Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Good riddance, 2016. For many of us, it was 12 long months full of bad news, fake news and surreal news, the most controversial election anyone can remember, plus too many other highlights and lowlights to mention.

This very December, we've seen the many shades of orange upstaged by Pantone's Greenery, and we all know the color of the year is not a nod to hope about the climate or to anyone's envy of the Western world.

Luckily, I can find solace in an area where my company definitely isn't green: spotting trends for the year ahead. Here at Havas PR, we devote the end of each year to spotting trends on the rise, and it's always interesting to look both ahead and back at the predictions that have proven out recently—more stringent legislation around brain damage suffered by football players (forecast in 2010); the universal brain-health movement (2009); and "Local is the new global" (2007).

Here are a few of the trends we believe will directly impact marketers and advertisers in 2017 taken from our more in-depth report, "Blowback to the Future: The Trends That Will Shape 2017":...

Trailing mobile among the most influential consumer trends are three others commonly discussed: the emergence of Millennials (see just how many there arehere); advanced marketing analytics; and demand for personalization.

While not perceived to have quite the same impact as Millennials, the aging population also figures among the top 10 consumer trends, per respondents to the survey. Emerging technologies such as virtual reality, artificial intelligence and wearables lie outside of the top 10 consumer trends, outweighed by other shifts including a focus on shopping experience and direct-to-consumer models.

To respond to these trends, marketers are taking a variety of actions, ranging from forming strategic partnerships (54%) to increasing technological capacity (51%) and engaging in dialogue with consumers (48%). That consumer dialogue is a critical focus for enterprise social business initiatives, and is also being increasingly used by CMOs to shape innovation....