Birnbach Communications Predictions For 2012

BCI Positioning

Dec. 14, 2011
Predictions for 2012

Why The Story Matters ● www.birnbachcom.com 1

Introduction
• For 10 years, Birnbach Communications
has compiled an annual list of media
trends for its clients. The trends help the
agency's clients work more effectively with
reporters, analysts, bloggers, and
customers on social networking sites.


Break free from 24/7 accessibility
• You almost never have downtime
anymore.
• This lack of downtime may negatively
impact ability to concentrate and avoid
distractions.
• The recognition that we actually need
to disconnect, that we need downtime,
is likely to generate coverage this year.
• Already a handful of companies have
limited email, both during the day and
after hours – and more will join those
ranks.


More will cut the cable cord
• Expect more people to reduce their monthly
expenses by cancelling their cable
subscription
– To reduce monthly expenses
– To use new technology that provides a
flexible alternative.
• Goal: To watch what we want, when we
want, and on the device of our choosing.
• Challenge:
– You need to have several apps, along with a
computer connected to your TV, and, it’s still
too complicated.
– Technology is quickly evolving, which means
what you buy today may be obsolete in 18
months, requiring new purchases and
additional tech support.


Media will continue to converge
• Expect more newspaper reporters to prepare
video reports for their newspapers’ website
and apps while TV and radio reporters
prepare text articles for their websites and
apps.
• We will stop defining media by the device on
which we used to consume them. We’re not
taping a TV program anymore because we’re
not using tape of any kind – we’re recording it
onto a DVR and watching it on a tablet. And
many of us read the daily paper -- without the
actual paper. We need to find new terms to
define what we’re doing.


E-books will improve their
experience
• Already a few innovative publishers
are working on combining video and
other interactive features into their e-
books to provide more value.
• Expect e-textbooks to include
interactive exercises, and nonfiction
e-books to include more video,
photos, and audio, while fiction books
will come packed with featurettes
much the way DVDs are packaged.


The press release will not die
in 2012
• Companies still need press releases to
communicate their news.
• Twitter is good as a kind of short burst of
news but get lost on the timeline.
• Press releases easily can be posted on a
corporate newsroom – good from SEO
perspective and to demonstrate the company
is still active.
• However, organizations can’t rely on a press
release alone. They need to think about
innovative ways to distribute their news,
including infographics, data-and-graphics
mashups intended to compellingly present
information.


Social media will play a bigger
role in B2B marketing
• More than eight years and nearly 900
million Facebook users later, B2B
businesses will embrace social media,
following the lead of B2C
companies…though they may not focus on
Facebook to reach their customers.
• B2B companies will recognize the need to
generate their own multimedia content, and
that there are active and engaged business
consumers even for niche sectors.
• We expect that more B2B companies will
consider increasing budgets to make
engaging their targets through social media,
thought leadership and lead generation
their top marketing priorities.


Time spent with actual people
will decrease
• So many people use social media
sites – from Facebook, Google+,
Twitter and LinkedIn, to Pinterest
and Quora and more -- that people
have less time to spend with their
friends and family.
• We expect more attention will be
paid as kids in schools face a new
way to feel alienated.


Value will be king in 2012
• Upscale consumers, suffering from frugal
fatigue, have started spending again. But
the 99% of us will continue to look for value.
• That bodes well for Groupon, LivingSocial
and other sites offering discounts.
• Key questions:
– “Do group discounts actually generate a
return for companies?”
– “Will Groupon turn out to be a good
investment since its Nov. 2011 IPO at $20?”
– “How many e-coupon sites do consumers
want or need?”


More efficient light bulbs will not
cause the end of the world
• Last year, The New York Times, Wall St.
Journal and others ran stories about
consumers stockpiling traditional 60-watt
incandescent bulbs, the result of legislation
to encourage the use of more efficient
compact fluorescent bulbs or LED fixtures.
• Guess what: The deadline for shifting to
more efficient bulbs came, and suddenly it
became a non-story.
• We don’t expect there to be much coverage
this year as people realize the alternatives
do actually deliver decent white light.


Academic integrity will be
important
• With many Americans unemployed or
underemployed going back to school, we
expect more will take online courses for
convenience.
• But because of competition among job
seekers, people will look for programs that
ensure academic integrity of their tests –
and those academic institutions will turn to
technology to monitor tests to ensure
there’s no cheating.
• As more school districts open up virtual
academies for students K-12, expect that
academic integrity will become important
even at the elementary and junior high
school levels.


The most overused phrases
• Lean-back/lean-forward user experiences.
– Lean-back activities are those in which users
passively access content, like watching TV. Lean-
forward activities are those in which the user is
actively engaged in consuming content, as when
they’re searching for content on the Internet or via
an app. Lean-back activities can last as long as it
takes to watch a sitcom or movie, while the attention
span for lean-forward activities tends to be much
shorter. LB/LF is important as content developers
look at how to best present their content.
• Post-PC – Given the exploding popularity of
tablets, especially iPads.
• Ultrabooks – PCs as sleek and thin as Macbooks.
• 99% vs. 1% – Because of the election, expect a lot
of mentions of this phrase.


Ongoing stories
• The 2012 election, healthcare, taxes and tax reform, and job
creation. The candidates, the process, the election as horse race,
Super PACs, the strength and weakness of the Tea Party and the
Occupy Wall St. movement (as well as the 99% vs. the 1%), and
sometimes the actual issues.
• The euro and euro zone economies and the debt crisis -- particularly
troubled Greece and Italy and stable Germany and France -- and
the impact of all of this on the US economy.
• Facebook’s IPO and its implications for the rest of the social media
sector.
• The battle between Facebook v. Google+. (Interestingly, Twitter
won’t be considered even an also-ran in this story.)
• The battle between huge companies. Apple v. Google v. Microsoft.
Oracle v. Everyone Else.
• The state of the media – because the media love reporting on their
competitors as well as themselves.


