1. Sex with No Apologies
Like it or not, the pornography industry today is a vibrant illustration of just how powerful sex continues to be. The Internet has made pornography instantly and discreetly available to everyone from the sex obsessed to the mildly curious. It’s widely agreed that the Internet developed so far so fast because of the online porn industry.

The Age of Pornography means never having to apologize. Or at least never having to worry that sexual revelations will ruin your career.

Indeed, recent JWT surveys show that women are becoming more sexually proactive and more sexually demanding.

This shouldn’t be taken to mean, however, that everybody is comfortable with the current free-and-easy attitude toward sex. There’s a definite counter trend that includes such things as teens making virginity pledges. And in the Muslim world, the freer female dress code of a generation ago is just a memory; Muslim women everywhere are returning to head scarves and all-covering clothing styles.
In 2006, expect to see further polarization of attitudes toward sex.

2. Faking Reality and Faking Celebrity
In many ways, “reality” has been the guiding theme of the century thus far. TV in particular aims to create the illusion that it’s a neutral observer capturing slices of real life. Handheld cameras and under- or overexposed grainy pictures are its hallmark.

The truth is, the proliferation of reality TV and the fact that so many of us experience the world through the TV make it difficult to say what exactly is real. The line between “really real” and “TV real” has become blurred.

Like reality, celebrity is blurring and shifting. Celebrity is no longer about status; it’s about familiarity. It’s morally neutral, which means it’s not about whether someone “deserves” to be a celebrity and it’s not about whether a person’s celebrity is based on good deeds or bad. It’s purely about face and/or name recognition and the acid test of being able to draw a crowd. The bigger the celebrity, the bigger the crowd.

With myriad media channels pouring out content 24/7, reality shows proliferating, and new one-to-many media such as blogging and podcasting, Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame is easier than ever to achieve.

While there will doubtless be plenty of public appetite for fake reality and fake celebrity in 2006, it’s authenticity that will give the edge and depth of appeal. In the long run, it makes unapologetically real personalities such as Kate Moss and Angelina Jolie more enduring than such rent-a-smile brand endorsers as Catherine Zeta-Jones.

3. The Timelessness of India and China—Going Beyond Cheap Labor
Globalization and borderless interactive technology have made India and China hot commodities in the 21st century, but there’s a whole lot more to them than huge populations, IT outsource centers, and low-cost manufacturing. With burgeoning prosperity, their growing middle classes are demanding their own versions of the good life. And both India and China are developing their own distinctive cachet in terms of chic design and high style.

In an era when the frenetic pace of life leaves so many people feeling chronically short of time, India and China also offer ancient practices for “stepping out of time” that just aren’t part of Western cultural or religious traditions. Various forms of yoga and Transcendental Meditation from India and Chinese t’ai chi and Qigong have become hugely popular ways for stressed-out Westerners to forget the clock and reconnect with themselves.

The ability of the most switched-on Indians and Chinese to alternate between the adrenaline of 24/7 living and the serenity of a world marked by timelessness and balance will become highly prized as life continues to accelerate through the coming year. In 2006, we will see renewed focus in the West on the mysticism and inner reserves of these two Eastern cultures.

4. Disappearing Downtime and Downspace
The spread of digital, interactive, and mobile technologies over the last decade has come at the expense of downtime—those apparently unproductive pauses for breath in the race of life. Before these life-changing technologies took off, the pace of life was slower and things took longer. No more.

Very few years ago, being away from the phone or office meant being out of contact. Time in the car, in a plane or on a train, in a restaurant or bar, or just out walking was downtime—uninterrupted and uninterruptible. Now, thanks to cell phones and PDAs, we never need be out of touch. We can call and be called wherever we are. We are no longer unreachable. Ever. Even in the bathroom. They’re part of what author and journalist James Gleick called “the acceleration of everything” in his best-selling book, Faster.

Now, just as in the environment at large, we are beginning to notice with alarm that we are running out of spaces. And we’re beginning to see that unstructured time—whether spent smelling the roses or simply daydreaming—carries its own value.

