Welcome to Upshot’s 2012 Trends Report! We’re so glad you could make it.

After you’ve clicked the link above and given your brain a totally unfair advantage, please be excessively generous about passing around this trend report. Click right here and we’ll automatically tweet on your behalf, or just pass the following link around to friends, family, followers, foes, and former flings: j.mp/upshot2012.

Here’s a quick peek at our 10 course menu for 2012:

• Guruism (SourceRank 83): Will your brand be the go-to guide on a given topic?
• Collective Curation (SourceRank 91): Credible brands can become hubs for Collective Curation, bringing a focused theme to life through the voices of others.
• Anarchy in the Aisle (SourceRank 82): The Path to Purchase is dead. Long live the Path to Purchase.
• Mindfulness over Matter (SourceRank 65): Situated between a tumultuous past and an uncertain future, consumers are increasingly finding solace in the present moment.
• Seamless Tech (SourceRank 60): Technology-enhanced marketing will increasingly provide seamless, simple experiences.
• Gender Bender (SourceRank 68): Between better-educated women, drastic household changes, and shifting collar colors in the workplace, traditional gender roles are fast becoming relics.
• Cause with Effect (SourceRank 82): With the lingering threat of a “cause bubble,” cause marketing must increasingly focus on making relevant, visible, and inspiring impacts.
• World of Wellness (SourceRank 80): Brands must reevaluate their roles in the diverse wellness ecosystem, ensuring that they’re contributing to a better quality of life for consumers.
• Recession Rejection (SourceRank 86): Shoppers are on a quest for control. And when they set their sights on smaller, more personal spheres, they’re optimistic about their prospects.
• Hack My Brand (SourceRank 53): Marketers are embracing benevolent hacking for innovative, entertaining, and practical solutions.

Keep checking back in with The Awesome Blog to see how these trends grow and evolve throughout 2012. For now, enjoy!

According to their website, Benetton’s Unhate Foundation “Seeks to contribute to the creation of a new culture of tolerance, to combat hatred, building on Benetton’s underpinning values”.  The foundation’s website boasts future plans of a Global Unhate Day, and a giant “Unhate Dove” fabricated entirely out of recycled war bullets.

While taking on all of the hatred in the world could certainly do us all a little good and the campaign is sparking conversation around the globe, Benetton’s commitment to making a legitimate impact is a steep goal. Sure, they’re doing an excellent job of creating (both positive and negative) buzz about their brand and potentially even enticing consumers to purchase their exceedingly pricey clothing, but it is safe to say that a bunch of unorthodox ads will likely fall short of creating world peace. Consumers are looking for causes where their contributions may have a real effect on a final outcome. Knowing the amount of press and simple word of mouth viral activity the ads have created in a matter of weeks, it will be interesting to see how Benetton’s campaign to change the world plays out over the next several months.

The rise of touchless, gesture-based interfaces is certainly a hot topic, particularly with the arrival of immensely-hackable Kinect console from Microsoft. It seems like each day brings us a clever new twist on this system, and many of these offerings have the potential to dramatically change the marketing world, especially in-store. The video below (from Germany’s Innovative Retail Laboratory) demonstrates just one of many potential applications: a prototype that would reduce confusion at the fresh food counters in grocery stores. As shown in the video, the Kinect system recognizes exactly what the customer is pointing to in the glass cases, and relays that information to a display screen. This particular system also integrates a scale, so the shopper knows exactly how much a given food item will weigh and cost. We’ll be taking a deeper dive into these gesture-based interfaces over the next few months here at the blog, so stay tuned!

Transcript from Upshot’s Air Presenter Demo video:
Our interactive team is always looking for practical applications of emerging technologies, and we wanted to take you behind the curtain with a nifty tool called the Air Presenter. It’s from a company called So Touch, and it takes all the clicking out of boring ol’ Power Points and instead uses gestures to move through a presentation. Soon, you’ll be able to capture these gestures via the much-hyped Microsoft Kinect, but the system currently requires a device called the radarTOUCH… and here at Upshot, we got our hands on the first radarTOUCH shipped to the US. Above, you see our own Brett Pachol walking us through a few of the Air Presenter’s features.

Importing a basic PowerPoint into Air Presenter is a simple process, and for a standard presentation, your slides will appear in the carousel format shown here. A presenter can scroll between slides, wave them on or off the screen, and zoom in to individual slides by pulling your arms in opposite directions. For any presentations with embedded videos, it’s easy to pull them up too. Air Presenter also allows you to use gestures to control playback functions such as muting and pausing.

