future proof september2011

FutureProof

Welcome to FutureProof – The Futures Company’s regular briefing about current global strategic and consumer issues with perspectives from our various international centres. Our purpose here is to broaden horizons and share some of our bigger picture thinking with you.

This edition includes:

China is meeting consumer

concerns over quality and

safety in the rapidly expanding

domestic markets.

Ten Years On Looking back at

consumer attitudes in the decade

since 9/11.

Social Networks The future of social networking will be driven by consumer preferences for interaction.

Issue 5 | September 2011

China’s economic growth over the last 30 years has been explosive. Between

1982 and 1997, per capita income nearly quadrupled.1 Foreign direct investment, negligible before 1978, reached nearly US$100 billion in 1994, as the economy grew by more than 9% per year.2 Investment in infrastructure between 1990 and 1999 increased total length of paved roads by 50%, doubled electrical output, and tripled the length of civil aviation routes.3

Consumer change has followed.

In Shanghai, home ownership doubled between 1997 and 2004.4 IKEA and B&Q entered the Chinese market in 1998. Just over half of urban households had a colour TV in 1990, but by 2005 this figure had more than doubled.5 By 2008, almost half of the population owned a mobile phone.

But the rapid economic growth has sharpened inequality and led to repeated safety and production scandals of which the recent high speed rail crash is only the most recent. China’s leaders are learning, quickly, that markets need institutions and governance as well as entrepreneurs and infrastructure.

And the government is struggling to convert investment into consumption,

even though optimism is running high, because it hasn’t convinced people that it will catch them if they fall. On the one hand, The Futures Company’s Global MONITOR 2011 survey reveals that 92% of Chinese people believe that financially, things are going either ‘very well’ or ‘fairly well’ in their country these days (the 21-country average is 40%), while 69% say the same about their personal financial situation.6

On the other hand, China has one of the highest household saving rates in the world (around 30%), partly due to insecurity caused by rising property prices, lack of welfare provision, and limited investment options.7

Repeated graft and safety scandals have also undermined attempts

to promote consumption. Milk supplemented with melamine, pigs reared on Clenbuterol and condoms lubricated with vegetable oil are among the more conventional cases to have hit the headlines in China in recent years.8

Similarly, the high speed rail crash that killed 39 citizens has caused seething anger. The decision to recall 54 bullet trains was symptomatic of fear of the public mood, a more important factor in China than outsiders sometimes realise.

And again, apparently legitimate goods are not what they seem. In July this year, the blogger Bird Abroad wrote a post documenting her visit to what proved to be a fake Apple Store in the city of Kunming. The international

FutureProof

Chinese growth: bursting at the seams

1IMF, Why is China growing so fast?, 19972Ibid.3Shuanglin Lin, ‘Public Infrastructure Development in China’, Comparative Economic Studies, 2001.

4Gallup, ‘Home Ownership Soars in China’, 1 March 20055China Statistical Yearbook, 20106Global MONITOR 2011 is a proprietary attitudinal survey of 21 markets around the world.


© The Futures Company 2011. FutureProof is published by The Futures Company at 6 More London Place, Tooley Street, London SE1 2QY. Copying, redistribution and display is permitted under a Creative Commons licence for non-commercial purposes, provided articles are properly attributed. Please notify us of any such re-use by emailing [email protected]

interest sparked by the story led to the discovery of 22 such fake stores in Kunming alone.

The Chinese government appears to have responded with a determination to tackle these problems. It seems to realise that the next phase of growth will require trust and accountability.

ReassuranceIn November 2009, the Chinese government launched a 30-second TV advertisement shown on BBC News and CNN around the world. Titled ‘Made in China’, the ad drew attention to the high quality goods made by Chinese manufacturers, including mp3 players, sports shoes, and jet engines. By the time this ad made it to air, delayed by several scandals9, 09 it looked like a defensive response.

