8 trends to capitalize on in 2008

‘luxury will be whatever you want it to be'. After all, what constitutes luxury is closely related to what constitutes scarcity.

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but also more try-out-prone, super-wired urban consumers are snapping up more ‘daring’ goods, services, experiences, campaigns and conversations.

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Time to study and learn from those brands that you think are already mirroring today's more diverse, chaotic, networked society, and then outdo them ;-)

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For the first time, there’s a global understanding,

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MAY 2009 | By now, virtually everyone has chimed in on how innovation is the only way out of the recession. So instead of adding more theory, let’s have a look at actual B2C innovations from recession-defying entrepreneurs and brands around the world.

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can research, compare and review

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making opinions, quality standards and prices even more transparent.

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latest and greatest in the transparency arena

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ow reviews are set for even more spectacular growth

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how price comparison is getting much more sophisticated,

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how the inner-workings of companies will be exposed in pragmatic new ways

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countertrend, OPENLY OPAQUE

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NOWISM | “Consumers’ ingrained* lust for instant gratification is being satisfied by a host of novel, important (offline and online) real-time products, services and experiences. Consumers are also feverishly contributing to the real-time content avalanche that’s building as we speak. As a result, expect your brand and company to have no choice but to finally mirror and join the ‘now’, in all its splendid chaos, realness and excitement.”

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As indicated in the definition above, the rise of FREE LOVE* can be attributed to:

An all-out war for consumers' attention (make that saturated consumers), including various handout and sampling techniques.
The online world, with its amazing capacity to create, copy and distribute anything that's digital, with costs that are close to zero, forcing producers to come up with new business models/services, which are often purely ad-driven.
The ever-decreasing cost of physical production makes it easier to offer more (nearly) free goods in the offline world too. In fact, many goods have actually become insanely cheap. Just one example: the price of televisions has fallen, on average, by 9 percent each year since 1998, according to U.S. Dept. of Labor data.
The avalanche of free content created by attention-hungry members of GENERATION C.
C2C marketplaces enabling consumers to swap instead of spend, making transactions cash-neutral.
An emerging recycling culture.
And all of the above fueling consumers' expectations to get online and offline stuff for free.

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The fortress of one-way communications from a non-trusted source (aka advertising) is crumbling!

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"Recommendations by personal acquaintances and opinions posted by consumers online are the most trusted forms of advertising globally.

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0% of online consumers worldwide trust recommendations from people they know,

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70% trust consumer opinions posted online."

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There are many more research studies, findings, dissertations, and so on that confirm the same fact: reviewing is the new advertising. This shouldn’t come as a surprise: just as with other trends, what’s unfolding now is a ‘forever need’ among consumers, one that's now being satisfied in a superior and previously unattainable fashion. In this case, the need is for trusted advice and recommendations—for feeling in control, for knowing the facts, for avoiding mistakes and disappointments—in order to make that perfect purchase. Which has become even more pressing as choice-overload continues: never before was there so much to choose from, in mature consumer societies, and thus such a need for reviews.

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So let's look at five manifestations of FREE LOVE: 'Any excuse to advertise', 'Courting saturated consumers', 'C2C', 'Swapping, not spending', and 'Less is more', which all incorporate one or more of the above drivers.

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need is for trusted advice and recommendations

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need for reviews

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Twitter.

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consumers’ decision making processes,

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have truly shifted to a new, powerful peer-to-peer arena

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latest developments in the

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world of reviews:

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“Thanks to our connection machine, they [young people] will stay linked, likely for the rest of their lives. With their blogs, MySpace pages, Flickr photos, YouTube videos, Seesmic conversations, Twitter feeds, and all the means for sharing their lives yet to be invented, they will leave lifelong Google tracks that will make it easier to find them.

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1.6 billion consumers are now online

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majority of them have been online for years.

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avid online networkers,

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best of the best’ hunters

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skilled bargain seekers

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opinionated reviewers and advisors.

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our billion mobile phone subscriptions worldwide

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two-thirds of which are in developing countries.

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next billion online users are on the horizon.

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if only a third of those phones get online access

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those that are born to the web

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reviewing will be a way of life

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Google Rich Snippets and Netflix: aggregation and syndication galore.

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Bazaarvoice’s ShoutIT app enables reviewers to have their reviews

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appear on

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Facebook, Digg or Delicious

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Netflix has hooked up with Facebook to allow users' reviews to be shared on their profile pages.

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Members that post a review on Epinions are rewarded with so called Eroyalties credits,

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FOREVER PRESENCE, with its effortless getting and staying in touch, is already facilitating a deafening (well, metaphorically speaking) conversation, that will continue between friends, family, strangers, foes, and yes, brands, in every possible combination until the end of times.

And while we have no intention of re-hashing the benefits of co-creation, we just want to point out that, ten years after the cluetrain manifesto (‘markets are conversations’) was published, it took a real-time publishing / conversation platform like Twitter to entice (big) brands to finally publicly interact with their customers.

