Devices to gauge consumer reaction, hacking food and trust as web currency: Vice, Mondelez and Mozilla predict the future

Andrew Creighton president, Vice Media

Creighton made a series of bold predictions for the future of marketing, focused heavily on pushing out content to engage the millennial audience.

He raised the notion that the demographic has grown up amid “two big forces”, which he dubbed the crisis of information and the liberation of information, such as mistrust in the media and the advent of the web, and made predictions for brands to get over the mistrust that has manifested around this.

“The casualty of this crisis is trust. Trust in government, trust in experts, trust in corporations and organisations and trust in media.”

“Really what for advertisers that means is you’ve got this inherent distrust, this pre-disposed mistrust and the bullshit detectors are at high levels of sensitivity. They [millennials] have the tools to search out any bullshit and republish it back to the world.”

Creighton envisioned that in the quest for trust and credibility, brands will not only create more content in a bid to differentiate themselves and to connect meaningfully with their audience, but do so after moving content creation in house.

“Brands will realise fully incorporated, multiplatform editorial strategies. We’ll see brands have full time media rooms, and they’ll do this in house. So what you will see is a talent drain from editorial companies because brands will pay more money for it.”

Creative and media buying will also gradually move in-house, according to Creighton, disrupting media production as we know it.

Wearable technology also featured in his forecast, with the suggestion that content creators will be able to gauge consumer’s physical and emotional reaction via a connected device, enabling them to push out content to stimulate them.

Bonin Bough vice president of global media and consumer engagement Mondelez

The best way to predict the future is to hack it, according to Mondelez’s Bonin Bough, who said that the future of food lies in a so-called “hack economy”, 3D printing and fast prototyping for brands.

He referenced Mondelez’s Oreo cookie vending machine at this year’s SXSW festival, which printed personalised products, and remarked that opportunities around food printing are “humungous”, particularly if they can be combined with delivery to consumers at home.

Utilising the takeaway around fast prototyping from the vending machine Bough stated that all food brands will soon push out and test products at an accelerated rate.

“Companies will be able to create and prototype fast and also generate media for their own products in ways that we’ve never seen before."

Denelle Dixon-Thayer SVP business affairs Mozilla

“We’re going to look for a world where trust is the currency on the web,” stated Mozilla’s SVP business affairs Denelle Dixon-Thayer as users made increasing demands around data privacy and information that they share with companies online.

Dixon-Thayer used the analogy of personal data currently being the football in a football match which has no control as it is kicked around the pitch from player to player.

“What we would like to get to is a place where the user is the referee and makes the rules. They can determine what happens with their data, where their data goes, who gets to access their data and also how much they want to participate in the value exchange.”

She stated that more controls will be developed to empower users and admitted that Mozilla customers often tell the internet giant that they “feel like you hear them but you’re not listening to them”.