2016 Preview: most likely to succeed

Looking first at the specific mentions, companies related to the sharing economy were popular choices:

“Uber has set themselves up as the kings of the ‘sharing economy’ in the last couple of years, with the disruption of a staid market for taxis and private hire cars. I expect more competitors (e.g. Kabbee) and the like to attempt to eat the ‘taxi lunch’ in the coming year. So what else can we expect from Uber? If the US experience shows us anything, we should expect to see UberEATS, UberRUSH and UberHEALTH coming to Europe – covering food delivery, business to business courier services and even flu jab delivery to businesses in big cities.” Andrew Wiseman, MD, ICM Limited.

“Any based on the sharing economy – like Airbnb or Uber – since they’re rooted in true insight.” Jane Rudling, MD, Marketing Sciences Unlimited.

“The Guardian and Airbnb – just to spite me.” Peter Totman, head of qualitative, Jigsaw.

Mentions also went to Handmade at Amazon and TSB, as well as takeaway retailers:

“Handmade at Amazon: a huge company pandering to our lust for everything handmade, authentic, creative and unique delivered quicker than the click of a needle.” Joe Staton, strategic innovation director, GfK.

“Following their recent takeover by Banco Sabadell and continuing evolution and competitiveness of their offering, we expect TSB to have a very strong 2016.” Virginia Monk, MD, Network Research.

“This would most likely be a brand like JustEat or GrubHub. One thing is for sure though, whoever succeeds will predominantly be new brands operating broadly throughout the digital space and offering real value, which is likely to either save time or cost, provide a superior offering or all three!” Richard Wareing, CEO and co-founder, ResearchExchange.com

Others had more general advice for brands and organisations:

“Those who fit their offering to the customer instead of the other way around. Traditional business are necessarily constrained in directly applying such an approach, but competitive advantage can be attained by those that learn how to build services from mobile-first businesses – a constant process of testing, learning, tweaking.” Zakaria Haeri, research development lead, Dunnhumby.

“Companies that truly embrace this new behavioural understanding both strategically and executionally. This understanding will help today’s marketers to consistently do what great marketers in the past have managed to do intuitively and with all actions clearly underpinned by cutting-edge behavioural science. These companies will also realise that in the new marketing reality of cognitively strained, ‘System-1’ driven consumers that salience and the need for constant recruitment of all consumers is the new reality.” Crawford Hollingworth, global founder, The Behavioural Architects.

“Consultative agencies working in close partnership with clients to solve their business challenges and problems. In particular those offering an agile integrated approach to the development of quant and qual insight, with demonstrable ROI (of course easier said than done!).” Dan Stracey, chief inspiration officer, Dub.

“Anyone that looks a feels and acts like they have three things:- 1. A genuine care for every customer as an individual. 2. A genuine concern for the world we live in. 3. A new and refreshing approach.” Nigel Cover, VP, business services, Maritz CX.

check back on january 4 for a preview of 2016’s biggest buzzwords