The first 6

Macro Trends of the 21st Century

By Jonathan MacDonald
Co-Founder of this fluid world and Managing Director of JMA

October 2009

The first 6 Macro Trends of the 21st Century – Jonathan MacDonald

About this paper

I am currently asked to speak about the major changes

happening in business and for the sake of clarity I have
labeled these as Macro Trends of the 21 st Century. This
paper is an introduction of the first 6 and is also available in
chapters at: http://www.jonathanmacdonald.com/?p=3986

These trends are not exclusive to this Century alone and

many, if not all, have appeared before the year 2000.
However, I believe these are critical to the moment and are
the origin of many challenges that businesses face in the
modern world of communication.

The first 6 Macro Trends of the 21st Century – Jonathan MacDonald

Macro Trend 1: Corporate technology in the hands of Citizens

The commoditisation of technology has enabled many of us

to access, use and develop upon tools and resources that
once were reserved only for large organisations - or those
with deep pockets.

Throughout history we have seen this happen with almost

everything constructed, from motor cars to television sets.

Communication technology as a commodity has propagated

an ultra-connected society who are now, more than ever,
empowered to interact and be heard.

One of the main outcomes is that normal, everyday folk, can

communicate and build valuable products and services, often
with little or no cost, that can compete directly with
companies who invest millions in developing offerings and
spreading the word.

The agility of common people, trumps the oil tanker speed of

many blue-chips who were once safe in the knowledge their
ability was sacred.

The last bastion of defense used to be that common people

wouldn't be able to market and distribute things, even if
they could develop them.

Now we live in a world where spreading word is possible via

blogs, social networking sites and RSS feeds -all at zero cost.

If new services are virtual, production prices seen in the old

physical world, cease to exist.

But then, with this re-definition we have new challenges.

Nobody will interact with things they don't value, and nobody
will advocate things they don't trust.

Creating trust and value is far different than raising money

to spend on marketing. The skill sets required are rarely
seen in standard business.

However, in the lives of humans, these techniques are

common-place. From understanding we begin to highlight
areas of resonance. These build connections that can
develop into value exchanges of integrity. This, in turn,
nurtures trust. Trust breeds loyalty and loyalty is
unbeatable.

Such methodology is the new framework for creation, either

The first 6 Macro Trends of the 21st Century – Jonathan MacDonald

fully or partly developed by every single one of us.

Thus, I attest that corporate technology in the hands of

citizens means more than cheaper printing equipment. It
signals a redefinition of products, services, marketing and
advertising communication.

The first 6 Macro Trends of the 21st Century – Jonathan MacDonald

Macro Trend 2: Physical is increasingly Virtual

Now we have the tools to express, purchase and discover

things without physical entities being necessary, we
increasingly do so.

It's not unusual for condolence, congratulation or

celebration to happen via virtual transmission (SMS, IM,
tweet, etc), yet having the same sentiment as writing a card
or a letter and posting it through a letterbox.

It's not unusual for players of games to spend money on

virtual goods. Mobwars on Facebook makes millions of dollars
in selling products but no physical stock changes hands.

When Second Life started, I paid real money (converted to

Linden Dollars, the Second Life currency) to buy masses of
virtual land. I then divided it up and sold it for more Linden
Dollars, then quickly withdrew in real money. I made a
significant profit, very fast, but nothing physical was bought
or sold and I never left my seat.

Conference organisers are looking more into tele-presence

solutions to hold virtual events. Hewlett Packard held their
own exhibition and 200,000 attended but nobody physically
went anywhere. No plane tickets were bought and the
technology used can today be rented in London for £300/hr.

The manufacture of physical products that people are

increasingly happy to buy virtual replacements of, suffer an
extreme risk of being marginalised.

Hopes that people "will always buy papers, books and cards"
are fundamentally flawed as are hopes that sending a "good
old fashioned letter will always be the best way of showing
you care" or that "buying a CD is always going to win over an
MP3".

A while ago a 16yr old said to me that his mate was "so old
fashioned he still downloads music".

Think about it.

In actuality, the dominance of virtual has a life-changing

effect on the postal system, logistic companies, the gift
market, the publishing industry and the entertainment
industry to name a few.

But this is just the start.

The first 6 Macro Trends of the 21st Century – Jonathan MacDonald

Technological advances in augmented and virtual reality will
fundamentally redefine what our future generations
perceive as 'real'.

Just as personal recommendation has out-gunned the power

of advertiser communication, the market of virtual, instant,
free, customisable and extensible platforms, products and
services will diminish the physical world and it's already
tumbling profits.