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can redeem their Eroyalties credits in US dollars.

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mass public conversation that is Twitter was just the straw that broke the camel's back.

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Sure, Twitter is ‘just’ the next evolution in personal communications, and something newer will steal hearts in the future (Google Wave, anyone?

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A Datamonitor consumer survey in April/May 2009 established that less than half of consumers across 17 countries are satisfied with their work-life balance. Various commitments and demands from work and personal/family life have contributed to the feeling of time-deprivation. People are looking for speed and convenience and anything that allows them to feel more in control of time. (Source: Datamonitor, August 2009.)

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Apple's new iPhone 3G S which includes video functionality, geo tagging, and direct upload facilities for YouTube and Mobile, will be yet another push for video-reviews to take off.

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The Checkout" report found that 28 percent of June 2009 shoppers describe themselves as "preferring to spend more if it saves them time." This was up from 23 percent in May. Additionally, the number of customers (28 percent) who responded that "saving money by shopping around" was their top preference fell from 33 percent the month prior. (Source: M/A/R/C Research and Integer, August 2009.)

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Chief Bloggers, Directors of Digital Care, Customer Relationships Experts, Social Media Strategists, Heads of Social Media, and yes, ‘Corporate Twitterers’ to personally (wo)man their Twitter conversations.

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Expect every industry, every sector, every product to eventually succumb to reviews, Tripadvisor style.

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Health | Vimo, a comparison-shopping site for health care, offers rate-my-doctor and rate-my-dentist functionalities. A similar review service is offered by ZocDoc.

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Beauty | On Makeupalley.com members give reviews on everything beauty-related, from makeup and skincare to hair dryers and perfume. The site includes detailed information about each user’s skin tone, hair color, skin type and eye color at the top of the review so that readers can gauge how well the advice will fit their own needs.

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Law & education | Avvo profiles legal professionals, including their experience, areas of practice, and ratings from clients. Ratemyteachers does the same for teachers. Also check out Yollege.

Airports | Sleeping In Airports has over 6,300 reviews of how airports around the world rate for sleeping in public areas.

Tech | Fixya is a popular post-sale tech support site, where 15 million members help each other with product support questions on 1 million products. It has now added product recommendations to its website.

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Recruitment | Glassdoor aims to provide an insider's look at what it's really like to work at a company, both financially and otherwise. The site gathers real-time reviews, ratings and salary details about specific jobs in 28,000+ companies. Also check out Australian LiveSalary.

Restaurants | Dishola eschews general restaurant reviews in favor of dish-specific (!) advice and information. Members can read smart reviews by Dishola editors, industry professionals and other members, as well as post reviews and photos of their own favorite dishes.

Printing | Printer.com provides information on a wide range of printers and cartridges; the site currently features more than 4,500 printers and over 1,950 cartridges.

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a fun entrepreneurial opportunity is to start a review portal (reviewcircus.com?) that lets consumers quickly find the right niche review site for their query. Just a page listing the various B2C categories, and links to related niche review sites. Should take you less than a week to get live, and could be a great advertising cash cow ;-)

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Enough already!” is what you’ll increasingly hear from consumers around the world when faced with yet another corporate ‘eco’ vision or must-buy green product. In fact, serious ECO-FATIGUE is upon us, as independent and experienced consumers are fed up with being told what to do, or, more specifically, told what not to do. Treated like unruly infants by Al Gore and his ilk, the ECO-FATIGUED increasingly rebel against the green movement’s obsession with ‘no’.

In hindsight, ECO-FATIGUE was a trend waiting to happen: after all, eco clashes with two of the most profound and enduring mega consumer trends of all time: a lust for independence, and a craving for the real thing (also known as, dare we say it, ‘authenticity’). In short: being told to make do with half-baked versions—or even to entirely forgo one’s pleasures and indulgences—is just, well, not cool.

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connectivity will lead to real-time reviewing of products and services:

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more timely and accurate information.

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In fact, Twitter has already established itself as the real-time snapshot of what people are thinking/feeling/experiencing and yes, reviewing, around the world.

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Student textbooks • U.S.-based Freeload Press provides free college textbooks in electronic form with advertisements inserted at chapter breaks. Inexpensive print-on-demand versions with no ads can be ordered for about USD 30. 'Customers' include students at four-year and two-year colleges throughout the U.S. and Canada. Freeload publishes primarily business and finance books. Students who register and complete a survey on Freeload's website can download a free PDF version of their textbook. Advertisers include Discover Card, PricewaterhouseCoopers and the College Loan Corporation.

In Europe, Danish Ventus Publishing runs a similar concept in 5 countries: (Denmark, Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium). Ventus offers titles in the fields of economics, science and engineering, featuring ads from companies such as T-Mobile, British Airways and Deutsche Bank every four pages.