But the scandals also had a direct economic effect. Each one led to a sharp drop in exports, and threatened the long-term credibility of manufacturers in sensitive sectors such as food, drink and children’s toys. So, in 2009, the Chinese government introduced the death penalty for food safety violators, passed a sweeping new food safety law and inaugurated a risk evaluation system capable of monitoring 500,000 companies

As significantly, in March 2011 the government issued a circular urging ‘procuratorates’10 across the country to work with the courts to “severely punish” violators of food safety laws. What was unusual about this directive was that, for the first time, the government urged citizens to use all the means available to them (including social media) to expose scandals.

This circular signalled an change of tactics from the Chinese government. Previously it had been deliberately opaque about the details of product safety violations, but now it recognised that the issue was becoming inflammable. By taking responsibility for it, the government acted as a lightning rod for anger. By encouraging citizens to help with the fight, the government acknowledged that there was only so much it could do, and put power in the hands of its people.

Clearly, there are two issues at play. On the one hand, high profile export scandals such as the Mattel toy recall of 2007 are a threat to economic growth, with some diplomatic implications. This threat grew when President Obama signed the Food Safety Modernization Act in December 2010, increasing the US Food and Drug Administration’s power to perform inspections on foreign manufacturing facilities.

More worrying for the government, however, is the potential for damage to domestic confidence in Chinese goods. Even brands that apply the most scrupulous standards to their production processes will be negatively affected by the minority who cut corners. This, in turn, will limit domestic consumption and foreign investment.

Foreign manufacturers who sell to the Chinese market have been better

equipped to offer reassurance than their domestic rivals because many have well-established reputations. For example, Amway deliberately sells its cleaning products at a premium price in China to emphasise quality; it takes fat margins by reducing the unit size.11 L’Oréal uses its own brand name, rather than the Elsève tag that’s

used elsewhere, for hair care products it sells in China. We expect to see foreign FMCG companies operating in China investing in independent, ‘gold-standard’ certification processes in the near future.

Domestic Chinese brands are unwilling to see foreign rivals sail effortlessly to the top of their categories on the back of reputation alone, and are redoubling their efforts to promote their own uncompromising standards.

In June 2009, investment website Seeking Alpha made Chinese company

The Chinese survey of 2,488 respondents was conducted during April and May 2011. For more information, please contact Deniz Erdem or call +44 (0) 20 7955 1873.7Nielsen, ‘Saving a Top Priority for Chinese...But Why?’, October 2011.

8Clenbuterol is an additive that speeds up muscle growth and fat burning, producing leaner pork.9Including several recalls of lead-coated toys, exported to the US in 2007, the notorious melamine milk scandal of 2008, and an incidence of dumplings contaminated with insecticide that made 10 people ill in Japan in 2008.

“China’s leaders are learning, quickly,

that markets need institutions and

governance as well as entrepreneurs

and infrastructure.”

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© The Futures Company 2011 1׀

3. Self-reliance: one of the most striking trends in our Global MONITOR data this year

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GLOBAL USA CAN UK JAP IRL RUS SKO BRA

What will better increase your chances of succeeding in today's world? % answering: Becoming as self-reliant as possible

(vs. seeking the help and guidance of experts or professionals):

2009 2010 2011

Source: The Futures Company: Global MONITOR survey, 2011

Datawatch

In most of the 21 major markets we surveyed

for The Futures Company Global MONITOR,

there is a significantly higher premium being

attached to self-reliance. While this may not

go as far as holing up in a cave with a supply of

bottled water and tinned food, it does indicate

a reluctance to depend on anyone else for

protection and guidance in an increasingly

unpredictable and unstable world.

Self-reliance does not mean turning away

from “advice from experts” but subjecting all

available resources to greater scrutiny. People

are prizing the savviness and skills needed to

build their own networks of trusted advisors

around themselves.

The latest edition of our future-focussed insights program, Global MONITOR 2011/2012, launches with a global webinar on 13 September 2011.

