PEOPLE’S INSIGHTS MONTHLY BRIEF: DECEMBER
photo: Bonita S
Trends for 2015
Every month we look at a couple of inspiring initiatives to track how brands and organizations are engaging with people in the conversation age. This month, we picked new initiatives that are indicative of larger trends that will unfold over 2015.
We’re seeing campaigns from people, activists, brands and governments to change the way we consume – live, shop, eat and engage. Technologies are maturing and governments are trying to shape the new world, with quite some friction between the two. Overall, there’s a demand that brands and tech companies behave more responsibly. Here’s an overview of what to expect in 2015: •
Stories about Climate Change. Skype opened the gates with its story about Kiribati, an island that could be one of the first victims of rising sea levels. 2015 will be filled with demonstrations, stories and pledges of action as governments convene to create a new agreement on climate at the UN’s COP21 next December.
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“Eat less. Move more.” gets replaced with “Eat different.” In earlier issues of People’s Insights, we covered initiatives by the US and UK governments to tackle the growing epidemic of obesity. Now a new documentary, “Fed Up,” urges people to reduce their consumption of sugar.
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Governments ‘versus’ Innovation. Governments worldwide have been criticized for taking action against companies like Uber and Airbnb… but are simultaneously expected to safeguard people’s safety, privacy, jobs and the larger economy. As this continues in 2015, can governments overcome the perception of being ‘antiinnovation’ and be seen as ‘shaping a better future’?
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One-hour delivery. Amazon just announced one-hour delivery for Prime members in parts of New York, with plans to expand to more cities in 2015. Other retailers will have little choice but to offer similar services.
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More brands on Instagram. Instagram recently announced it has more than 300 million monthly active users, surpassing Twitter’s 284 million. The platform can certainly be used for major brand activations, and we expect more brands to get on Instagram in 2015.
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Insurance for crowdfunding. Crowdfunding platform Indiegogo is testing a new feature – people can purchase insurance on projects they choose to fund. Will this sense of security encourage more people to back projects, with higher investments?
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Digital releases for movies. With theatre chains shying away from Sony’s The Interview, the studio decided to releasethe movie at independent theatres - and online. Online sales totaled an impressive $15 million in the first few days. Can we expect more digital releases of blockbuster movies?
Let us know what you think at @PeoplesLab on Twitter. We look forward to your feedback and comments, and hope you enjoy this issue.
Nidhi Makhija-Chimnani Director – Research and Insights, MSLGROUP
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Skype’s Turning the Tide
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Fed Up
11
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Governments ‘versus’ Innovation
14
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Amazon Prime Now
17
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Instagram’s 300 million
19
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Indiegogo’s Insurance Trial
21
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The Interview
23
8
2015 will be a significant year for the movement to address climate change. This past September, over 300,000 people participated in the People’s Climate March in New York, demonstrating to governments and corporations that climate change is high on their priorities. The last few months have also seen world leaders and lawmakers proceed in their negotiations to find an agreement that governments can sign at the next UN conference on climate change (COP 21) in December 2015.
South Bend Voice on Flickr
We expect more companies and brands to join the conversation, to announce their support for the movement or highlight their efforts to protect the environment.
A great example is Skype, which shared a powerful story of island nation Kiribati which is on the “front line” of climate change. In a video called “Turning the Tide,” Skype follows journalist Anna Therese Day and photographer Gianluca Panella as they investigate the effects of higher sea levels on the people of Kiribati and the government’s dual efforts to preserve the islands and relocate the population. The connect to the brand? Skype helps Day and Panella, a “modern mobile news team,” “get to the heart of the story quickly.” Simple, subtle, powerful. Watch the video together.skype.com/en-us/kiribati
Follow the duo’s coverage of Kiribati on CNN and Mashable
Obesity and diabetes rates continue to increase globally. According to WHO, 1.4 billion adults (2008) and 42 million children (2013) are overweight or obese, and 347 million people worldwide have diabetes (2011). Anti-obesity programs launched by governments and the food & fitness industries usually revolve around eating less or moving more. A new documentary, Fed Up, argues that the problem lies in what people are eating and targets sugar consumption.
