The 5 Trends Marketers Can't Afford to Ignore in 2017

2016 was a wild ride. Between the explosion of fake news, deepening social divides, growing anxiety about the future and a rising wave of activism, brands aren’t sure how to prepare for 2017. Here are the five trends marketers can’t afford to ignore.

1. IRL / Micro-Clanning

Wary of being phished, cat-fished or otherwise hoodwinked online, people will meet to connect and share in-person. Intimacy will fight out digital isolation. It’s an opportunity for marketers to create better experiences for consumers, In Real Life. 

- Meetup.com has 39 million sign-ups and growing

Tea with Strangers – Have a real two-hour conversation about anything with a person you are matched with

Tech enables friendships – Hey Vina connects fab women for friendship, Hello Mamas connects like-minded new moms who live nearby

2. AI will probably take our jobs.

But there’s an upside to more free time. Brands can use AI to make people's lives more enjoyable when they're working less.

- Not to worry, a guaranteed minimum income will come to America soon enough, when salaries are a thing of the past.

- As AI continues to automate industries and create time saving products across all facets of consumers’ lives, brands will help us fill our expanses of free time through the creation of pleasure machines, the ultimate form of escapism.

3. Data (Gold)Mining

The next generation of consumers, Gen Z, is privacy obsessed. Brands must get ready to pay for their precious data.

- Weaned on social media, Gen Z’s digital selves are inextricably bound to their physical selves. Don’t expect them to share data except when they want to – or when they are paid for it.

- Gen Z will be the first generation to recognise and monetise their online lives, expecting (and receiving) payment for views, likes, and sharing of any iota of personal info.

4. EMOnomics

Emotion is the new currency – from joy to misery. As our culture becomes more divisive, we want our moods expressed and recognised. Brands can cash in if they appeal to consumers' emotional selves.

- Rage Room in Dallas and elsewhere – $25 for 5 minutes of smashing stuff

- Shocking violence, sex and betrayal on hot shows from ‘Westworld’ to ‘Real Housewives’; tearjerker ‘This is Life’ is a hot new show on NBC

- 2016 top-grossing movie, ‘Captain America: Civil War’, shows divisiveness among superheroes

- Kanye’s rants and then his break with reality show how manic and fragile we all are

5. Small-ing

Big is no longer trustworthy. Consumers are shrinking their networks. Brands need to make themselves seem smaller to earn consumers' trust.

- McDonald’s, Coke – those icons are toppling. Now everyone wants small, local, handmade, artisanal

- Millennial Maker Culture – the love for the unique and hand-crafted dovetails with right-wing conservatism a la ‘Let’s Make America Great Again’; nostalgia for the ‘good old days’

- Artisanal categories account for 20% of all Kickstarter campaigns and have raised over $100 million in funding

- Etsy – where global artisans sell their goods – started with $175,000 sales in 2006 and in 2015 reached $2.4 billion

- Small-batch / local / farm-to-table food and dining is one of the strongest trends in food industry

Faith Popcorn is CEO and Founder of Faith Popcorn’s BrainReserve. She is a futurist and author, who works with Fortune 500 companies including P&G, IBM, Unilever, J&J, Amex and Coke. She has predicted some of the past decade’s biggest trends.