I don’t think there is any question that future buying activity will be driven heavily by economics, that is, who can offer the most affordable quality. But when there is a decision point between brand options, and price is not the key driver, then consumers will increasingly ask whether the brand demonstrates that it cares about its customers. A couple of examples. Starbucks versus local and smaller coffee houses is a choice that many consumers make. Starbucks attempts, mostly with good success, to overcome its gigantic size with a genuine emphasis on being a local third place. Their reputation for good treatment of employees, for providing health insurance for part-time workers, for frequent promotions and giveaways, like their provision of a free drink for every 15 purchases, the free music download cards on the checkout counter, the constant stream of responses to customer concerns on their Facebook and Twitter feeds, all say that, as a brand, we care about you.

For a subset of coffee customers this is not enough. They will choose a local brand, because the very fact of being local and small says to them, this is a brand that can know us and that cares about us (and, they will usually say, tastes better). It is a built-in feature, really, of the whole localization movement applying to local foods, local book stores, and so on. Local should equal caring and if it does not, something is wrong.

Facilitating such shifts in attitudes about brands are all the tools and new assumptions about marketing. Chief among these is the shift of power to consumers – the Net means that customers own the brand and are the primary marketers. The Net is a megaphone for individual customers and their connected devices are all publishing tools now. Probably the most interesting, and even amazing thing about the Web in the past five years has been its metamorphosis from an information-consuming medium to an information-publishing medium for the average user. I think we are just now beginning to grasp what this means, from consumer interactions to revolutions in the public square.

Of course everyone concerned with marketing and brands is wondering where this is all going. Recently Business 2 Community published The Future of Marketing: 46 Experts Share their Predictions for 2012. Here are a few highlights.

“Cross-department and channel collaboration will become more prevalent as marketing coordinates its research, analysis, activities and reporting with other parts of the business.” -Alexis Kingsbury, Global Marketing Director at Spidergap

“Referrals will also be a much higher percentage of successful business marketing because it’s much easier to either recommend or knock companies online using social media and have your message shared.” -Andrew Baird, Chief Freedom Officer at Amazing Business

“Customer data will become more important than ever. Tapping into Facebook’s social graph will allow businesses to access an incredible amount of information…This will be used to take marketing personalization to a whole new level.” -Chris Wise, Director of Marketing at Guideline Central

“Webinars as an educational and marketing platform saw a huge rise in popularity in 2011, and will continue to grow in popularity in 2012.” -Jeremy Gregg, Executive Director at The PLAN Fund

“The importance of viral and shareable content will drive companies and brands to become more creative with their content, replacing the predictable sales pitch with more informative or entertaining material, making the 2012 browsing experience less like opening pages, and more like changing channels.”- Stephen Powers, President and Founder of Rightlook Creative

In Marketing 2020: Shifting the balance between consumers and brands, the blog Nice to be Seen muses about the new skill sets that the future marketing world demands. Based on a gathering of the AMA Atlanta, the author suggests that technology skills, whether in social media or in newer and proprietary means for reaching individual customers will become a basic requirement.

Finally, Laughlin Constable has created a wonderful video that sums up most of the contemporary assumptions about where marketing is going.

Glen Hiemstra is a futurist, author, speaker, consultant, and Founder of Futurist.com. To arrange for a speech, workshop or consultation contact Futurist.com.

The most recent edition of The Futurist magazine included The Best Predictions of 2011. Here are some that seem stranger to us than the others.

1. Thought Helmets. According to Gerwin Schalk, an Albany Medical College scientist, by the year 2020 we will have thought helmets. Though these helmets will probably not be for commercial use right away, Schalk is sure that at least “Soldiers will communicate with telepathic helmets.” It will be very interesting to see how these actually work. Once the technology is even more advanced will it be embedded into our brains so everyone can communicate without speaking?

2. Sleep learning. Great news! By 2030 you will apparently be able to study in your sleep! But, only at select locations. “Hotels will offer customers a selection of dreams as well as the opportunity to study and learn while they sleep.” It would be interesting to ask the Futurist who predicted this a few questions, such as: Will you be able to study any topic? Who will decide which topics (committing the perfect crime, kidnapping for dummies) are off limits to study?

3. No more days off. Bad news for students who love snow days. In the future “Schools won’t have days off for inclement weather anymore”. The idea is that all students will have access to internet and be able to attend class online. Is it plausible that all students will have web access and own a web-enabled device? Perhaps. But then again every young student who wants to take a day off to play in the snow will find a way to get around the rules by using any number of excuses that the school can’t necessarily check up on. How are you supposed to track every student who says it snowed so hard that their electricity went out?