fedupmovie.com
Fed Up makes a dramatic impression, throwing facts, numbers and simple-to-understand visuals at audiences. It also features prominent figures – the executive producers are American TV host Katie Couric (who also narrates the film) and Laurie David who also produced An Inconvenient Truth. The film also includes a brief interview with Bill Clinton. The trailer has received 5 million views on YouTube; and 90,000 likes, 960,000 shares and 15,000 comments on Facebook. It has received high ratings on IMDB and Amazon, and conversations around the film on social media reveal that it’s making people scrutinize the sugar content of the food they’re consuming. On the documentary’s website itself, 55,000 people have pledged to go sugar free for 10 days. LA Weekly’s Amy Nicholson predicts that “Fed Up is poised to be the Inconvenient Truth of the health movement.” Watch the trailer
It’s increasingly common to hear people complain that governments are slow, archaic and ‘anti-innovation,’ especially when the conversation turns to legal action against ‘new age’ companies like Uber and Airbnb. Uber users tout the convenience of the mobile app, availability of Uber rides and occasional freebies (water, magazines, mints etc.). Airbnb users highlight the wide range of affordable accommodation and community feel, and Airbnb hosts appreciate the added income (in some cases their primary income). Governments are not so thrilled. Apart from complaints by taxi unions and hoteliers, they also have to consider public safety and legal & economic implications. For example, many city and national governments have acted against Uber for non-compliance with license regulations, unfair competition and insufficient background checks. The list includes cities in the U.S., Brazil and India, and the countries Belgium, France, Germany, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, Colombia and Canada. Airbnb users, on the other hand, tend to get in trouble for breaking local laws, rental agreements, insurance terms and even tax collection. City Hall San Francisco Rally for Passing the Airbnb Law (photo: Kevin Kreji)
The way the two companies (are perceived to) have responded is vastly different. Uber’s position is that governments must update their laws to cope with current technologies. Airbnb is more collaborative, publishing studies about the benefit of Airbnb on local communities and negotiating arrangements with governments. For example, Airbnb now collects taxes on rentals in Portland, San Francisco and Amsterdam, and is working to simplify local renting laws. Governments do benefit from some press in their favour, but don’t seem to have sufficiently addressed the accusation that they are “anti-innovation.” As Airbnb and Uber use online petitions to rally the pro-sharing economy audience, governments may have to start taking control of the way they are perceived.
airbnbnyc.com, action.uber.org/illinois
Same-day delivery has picked up in the last few years, with same-day services offered by Amazon, Google, eBay, Walmart and startups like Instacart, in select cities. The companies typically offer their own range of goods and have partnered with chains (like eBay has) or local stores and restaurants (like Amazon has) to provide people with daily essentials, groceries, electronics and more. People pay a fixed amount or subscribe to a service to qualify for the speedy delivery. But critics doubt the services create a profit, let alone break even. In fact, eBay slowed down its plans to expand its eBay Now service and may have shut it down altogether, choosing instead to focus on in-store pick ups. So it’s an interesting time for the deep-pocketed Amazon to shake things up with its new one-hour delivery offer. Will Amazon dominate the instant delivery market in 2015 and attract more local partners? Will competitors ramp up their investments to compete? Will one-hour delivery become the new norm for urban dwellers?
youtu.be/ODLp4ZGQwzk
Amazon Prime Now is an extension of Amazon’s Prime membership ($99/year) which includes free two-day delivery and unlimited access to an online library of content. Members can download the Prime Now app and browse items available for delivery at their location. They can opt for one-hour delivery for $7.99 (there’s no minimum order), or two-hour delivery for free – between 6am and midnight, seven days a week.
Prime Now is currently available only in Manhattan, with plans to expand to other cities.