This raises tough issues for businesses that want to get a slice of people’s increasingly hard-pressed time. The ones that succeed will be those that take the trouble to understand the quality and value of this downtime, and enhance it. The ones that fail will be those that barge in and act as if they have a right to encroach on consumers’ time.

5. Natural Disasters and Eco-Awareness—No Longer Just Hollywood and Tree-Huggers
The rampant advance of technology, massive engineering projects, and widespread personal comforts has lulled most people in the developing world into a false sense of environmental mastery. Sure there are unsightly garbage dumps and the occasional oil spill, and sure the air smells bad sometimes and the weather seems to be a little weird these days, but none of these are enough to upset the comfort of most people.

The tsunami and Katrina have pushed the environment further up the public agenda and have gotten many people wondering what’s next. Both events gave the media ample material to dramatize environmental disaster in a way that was more impactful than any Hollywood movie. The cover of the November 2005 issue of Wired magazine (which firmly believes there’s a technology solution for everything) flags up “Earthquakes, Tsunamis, Meltdowns: America’s Next 10 disasters.”

Whether 2006 will see another large-scale environmental disaster is impossible to know. What’s certain is that people around the world are going to be more interested in the issue than they were a couple of years ago.

6. Living with Islam—No Longer an Issue of Merely Academic Interest
There are few hotter topics in current affairs than Islam. In fact, the internal relationships between the various streams of Islam, and the relationship of Islam and Muslims with the non-Islamic world, are crucial issues for everyone.

In Europe there are around 12 million Muslims, accounting for 7.5 percent of the population of France, 6.2 percent of the Netherlands, 3.6 percent of Germany, 2.5 percent of Britain, 1.7 percent of Italy, and 1.2 percent of Spain. The U.S. Census doesn’t ask about religious affiliation, but independent estimates of the Muslim population of the United States range from 1 to 3 million, while some Muslim groups estimate the number as high as 7 million.

The conflict of values and loyalties has been sharpened by the headline-grabbing activities of militant Islamic fundamentalists, which have led many non-Muslims to associate Islam with violence and suicide bombers. That’s bad enough for Muslims living in mainly Muslim societies, let alone those living in non-Muslim countries. Islamic fundamentalists are determined to push Muslims and non-Muslims apart by creating a climate of mutual fear and resentment. Yet with so many Muslims settled in non-Muslim countries, and immigration likely to bring yet more, separation is not a real option.

In 2006 and going forward, coming to terms with the problems of cohabitation and finding solutions palatable to both groups will be a matter of urgency in Europe and elsewhere.

7. Personal-Control Freaks
Arguably the biggest change, overarching all the others and driving many current developments, is the mania for personal control.

The essence of personal control in any situation is giving consumers the means to get more of what they want and less of what they don’t want.

So the TV remote control means less physical effort and more convenience; it means less putting up with unwanted shows and commercials, and more freedom to seek out pleasurable content quickly and easily. In today’s highly competitive markets, there’s huge scope for consumers to exercise personal control by playing brands off each other. With so many brands chasing limited money by adding more features, lowering prices, and putting together better deals, consumers have come to feel there’s always more to be had. As with the TV remote control or computer mouse, the promise of something better is rarely more than a click away—literally or metaphorically.

In 2006, as more gain access to broadband Internet and other means of empowerment, their dissatisfied brand-switching will become even more the norm.

8. Brand Sluts
As choice and competition increase, brand loyalty is under threat. Within a given category, consumers are increasingly prepared to switch brands; they’re willing to go with any brand that makes an attractive offer. Welcome to the merciless world of unfaithful consumers or Brand Sluts.

The whole notion of Brand Sluts is a nightmare for brand managers. They work hard to build their brands and to establish close relationships with consumers.

There are five big trends pushing Brand Sluts to be promiscuous.

Commoditization: From apparel all the way up to microprocessors, commoditization is the name of the game in many markets. There are few things that remain special. With most products, the market quickly finds a way of making something similar that is cheaper and does more. Commodities don’t command loyalty.