But Air Presenter’s biggest step forward is its ability to fully manipulate 3D models, turning them in any direction or zooming in with intuitive gestures. Ok, so maybe the cartoon cow in the demo version isn’t the most convincing image to use when making the case for business applications, so let’s talk through what could be demonstrated with this particular feature. Three dimensional renderings of new products or new packaging are obvious applications, especially for B2B presentations or pitches. But we could also go much bigger – and frankly, much smaller – too. If your service is location relevant, you could Find Your Place by mapping this information onto a 3 dimensional globe or map. Or, if the key to your presentation is in the details, you could zoom in and take a deeper dive into the components of your product.

As gesture-based interfaces continue to rocket to popularity in 2011, we can think of plenty of places where an Air Presenter system would spice up a presentation. For B2B applications, this tool is clearly made with exhibit halls, trade shows, and conferences in mind, as well as 3D retail models or architectural proposals. But, we see the potential for consumer-facing applications as well in immersive retail environments like flagship stores, where shoppers could browse through three-dimensional renderings of the products, get additional information about these offerings, or just be entertained by branded multimedia content. We’ll be keeping an eye on this system and it’s peers, and the only gesture you’ll need to make is following our coverage at Upshot’s theawesomeblog.net.

Ever since Sao Paulo decided to ban billboards, ad folks in the US (and around the world) have nervously wondered, “Could it happen here?” While it’s hard to say, we’ll soon know what that scenario would look like, thanks to the latest project from Morgan Spurlock (of Super Size Me fame). He’s developed a platform called No Ad that taps the power of crowdsourcing to virtually erase billboards and outdoor ads in US cities. (Thanks to Jaclyn Gordyan for the tip!) He starts by filming a panoramic view of the area in question, and then asks fans to use the site (essentially an online, stripped-down version of Photoshop) to replace the ads in each frame of the clip. And Spurlock’s aiming high to kick things off: he’s taking on Times Square. While it’s unclear whether this campaign is reflective of a larger sentiment among Americans (one could certainly make the argument that the advertising clutter in Times Square is precisely the draw of the place), it’s certainly a reasonable discussion to have about the future of advertising. After all, knowing that consumers are seeking Primitive Simplicity in their personal lives, is it just a matter of time before this preference gets applied to experiences outside of their homes? It’s certainly a possibility.

But, as we’ve regularly restated, don’t mistake this desire for simplicity as an anti-technology stance. In fact, certain technological advancements are considered to be the solutions to these dilemmas, rather than the problems. For instance, let’s consider one of our favorite things in the world: interactive projections! (We’ll take any excuse to mention them, won’t we?) In this case, it’s MINI Cooper projecting virtual vending machines in a handful of Canadian cities, as seen in the video above. Passersby choose from nine different MINI paint jobs and text their selection to the projection, at which point the selected car is discharged in a very MINI-esque manner. But, in the context of our discussion above, does this kind of OOH experience qualify as clutter or enhancement? One could argue that it’s a shiny, distracting intrusion each city’s nightlife, while others could make the case that turning a boring ol’ building side into an interactive, engaging source of entertainment that enriches the participants’ evenings. Moreover, projection as a medium is inherently temporary, requires relatively little power, and leaves no lingering impact on the environment. If we can check those boxes off, does Spurlock’s complaint become spurious?

(Aside from the clutter discussion, we do want to note one other spot where the campaign falls short. After choosing their car, the recipient receives a text message inviting them to Like MINI on Facebook. Certainly, some follow-up is better than none, but considering the projection’s level of engagement, shouldn’t the SMS deliverable be equally engaging? Why not ask the participant for their zip code and provide them with the nearest dealer, or offer them a chance to schedule for a test-drive, or offer some promotional incentive to walk into the dealership? Seems like a missed opportunity.)

These kind of projections are only the beginning, especially considering what hack-happy designers are doing with the Microsoft Kinect system. The gesture-based interface is proving to be enormously versatile, delivering jaw-dropping interactive experiences without the need for wires, controllers, or other electronic clutter. One example that we especially enjoyed is the music video below, in which the German group Moullinex uses 3D motion-capture to show renderings of the musicians in action. Better yet, the group was kind enough to share the secrets behind their process, just in case anyone else has a hankerin’ to be Driven by Data. Knowing that these low-impact, high-engagement options are becoming more readily available, are critics of consumerist clutter going to view these solutions as resolving the problem or making it worse? If you’ve got an opinion on the matter, let us know in the comments below.