Thus, I attest that increasingly virtual experience is more

than the promise of holographic pornography. It signals a
redefinition of all trade.

Globally.

Now.

The first 6 Macro Trends of the 21st Century – Jonathan MacDonald

Macro Trend 3: It’s about Distribution not Destination

Once upon a time the idea was to build something and people
would come.

Better still, building something that people were forced to

come to, ensured the idea was realised.

The original AOL model essentially charged people for using

the internet, then mobile portals offered limited services
and stung you for anything you chose to do outside of the
walled garden.

Running these ideas past the younger generation rewards

you with incredulity. How could companies even dream of
forcing people to do things?

However - creating a singular destination and then 'driving

traffic' - or worse - 'gaining eyeballs', was a priority.

The most advanced practitioners would then append the

desire for a 'click' from such traffic. The volume of traffic
and numbers of clicks was pretty much the essence of online
media.

Once upon a time.

Then, citizens who embrace freedom like a fish to water,

found ways of escaping forced environments and accessing
things they valued through a variety of means. The effect of
which meant that a singular destination was only as
successful as the traffic and clicks in one place, whilst the
people of the world travelled to many places on various
machines and screens.

Once the main thing was destination and now the main thing
is distribution.

Creating ways of accessing value via alternative means,

enables people to get what they want, when they want.

Singular destinations don't need to die - but multiple

destinations or pathways need to be created.

One of our clients wanted to increase their e-commerce

sales and upon inspection, I found they depended solely on
traffic to their website to do this.

We created a number of online stores on various platforms

and unsurprisingly the sales accelerated.

The first 6 Macro Trends of the 21st Century – Jonathan MacDonald

Another past client, with explicit knowledge and (I thought)
understanding of this case study, decided that it was too
costly and unpredictable to diversify their retail buying
points and chose to stick with their singular destination.

One year later, they had lost significant market share and
budgets were duly cut in the name of efficiency.

Good people were fired and now today, due to the state
they are in, it would take a major overhaul for them to get
back to where they were, let alone get to where they could
have been for the sake of a few thousand dollars of
investment a little while ago.

Paradigm shifts away from the norm are often seen as

dangerous but simple logic will tell you that in a market of
(for example) 14 million buyers, having 1 million coming to a
single destination will lose the potential of the 13 million
others.

However - being where the full 14 million people are, will at

least increase the chances of purchase.

But this trend is more than retail specific.

Tools, utilities and applications are currently in an upturn.

Both companies and citizens are creating things that people
can use but echoing the mentality of destination
methodology.

It is great to be in a single 'store' but the real fun begins to

be in all stores.

Creating an application for the Apple store and "seeing how

it goes" will only prove how well a single destination works -
not the full potential of your product or service.

It may be that the Android Marketplace is more suitable but

you may never find out.

The great work of companies creating better priced bundles,

better designed services or better worded communication,
are often falling over at the final hurdle with naive
assumption that attracting attention to a single destination
will circumvent a macro trend of distributed interactivity.

Thus I attest that distribution over destination is more than

a call to give people an RSS feed. It signals a redefinition of
product, proposition, placement and pricing. The acceptance

The first 6 Macro Trends of the 21st Century – Jonathan MacDonald

of this trend is directly proportional to revenue potential.
Right now.

The first 6 Macro Trends of the 21st Century – Jonathan MacDonald

Macro Trend 4: Mass Niche not Mass Groups

A target group used to be an age range with gender

specification.

Males aged 18 - 24 in metropolitan areas may tend to be into

football more than females aged 50 - 60.

This may well be true, but now we live in a world of personal

media devices, the challenge is to make all experiences
directly resonant for citizens who organise themselves in
masses of niche communities rather than big demographic
groups.

Niche communities can be around anything where there is

common ground. This includes relationship-based (i.e family),
or hobby-based (i.e car club) groupings.

Individuals can be in numerous communities of interest - but

the 'age, gender and location profile' may differ
substantially.

Added to this - the experiences we demand in a fan club of a

musician could well be different from the experiences
expected using a health service.

Any level of assumption when dealing in personality based

communication will lead to negative experience which is
damaging to all involved.

Yet still, we see elaborate justification of practices in

advertising that are deemed "OK, because people don't mind
it too much".

The trend toward individualisation and personalisation means

that citizens are claiming accountability of their own
experiences. This trend provides significant headaches for
the advertising, marketing and telecommunications industry,
as the risk of harming experience is astronomically higher
when conversing in personal media than it was in broadcast
media beforehand.

The media that society is connected with - or social media as

it is called - is a new science involving the inter-relationships
of real people who are not a number or a demographic
subset.