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another way reviews can be made more attractive and useful, and thus more powerful: combine them with MAPMANIA.

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The KaBOOM! Playspace Finder is a user-generated online directory that lets anyone enter, search for and rate play spaces. Users can add photos and comments for each play space, as well as detailed descriptions including available playground equipment or amenities. Some 16,000 play areas across the USA and Canada are now listed on the Google Maps-based site.

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Not participating yet? Don’t even think about just dipping your toes in: dive into (and learn from, if not copy) what other brands are already doing on Twitter. Look, this isn't Second Life: starting the conversation on Twitter is easy (five minutes and you're up and running) and it won’t cost you the world.

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TWINSUMERS: consumers whose lifestyles mirror yours, who think, live, act, consume alike, and whose reviews therefore have real relevance.

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The way we see it, if you’re willing to attach your identity to your commentary, you’re willing to stand behind what you say. No anonymous mudslinging; no PR propaganda."

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Finance • Free software may be nothing new, but sophisticated personal finance/money management tools had until now eluded the FREE LOVE dance. Enter Mint, which has relationships with more than 3,500 banks, credit unions and credit card providers, and each night securely downloads transaction data to give users a unified view of all account activity. Transactions are categorized and organized to show users how much they spend on gas, groceries, parking, rent, restaurants, DVD rentals, etc., while an alert system proactively notifies them about unusual activity, low balances, unwanted fees and charges, and upcoming bills. Mint's revenue model is based on lead generation. The system keeps tabs on the latest offers from hundreds of providers and recommends ways users can save money on interest rates and other expenses. Mint is currently available only to U.S. consumers, of whom more than 100,000 have already signed up. The company claims it is now organizing USD 6 billion in user transactions, and has identified nearly USD 90 million in savings opportunities.

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Also check out Wesabe, which is part financial software, part community. With Wesabe, users can see all their bank accounts and credit cards in one place, categorize their transactions however they want, see spending and earning summaries, discuss things with other interested users, and receive tips for saving money based on their spending. Membership is free.

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As Jeff Jarvis (yes, him again) first noted ages ago (i.e. April 2007):

Interviews and articles need never end. And never start. A story can begin with a reader’s blog post: ‘I wish I knew…’ Or it can begin with a reporter’s blog post: ‘I’m looking at doing a story about ____. What do you know? What do you want to know? What should I ask? Whom should I ask?’ Who says the reporters should ask all the questions? Shouldn’t the readers? Then the interviews can appear online to be challenged, amended, and corrected by writers, readers, and subjects alike. Then the reporter writes a story.

But who says the story should be over then — done, fishwrap — just because the reporter’s finished writing it? The story is online and it continues to live and grow as people add their knowledge and perspectives and corrections . So the article isn’t a product. It is a process. It’s alive.”

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“I want a page, a site, a thing that is created, curated, edited, and discussed. It’s a blog that treats a topic as an ongoing and cumulative process of learning, digging, correcting, asking, answering. It’s also a wiki that keeps a snapshot of the latest knowledge and background. It’s an aggregator that provides annotated links to experts, coverage, opinion, perspective, source material. It’s a discussion that doesn’t just blather but that tries to accomplish something. It’s collaborative and distributed and open but organized.”

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If giving is the new taking, then hundreds of thousands consumers/individuals are on the right path. Never before have we witnessed such an explosion of free content, courtesy of individuals who—for free, nada, zilch—are happy to share their thinking, their novels, their photos, their movies, their music, their knowledge and expertise, their advice, their crafts and more.

Call it GENERATION C, the HOBBY ECONOMY, the GIFT ECONOMY or CROWD MINING, as long as you don't forget that besides undeniable passion, this user-generated FREE LOVE provides participants with visibility, with respect, with status. Even if they participate anonymously (Wikipedia is a good example), it gives them bragging rights among other GENERATION C members.

Now, we’ve written and spoken about participation vs consumption so often that we won’t repeat the whole spiel, but two more thoughts:

Firstly, nothing indicates that user-generated content, both of the paid and the free kind, and in all its variety, is not here to stay.

Secondly, if many consumers are now producers too, and if they mostly produce for free, will they not expect a similar sharing and loving attitude from corporations? So as a brand, not only may you find yourself competing directly with individuals doing what you do for free, but you will also be confronted with growing expectations for your brand to be giving rather than just taking.

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Now, FREE LOVE is not about everything being free in the (near) future. After all, not everything commercial can be ad-sponsored (if only because those ads in the end have to sell something else), not everything will be copyable, and not everything that's non-commercial can replace the for-profit business world. In fact, scarcity can and will forever be redefined, creating an endless stream of new products and services that many consumers will be happy to pay for. For some instant inspiration on what may in fact be better than free, (re)read Kevin Kelly's excellent 8 Uncopyable Values.

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