I’m not sure what class Google is taking, but it’s definitely the star student. There was clearly some extra-curricular work behind their just-released Google Art Project, which delivers over a thousand works from 17 of the world’s finest museums right to your browser.

Reapplying the technology that generates images for Google Street View (see the behind-the-scenes video here), Google’s Art Project lets users virtually stroll around the museums and see these pieces in incredible, high-res detail (yes, even down to the brushstrokes). In addition to sidebars loaded with information about the artists and the history of the pieces, users can also sign in to save images to their personal collection, as well as adding comments to specific points on each zoom level. In other words, if you want to start a discussion about a particular point on The Birth of Venus, drill down to an extreme close-up and leave your comment. Or, if you’ve got an interesting insight about the Bodhisattva sculpture in the Smithsonian, stay zoomed out and add your point at that level. For all the criticism about Google not “getting” social, it’s easy to see how this setup can be used to drive conversations. And, with those conversations driving awareness, interest, and understanding of fine art around the world, it’s easy to see how this fits our Brand Patronage trend for 2011.

Of course, there’s a reason Google’s as profitable as it is – these creative flourishes always seem to have a business application buried deep below the surface . Art Project is no different, as it does a brilliant job of showcasing how Google’s Street View can work indoors. In related news, Google has been expanding their Street View service into selected stores around the world, meaning that as you virtually “stroll” along a Google map, you can continue right into the front door of these retailers for a panoramic view of their selection. (As Google tends to do, they’ve created yet another adorable video to promote the service – see the bottom of this post.) This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Google having some fun with their Street View functionality, and it’s yet another manifestation of Life in the OOC. The first steps of the path to purchase continue to move further into consumers’ homes, with shoppers having the power to run price comparisons, check inventory, and get detailed product information before they step foot out of the house. The ability to scope out the inside of these stores gives shoppers one more tool in deciding where to shop, creating an efficient plan for getting through the store, and (with the rise of site-to-store ordering) even selecting the items they plan to purchase, right from the comfort of their own homes. That sure sounds like a masterpiece of technological innovation to us.

We’ve blown through a slew of Sized Right examples in our trends report and Smartshot webinar, covering an admittedly wide range of applications. After all, Sized Right is our most versatile trend for 2011, with implications in-store, at home, in consumers’ daily lives, and even in their heads. With that in mind, it might help to step back and set the mood for the trend, pointing out a couple of examples that, while fringe in their specifics, powerfully illustrate the driving factors behind these sentiments.

The rise of Sized Right starts right at home, where Americans are retreating from the past few decades’ trend towards McMansions. Tired of maintaining homes that are too big – and increasingly wary of the massive mortgages they require – consumers are now opting for more appropriately-sized homes. But, don’t mistake this for self-denial. There’s a certain comfort in finding a home that fits your needs, especially with smarter solutions that allow you to get more out of smaller spaces.

What’s that look like in practice? How about fitting 24 rooms into a 330 square foot apartment? That’s what Hong Kong architect Gary Chang miraculously pulled off, as seen in the video above. Now, we’re not saying this is going to be the norm for home life, but we are saying there are valuable lessons to be learned here. While Chang literally packs multiple layers into a single space, this is indicative of a general trend (both at home and in-store) toward more flexible configurations that allow the same space to serve multiple functions. This can happen physically, as in Chang’s case, but as we’ve seen in our Life in the OOC trend, it’s also possible thanks to digital technologies that overlay virtual functions on real-world spaces.

It’s also noteworthy that Chang doesn’t see the small size of his abode as a constraint; rather, it’s an opportunity for efficiency. He uses plenty of practical tricks, ranging from mirrors that amplify the space to shades that bring in golden light, which all combine to give the impression of space without the burdens that would accompany that physical footprint. This is a sentiment that runs through everything we’ve seen with consumers seeking smaller (but not 330-foot) homes. Consumers are reassessing their priorities, and realizing the benefits of having less stuff to fret about. We tend to fill bigger houses with crap we don’t need, so small houses force the residents to be more proactive in their filtering. This ends up being a relief for consumers who otherwise feel the pull toward hoarderism, as well as (often younger, Millennial) homeowners who happily sacrifice square footage for the experiences offered by their ideal locations.

Clearly, Chang’s layout is very, very smart. So, the opposite would be… dumb? That’s the opinion of Smart Car USA, who recently kicked off a campaign “Against Dumb” that mocks everything supersized, as shown in the video below. On the one hand, this campaign bluntly speaks to the beliefs behind Sized Right, and manages to communicate the philosophy in a quick, visually appealing manner. Still, we have to take issue with the tone. It’s a little too condescending, a little too holier-than-thou, and even a bit obnoxious. The transition toward Sized Right is a huge undertaking for the Amercian consumer after half a century of moving in the other direction. You’re much better off offering helpful reassurance for consumers looking to make the switch, rather than ridiculing them for the mistakes of their past.

