Predicting the future, part one

Verdict

This is a highly unlikely scenario – if anything the opposite is looking increasingly true. Looking to the future, we wonder whether management consultancies will become ever-better positioned to use big data to their advantage. Their focus on more specific research, with a far more business-centric approach, will benefit from the development and application of intelligent algorithms (and the likes of Deloitte, PWC, McKinsey, KPMG et al will also have the budgets to do this).

However, we strongly believe there will still be a crucial role for market and opinion researchers in interpreting and understanding the motivations and attitudes of consumers as humans; a much more optimistic future scenario for insight consultancies. This is as important in strategic insight planning as broad-scale business knowledge.

Verdict

An interesting thought. In theory, social media – and Twitter in particular – are already providing the means for instantaneous public polling. The Iranian revolution/Arab Spring and Barack Obama’s social media strategy are strong examples of the power of public opinion.

However, in terms of relevance (at least for the short- to mid-term future), we don’t believe social media can be considered a truly democratic tool. They only showcase what people want to say/be seen to be saying – rather than their inner monologues. We simply don’t have the tools to accurately know who people are on social media, meaning the samples cannot be considered representative. Plus it is relatively easy to manipulate the findings of social media for those looking to validate their own agendas.

Moreover, the politics of devolving decision-making responsibility to the public will remain hugely complex and fraught with risk, long into the future. Some major issues:

• We question whether any government would make national decisions based solely on public opinion – the risk alone could paralyse decision-making apparatus.
• It relies on public participation, which would need to be vastly improved before this becomes a serious proposition.
• It would be hugely difficult – and in many cases, impossible – to provide everyone with the right amount of accessible information upon which to base their opinions without misinterpretation. Much public policy is complex – and when it comes to extremely controversial decisions such as, say, reintroducing capital punishment, handing the decision-making over to popular vote could be difficult, if not disastrous.
• On the plus side, local government could benefit. We know that, for example, councils in the UK are not legally obliged to fix potholes in the road unless they are alerted to them – so cyclists and drivers take photos and post them socially, making councils liable to mend them. This level of small-scale democracy benefits hugely from participation from the people affected most.

Verdict

While this debate remains the Holy Grail for advertisers, we question whether it will ever be a feasible option. There are several things to take into consideration:

• How to resolve multi/second-screening issues? How do you pick out what people are actively focusing on (as opposed to being passively exposed to) in an increasingly digital world? Tools to monitor this will be improved but are extremely complex and also depend on consumers opting-in to behaviour and attitude tracking technology.
• Where does privacy fit into this? Stories about smart TVs that can (secretly) monitor consumer behaviour and transmit back to servers for big data and targeting purposes will do nothing for public confidence/uptake.
• Who will manage and implement the process? We posit that Google may take a leading role in future developments – they already have the multi-media/omnichannel capabilities, which means multiple media can be monitored via one source; their developments in AI and wearable technology allow researchers to bridge the gap between stated intention and actual behaviour; they are actively patenting technologies like “pay-per-gaze”, which makes eye-tracking affordable and far more feasible for personalised ad targeting. But this won’t be anything we see in the short term, especially as they rely on consumer input/agreement.

Verdict

This already exists in the form of smartphones – the newest iPhone 5S, for example, incorporates completely invisible automatic data collection into the device. Indeed, smartphones tick multiple boxes as they increasingly become part of our identities, feeding in multiple sources of data without the need for consumer interaction. And as the environment around us becomes ever smarter and connected, there will be no need for implants – we will seamlessly interact with the world around us.

However, the role of big data – and the subsequent consumer backlash against invasions of privacy – could rear its head and could well be the counterfoil to any real advances for the foreseeable future. What will brands use this data for and how can constant user connectivity be turned into a benefit for consumers? What of the growth of anonymous services like duckduckgo.com, which promise not to track consumers?