by Ellen Curtis, Creative Commander
Have you noticed your email box, Facebook and Twitter feeds are full of predictions for 2012? Mine is. If someone would have predicted 2011 would be the year of predictions they would have been spot on. Here’s my eclectic list of lists:
1. OK, this one will take some time to read. Written over 12 years ago, The Clue Train Manifesto is amazing in how accurate it is. The gist, as stated on the book’s cover, “Markets are conversations, talk is cheap, silence is fatal.” The link is to the entire text of the book. Free.
2. Mashable always serves up great information. Here’s their 5 Key Digital Media and Advertising Trends for 2012. Notice four out of the five trends include the influence of mobile.
3. Here’s our clients, Shopatron’s, look into the crystal ball. Working with over 1,000 brands, no one knows more about Ecommerce than them. So this list is a keeper.
4. Faith Popcorn is a past ad agency exec turned futurist. She is most famous for her book, “Popcorn Report” and coining the phrase “cacooning.” Here are her predictions for 2012.
5. Click documents has made my job easy by compiling over 80 contributors to their Social Media & Content Marketing Predictions 2012.
6. What’s the upshot for 2012? Here are 10 cultural trends identified by trend watcher, Upshot.
7. Here today gone by 2012. The blog, 24/7 Wall St., predicts “Ten Brands That Will Disappear In 2012.” Sears and Sony are just two they mentioned. We’ll just have to wait and see.
8. At the opposite end of the spectrum, there’s Forbes Comeback Brands of 2012. At the top of the list is the Muppets and Madonna separately not performing together. However, that would be fun to watch.
9. I am a marketer and a small business owner. Here are two lists for the latter job description: Entrepreneur magazine’s Top 10 Small Business Predictions for 2012 and Inc. magazine’s 5 Predictions for the Future of Your Business.
10. Lastly, to put all this prognostication into perspective is a list of predictions from the past, something I found on StumbleUpon, a social media platform no one predicted would change the way we find and share information.
Too much advertising these days seems to be about the product or service and about the people who bring you these products or services. We used to believe that marketing to consumers was about creating their experience,and what the brand offers them. And this approach worked very well. What happened is ad agencies and marketing firms got lazy. They no longer spent time getting to know the consumer. And they no longer spent time coming up with insightful experiences. In fact, it works better than ever still today. Whizbang creates consumer experiences and benefits. We always have. We always will. Just check out our work at Whizbang Ideas.
