Fortune-telling favours the brave. Our predictions for the year ahead.
January, 2023
Our CEO, Richard Sunderland, gives 2023 ten of the best: ideas we expect to be bothering businesses and boardrooms in the coming year. Though, as futurist Faith Popcorn famously once said, you can trust a crystal ball about as far as you can throw it.
“No organization can afford to treat ESG as anything other than intrinsic to their commercial and cultural success.”
1. ESG will be fundamental, not departmental.
No organization can afford to treat ESG as anything other than intrinsic to their commercial and cultural success. Being good and responsible as a business needs to be baked in and central to corporate strategy. Positive social impact will become an increasingly significant KPI. Stakeholders, from the inside out, will demand it.
2. Clarity begins at home.
Plainly and simply, this is about clear communication. The Oxford English Dictionary contains 600,000+ words. And counting. Choosing the handful of words that best express what you do – and why anyone should care – will be more important than ever. Our favourite to make the cut in 2022? ‘Goblin mode.’
“Fuelled by information overload and our diminishing attention spans, brands will look to gameify what they do to capture customers and keep them engaged.”
3. Gameify to satisfy.
Fuelled by information overload and our diminishing attention spans, brands will look to gameify what they do to capture customers and keep them engaged. We expect to see traditionally low-interest categories such as insurance and pensions increasingly add an element of play to their offer. Game on.
4. NFTs will become tokens of affection.
The sensationalism will continue to subside and NFTs, as secure tokens of trust, will become the standard currency for brands to say thank you to – and fundraise from – their fans. It’s exciting to anticipate some of the clever things that non-profits, museums and rights-owners will be able to do in this space – once they overcome the jargon.
“We expect to see ‘Employee Value Proposition’ becoming a more significant part of the vernacular of hiring – and every organization that wants to get the best people to use their EVP to put some purpose in their pitch.”
5. EVP is VIP.
Recession or not, talent will always prevail. And that means organizations being clear on why they do what they do to attract and keep the best brains on their side. We expect to see ‘Employee Value Proposition’ becoming a more significant part of the vernacular of hiring – and every organization that wants to get the best people to use their EVP to put some purpose in their pitch.
6. It’s not where you are, it’s who you are.
Smart companies, embracing the talent chase, will see ‘remotion’ as a huge benefit. Being able to access the best people for the job, regardless of their ability to commute to a physical location. Once so far, technology now makes us all – universally – so near.
7. Intellectual Property is not just an asset class. It’s a class asset.
The number of trademarks filed each year – with double-digit growth in many markets globally – encourages us to believe that IP is experiencing a landgrab akin to URLs in the early days of the Internet. And, of course, your intangible assets can have a tangible impact on your balance sheet as competition for originality continues to heat up.
8. Answering the question: what’s in it for me?
We’ve long advocated the importance of brands talking about benefits, not just features. Tough times ahead will see more businesses being clear about the bargain they’re offering their customers – and that goes way beyond price. It’s about having empathy with our collective situation, giving back, and being generous.
“As more organizations look to optimize their engagement strategies, being clever in how information is sliced and diced will inevitably rise up the agenda.”
9. Make your data work for you.
Getting granular with the information you hold about your customer is not just the preserve of giants like Amazon. As more organizations look to optimize their engagement strategies, being clever in how information is sliced and diced will inevitably rise up the agenda. CRM has been with us for many years, but the commercial realities of 2023 combined with the behavioural capabilities of AI, will see more people waking up to the value of a smart data strategy.
10. Less talking, more walking.
Many have laid claim to the idea that the best way to predict the future is to create it. And tech continues to remove many of the barriers to creating new ideas and innovation, however long-lasting they might be. This year, we’re gearing up for more ideas that embrace the BETA stage and get out there to challenge convention, test ideas and see what happens.