tenths the speed of sound. If trust matters in any market it matters in airlines.

We’re not saying that trust isn’t important. Rather, our view is that trust is a consideration along with price, value and quality.

Most people wouldn’t trust an estate agent and yet the majority of us choose to employ their services.

Part of the problem is that trust is often talked of as a single, monolithic, entity. For most consumers trust is a complex, multi-layered concept, coloured in shades of grey. Only great brands, offering great service are truly and properly trusted. High-quality service engenders trust.

Trust also happens in the moment. In the moment when we manipulate the mouse over the ‘click to buy’ button. In the moment that we are in the showroom. In the moment when we are test-driving a car. At the point of purchase, previous – rather abstract – notions of trust can be disregarded as price and value tip the purchase decision. Who wouldn’t want to fly to Bergamo for £49? Why wouldn’t you take the chance on an unfamiliar brand if it offered conspicuous value?

We posit that trust is a factor in the purchase decision but it’s not a pre-requisite and neither is it the most important consideration. We’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter.

Photo: (Creative Commons) DrewbieDoo

In this context, we note with interest the recent advertising activity from EDF Energy for its "Blue +Price Promise". Under the initiative, EDF says it will tell its customers if any of its competitors are offering better tariffs and that it won't charge them if they then wish to change suppliers accordingly. On its website, EDF thus offers a guarantee that “From the moment you complete your move to Blue +Price Promise, we'll let you know if a competitor or EDF Energy launches a product that's more than £1 cheaper per week”.

Should EDF find itself being out-priced, it claims that customers will receive letters or emails within 10 days of it learning about the more competitive option. And to give the process an air of transparency and impartiality, prices are monitored by PricewaterhouseCoopers (so that customers “don’t just have to take our word for it").

With the company also guaranteeing that its current prices will be maintained until 2013, that customers will receive monthly rewards as part of its “Thank yous” scheme and that the electricity it supplies comes from “low-carbon generation”, it seems clear that our Transparency, Demanding Consumers and Maximising Behaviour trends have lost none of their potency in the early 10s.

But this is a development which also speaks very strongly to our emerging End of Inefficiency trend - which suggests that, at least in relatively low-interest sectors, consumers may soon find themselves willing to hand over a degree of control to third-party systems guaranteed to find them the best deals. Does EDF's scheme show, then, how brands might be able to interrupt this trend by championing their own efficiency? And does it give further proof that we're heading towards "Price Comparison 2.0", where the impetus falls on brands rather than consumers? We'd love to hear your thoughts.

Running between 9am and 11am on March 5th, the offer was, so the brand said, an attempt to reward customers and increase lunchtime orders - with Twitter and Facebook members being invited to use a “#LetsDoLunch” hashtag in order to influence the final price. Those who chose to participate were then able to purchase the pizza through the Domino’s website once the "reverse auction" had closed.

At the start of April, Domino's ran a similar initiative at its Milton Keynes branch, with prices for five large pizzas falling by at least a penny each time a relevant hashtag was posted (to a minimum of £6.50 per pizza - with the final price in this instance being £6.98). And it says it has plans take the Tweet Treat proposition to other outlets across the country in the coming weeks.

From Uniqlo to Innocent, Gap to Swedish supermarket ICA Vanadis, examples of retailers adopting a more playful approach to RRP are very quickly multiplying in number. Can we thus imagine a not-too-distant future where real-time sales monitoring and continuously adjusted price display support increasingly personalised deals? Will playful and game-like interactions be used more frequently to engage, entertain and create closer bonds with consumers in conventional retail spaces as well as online and on mobile platforms? We'd love to hear your thoughts.

According to IHG, the hotels are being designed to offer a Zen atmosphere in all areas – with plants and skylights in the lounge, LED mood lighting in the rooms and a gym which will boast an outdoor feel. Guests will also be encouraged to maintain a healthy lifestyle at all times, with each hotel providing nutritionally designed menus and services as well as multifunctional room amenities for fitness (for example, the coat rack will also be a pull-up bar and the luggage shelf will double as a weight bench).

Developed, IHG said, in response to its own research which showed that 1 in 4 travellers want hotels which accommodate their healthy lifestyles, the company claimed Even Hotels will be “fulfilling the so far unmet demand for healthier travel”. A sign of things to come in the hospitality sector? Or something that will always be a niche proposition? We’d love to hear your thoughts.

The facts and figures reveal that the economy is flat; inflation is falling but is still higher than earnings growth  -  it needs to fall further to secure recovery; risks from the Eurozone have lessened (though not disappeared); UK GDP contracted 0.2% in Q4 2011 -a second consecutive quarter of negative growth would place the UK in a double dip recession; and the unemployment rate stayed at 8.4%, the highest for 16 years; interest rates remain at 0.5%.