In fact, these consumers are probably willing to do most of the mocking themselves. And that’s the part of the Smart campaign that we really like. On the brand’s Facebook page, Smart encouraged fans to submit their dumbest purchases to be voted on by the community, with the winner getting a Smart car. It’s a much more playful tone than their ads, and does a better job of getting participants to think long and hard about their personal consumption histories. And there’s nothing dumb about that.

Do you just love marketing trends, but find that you’re too busy to sit down and read a whole trends report? Well, what if we told you that we could crank through an entire year’s worth of trends in less than 15 minutes?

Why, you’d have the latest installment in our Upshot Smartshot webinar series!

Now’s your chance to see us do our best auctioneer impressions, as we roar through all of our 2011 trends in the video above, and blaze through a ridiculous amount of examples that weren’t in our original report.

Okay, fine, it’s probably a little too fast. So watch it a couple of times. Or, better yet, read the full trends report at your own speed at j.mp/11trends.

Don’t forget: if you’d like a customized trends presentation for your company, we’d be happy to share some trends love! Our first few presentations have received fantastic feedback, if we may be so immodest. Contact us via Twitter, the “submit” button above, or just leave us a comment below.

Please be excessively generous about sharing these trends! An easy way to do this is to pass along the following link, which will take you right back to this page: j.mp/11trends. (Actually, the easiest way is to click right here and let us tweet on your behalf.) Also, you can print out our handy, smart-looking reference guide to the 2011 trends by clicking here.

But, if you’re the frisky type who likes a little teaser, here are the topline takeaways from the full report:

• Sized Right (SourceRank 82): Consumers are making a big deal about smaller solutions, and it’s influencing ideas about everything from convenience to curation to consumption.
• Game On! (SourceRank 85): Brands are discovering the significant motivational power of gaming mechanisms, and consumers are happily playing along.
• Driven by Data (SourceRank 81): The future of show-not-tell marketing is using clever, compellingly-curated data to enable new experiences, solutions, and opportunities.
• Find Your Place (SourceRank 63): Real-time location data provides a world of new opportunities for brands to delight consumers with enticing occasion-based marketing.
• Demographic Divergence (SourceRank 86): Growing gaps between demographic groups will require inclusive strategic ideas, implemented with laser-targeted precision.
• Future Fear (SourceRank 85): As Americans begin to temper their eternal optimism about the future, marketers must be there to offer reassurance.
• Cause with Effect (SourceRank 69): With a possible “cause bubble” threatening the legitimacy of cause marketing, it’s time for brands to make a more significant impact.
• War on Whiners (SourceRank 71): Now that consumers have found their voices, self-assured brands will learn when to react, when to ignore, and when to respond with their own two cents.
• Life in the OOC (SourceRank 80): Online-Offline Convergence – a.k.a. The OOC – is no longer on the horizon; we’re living in it.
• Primitive Simplicity (SourceRank 56): What was once a vague preference for simplicity has now (d)evolved, with consumers increasingly believing that our sophisticated society creates more problems than solutions.
• Brand Patronage (SourceRank 55): As creative industries collapse, more artists will turn to marketers for innovative, mutually beneficial promotional partnerships.

Ohhh, so this is awkward. We didn’t realize you could count all the way to eleven. Well, consider the extra trend an early present for the holiday season. And that’s not the only thing we’ve been generous about. You may have noticed our other new gift to the world: our SourceRank trend scoring system! Click here to get all the skinny on SourceRank.

Finally, you’ll notice that these trends come with a slimming-down of the blog design. That’s no accident; the new format emphasizes our Potty Postings, Smartshot Webinar series, and the blog’s role in tracking the ten(ish) trends throughout 2011. You’ll notice that the menu at the top of the page now features our current trends, with all of our other categories getting pushed off into the archives. What can we say, we’re moving forward!

In the six months since we first covered Facebook’s social plugins and instant personalization features, over two million sites have implemented these services. It’s safe to say that Facebook’s little experiment is going well. But while the Like button has been a boon for marketers in the online world, there’s still some pervasive cynicism about what this technology means in the offline world.