Global MONITOR is designed to inform strategy development, inspire innovation and guide communication across multiple markets worldwide. It is based

on consumer research in 21 countries. For more information on Global MONITOR, please contact (in the US) Simon Kaplan, +1919 932 8858

([email protected]) or (in Europe) Deniz Erdem, +44 20 7955 1873 ([email protected])

Self-reliance: one of the most striking trends in our Global MONITOR data this year Victoria, one of our network of Global

Streetscapers, based in Russia notes

“The general mood [in Russia] is uncertain.

Most people feel they can count only on

themselves and do not expect support from

government or social structures. There is

uncertainty about the general situation in

the country, including politics and economics.

Everybody keeps in mind that the overall

situation might change tomorrow, and so will

your personal future.

“Those who are more optimistic and capable of

estimating the situation in the country are more

clear and rational. They are connecting their

future with other countries, trying to protect

their families and assets by transferring the

last ones abroad.

“Resourcefulness and persuasion are very

specific values about our country, as you

sometimes may get into a situation without a

solution. And then you have to be very creative,

and only resourcefulness allows you to

settle your issues, even if the environment

and regulations are against you.”

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American Dairy (ADY) its stock pick of the day, based on two stunning quarters of growth after the melamine milk crisis. The company was one of the few industry beneficiaries of the crisis, as emerged with an unimpeachable record for quality. The company had highlighted this with an aggressive advertising campaign in early 2009, running on Chinese Central Television (CCTV) channels 1, 2, 3 and 6, and on six provincial channels across China.12

After the Clenbuterol pork scandal swept China in early 2011, Yurun Food, one of China’s largest meat manufacturers, invited 100 consumers from Nanjing to visit its food production plants and report back on the standards it enforces. Each was given a copy of Yurun’s 400-page manual, covering every check built into the production process. Yurun officials taught the visitors about pig certification, slaughtering hygiene, liquid chromatography, microbial sampling and hand disinfection.13 The forensic attention to detail demonstrated by Yurun received positive coverage in the press and online, and reinforced the company’s reputation for quality.

China’s safety problems are not unique. They mark a particular stage of economic growth. What’s different for China is the scale and complexity of its supply chain; keeping track of every component or ingredient is nigh on impossible.

In order to build confidence in its produce, however, we expect that domestic brands will have to invest heavily in independent certification, scientific analysis, quality control and public relations. Foreign brands, meanwhile, will sustain an advantage over local rivals by emphasising quality, resisting price pressure, and – who knows – perhaps even working together on quality standards.

Trusted adviceOf course, a large consequence of all of this for Chinese consumers is that it is impossible to know where to get reliable advice. When we conduct qualitative research for product launches in China, there’s a consistent theme – confusion. Inundated by information about brands and products that burst onto the scene then disappear, Chinese people don’t know where to turn for advice about which products are best, or even safe.

Reinforcing confidence over the next ten years, particularly in domestic brands, will require brands to provide better access to trusted, impartial and filtered information about products and services.

The Futures Company’s Global MONITOR 2011 survey reveals that 29% of Chinese people say that information

is the most valuable resource available to them in everyday life, more than money (25%), energy (24%), time (19%) and space (2%). The same is not true for the more affluent markets which we track. The problem is finding information they can trust; as we have already seen, Chinese consumers have more reason for scepticism than most.

This explains the importance of word-of-mouth in the Chinese market. Distrustful of claims made by brands, people are increasingly relying upon a messy network of trusted or semi-trusted advisors to inform their buying choices.14 There are three main avenues for this: friends and family, internet forums, and point-of-sale.

A 2010 survey conducted by McKinsey found that 66% of Chinese consumers say that they would consider friend

Trusted advice: the opportunity Demonstrate your brand

Consistency in-store. Look the same everywhere

Endorsements: Cool or trustworthy?

Don’t just pay someone to parrot you. Challenge yourself to come up with a genuine benefit that will walk on its own.

