Resolutions and predictions

Welcome to 2011 … and as ever a new year brings out the predictions and resolutions in us all. 

As well as over-eating, playing lots of Christmas games and plenty of R&R, I have spent some of the holidays  researching  media fragmentation and its impact on marketers.  The prescient abilities of some commentators amazes me.  Lindgren et al in their 2002 book, Beyond Mobile, were already predicting that the mobile marketplace “will be filled with services that are time and position critical”¹.  Having successfully googled a really lovely pub (the Crown at Tolldown)  as an alternative to motorway services,  and been wowed by the potential of web 3.0, I’m resolving to go fully web mobile this year.

Or take Martyn Davis:  the third edition of his book, The Effective Use of Advertising Media² , was published in the 1988 heyday of VCR ownership. He predicted that new media and audience fragmentation would necessitate a re-think of the marketing concept, based around segmentation and narrowcasting.  A whole decade later, with less crystal-ball gazing, Tony Yeshin³ was still writing about the impact on advertisers of people fast-forwarding their video tapes.   

I predict a greater chance of success for the News International takeover of BskyB, after the debacle of Vince Cable proclaiming that he was out to get Rupert Murdoch. But beyond that, who knows what 2011 will bring?

¹ Lindgren, M., Jedbratt,  J. and Svensson. E.,  2002. Beyond Mobile. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

²  Davis, M., 1988. The Effective Use of Advertising Media. 3^rd ed. London: Century Hutchinson.

³  Yeshin, T. 1998. Integrated Marketing Communications: the holistic approach. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.  p183.