Consumer Technologies, Ideas and Trends in Europe and What They Mean For Brands
The year 2010 is a date from science fiction.  By now we were supposed to have hover cars, paper clothes, android companions and be happily holidaying on the Moon while robot television cameras kept us safe and secure. 

CCTV may be live and well on most London streets.  But what is really happening in 2010 with regards to Internet technology?  Organic’s team in London has been reviewing digital in Europe, looking at what the big themes are and thinking about what this means for brands at the start of this new decade.

1.  New Media Market… The Tablet eBooks and Smarter Phones
Apple
continues their quest to reshape and own media distribution; from music
and film to books and newspapers. The Apple iPad tablet and the updated
iPhone OS v4.0 are key to putting devices into consumers’ hands that
they love and most crucially, use to buy media online from iTunes and
iBooks. Google is using their Android mobile OS and Chrome browser to
build competing opportunities, irrespective of electronic device. After
a great Christmas, Amazon’s Kindle 3G fights to hold sales against
upcoming PC tablets by adding application support and color screens.
All will be winners in the new media market – whether it saves
traditional broadcast media and their associated advertising revenue is
another question.

2.  Personal Media
The promise of
personalized media is jumping the chasm from early-adopter into the
mainstream. Media owners realize they can no longer dictate what
audiences consume through editorial and marketing. Subscription and
advertising revenues are increasingly coming from on-demand, highly
personalized, rich media based on each consumer’s individual taste,
mode and moment.

3.  Local Is Where It’s At
Location-based services are
central to social media better integrating with real-world activities.
This provides brands with new opportunities and challenges for
effective audience engagement; relevance, recommendation, participation
and safe social interaction.

Checking-in to your local café and
checking-out the whereabouts of your friends is at early-adoption in
Europe. Social networking technology is increasing better integrated
with real-life locations, contacts, places, activities, buzz and even
Augmented Reality… easily available at your local App Store.

4. Real-Time Friction
Twitter,
Facebook, Google and a raft of location-based services are fighting for
ownership of real-time information. Trending of hot topics and breaking
news is real currency for audience attention (adoption, ad sales),
search engines integration (Google vs. Bing) and data sales (for trend
watching, news etc…).

So social networks continue to
switch-off more default privacy settings. Meanwhile, privacy advocates
are investigating and savvy consumers are learning how to lock down
their profiles.

Whoever the winner, static content that is
updated infrequently will be increasingly ignored, with ‘now’ being
more and more important to consumers in 2010.

5.  Green Design is the New Black 
Copenhagen
2009 summit added momentum to green thinking (if little solid
agreement). CES had a strong showing of new green Consumer Electronics
that balance affordability and sustainability. The continuing trend is
for authentic product design that improves the consumer’s (perceived)
contribution to saving the planet; beautiful products with lower energy
consumption, an increased focus on monitoring energy usage and (thanks
to a weak economy) new ways to save money. Eco is now more than an
ideal in Europe. It is increasingly central to consumer demand and
brand equity.

6.  Touchy, Wavy Interfaces
It’s
hard to miss the jump in computer accessibility with touch-interfaces
such as the Apple iPhone. Microsoft’s Project Natal is pushing
controller-less interaction as the way of inspiring new audiences, the
way that Nintendo Wii attracted families and women to their gaming
system. Apple’s upcoming iPad tablet will of course be both touch and
gesture lead. The new Apple Magic Mouse is following this important and
crucially, patented trend.

7.  Hey You, Get on the Cloud
Gmail
is ubiquitous. File storage is shifting to the ‘cloud’ and despite
outage fears, adoption of new web services are growing. Music and film
distribution is no longer about ownership of physical media such as a
DVDs and increasingly about access to huge subscription-lead services.
Personal information such as photos is also building value; personal
value, social currency and as a platform for advertising revenue.
iTunes is joining the fray with their acquisition of Lala, an on-demand
music service. Amazon and Windows Azure battle for adoption of their
web services for use in online applications. Google is betting on the
cloud as the future of applications with Google Office and Chrome OS.
Microsoft is responding with web services built into Office 2010,
including a free online version.