Monitor what people are saying about you but learn from and engage with it, don’t censor it.

Be brave – host people’s opinions about you.

10Procuratorates are public bodies responsible for legal supervision and enforcement of state laws. 11‘Amway’s China Redux’, Forbes Asia, 7 September 2009.12Seeking Alpha, ‘American Dairy: Finally Something Positive about Chinese Baby Milk’, 22 January 2009.

13http://post.news.tom.com/DB001D44519.html1454% of Chinese people, for example, agree strongly or slightly with the statement: “Most companies only make claims about their socially responsible efforts to try to sell me more of their products”.



and family recommendations when choosing a moisturiser compared with just 38% of respondents in the US and UK.15 Indeed, The Futures Company’s qualitative research shows that younger Chinese consumers are leading their elder family members by the hand when it comes to product attributes.

The search for trusted advice from friends and family seems to be partly a function of aspiration. With rising

disposable incomes, many people are willing to spend a high proportion of their salary on key items, but do so judiciously. A 2009-10 study by Pao Principle, cited in Forbes Magazine, found that the average female Chinese luxury consumer will spend roughly 11% of her income on handbags alone.16 Taking advice from friends is seen as a way of improving the chance of success when making such a large purchase. Even for the purchase of smaller items, the dizzying pace of product launches

guarantees the importance of trusted advisors.

Internet forums and social networks, though less reliable, are still seen as valuable sources of advice. The explosive growth of Sina’s Weibo service heralds a new era for digital word-of-mouth, because it is set up as a vehicle for opinion. Threaded comments and one-click micro-polls encourage debate, while content filters

and categorised trends cut through it. The ability to follow trusted advisers, such as celebrities, friends and reviewers, allows for greater intimacy. According to The Futures Company data, 65% of Chinese internet users (versus a 21-market average of 48%) agree with the statement: “The internet helps me to connect with other like-minded individuals”.17 We expect this figure to grow.

Finally, point-of-sale marketing is successful because it acts as a proxy

for advice from friends and family. A recent McKinsey survey found that 56 percent of Chinese consumers say that the information they get at retail outlets is essential to make up their minds.18 The opportunity to have a salesperson rub cream into your hand, or demonstrate the benefits of a stain remover, presents as trusted advice, even if the salesperson works for a particular brand. It is reassuring to be able to talk about a product with someone. Consumer goods companies are particularly well-known for using thousands of in-store salespeople to recommend their products.

Becoming a conduit for trusted advice is one of the great opportunities available to brands looking to grow in China during the next decade. Brands that get it right will float to the top, while those who control their message too remotely will sink. In some categories, engendering confidence will be a critical brand attribute. Growth in China may depend on it.

This is an extract from a Future Perspectives thought piece on China to be published at the end of September in the New Thinking section of our website www.thefuturescompany.com

“Inundated by information about brands and products that burst onto the scene then disappear, Chinese people don’t know where to turn for advice about which products are best, or even safe.”

15Max Magni and Yuval Atsmon, ‘The Power of Word of Mouth in China’, Harvard Bus. Review, 30 April 2010.16Forbes, ‘What Chinese Shoppers Want’, 8 March 2010.17Data from The Futures Company’s Global MONITOR 2011 survey

18McKinsey & Co., ‘China’s In-store Wars’, August 2010.



Futurists and trends analysts rarely get the opportunity to go back and

look at how they called the future. Usually, there’s too much else going on which obscures the picture. But the tenth anniversary of 9/11 provides such an opportunity to look at how we did and how the decade evolved.

Shortly after 9/11, Yankelovich, now part of The Futures Company, conducted a teleconference open to all in which we took stock and offered guidance about the future. (That September 26 teleconference was later released as a white paper entitled, “Trying to Get Back to Business as Usual in Trying Times.”)

