I've recently been asked by ad agency BBDO to answer some questions about digital futures, with a particular emphasis on mobile (they are looking long and hard at this as an issue). As my answers summarised a lot of Distraction Culture issues, I thought I'd post them....
How have new technologies and, in particular, mobile devices, changed people’s behaviour?
The biggest impact of all has been an increase in the demands made on a consumer’s time – the proliferating new media (web, e-mail, sms, mobile voice calls, mobile data, games, iTV) compete for attention with old media and the “real” world. This makes all of us “always on” and more time poor – even though a day still only has 24 hours.
The potential of communication with those who are distant from us is already disrupting social behaviour with those who are close to us. We see this in families, business meetings and public spaces.
However we are also witnessing a flowering of content created by individuals who are using the new technologies to express themselves and communicate. Much of this will be used to reinforce and grow new concepts of social networks which lie at the heart of digital communication.
What challenges do these changes present for brands and marketers?
Put simply, marketing becomes a lot harder. Consumers will evolve more strategies for message filtering and avoidance, technology will help them – sometimes (more channels but more choice tools too). Arguably, it will become impossible to establish new global superbrands in the physical product area, though digital products and services spread virally will still be able to achieve salience rapidly.
The old model of advertising will never disappear but understanding the diffusion of messages through social networks will become the number one marketing skill.
Ideas will spread more quickly too. Brands will get caught out ever more quickly for lack of authenticity and transparency in their behaviour.
How do you expect people’s behaviour will continue to change over the next 10 years as mobile devices proliferate and spread even further?
Commitment, for instance to being somewhere on time, will decline as people use mobile to check out and seize the best possibilities for themselves at all times. Expect more fluid social structures as a result. Avoidance of (social) discomfort will also be easier to achieve – look how teenagers use phones to avoid meeting their friend’s parents on the doorstep. Imagine that among thirty somethings.
Being unprepared will be less of an issue: maps in the environment, mobile access to funds always there, digital information embedded in the fabric of the world around you (RFID is just the start).
People will define themselves by their network, as they once did by family, or geography, or tribe. How they see and interact with that network will be very important to them. In fact, it already is.
There may be a backlash too – emphasising focus, responsibility, the long term. Hopefully.
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