Stardate December 9th 2555
It’s that prediction time of year again.
Ad agencies are especially adept at producing overblown documents (often for sale believe it or not!!!!) trying to prove how cutting edge they are by telling us How We Will All Live In 2013.
Well, the Mayans predicted there won’t actually BE a 2013, so let’s get over that minor hump first.
It’s really, really, REALLY difficult to predict the future, so I won’t even try.
I’ll leave that to the hyper-intellectual planners, social media analysts and Trendistas who’ll tell us with great authority what we’ll all be doing for the next decade.
The fact that not a single one of these smug self-important Nostradamus’s (is the plural Nostradami?) predicted, er… The Internet – the single biggest thing to happen to communications since the invention of television – shows how much notice you should take of them.
I mean, if it’s your job predicting things, how could you miss predicting the biggest fucking thing to happen to our business in our lifetime?
I’m reading killer pearls of prescience such as Mobile communications is going to get bigger! Well duh! I really need an i-crystal ball to see that coming. Surely that doesn’t count as a prediction so much as a blindingly obvious evolution of what’s been happening?
You can’t predict the future. It just kind of happens around you with trillions of variables (actually probably a bigger unit of ‘illions) .
Who predicted a moronic dance from a South Korean ‘burb would become the number one YouTube hit EVER?
Who predicted the rise and wobble of Facebook?
Creative people learn to adapt to and deal with things happening around them and are generally cool with a chaotic, unpredictable environment.
Whereas a certain insecure faction feels the need to try and turn advertising into a science, and spend millions of dollars on incredibly bright people to waste a lot of time trying to mitigate errors.
But they’ll always get fucked over by the sheer unpredictability of human beings.
No-one really knows what people will like next. And I mean ‘like’ in the original sense, not the ‘thumbs-up facebook like’ or the ‘double-tap heart Instagram like’ sense.
And THAT’S what makes the ad-business stay so interesting.
Blog off.
Nostradamae looks cooler, don’t you think? And of course you’re right about predictions, they’re the industry’s equivalent of self-help books – and equally fatuous. By the way, I’m in Bangkok all this week so if you fancy a pint some time….? Andrew
OK, Nostradamae it is – that’s why you’re a writer Andrew!!!
The only reliable crystal balls are the ones between my legs.