Companies are emerging who are good at identifying who

the influencers are and how the relate to others.

The first 6 Macro Trends of the 21st Century – Jonathan MacDonald

To say that social media intelligence is important would be
underplaying the role that data will increasingly play in the
understanding of social interaction.

Understanding the niches is surely the first step to being

able to add more value for the individuals involved.

The promise of understanding is more than just neat

phraseology.

Imagine if you could have a crystal clear view of real-time

feedback, free-of-charge access to real-time research, plus
the ability to monitor and affect real-time influence on
product purchase.

Imagine if you could reduce your cost of sales, reduce

wasted media spend and build armies of fanatics that adore
your products. These armies will market the products
themselves - whilst you know, at all times, how people are
feeling. Ultimately, this means you can provide things that
people value even more which drives ongoing loyalty.

Thus, I attest that the visualisation of a world based in mass

niche is more realistic and valuable than viewing people in
assumed and inferred groups for the sake of convention or
convenience. This trend signals a redefinition of the abused
terms such as 'targeting' and 'relevance', in addition to
demanding a complete re-think as to what the
understanding of individuals really means.

The first 6 Macro Trends of the 21st Century – Jonathan MacDonald

Macro Trend 5: Broadcast Control is now Self Scheduled

In 1998, two guys called Jim and Mike started trials of a new
technology in the San Francisco Bay Area.

In January 1999, they exhibited at the CES show and

announced the first device would ship on March 31st that
year (despite having many months left of work remaining to
complete the device).

Because the date was a 'blue moon', the staff code named
version 1 as Blue Moon.

On March 31st 1999, the TiVo Blue Moon signified the end of
broadcast control and a fatal blow for the TV advertising
industry.

Not that anybody realised.

Eagerly, Thomson and BSkyB partnered with TiVo and Phillips

and Sony both started their own versions. Very few people
raised any concerns at the time about possible negative
impact on media industries because the devices were in the
hands of few - mostly those who had buckets of cash.

No risk perceived - disruption quietly grew.

The media industry was still highly dependent on sponsorship

via advertisements and gradually became aware of losing
revenue if viewers adopt TiVo-like systems in large numbers.
Knowing this, some countries took protectionist measures,
especially when media was already struggling due to poor
viewing figures.

For example, the government of Singapore banned TiVo,

citing the potential adverse impact on the local media
industry if usage were to increase. Which it did. The
Singapore government faced extreme difficulty in regulating
the use of TiVo, as individuals were bringing in sets from
overseas, over-joyed at the ability to finally control their
own experiences.

All was not lost though as TiVo started to create a number

of advertising solutions intended to reach the viewer that
fast forwards through ads. The company FX was the one of
the first to use 'PVR resistant' adverts that appeared
during the series 'Brotherhood' in 2006. The Deputy MD of Fox
International Channels, Jason Thorp, said at the time: "There
are a whole host of issues that broadcasters and

The first 6 Macro Trends of the 21st Century – Jonathan MacDonald

advertisers are currently facing, and about to face, that
are going to irrevocably change the business. A creative
response will be the only solution to all of them."

The 'creative response' in their case was to find ways of

forcing people into doing something they didn't want to do.
Fast forward a few years and the stories of such
'creativity' have quietly been shown the back door. Forcible
relationships are never productive. The seesaw of control is
never healthy if heavily stacked against one side.

According to research, 13% - 40% of all viewing on Sky Plus in

the UK is time-shifted. 3 in 10 people watching drama
currently self-schedule. These figures rise continually -
primarily as people increasingly trust that the technology
isn't going to fail and 'lose' their beloved show. Companies
who have the real data on PVR usage rarely let on what is
really happening. Conservatively my opinion would be to
double the research stats at least.

Yesterday morning, the Japanese Grand Prix qualifying was

broadcast on BBC at 6AM and the presenter started the
show by congratulating people for having heard their early
morning alarm clocks. Why would we necessarily have to
watch something at the scheduled time anymore? I doubt
many did. But this isn't just about television. This is about
experience in general.

Control of experience has moved to being jointly owned by

the content holder and everyone else. Content that is
created by citizens can be consumed by others whenever
and wherever we, the public, want. This now also holds true
for corporation created content too.

Once we were limited as to what device we had to use but

now we are increasingly able to do what we want, on any
machine and a screen. This trend means that we are more
accountable for our experiences than ever before. We can
control how we enjoy, to a greater extent.