Oh, wait, we see the problem: skeptics still think there’s a boundary between the online and offline worlds! Apparently someone needs to hop on the 405 and get themselves to The OOC, where Online-Offline Convergence is everywhere. (Y’know, this is the kind of thing that should really be a trend for 2011, dontcha think?) Generally, this trend has been driven by the explosive growth of smartphone ownership, since this is clearly the best tool for using online information to augment our offline lives. But we need not get so fancy.

Consider the Coca-Cola Village shown above. (Thanks to Adam Stipanuk for the tip!) The “village” is an annual 3-day pop-up amusement park in Israel, which provides teens with outdoor activities ranging from basketball courts to swimming pools. Those settings aren’t particularly conducive to lugging a phone around, so Coke provided the attendees with RFID-chipped wristbands that were linked to their individual Facebook accounts. If the kids wanted to let their friends know where they were headed, they simply touched their bracelet to the thumbs-up sign to “Like” that particular attraction, which would be automatically registered on Facebook (and viewable on kiosks around the Village). The same strategy allowed the teens to tag themselves in photos that were being taken by the park’s staff, so their memories would be preserved and shared after the event. The result: 35,000 (!) posts. You think Coke “liked” those results?

This brilliant execution seems almost borne out of necessity; i.e. how do you get teens to share their Village experience on Facebook if the environment is not conducive to smartphones? Their solution was to make the most important elements of the teens’ Facebook experience (namely, photo tagging and sharing what they’re doing) as seamless as possible via the RFID bracelet. Event marketers, take note!

Likewise, when a new IKEA opened in the Swedish town of Malmo, the retailer wanted to use social media to spread the word. But rather than using an intrusive means of interaction, the store tried to assimilate itself into the activities that Facebook users were already doing. So, the store manager uploaded a handful of photos featuring rooms filled with IKEA products, and made a simple offer: the first person to tag themselves as the featured items would win those items (see the video below). Predictably, it set off a social media frenzy, but also managed to spread these shots through the taggers’ own networks, ultimately spreading the word about the new store opening.

“Like” it or not, the Facebooks of the world are no longer confined solely to the online space, and brick-and-mortar retailers ignore them at their own peril. The next year (and beyond) will present significant challenges to retailers as they fend off an all-out assault from non-traditional competitors on the (mobile) web. Focusing on the smartphone is clearly an important part of this strategy, but these examples show that some of the most innovative responses circumvent the phone altogether.

There are plenty of marketing lessons to be learned from the explosive success of Groupon. The fact that a Groupon only kicks in after a certain number of buyers commit definitely creates a bit of urgency, but also highlights the compelling proposition of group buying.  The basic idea: if enough consumers work together to guarantee a significant amount of sales, they’ll be rewarded with extreme discounts. We’ve also seen this proposition at work when participants aren’t committing to a straight-up purchase, but instead focus on funding creative endeavors (via Kickstarter), supporting responsible businesses (via Carrotmob), or spreading the word about sale items (via Uniqlo’s Lucky Counter).

So, knowing all this, why aren’t more companies offering something like eBay’s just-launched Group Gifts option? The video above demonstrates the simple concept: for higher-ticket items, friends and family can band together and commit to the purchase. Contributors can be recruited via email or social networks, all the deadlines and other nitty-gritty can be arranged up front, and the payment is automated through Paypal. It’s so friggin’ easy, and so obviously in-touch with the rise of group buying, that we can’t help but wonder what’s taking the rest of us so long to jump on board. After all, the infrastructure is already in place to easily make these arrangements; eBay’s system is really just a simple checkout layer that’s sitting atop consumers own communication networks (via Facebook) and promotional channels (via Twitter). For industries where big-ticket items often end up as gifts (ahem, like the travel industry?), this seems like a no-brainer.

Of course, not every collaborative buying endeavor is so equitable in its rewards. We’re also witnessing the rise of sites like To Vie For, who counterbalance their community’s cooperation with some casual competition. As demonstrated in the video below, the prices of items on TVF continue to plummet as additional participants commit to buying them. But these prices don’t drop indefinitely; once the limited number of items are sold, anyone who hasn’t locked-in a price is out of luck. If this reverse-auction style seems like it’s a bit of a game, that’s because, well, it is. TVF is blunt about their use of gaming mechanics, describing their setup as “play-to-win” and even using the phrase “the game ends” when an item sells out. It’s got all the excitement of a Black Friday stampede, without the risk of getting trampled!

Whether you’re making your customers work together, or pitting them against each other in a bit of friendly (?) competition, the important thing is that these services are recognizing that their customers are a micro-community, and motivating them in ways that tap into these group dynamics. Could this benefit your brand, too?