5 TRENDS FOR 2020
Five powerful consumer trends. Five opportunities. Are you ready?
It’s here! For what feels like forever, 2020 has been every trend watcher’s near-mythical time horizon. Now, we’re about to live it.
New challenges – and huge new opportunities! – are ahead. So here are five key emerging consumer trends to supercharge your planning. Each one is a powerful opportunity to build new products, services, campaigns, brands and more that people will love in 2020 and beyond.
1. GREEN PRESSURE
In 2020, consumers move from eco-status to eco-shame.
2. BRAND AVATARS
Human brands take powerful new form.
3. METAMORPHIC DESIGN
Consumers demand relevance as a service.
4. THE BURNOUT
Smart brands rush to help those burned by the pressures of modern life.
5. CIVIL MEDIA
Why the future of social is meaningful connections.
Remember, trends mean nothing if you don’t use them to make what you do – and the world – better. So absorb these trends, take them to your team, share, discuss, argue and conspire. But most of all, act.
2. BRAND AVATARS
In 2020, human brands take powerful new form.
You already know that virtual influencers are moving into the mainstream. This year saw Lil Miquela, the best-known among Instagram’s virtual influencers, star alongside supermodel Bela Hadid in a (cringe-inducing) campaign for Calvin Klein.
Meanwhile, virtual avatars are making noise elsewhere. The Chinese state news agency, Xinhau, have launched their second virtual news anchor. And the newest member of the YouPorn’s legendary marketing team is a virtual character called Jedy Vales. Just another slice of digital ephemera? Perhaps, but a crucial shift informs these three examples.
The media landscape continues to fragment. Digital channels multiply. One opportunity? In 2020, consumers will pay deeper attention to brands who embody themselves via new virtual characters and avatars, allowing them to inhabit digital channels in richer, more immersive and more human ways.
Deep underlying forces are fueling the rise of BRAND AVATARS.
First, a multiplicity of digital channels – TikTok! Fortnite! Alexa! In-store touchscreens! – means new expectations when it comes to the democratized conversation between brands and consumers.
Second, consumers are already becoming accustomed to meaningful relationships with AI-fueled entities. Relationships that go way beyond Alexa, order me some washing powder, and that encompass wellbeing, creativity, and even the human need for companionship. Now Amazon are working on a wearable that will understand and respond to the emotions of the user. The rise of these VIRTUAL COMPANIONS is priming consumers to expect branded virtual entities that connect to them on a deeper level.
So, ready to code your BRAND AVATAR to life in 2020? First, check out how others are doing just that.
YOUR RESPONSE?
This trend is just one, actionable angle on a far deeper and ongoing shift that you know well.
Back in the days of top-down, legacy, one-to-many media, we had top-down, legacy, one-to-many brands. Now we live in a world of democratized, participatory, immersive media. And that means the rise of democratized, participatory, immersive brands.
Most consumers don’t want to connect with a fast food, cosmetics, or media brand. If your guiding idea when you apply this trend is, ‘hey guys, let’s be friends!’ then you’re going to faceplant. But what consumers will respond to are brands that meet them in the digital channels they live in, and serve them: solve pain-points, offer useful information, and yes, even deliver a dose of fun.
Applying this trend effectively, then, means thinking hard across two dimensions. First, the digital lives of the consumers that you want to reach. Second, your brand and its values.
On the digital lives of your consumers, ask yourself: who do we want to reach with a new AVATAR? Crucially, what digital channels are these consumers living, working, playing inside? Will our AVATAR be about solving a serious pain point inside a traditional channel? The BBC made a new AI-fueled assistant that understands regional accents from across the UK. Will it be about playing alongside consumers in a way that enhances their experience of the channel: see Wendy’s and their AVATAR inside Fortnite.
Clarity around your brand is just as important. When you create an AVATAR, you’re bringing your brand – its values, characteristics and essential nature – to a new kind of life. Take this trend, then, as an opportunity to clarify your brand as never before. Gather your team and ask: what are the fundamental properties of our brand? What kind of virtual character would personify the values we hold? Does the AVATAR we see taking shape unintentionally send messages that marginalize or exclude certain groups?
Read the next article of the series on METAMORPHIC DESIGN
Publication Courtesy – trendwatching.com