The ability for every single one of us to become journalists

has redefined who influences society. Sure, many millions of
blogs have few readers (and are mostly all about the author
rather than anything else), but a collection of citizen blogs
eclipse the entire 'professional' news industry and the
influence it once enjoyed. The Twitter feed from
'BreakingNews' currently gets you news within seconds of
events happening.

The first 6 Macro Trends of the 21st Century – Jonathan MacDonald

Free.

Constantly.

On any machine and screen.

The paradigm shift has spread across all industry. In the

world of commercial communications, for example, the
mindset had been similar to the broadcasters of old. Lets
send out our message and try our best to make people
listen. But now it’s about people also having a say in what
they want to listen to and when, and where.

The paradox is that people often don't know what they want.
But this is not an excuse to bypass the need to understand.

Thus I attest that self-schedules replacing broadcast

control is more than the ability to skip annoying adverts. It
signals a redefinition of user experience. This goes down to
root level, placing joint accountability at the centre of value
creation. Different rules for a different game - this time
with more than one side.

The first 6 Macro Trends of the 21st Century – Jonathan MacDonald

Macro Trend 6: C2C is more powerful than B2C Communication

At the time of writing, the buzz-phrase 'word of mouth' is

being lauded as an incredible new invention. The term
'conversation' is a very '2.0' thing, apparently. It's almost like
personal interaction is a new thing, whereas it pre-dates
everything else.

Peer influence/word of mouth, will have emerged when there

was more than one person on earth. Ironically though, it's
only in recent times that the communication industry is
becoming aware of how citizens interact because the
infrastructure is now in place for fast and wide
conversations to happen outside peoples’ family, workplace
or village. Plus, media and devices are becoming more
personal.

This dawn of realisation has sprouted new experts. Those who

grasp (what is essentially) elementary psychology, can
better understand the 'social' trend, yet many people in the
communications world are surrounded by an all-consuming
legacy of 'the way things are done', which goes against
common sense in many cases.

Citizen to Citizen (my version of C2C) is only more powerful

than Business to Consumer communication when citizens are
in an environment of understanding and better still, trust.

When there is understanding and trust, any number of

citizens communicating is untouchable in terms of influence
impact.

But surely that is no surprise?

The mindset of treating everyone like a lowly 'consumer' or

worse, an 'end user', is the most patronising, insulting and
offensive way of approaching any dealings with real people.

Understanding will never come from this mindset.

Trust will never come from this mindset.

To accelerate communication power, businesses must learn

from the way that citizens interact most effectively.

When we build relationships, we learn about each other. This

is a two-way process. Nothing to do with spying on behaviour
or implying some kind of pseudo-intellect from scrappy data
that resides in numerous silos.

The first 6 Macro Trends of the 21st Century – Jonathan MacDonald

Many of the practices I see heralded at conferences, are
analogistic to hiding in the bushes outside someone's house,
breathing heavily and scribbling down notes on a pad for
later use.

When we best learn about each other, we find common

ground. We look for areas in which we can be valuable to
each other. Nothing to do with one person treating the
other like a slave or acting like a stalker.

Thus I attest that Citizen to Citizen communication is more

powerful than Business to Consumer communication only
because businesses mostly treat people in a sub-optimal way.

If organisations can learn from real people then maybe they

can grow up to act like real people - ergo, enjoy the
symbiotic power of communicating in a fruitful, productive
and valuable relationship.

The first 6 Macro Trends of the 21st Century – Jonathan MacDonald

About Jonathan MacDonald

Jonathan is the co-founder of this fluid world

(www.thisfluidworld.com), which is a consulting service that
assists companies in their search for business and
communications excellence, fitting to the 21 st Century.

He is also the MD of JMA (www.jma.co.uk), which is an agency

delivering specialist execution in communication strategies.

Jonathan has spent the last 18 years assisting over 100

companies including Ogilvy, Unilever, Kodak, BP, American
Express, British Airways and Motorola.

His experience, contribution to the industry, entrepreneurial

spirit and passion means that Jonathan is widely considered
as one of the primary strategists and thought leaders in
the digital space. He is well known for his popular blog
(www.jonathanmacdonald.com) and speaks at many
conferences around the world.

Previously, Jonathan has been the Sales Director of Blyk,

Commercial Director of Ministry of Sound, CEO of a Sky TV
channel and a Chairman of the Music Industries Association.

Jonathan is also the founder of a communications movement

called EverySingleOneOfUs (www.everysingleoneofus.com),
which seeks to unite a wide cross-section of mobile
operators, advertising agencies, big-name brands and
members of the public; to educate the industry and
encourage discussions about emerging business models, and
to facilitate a step change in communications.

The first 6 Macro Trends of the 21st Century – Jonathan MacDonald