Of special interest are the half-dozen questions specially included in the first-quarter wave of the 2002 U.S. Yankelovich MONITOR and asked again in the 2011 third-quarter wave.

In our initial assessment in September 2001 assessment, we argued that 9/11 would have only a limited impact on the American consumer marketplace. Pundits were almost unanimous in declaring otherwise, yet our view is how things have turned out. It was apparent even then.

In early 2001, well before 9/11, theoverwhelming majority of American consumers were more interested in balance and time with family and community along with integrity and authenticity.

The mainstreaming of affluence, or trading up, was gathering momentum. We felt that nothing about 9/11 would daunt it. In fact, it burst into the ensuing housing boom and accumulation frenzy of the mid-2000s.

We said that paradox and irony were too deeply rooted to give way, even to something as sobering as 9/11. By contrast, pundits across

the ideological spectrum foresaw a withering of cynicism, incivility and lack of respect for authorities. This was perhaps post-9/11 punditry’s biggest mistake.

Our forecast was an American marketplace in which people would live in ever-tightening circles of close, intimate connections. This future is upon us. We see it in social networks, first to aggregate friends then to winnow them down into clutches of closeness. We see it in the booming happiness fad for which relationships figure first. We

see it in the echo chambers of politics, media and information that people now inhabit. We see it in the intensifying interest in localism from local foods to walk-able neighborhoods to craft beers to community banks to regional tourism. We see it in people coming together with communities and families for support in their financial struggles. Intimacy is the elemental character of life as people look ahead.

Our bottom line in September 2001 was that 9/11 would contribute to the direction of the future but would not wholly, or even mostly, set that direction. This was because, as we said, in almost no time, 9/11 would lose its grip on people. This is also how things have turned out.

As can be seen in the above table, in 2002, nearly two-thirds disagreed with the idea that 9/11 had “had very little effect” on their day-to-day lives. To restate it in a more straightforward way, two in three felt that 9/11 had, indeed,

9/11 ten years on By J Walker Smith

The events of September 11 have had very little effect on my day-to-day life

2002 2011

Total Disagree 65% 47%

Strongly Disagree 23% 14%

Disagree 42% 33%

Total Agree 35% 53%

Strongly Agree 5% 10%

Agree 30% 43%

“What has weakened since 9/11, is the belief that “all human beings

are Americans under the skin.”



J Walker Smith is the Executive Chairman of The Futures Company.

“Ten years ago, I stayed up all night with

the newscaster Peter Jennings. The entire

night after 9/11 the ABC cameras were

pointed straight down at the wreckage of

the World Trade Center towers. Floodlights

lit the devastation in an unearthly glare

as smoke seeped up through the tangled

girders and emergency responders

searched furiously for survivors. Only

days later did I begin to emerge from the

shock to see that the pall over me was

casting a dark shadow over everyone

else, too, especially the clients of our firm,

many of whom had been immobilized

by the events of 9/11. So, partly for our

benefit and partly for the benefit of others,

we conducted a teleconference later in

September to offer thoughts about a way

forward through the trauma of that day.

With the tenth anniversary of 9/11 at hand,

it is useful to revisit our perspective of the

moment and assess whether our counsel

looks wise in retrospect. We can do a

better job of looking ahead by learning

from looking back.”

affected their ordinary lives. But by 2011, 9/11 was losing its grip, with the majority now agreeing not disagreeing that 9/11 has “had very little effect” on their daily lives. Additionally, looking closely at the distribution of agreement and disagreement, a notable lessening of the intensity of feeling is apparent.

The real terror of the post-9/11world was not apparent at the time. 9/11 was simply the first thing out of Pandora’s 21st century box. What has weakened since 9/11, to quote political philosopher John Gray, is the belief that “all human beings are Americans under the skin.” 9/11 was the strike against that presumption that legitimized a new context for debate. Everything that followed, much of which was immediately recognizable as utterly venal, was seen in a different light, one that brought out the shortcomings of the established order as much as the malevolence of the events or perpetrators themselves.

