Business Trends of 2017

Today we will be breaking down the following four Key Business Trends of 2017:

• Smart Machines
• Personalization
• Prosumer Tourism
• Consumer Sharing

 

SMART MACHINES

Smart machines are devices that can teach themselves how to do things. This functionality is sometimes called “machine learning,” and is a subset of artificial intelligence.

Example: Interactive Billboard

To promote its haircare products in a mind-blowing way, Swedish company Apotek enlisted the help of ad agency Akestam Holst and production company Stopp to create an interactive digital billboardin the Stockholm subway. The billboard was rigged with sensors that detected when a train was coming and as the wind blew the passengers standing on the platform, it also blew the hair of the woman in the ad poster, with her locks sweeping around in front of her face. Here is a link to a video of this particular billboard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=tdQgsmYKxLM

 

PERSONALIZATION 

Personalization is a technique that is used to somehow personalize a specific product or campaign to target the customers directly. Making them feel a special connection to the said product.

Example: Share a Coke Campaign

The company’s “Share a Coke” 2015 summer campaign was one of the best-performing marketing campaigns in Coca-Cola’s history. This marketing strategy traded out the company’s iconic logo on 20-ounce bottles for 250 of the country’s most popular names. Essentially, consumers had the chance to have a generic name, such as “David,” printed on Coca-Cola bottles and were encouraged to share those bottles with friends and family.

PROSUMER TOURISM

Influencers infiltrate the travel and tourism space. Implications – Social media influencers are a recognized source of expert information in various industries, with the travel and tourism space as the next frontier. Specifically targeted to younger Millennials — who statistically use travel advisors more than any other adult-aged group — these Prosumers serve as experts whose credibility is boosted by authenticity.

 

Example: Social Media Travel Guides

The Sherpa mobile app utilizes the popularity of social media platform Instagram by transforming the photos people take of different locations into a curated travel guide. The guides are depicted through a visual medium, showcasing the locations from the perspective of a locale or tourist.

 

CONSUMER SHARING

Technology has reduced transaction costs, making sharing assets cheaper and easier than ever and therefore possible on a much larger scale. The big change is the availability of more data about people and things. This allows physical assets to be consumed as services. Before the internet, renting a product from someone else was possible, but was usually more trouble than it was worth.

 

Example: Airbnb

Gives consumers the opportunity to choose their rooms and pay for everything online. Their beds were provided by private individuals, rather than a hotel chain. Hosts and guests were matched up by Airbnb, a firm based in San Francisco. Since its launch in 2008 more than 4m people have used it—2.5m of them in 2012 alone. It is the most prominent example of a huge new “sharing economy”, in which people rent beds, cars, boats and other assets directly from each other, co-ordinated via the internet.