SINGAPORE, SEPTEMBER 21, 2011; Global media and communications agency PHD predicts that new technologies will become prevalent over the next five years and their impact on society and the marketing and communications industry will be beyond the ordinary. This according to a new book titled 2016: Beyond the Horizon
“In 2016 Beyond the Horizon, PHD takes us through a fascinating and detailed look back at how technology has brought us closer together even as geography has pushed us farther apart. PHD details how a social
approach to technology will drastically alter institutions from government to gaming, from media to marketing. The future PHD outlines is a place where technology enables us to connect with our friends and harness their collective wisdom to make better decisions. It is a future that is connected, networked and, while uncertain, certainly bette,” says David Fischer, Vice President of Advertising and Global Operations, Facebook
2016 explores the likely developments within areas such as connected TVs, markerless augmented reality, enhanced voice-recognition, Natural User Interface (NUI) and NFC (Near Field Communication) and how, coupled with the acceleration of social media usage, they are changing the actual physics of marketing.
The book considers that with one in every two people in the developed world connected to a social network, there are now 1.2 Bindependent media owners all linking to each other. They are
influential, given that peer recommendations are more trusted than any form of advertising, and since social networks don’t stop at their own boundaries but instead affect the entire web, they leave a
print on ‘social graphs’. This is leading to a complete change in how society functions and all of this activity is increasingly mobile.
2016 looks at how technology will affect the areas of infrastructure, interface and internet as well as the implication on society in 2016. Key findings state that the most defining difference from 2011 will be people looking through their devices and holding them in-front of their vision to augment their surroundings. An increasing amount of purchases will also be made after a device has been held over the
product to see a summary of user reviews and even brand sentiment.
Youth audiences will also amuse the older generations by holding phones in front of their friends’ faces to gain access to their social graph. A large percentage of youths will abandon any concerns of data-privacy, as the desire to be witnessed will be overwhelming. They will be further incentivised by the additional benefits that they receive such as micro-payments, tailored content, pay-wall access, free wi-fi and the kudos of belonging to well-branded groups.
Finally, based on the observations of technology’s impact, PHD has predicted how this will manifest itself in media agencies in the future. One key assessment is that by 2016, the advertising industry will largely be considered as much a technology industry as it is considered a creative industry. The communications agency of 2016 will be increasingly considered to be a digital-based agency first and foremost and in many of the developed
Industry thought leaders also give their views in the book, with their opinions brought to life in film via
mobile* using Zappar’s augmented reality technology. Among those included are BBH’s Sir John Hegarty, Diageo’s chief marketing officer Andy Fennell and Babs Rangaiah, VP Global Media Innovation, Unilever.