In the decade since 9/11, the post-WW2 world order has lost its moral authority. That world of assurance has collapsed into a world of volatility. The world order which is now emerging is still coalescing. But already we know enough about it to know that it requires new rules and new assumptions.

This article is based on our Future Perspectives thought piece Looking Back to Look Ahead: A Ten-Year Update on 9/11 recently published in the New Thinking section of our website.

Our latest research on the future of health and wellness was recently featured in Marketing Week in the UK. [http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/analysis/features/brands-serve-up-a-personal-lifestyle-plan/3029178.article]

Our Executive Chairman, J. Walker Smith presented a paper on The Culture of Contentment: The New Context of Consumption at the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) National Conference on Health Communication, Marketing, and Media in Atlanta, GA.

The IIPS, The Futures Company’s public services insight thinktank presents its fifth annual review of values, attitudes and aspirations of the British public. What the Citizen Wants: Beyond the Big Society takes place in London on 27 September and will unveil new research on attitudes to community engagement. For info and invites, please contact [email protected]

Futures Company Director Andrew Curry spoke at the launch of Kinetic’s report on the future of out-of-home advertising, “On The Threshold of Change”. [http://www.kineticww.com/en-GB/home/what-are-we-thinking/moving-minds/environmenstinsight/11-07-06/The_future_of_Out_of_Home_media_in_the_UK_to_2020.aspx]. Andrew’s presentation looked at the technology context of 2020. He described a world in which consumers’ portable and locatable devices communicated with a smart city which was both a platform for competing technologies and in which data was open and hackable.

NEWS

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http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/analysis/features/brands-serve-up-a-personal-lifestyle-plan/3029178.article

Reimagining social networks By Alex Steer

There’s a moment in the film The Social Network when the Mark Zuckerberg character realizes what his new website, ‘The Facebook’, is really all about

‘People want to go on the internet and check out their friends. Why not build a website that offers that? Friends, pictures, profiles, whatever. You can visit, browse around, maybe it’s somebody you just met at a party. I’m not talking about a dating site. I’m talking about taking the entire social experience of college and putting it online.’

In Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay, that moment is so powerful because it takes us back to a time, less than ten years ago, when social networks barely existed. There was MySpace, of course, which at its height counted one in four people in the US in its active membership; and there

were systems like Usenet for online discussion with strangers, and instant messaging for online discussion with friends. But there was nothing quite like the ‘find-and-friend’ model that Facebook made famous. The scene in the film transports us back to social networking’s Big Bang – the revelation that what people want to do online is to interact in a certain way.

Fast forward to the present, and it’s a shame that so much of the conversation around the future of social networking focuses on technology. In the last few years we’ve heard that real-time access, mobile apps, geolocation, near-field communication and other innovations

would transform social networking. To some extent they have: many of the changes over the last decade have been technology-driven. But what’s often missing is the simple, human question: how do we want to interact online, and how is this changing?

Our work on the future of social networking starts with the conviction that the future of social networking will be shaped less by technology change, and more by understanding how people’s online interaction choices are changing, and reimagining social networks and social media content to meet those changing needs.



Cycle-in-Cinema Screenings, UK

A new form of pedal powered cinema screenings have been popping

up around London in 2011, where consumers take in their bicycles,

hook them up to a dynamo which acts as the energy source for

the movie screening. Promoted and organised by a not-for-profit

education project called Magnificent Revolution, the screenings are

held in public places and arranged through social media callouts. The screenings are getting popular

not only with bicycle and green enthusiasts, but also with those who are looking for a fun way to spend

their evenings in a exciting social environment. The idea has gained positive coverage in the press,

as the Evening Standard noted in August that ‘With their relaxed bring-your-own booze, picnic-style

atmosphere, pop-up cycle cinemas have been a hit all over the capital this summer’.