4. Empty Oceans. By 2050 “Ocean-dwelling plant and animal species will disappear on a scale equal to the five great global extinctions of the past 600 million years,” according to the International Programme on the State of the Ocean. This pessimistic prediction assumes that people will stop taking action to mitigate greenhouse-gas emissions and continue to destroy the ocean. There is no doubt that the world needs to pay attention to creating a more sustainable planet, but predicting such a widespread extinction happening in the next 39 years is pushing the boundaries of plausibility. Needless to say, it wouldn’t hurt to start preserving what we have before it’s too late.

5. Holograms for everyone! By 2022 “Home entertainment centers could be playing movies and television shows as 3-D holographs, no television screen involved.” The components of 3-D Holographic technology have been around for a long time and have recently made some great improvements, but to get holographic products that are commercially usable in the next 11 years is going to be quite the challenge. Why? The issue is with finding more sensitive film. Film has been around since before 1890. Less than 35 years later, in 1922, we had the earliest confirmed 3-D film shown to an audience. Holography was invented 25 years later in 1947. Our technology is vastly more advanced now than in the early 1900s, yet it only took a span of 60 years to invent film, make it 3D and turn objects into holographic images. Now, more than 60 years later we have even better technology and 3-D holographic shows and movies are still just beyond our grasp (commercially). Judging by the numbers, we are long overdue for this prediction to come true.

In preparing for this event I was interested to learn that the disabled have suffered during the economic recession of the past three years, in cutbacks to social programs that serve them, and even more so in terms of employment. While the national unemployment rates hovers at 8.6%, among the disabled the rate is more than twice that high. We considered the need to address this issue and we explored advances in technology that enable the disabled to be both more employable and independent. This includes access to social media. Because of social media younger disabled people (under age 30) are much more likely to be integrated with and interact with non-disabled peers, as compared to those over the age of 30. So this is another area that social media and the power of the Web are combining to change social structures.

One of the attendees, the Borshoff Agency, captured the spirit of the event in their blog. They noted in particular the use of multiple methods of communication, including the typing of closed captions by a stenographer live as I delivered my keynote. This is something we intend to explore further here at Futurist.com, for example the adding of close captions to our videos.

Glen Hiemstra is a futurist, author, speaker, consultant, and Founder of Futurist.com. To arrange for a speech, workshop or consultation contact Futurist.com.

Too bad the events on screen are beautifully choreographed displays of hatred, racism and murder. Referred to by both police and civilians alike as “PR”s, the Puerto Rican “Sharks” battle against the non-race-specific white “Jets” to be the best gang on the block. Each side gets daily doses of racial slurs and violent threats, a reflection of the intense civil rights problems in America in the ’60′s.

At the same time that this film highlights fundamental issues with rampant racism and inequality in America, West Side Story does a great job of making light of the situation with foolish insults and melodramatic dance numbers to call attention to the absurdity of violent discrimination. Placing this racially tense story in a musical setting, full of spontaneous dancing and beautiful melodies draws attention to the irrational nature of its content. Fight scenes on the playground are theatrical ballet sequences that correspond perfectly with orchestra music. Absolutely offensive situations presented in the film are lightened with lyrics and dialogue that demonstrate the ignorance of the kids that hate each other for no apparent reason except skin color.

The purpose of presenting a dark and serious subject like racism with a light touch is to show the audience how silly and unsubstantiated the “arguments” are for being discriminatory. It’s almost embarrassing to watch the explosive violence that stems from the smallest comment. Senseless anger and ridiculous name-calling seem petty and laughable while watching it on screen in this way.

And yet we unfortunately haven’t come too far since the 1960’s. There is still illogical hatred and discrimination that leads to incessant violence, and for what?

[Glen Hiemstra note: My wife and I had attended a screening of West Side Story before Mallory was able to go. Today in a speech to the annual conference of the Alliance for Children and Families, in Washington DC, when talking about demographic trends and specifically immigration, I described our experience this way...

For the last three weeks a Paul Allen owned “Cinerama” theater in Seattle has been doing a 70-millimeter Cinerama revival. My wife and I went to West Side Story, made in 1961, 50 years ago, a film that I had not seen as a child. It was amazing. It was the saddest experience, to see how far we have not come in our jingoistic, nativistic, astonishingly prejudiced attitudes toward immigrants. Then it was Puerto Ricans in New York, now it is Mexicans and others from Latin America. Then, major film writers and studios were willing to challenge the status quo in a block-buster, academy award winning film. Now only a low-budget indie film maker would dare to tackle such a subject, while leading political candidates for the highest office can talk about how high a fence to build and whether it should actively kill people. This is not right. Here is my prediction: In the future, when a fence has been built, American business leaders will be climbing ladders with megaphones, to beg those on the other side to please come and do some work.

I might add, West Side Story made me proud of the often maligned 60's.]