Outsourcing: Companies used to make the products that carried their brand names, but now many outsource manufacturing to far-off places where labor is cheap. This means similar products carrying different brand names are quite likely to be made in the same factory by the same low-paid workers. The brand name is often stuck on afterwards rather than built into the product.

Brand Inflation: Brand building has gone from being an organic process rooted in products to being a discipline with a massive bibliography and thousands of practitioners.

Even deep-rooted brands want to extend and leverage themselves into new product areas. The result is brand inflation: markets full of brands making similar moves using similar techniques and often just creating a lot of brand noise. This makes it almost inevitable that consumers will form superficial emotional relationships with many brands—and behave like Brand Sluts.

Rapid Innovation: Innovation is no longer the exception, it’s the norm. But in new product areas with rapid innovation, it may make no sense to stay with a brand—especially when the underlying technologies are commodities. For example, in the category of traditional film cameras, there are few brands—Nikon, Canon, Pentax, Olympus—and loyalties are strong. But in digital cameras, there are the old camera brands plus dozens of electronics brands such as Samsung and HP that just assemble commodity technology. There are more choices and fewer reasons to prefer one brand over the other.

Improved Information Access: Access to information has increased hugely, largely thanks to the Internet. Many brands have become just the cosmetic allure, the emotional packaging of the underlying product. And the wealth of information available on the Web—product reviews, expert evaluations, comparison sites, etc.—enables consumers to see beneath the packaging and decide for themselves what’s on offer for their money.

Brand owners must ask themselves: Do we really have a brand with a compelling story that’s rooted in truth? If they do and can live the story, they can expect loyal consumers. If they don’t, then their brands are essentially just marketing ploys, and they should expect their consumers to be Brands Sluts.

9. Questioning the Costs of Mobility
Until very recently no one has had any doubts that being modern means being mobile, and that the costs of mobility are far outweighed by the benefits. Mobility has been an unquestioned good thing. But now the cost-benefit equation is shifting.

The most obvious factor is the rising cost of fuel. The price of crude oil has risen over the last couple of years due to such factors as tensions in the Middle East, capacity shortages in refineries, and growing demand from fast-developing economies such as China.

In a world in which people are increasingly short of time, where time is becoming a valued currency, a couple of hours or more spent in traffic represents a real cost to individuals.

Welcome to road charging.

There’s a similar scenario with flying. Low-cost carriers have brought ticket prices down, but increased security checks, missed take-off slots, long taxiing times, and congested air lanes all add significant time costs to flying.

So it is that when consumers make their decisions about whether and how to get from A to B, they are having to factor in higher fuel costs and significant time costs. And as environmental awareness grows, they are increasingly likely to be factoring in those environmental costs that are most apparent.

There is little likelihood of large numbers of people anywhere completely giving up on the idea of personal mobility. But 2006 is certain to see individuals, companies, and authorities asking more serious questions about the costs and benefits of personal mobility in its current form.

10. Rising Global Health Fears—Thinking About the Next Pandemic
Globalization and global mobility have provided outstanding opportunities for pathogenic bugs of all sorts.

Regardless of when it takes place, The Next Pandemic is already an idea that is spreading fast and far. And that in itself is significant. A few short years ago, the phrases “the next tsunami” and “the next pandemic” would have been meaningless to most of us. Now they are all too laden with meaning for millions of people.

Whether the next pandemic actually occurs in 2006, 2007, or 2016, what’s certain is that it can no longer be regarded as a sort of media-driven Hollywood disaster movie fantasy.

What’s certain is that if the expected pandemic is inclined to spread, it will have a major impact on every level; air travel, tourism, and the international food trade will be disrupted, mass transportation and public places will be shunned, and Westerners may well have to rethink social habits such as kissing, hugging, and even shaking hands.

One way or another, the coming year is virtually certain to see a rise in global levels of anxiety about health.

bron: Marketing Online, 19-12-05