8.  Pretty, Usable Design
In
2010, ideas will be expressed online in an increasingly design-focused
way. Evolving standards are finally unlocking the web designer’s
pent-up creativity; new tools in CSS3.0, Adobe CS5 and more
featurepacked CMS software allow simple, expressive design to happen
more frequently and easily online. We will see more use of typography
as designers no longer need to use standard fonts; flexible multi- and
single page layouts; straight-to-mobile compatibility; useful pop-up
modal boxes; tablet and newbiecompatible magazine layouts…

9.  Baby Boomers & Gen X Discover Health Informatics
Baby
Boomers are retiring and health is more front of mind. Services from
running to illness to alcohol and food consumption are available. These
services are creating a more informed and in-control patient. Microsoft
is pinning its hopes on owning the health informatics space with the
launch the Health Vault. Mobile technology has improved health and
lifestyle choices by enabling recording and viewing information into
the hands (and lives) of consumers. GPS enabled, heart monitoring
running apps such as Garmin’s Forerunner are a boon for Gen X wanting
the motivation and direction on keeping fit.

10.  Hello Newbees!
Adoption
of Internet technologies, especially social and mobile continues to
grow. More new users are entering the market. There is also a big shift
shift from passive to active participation. There are also some
hot-spots in Europe. Eastern and Southern countries present new
opportunities to actively engage consumer audiences that were only
previously accessible by broadcast media.

What Does This Mean For Brands in 2010?
Brands need to evolve in three areas:

1.  Active Campaigning
The
shift to digital especially amongst Gen X and Gen Y has happened and
2009 saw big budgets move from broadcast media. These budgets are still
often spent on buy, launch and leave campaigns; created, laid out in a
media plan and later measured with reach and attitude shifts. In 2010
this approach will be increasingly be less successful as audiences
crave engagement that is relevant, real-time and participatory.

What will be more successful in 2010 are brands that:
• Go beyond sharable content and useful applications. Build ideas for audience participation, contribution, adaptation and socialization.
• Ongoing commitment to engaging with consumers.
Brands who seed, encourage and reward outside the traditional
start-stop campaign periods will be rewarded with higher consumer
loyalty than their competitors.
• Less brand sites and more community integration. Engagement authentically in places where consumers socialize and undertake their interests.

2.  Focus on Your Most Valuable Consumers
The
decline of attention to broadcast media means brands need to re-think
mass market, once a year awareness building campaigns. Brands should
look for lots of creative ideas, each that resonates with their truly
valuable consumers. This is not a shift from advertising products or
big ideas. However, brands should better exploit the fact that their
most-valuable consumers are more online, more mobile, more social and
more vocal than ever.

In 2010, brands need to:
• Talk to smaller consumer niches; less mass-market selling. Ideas that usefully fulfill the needs of your most valuable and growable customers.
• Make it local. Use social and mobile technology to customize, personalize and integrate ideas with the audience’s local environment.
• Love data.
Information is more than just results. It’s the mechanism for allowing
niche-thinking to happen. Brands therefore need a stronger
value-exchange to gather data to make their digital experiences
exceptional.

3.  Instill Design Thinking
Design in
marketing has traditionally focused on graphics, packaging and set
construction. Design should be a ethos that runs from product
conception right the way through to selling and customer support.
Therefore brands will be increasingly successful when marketing is an
extension of the way products are designed, rather than just shifting
mindsets from A-to-B and discounting purchase.

Therefore brands need creative ideas based more on Design Thinking:
• Function. What do you want consumers to do and how is this participation rooted in demonstrating product relevance and advantage?
• Context.
What environment, mode and moment are you engaging consumers? How might
your brand and products usefully fit with this context?
• Materials.
What useful utility will your content and functionality provide? How
will they enhance product understanding and differentiation?
• Construction.
How will you build your idea using digital technology? Will it be
tightly controlled, user adaptable, touchable, mobile, sharable…?

Adrian Jarvis