Ongoing stories
• Online privacy will continue to be an important story.
• Online reviews – specifically whether they are from real customers
who have bought the product or whether they are positive phony
reviews paid to counteract real negative reviews – will generate
coverage.
• The economics and environmental impact of fracking, an efficient
but controversial way to extract oil and natural gas from shale. We
expect climate science and global warming to be issues during the
general election, specifically when discussing regulations.
• Net-specific issues such as net neutrality (the need to prevent
broadband providers from blocking access to competitors), the e-tax
loophole (in which e-retailers don’t require customers to pay sales
tax, which gives Amazon and others an advantage over bricks-and-
mortar retailers that do charge customers sales tax), and anti-piracy
legislation (Stop Online Piracy Act aka SOPA and Protect Intellectual
Property Act aka PIPA).


Ongoing stories
• Cyberattacks on B2C websites. As more high profile sites get
hacked, expect more reports that reinforce fear and
uncertainty of online commerce.
• Cyberwarfare: the act of attacking one’s enemies by hacking.
It’s happening on both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
and the US media has reported that China is using
cyberwarfare against the US, including corporate espionage,
so expect it to spread elsewhere.
• The rising threat of Chinese businesses, the Chinese
economy and the Chinese military.
• One story not likely to be covered for most of 2012: Tim
Tebow. Not that his 15 minutes is up. Expect the media to
regain its interest with the start of the next NFL season.


More fees
• Look for all types of companies to start adding fees
for things that had once been included in the price.
– Airlines will continue to charge for baggage, onboard
food and other things that used to be included in the
price of a ticket.
– Banks are charging consumers to use their debit cards
or paying bills by phone (or backing off, when there’s
too much public pressure).
– Shipping companies charge surtaxes to offset spikes in
the price of gas, which, by the way, has dropped from
sky-high prices.
• Another aspect of fees: They won’t go away.
• Expect a number of companies who should know
better to make a mistake in how they communicate
their fees to their customers.


Mobile payments will increase
• Spearheaded by Google Wallet, Visa's
V.me, and Verizon, 2012 looks to be a big
year for mobile commerce.
• Using smartphones to make purchases will
not attract most Americans this year, but a
growing part of the population will love the
convenience of not having to find an ATM or
not paying fees to use another bank
system’s ATM.
• Eventually going cash free will be
mainstream by the end of the decade.


B2B Videoconferencing
will hit its stride
• Consumers are chat via video using
Skype, Facebook & Google+ as well
as their smartphones.
• They’ll increasingly start to use video
chats for business, but they’ll find
that while the free services are fine
to talk with a long-distance friend or
family member, it’s not okay when
talking with a customer. They’ll look
for business-class services.


Converging technology won’t
live up to its hype
• Converging technology was supposed to result in single
devices that could handle multiple functions.
• The problem: we still need too many chargers and have too
many devices to sync, including:
– Laptop or ultrabook.
– iPhone or Android phone (or, decreasingly, BlackBerry).
– iPad or other tablet.
– iPod.
– E-reader.
• Interestingly not everyone wants the same from
convergence: young adults love all the features on their
phones, except two: the phone (because they rarely
actually use phones to make a call) and voicemail (they
prefer texts).


Data will be bigger in 2012
• At least the approach known as “big data,”
software that enables users to capture and
visualize huge amounts of data on their
desktops, will be big in 2012.
• These days, companies gather a tremendous
amount of data, and it is only getting larger and
larger. The challenge: how to visualize the data
so that the business can gain insights and not
be overwhelmed.
• Unlike Business Intelligence, which often looks
for trends within a company’s data, big data
enables companies to ask questions on the fly
to identify new trends and insights, and to
generate real-time answers.


Ongoing tech trends from 2011
• Cloud computing: This trend started in 2010 but continues to go
mainstream.
• The battle of tablets: Just because the first battle went in Apple's
direction does not mean that wannabe iPad Killers have given up
the fight. Competitors still want to get into the action and capture
some of the marketshare. From the media's perspective, it's a two-
horse race between the Kindle Fire and iPad. We expect a third
option to gain some traction, but the iPad will continue to dominate.
• The three most important tech trends will be mobile, mobile, mobile.
Unless the three most important trends are social, social, social. For
example, enterprise technology now needs not only to have an
intuitive interface, it also must be accessible on iPads.
• Gaming is not just for kids. Gaming will continue to be integrated
into business and training apps to keep people engaged and
entertained.


The role of CES will diminish
next year
• The Consumer Electronics Show (CES)
has been considered so important that
non-tech outlets feel compelled to cover
the latest cool gadgets launched at the
show.
• But that is changing.
• The reason: While CES is not "dead show
walking," it is being supplanted by Austin’s
South by Southwest (SXSW), March 8-18.
The change does not mean we don't love
gadgets – because we still do – but that in
a Post-PC era, we live in an app world.


Reporting and metrics will
continue to be important
• For marketers, analytics will become even
more important than ever.
• Department store owner John Wanamaker is
remembered for a quote about metrics: "I
know that half of my advertising budget is
wasted, but I'm not sure which half." That’s
not acceptable anymore.
• There are so many ways to measure how
companies are engaging with their customers
and potential customers – that one challenge
is to prevent being overwhelmed by metrics
and figuring out which ones truly matter to the
organization.
• More than ever, we think clients will be asking
and looking for ways to measure ROI.


Questions?
Comments?
Agree or Disagree?
Let us know
Norman Birnbach
Birnbach Communications
781.639.6701
birnbach@birnbachcom.com
www.birnbachcom.com
www.twitter.com/normanbirnbach


Birnbach Communications Predictions For 2012

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