Watch the video Check out what users are saying on the Google Play store and at iTunes
In December, Instagram announced it has more than 300 million monthly active users, helping it cross Twitter’s 284 million. The platform is already popular among top brands, who use it to share images and videos of products, celebrities, behind-thescenes photos, promote campaigns, regram people’s photos, engage with influencers, sell products (through platforms like like2buy), advertise and so on. 2015 will see even more brands embrace Instagram.
Here’s why. Instagram has a large number of users… •
300 million monthly users (2014)
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75 million daily users (2013)
….including the prized teens and millennial audience… •
41% of users are young adults (16-24) (2014)
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42% of US teens (13-17) use Instagram (2013)
…who are very active.
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70% of users log in at least once a day (2013)
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20 billion photos shared (2014); 70 million a day (2014)
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1.2 billion likes/day (2014)
For more stats, visit: expandedramblings.com Check out the GlobalWebIndex infographic at allfacebook.com
Even as crowdfunding grows (Kickstarter records over $1.5 billion pledged by 7.6 million backers), the risk of fraud has not been addressed sufficiently. The person raising funds is not liable to anyone. Instead, the burden lies solely on the backer to do ‘their own homework’ on the starter’s credibility and the soundness of their project. While platforms like Kickstarter are relatively stricter about the crowdfunding process, others like Indiegogo are more flexible and perceived as being more risky – even though both platforms have had their fair share of ‘scampaigns,’ delays and defaults. indiegogo.com/projects/olive-a-wearable-to-manage-stress
In this context, Indiegogo’s experiment to offer insurance is a good move.
The experiment seems to have covered only one product to date – the Olive stress management band which is available for $129 on Indiegogo. For an additional $15, backers can purchase insurance which secures them a full refund if they don’t receive the product within three months of the estimated delivery date. Indiegogo offered insurance on up to 25 bands only, cutting their own risk in the experiment. The surprising part – despite all the coverage the insurance offer received in online news sites, only three people paid for it. This could mean any number of things… backers felt more confident after seeing Indiegogo back this particular product… they were confident in their decision to back the company… they were unwilling to shell out more money… and so on. Time, and more experimentation will tell if insurance will have any impact on people’s trust and the size of their investments.
What do you think? Tweet us at @PeoplesLab
After the cyber-attack on Sony Pictures, major theatre chains were wary of releasing the controversial the movie The Interview on Christmas Eve. This forced Sony to consider alternate ways to distribute the movie. The studio decided to go ahead with independent theatres and made the movie available online on YouTube, Google Play, XBox, iTunes, Crackle and a standalone website. Viewers in the US and Canada could rent (stream) the movie for $5.99 or purchase (download) it for $14.99.
The Interview raked in $15 million in online sales in its first four days, as compared to $3 million from the independent theatres. While $15 million isn’t really comparable to what larger theatre chains would bring in, it did help the movie set the record as Sony’s highest online grossing film of all time. Inspired by the initial success, Sony is now expanding distribution of the movie to its Playstation Network, to cable television through US pay-per-view network In Demand, and to Walmart’s video-on-demand service Vudu. As the studio continues to experiment with its release strategy and see more signs of success, could we expect to see more movies launched simultaneously across theatres, TV and online? It would definitely be more convenient for viewers, and perhaps quite profitable for studios as well. But not so for theatres, and therein could lie a problem.
twitter.com/TheNationalUAE
People’s Insights is a collection of inspiring initiatives, insights and foresights shared by MSLGROUP’s SPRINTers – our global team of 100+ strategic planners, researchers and insights experts. We feature the best of these initiatives as People’s Insights monthly briefs, and original insights and foresights – from our SPRINTers and other MSLGROUP experts - in our People’s Insights magazines. We share these reports on our social platforms and distribute them freely to inspire more engaging campaigns. People’s Insights covers the latest trends in engagement on both consumer and corporate sides. Check out our latest magazine, The Future of Business Citizenship, for data and insights on how Millennials want businesses to be better active citizens. * People’s Insights is available as a blog, powerpoint decks, infographics, white papers and magazines, a Kindle eBook and even an iPad app. Follow us on Twitter at @PeoplesLab or subscribe to our newsletter to receive our monthly briefs and quarterly magazines.
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