Our video interview of Priyanka is conducted by Mallory Smith, my Office Manager, a recent graduate of the University of Washington and herself a member of the millennial generation. It is exciting to hear the story of iCAREweCARE. As Priyanka says, why should she wait to make a difference when she can start doing that now.

I believe that what Priyanka is doing here is an example of the activist nature of the millennial generation, as forecast by William Strauss and Neil Howe in their various works on generational theory, especially the original The Fourth Turning, and then more specifically in Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation. Look around the world and I think you will see this new generation, now about age 10 to 30, making their voices heard, often in dramatic ways.

Glen Hiemstra is a futurist speaker, author, consultant, blogger, internet video producer and Founder of Futurist.com. To arrange for a speech contact Futurist.com.

[Update: Priyanka was of the first "100x100" women entrepreneurs featured by the start-up company The Smart Girls Way.]

Not long ago I was editing some video, and came across a speech I did for the American Red Cross, on the occasion of their 125th Anniversary Celebration, in 2006. It was one of my all-time favorite speaking events, in Washington DC. I admire the long history and the good work of this volunteer organization. The assignment included not just a 30-minute keynote, but facilitating the whole audience of several hundred in a set of quizzes using electronic polling, as well as moderating a panel that immediately followed my keynote. But in this blog, and in the video, I want to zero in on a 15-minute segment in which I outlined what I considered, in 2006, to be the five major trends and their related challenges for philanthropy in general and the Red Cross specifically as they looked ahead to their next century.

It is quite clear that we are living in a time period in which the gap between rich and poor is growing, by most measures. The middle class is being more and more squeezed…that means a growing wealthy class with large amounts of money to give, and therefore the creation of [their own] foundations and significant new large scale programs…but it means a squeeze on workplace giving…As the middle class feels their budget extremely squeezed, and that appears to be the case in the next few years, the likelihood of them increasing their amount of giving diminishes, and therefore the [need] to increase giving means we have to increase participation in giving, more so than the amount of giving, from a squeezed middle class.

This was in 2006 remember, when attention to the growing income gap was generally off the radar, except among a few futurists, economists and other social observers. I also discussed the tremendous impact that the rapidly accumulating public debt would have on public agencies and their ability to spend in the future, some two years before the economic collapse of 2008. All the attention we pay now to public debt did not hit full force until just the past year. This is some of what I said back then:

In terms of public agency trends, what is going on [in 2006 remember] is quite clear. The deficit that we are in the process of creating at a federal level in the United States will, once again, for the next decade or two create a tremendous drag on public agencies to flexibly and creatively respond to the issues of our day. Now we will probably work our way through this again, as we work our way through political elections and changes over the next couple of decades, but for the next two decades this deficit is going to be a tremendous drag.

To summarize all of the five trends that I outlined in 2006..

Demographic Trends, including increasing diversity in the U.S., the aging population, the millennial generation, and on the horizon the impending population decline in parts of the world. There are implications for what the Red Cross looks like, who it serves, and the possibility of a major surge in volunteerism.

Trends in Philanthropy, including the impacts of the rich-poor gap and the squeezed middle class discussed above, and the demand for competency and transparency in large non-profits, driven especially by our “highly interconnected and blogged world.”

Communications and Technology, including the coming dominance of the cell phone world-wide and thus its utility in changing communications during disasters, and the lesser known impact of nanotechnology, specifically the introduction of nano-water filtration. In 2006 1.2 billion people lacked access to clean water, and half of those hospitalized in developing nations were there because of water borne illness. I note the recent, at that time, availability of simple technologies like the Life Straw, that can filter water simply for very low cost, simply by sucking on a straw.

Trends in Public Agencies, primarily the coming issue of public debt, which was completely obvious to me during the second term of the last U.S. President, but was generally off the radar at the time.

Global Warming. This is a term that has lost favor five years later, because it has been effectively politicized rather than left as a scientific issue. But in 2006 I was noting that, for science, global warming was a settled issue, and just months after Hurricane Katrina, the long-term implications for an organization like the Red Cross, were clear to me,

What this means is the potential in our lifetimes, not the next several centuries, but in our lifetimes, of changes to weather patterns on the planet. Wild weather, in other words. As the planet heats up the frequency and intensity of storms is likely to increase…Global warming is real. It means as an organization we are going to have to face wild weather over the next many decades. It’s time to acknowledge it. It’s time to do more than ever to get ready for it, and perhaps it is even time to begin lobbying for everything we can do to reduce the impact of global warming.

Looking back now, five years later, I feel pretty good about that speech and my ability to help an important organization accurately see what was coming.

Glen Hiemstra is a futurist speaker, author, consultant, blogger, internet video producer and Founder of Futurist.com. To arrange for a speech contact Futurist.com.

It is good to learn from history.

Check out the trailer and learn more about the film here!

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