What interests us particularly is the current flavour of social debate – much of the Budget debate, response and analysis has centred on the issue of fairness and whether or not the wealthy have gained at the expense of the majority. While the top rate of income tax was cut from 50% to 45%, there has been a big increase on stamp duty for expensive homes and a series of measures targeting tax avoidance. The income tax personal allowance has been increased substantially, but the higher tax allowance for pensioners will be phased out.

The Government insists that thanks to these measures, the rich will pay more. But the symbolism of reducing the top rate of income tax while age-related income allowances are phased out for pensioners has sparked fierce debate.

We also see some manifestations of our trends.  The state pension age will now be reviewed periodically so that it stays in line with rising longevity  -  a manifestation of our Ageing, but increasingly Ageless, Society.  The proposal to send each household a summary of their own contribution to government spending, broken down by sector, is not a revolutionary new release of data (it can be calculated easily from publicly available documents), but personalises the statistics and contributions to each taxpayer, as seen in our Transparency and The Quantified Self trends.  And as consumer market regulation grows with the above-inflation increase in tobacco duty and the new duty on gambling machines, are we seeing a steeply growing Assault on Pleasure?

Equally, innovation has never been more important to the success of advertising and marketing communications. We live in a modern world where the proliferation of content, channels and media means that most messages will drown in the cacophony of noise and competition that is the saturated, always-on media environment of today. Whilst innovation has been big news for some time in the business world and the wider economy, the human tendency, as always, to define, categorise and control means that for most people the term innovation is about devising new products and services.  But in the growing space that is created by the expanding bubble of personalised digital communication, innovation must be as much about generating a rich seam of new, interesting and different ways to engage with the consumer. This engagement is key to creating the powerful social and cultural construct that is a brand and to effectively changing behaviour - whether for social, philanthropic or commercial purposes.

But now, the field of play, with networked communications and ubiquitous digital channels that reach in into every nook and cranny of the consumer psyche has got so vast and amorphous that agencies are faced with an ever-more intense challenge, perhaps, than ever before. How can they generate powerful, motivating and stand-out ideas that are so good that they can have a life of their own, provide space for consumers to play and pass on and become integrated into the cultural landscape of the day-to-day?  Because in a world where brands become verbs, such as Google, Twitter and Facebook, the prize of effectiveness has to be integration into the consumers rich palette of daily repertoires and activities.  It is worth noting that many social nouns are also becoming verbs - family and community are all about what we do, rather than what we are, which gives a further clue as to the paramount importance of the active consumer in creating social and consumer reality these days.

Ideas are born from many different sources - in fact what seems to distinguish the best and most original ideas nowadays is the ability to combine insights from a range of disciplines and perspectives into a single over-arching and powerful thought or proposition that will corral consumer attention.

From research we have undertaken published in  The Future of Insight and from the workshops we have been running with our Insight Community over the past year,  we have found that the nature and role of insight is rapidly transforming from being a research-process to an idea-formulation to transform the ordinary to the special. Great emphasis is now placed on the experience of getting an insight - the “Aha!” moment as many people call it.

More and more of our clients (both agency and client-side) recognise that such breakthroughs can only come from a genuinely broad-based, open and collaborative process. This requires the right mix of skills - increasingly bringing in people from different disciplines - as well as the willingness to constantly experiment and innovate with approaches, to turning research into inspirational material and working methods to maximise the quality and range of ideas. The most important facet is then being able to capture and communicate the insight in a way that transforms the mind-set of everyone involved and this remains one of the biggest challenges facing our clients. It is almost as if insight professionals have to become marketers of their own ideas to maximise their impact.

This year the Future Foundation is sponsoring the IPA Effectiveness Awards and as part of this year’s judging panel we look forward to witnessing many examples of clever insights, ideas and impressive displays of innovation, which in order to clinch one of these coveted awards will also have had to have been clearly identified, communicated and measured in terms of their effectiveness. In particular we are delighted to be sponsoring a Special Prize at the Awards which will reward the paper where insight was at the heart of thinking and significantly influenced the return on marketing investment. Entering these Awards are no mean feat and require enormous dedication, but for companies keen to prove the power of their marketing communications, winning an IPA Effectiveness Award is the industry equivalent of an Olympic Gold.”

For more information on the IPA Effectiveness Awards or to enter, please visit www.ipaeffectivenessawards.co.uk

f you would like a copy of ‘The Future of Insight’, please email Josiew@futurefoundation.net