Advertising, Technology, future
What Will it Take to Survive in 2011?
We’ve long past the tipping point in the digital world; the proverbial moment when “Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread like viruses”. Newspapers haven’t been relevant for years. Cable television is strangling the consumer just like the music industry did to their artists. Over 90 million Tweets are sent out daily and 250 million people around the world login to Facebook. The most avid Apple supporters doubted that 10 million iPads’ could be sold by years end and PayPal saw over $1.5 billion in mobile transactions in just one day this year.
For a lot of us the digital revolution has come and gone leaving behind an expansive Cloud of new information so vast and changing that in just 2 days, we produce more information than we have in our entire existence up until 2003. We live in the information age, that’s a given – it’s user generated, it’s machine generated, a lot of it is crap. But the more information we produce, the more information is out there about ourselves, about our habits or about our surroundings and the easier it becomes for machines to categorize us into specific psychographic and behavioral targets.
Now I’m not about to go into a rant about how the advertising industry is going to instantly wake up and begin properly catering ads to you or I or Jim down the street. There is still way too much money to be had in the traditional media space. Companies will continue to spend billions on mass media campaigns with no clear understanding of the true impact on sales; only enforced by their mass media agencies citing the unequivocal belief that reach equals conversions. But in 2011, companies will look to change their strategies because, let’s face it, post-economic-downturn sales are nowhere near the expected turn-around rates. You won’t see a major shift in 2011 (the one we’ve been expecting for years), but you will see the stragglers, the ones wrongfully deterred from the Internet and mobile and localization and social, begin the inevitable shift.
With that shift comes an exodus from the traditional businesses that support or were supported by these archaic beliefs of the mass media model. Print, cable television, the large advertising agencies; for years they’ve been creating new talking points to justify their existence instead of investing in change. The survivors will be the ones that try to adapt. It might not always work but in light of the major shifts that will happen over the next decade (the retiring baby boomers, the shift away from physical media, a change in influencers), sticking with what works now is the biggest threat to any business this year.
Monetization strategies no longer shape our world, especially in the digital realm. Data is king. The first trillion-dollar business will be the one that is able to properly collect and mine trillions of data points to solve complex problems. This will likely take the form of a cure for cancer or an intelligent solution to a looming energy crisis. 2011 will see a shift in the way that organizations and governments leverage each other’s expertise to solve these problems. No longer can businesses work in silos to accomplish tasks. Sharing becomes pivotal over the next year.
We’re at the beginning of a decade that will bring the biggest ever change in our behaviors. The way we consume, cures for ‘incurable diseases’, a rapid shift towards renewable energy and biotechnologies jumpstarted by new global economic super powers. The West will continue to fall stifled by inefficient processes and inability to adapt and a new global currency will replace the U.S. dollar in Forex markets. The Space Shuttle will retire and commercial space flight will become a reality. Moore’s Law will be broken replaced by the Kurzweil’s ‘Law of Accelerating Returns’. The boomers will retire and Gen Y will quickly surpass their predecessors as the next 24 year-old billionaires.
This is the decade that the next Microsofts, IBMs, Intels, Amazons and Googles will be built; the game changers that redefined our world and created a spark that ignited an unstoppable technological flame. The Gates and the Buffetts will step back leaving a void to be filled by the next generation of superstars. And any one of us has the opportunity to fill that void.
Tags: 2011, cable, cashmore, data, drew cashmore, facebook, google, ibm, ideas, ipad, microsoft, paypal, print, the future, the next decade bill gates, tipping point, tweets, twitter, warren buffet