Using social media to track illness, Brazil

As the number of social media users grows across the world

the data generated is increasingly being used to track infectious

diseases in the population. According to an article in the New

Scientist in July 2011, Twitter status updates are being used to track

the growth of dengue fever in Brazil enabling better deployment

of medical services to control the outbreak. The article also notes that while social media and web

behaviour has been used previously for generic surveillance of global pandemics, the research in

Brazil has been the first to collect data at a local city level. Similar to this are more consumer centric

mobile apps like the Swedish Myggrapporten, which highlights mosquito activity by tapping into

the geo-tagged status updates of consumers around world and the website Sickweather, which

aggregates sickness mentions from across social media networks and overlays this information on

real time maps to better inform consumers

Recycling used cooking oil, Spain

The Barcelona City Council has started distributing containers to households to

make the recycling of used cooking oil more convenient. The Olipot campaign was

launched in February 2011. The free Olipot can be obtained at the local Punto

Verde, a network of public recycle points around town, that are called ‘Green

Points’. Consumers are encouraged to collect used cooking oil in the handy

containers instead of dumping them into the drain which can pollute the water

system. The Olipots can then be taken to the local recycling center that recycles

the cooking oil in a eco friendly way.

This is aimed at getting consumers do their little bit for the environment in their everyday activities.

The Olipot initiative has received positive mentions and consumer interest is growing with reports

indicating that the recycling centres ran out of the stocks for the Olipot as early as March 2011.

Global Streetscapes are our eyes and ears on the streets of cities around the world: a network of culturally connected individuals in over 40 countries and 60 cities capture new examples of emerging and evolving trends and innovations. This source of continually updated observational insight and local intelligence provides a straightforward way of connecting to product and service innovation and examples of consumer and brand behaviour.

Each of these choices involves a trade-off. For example, the issue of online privacy is clearly a rising point of consumer concern right now. Taken to its extreme, a concern for online privacy would mean abandoning networks entirely – but there is no sign that most consumers are interested in this nuclear option. We use a simple “Four Cs” model to explain why people find value in online interaction – it lets them communicate, collaborate,

“Much of theconversation around

the future of social networking focuses on

technology.”

create/curate and consult together, and as long as these needs exist, and are met, online social networks have a future. But will privacy concern pull us towards a Closed Fist future, or will our desire for ease of access (and our dislike of remembering passwords) bring us back towards an Open Hand future in the end?

There will be no single answer to these questions. Social networks will evolve in different ways in response to the particular needs of particular groups of consumers. Using our Pivot Points

We have identified six critical decisions – known as Pivot Points – that consumers are making now, that will shape the social networks of the future, and the media landscape for businesses, brands and marketers. In brief, these are:

Scale. Will we want the scale benefits of large networks (a so-called Big Net future), or the intimacy benefits of small ones (a Tight Knit future)?

Privacy. Will we value convenience of use and access (Open Hand), or safeguards on our private data (Closed Fist)?

Specificity. Will we want to spend time on a few networks (One for All), or divide time between many (One for Each)?

Pervasiveness. Will we want to be ‘always on’ (Turn On), or to access our networks only when we need to (Tune Out)?

Utility. Will we see our networks more as entertainment (Play), or as utilities (Plug)?

Worldview. Will we want networks to reinforce our habits (Confirm), or to challenge our preconceptions (Challenge)?

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http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/lifestyle/article-23978249-fancy-an-evening-at-the-cinema-just-start-pedalling-mate.do

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128215.600-twitter-to-track-dengue-fever-outbreaks-in-brazil.html

http://www.mnn.com/your-home/at-home/blogs/olipots-recycling-in-barcelona-gets-greasy

Piercing the Shard: Andrew Curry writes “The Shard is inescapable from our London office. The city’s soon-to-be tallest building, a piece of concept architecture by Renzo Piano, can be seen from our office windows and most of the approaches to the office. Size matters. As the economist Andrew Lawrence has demonstrated with his Skyscraper Index, announcements of buildings billed as the tallest are an unerring leading indicator of the top of the market, that boom is about to go bust.”

