Can We Predict the Future of Digital?
During Social Media Week London, HotWire PR hosted a session with Matt Cross, Tom Rouse & David Clare all from HotWire, discussing the outcomes of their 2014 predictions and explaining their thoughts for the digital future.
Can we predict the future? Predicting the future is not an exact science and it seems when it comes to predicting the future of digital, forecasting what’s coming next is near impossible!
During Social Media Week London, HotWire PR hosted a session with Matt Cross, Tom Rouse and David Clare discussing the outcomes of their 2014 digital predictions and sharing their thoughts for the digital future.
What are their 2015 predictions and what do they mean for digital marketers?
Connected Cars
Matt Cross suggested in 2015 we will finally see some progress within the connected automobile space. The functionality of the dreamed up ‘Bat Mobile’ has not yet been achieved in 2014 and if you were to judge by the audience at HotWire PR, albeit a London tube reliant group, it looks like we haven’t adapted the lowest of tech capabilities for cars! Apparently 64% of the UK population drives to work which could present huge opportunity for content distributors! So is this the year for making cars connected?
What does this mean for digital marketers?
Consumers are adapting faster to new technologies, but they want a personalised and sophisticated experience. As suggested by Matt, if you can recognise what device your customer is using and what environment they are in (are they browsing at home or while commuting?) different messages should be sent to a user to enable them to engage appropriately. “Where there is content, there is advertising”, for car users the use of GPS, integrated technologies and targeted ads could be a focus for digital markers.
Multi-Screen Content
What’s another screen? Digital marketers have been working on adapting content for mobile, tablet and desktop, but going forward Tom Rouse suggests the addition of wearables will force marketers to create content for multi-screens, such as watches and glasses. With the addition of these devices, will consumers become even more ‘turned on’ as they are more likely to check their devices or will they become less likely to interact with messages as they can prioritise what alerts they want to check?
What does this mean for digital marketers?
There is still a long way to go in terms of using all the data we collect in an effective way. By creating device specific content and personalising messages by using location and other customer insights marketers can create an effective message tailored to each consumer.
Healthcare Technology
We have all seen the spike and decline of fitness bands such as the FitBit and Nike Fuel Band, but David Clare thinks health technology will be taken to the next level by being accepted and integrated into our healthcare systems. It will go far beyond counting steps and calories to mapping genes, monitoring blood pressure and even controlling our emotions. Currently GPs cannot use data from these devices as ‘medically sound’ information, but hopefully by THE END of 2015 they can start to use it as part of an overall healthcare assessment.
What does this mean for digital marketers?
Health will continue to be on the forefront of consumers’ minds. To allow consumers to use multiple devices, platforms which allow the interaction of multiple health gadgets will be what the consumer is using. It seems the future success of health technologies rely heavily on building communities which means marketers should include healthcare community groups, hospitals and other related services to continue the positive effect health tech devices have on users.
With the state of digital changing everyday it is a daunting task to try to predict the future. One thing is definite, consumers want personalisation and ease of use. For digital marketers we need to make creating interesting content for multiple devices a priority and standard practice in 2015.
Opinion piece By Heather Nolan