Read more: http://blog.thefuturescompany.com/2011/07/19/piercing-the-shard/

From the BlogMy Millennial generation: Lawrence Wykes writes “The question of whether the Millennials are a coherent cohort is still open – the data has never quite added up. And our recent analysis, based on our Global Monitor data, suggests that as a group the Millennials are a fragmented cohort, refracted by technology. ... Millennials look like a generation to researchers because there is a social-technology breakpoint between their cohort and all previous generations. But, in terms of social analysis, defining a group by technology – rather than their underlying attitudes and values – has problems.

Read more: http://blog.thefuturescompany.com/2011/08/11/my-millennial-generation/

From Cash to Commitment: Amy Tomkins writes “Hermione Taylor’s new sponsorship site The DoNation seeks to replace cash with action and help people inspire their friends to live more sustainably. By harnessing the social and viral nature of sponsorship, The DoNation encourages people to engage with environmental issues and take action to change their behaviour. This changes the traditional sponsorship model and makes the whole transaction more direct and efficient.

Read more: http://blog.thefuturescompany.com/2011/08/19/from-cash-to-commitment/

Alex Steer

“What does

Facebook have to

do with medieval

monks? Well,

Facebook originated

as a way of enabling

gossip and interaction between US Ivy

League college students, starting at Harvard.

Harvard, of course, was founded in 1636 and

modelled after the Universities of Cambridge

and Oxford; and these, with their thirteenth-

century origins, were based on an ideal

established by England’s great religious

houses, the monasteries. The scholars of

Oxford and Cambridge (and by extension

the Ivy League universities where Facebook

was incubated) took as their inspiration

the monastic ideal: a group of people living

together, in close quarters, sharing

everything, trading knowledge, having

few secrets from each other.

“Ring any bells? Underpinning Facebook,

still, is an undergraduate culture - and

underpinning that is a monastic culture. Little

wonder the network still struggles with the

idea of privacy. I’m a medievalist by training,

and in Facebook’s wrangles and mis-steps

over privacy I pick up echoes of the intimate,

gossipy world of the monasteries. We still

tend to treat Facebook as a guide to the

future of social networking - but the social

model that underpins it is centuries old. As we

developed the Pivot Points framework, I had

to shake myself and realize I’d grown up with

a model of social networking that’s essentially

medieval. Is it really that surprising that as it

spreads, the idea of the network might change

quite radically?”

framework helps businesses, brands and marketers imagine different possible futures, understand the decisions their consumers are making, and decide how to act.

Looking back at Facebook, we can see that from the beginning it’s relied on people making certain choices about how they want to interact. It depends on scale, openness, ubiquity (we’d say it’s Big Net, Open Hand, One for All), and on people’s desire to spend more of their online time socializing and getting content and recommendations filtered by their social graphs (Turn On, Play, Confirm). Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of a network for people who want to ‘go on the internet and check out their friends’ has gone global.

But just like MySpace’s idea of a completely open, highly customizable network, today’s leading networks will find themselves at risk if they don’t anticipate – and adapt to – people’s changing interaction choices. In the end, technologies create possibilities, but our decisions shape the future.

A longer version of this work can be found

on our blog, in the week starting 1 August

2011. It has also been published as a booklet

in the New Thinking section of our website.



http://blog.thefuturescompany.com/2011/08/01/the-future-of-social-networks-1/

http://www.thefuturescompany.com/file_depot/0-10000000/0-10000/1/folder/2703/The+Futures+Company+Status+Update+9_6_20111.pdf

http://www.thefuturescompany.com/file_depot/0-10000000/0-10000/1/folder/2703/The+Futures+Company+Status+Update+9_6_20111.pdf

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Editor: Andrew Curry Production: Karen Kidson Design: Alake Riley

future proof september2011

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