Why Brands Need To Get Out In the Real World

The year has barely begun but already there seems to be friction at every turn in the physical world, or online where humanity continues to turn for interaction and information.

However, there are signs of push back according to findings within Accenture's latest annual Life Trends report, now in its 18th year.

According to the report, people are beginning to rebalance their behaviours and priorities as issues with technology entering every part of their lives throws up questions. This growing trend is another that marketers should be aware of as they produce and distribute brand communications and an increasing rate. They will also find their product claims and values are potentially questioned as trust is hampered through digital media.

Outlined within the report are five themes based on its findings:

• Cost of Hesitations that outlines the avalanche of digital content being produced continually and the deception taking place across a large part of it, causing people to stop and consider whether they can trust what they see and hear more.
  

• The Parent Trap focusing on how people aim to protect younger people from the dangers they face from their relationship with tech.

• Impatience Economy explores how people seek out fast solutions to solve their problems in life.

• The Dignity of Work outlines the rising tensions that are being faced as business, technological and human trends collide due to the growth of digital technology, and a growing hesitancy to trust and embrace them.

• And that hesitation has influenced Social Rewilding, a movement that sees people yearn for more simplicity while textually engaging with their environments and seeking out meaningful connections with one another.

Discussing some of the report's findings and what they might mean for marketers and brands is co-author Katie Burke, global thought leadership lead for Accenture Song.

Creative Salon: What were the key behaviours that stood out for you from putting this research together?

Katie Burke: It's more of a need for control and autonomy over our lives, and that's very human. But the way technology has continued to accelerate, there's been this push into a need to start wrapping our lives around the tech as it changes. What that's caused is a friction, and in certain cases, we've done it, but we're pulling back because it's just not working for us overall. That's one of those bigger things I call pendulums swinging. We're seeing people push back against technology. Maybe it's gotten too much into the things that matter, and then certain places, they're really embracing it. So I think that this whole concept of it's moving fast but we're going to do what helps navigate our lives in the best way for us is just the dominant behavior that we see. It's still about us, even though this is changing quite rapidly.

CS: The fear that everyone has, is that technology is moving so fast and... replacing humanity. You can see why that fear is still there, but there does now seem to be a pushback against that to say, “No, these things will not work without the input of people.’ Is that a message that coming out in what you're seeing?

KB: We do see that in one of our trends, called ‘The Cost of Hesitation’ and with the pace of AI, for example, it is changing fast. We do have what I would call ‘utopian visions’ from the tech leaders that are out there painting a future and people are trying to understand if that's the future that we want. And that question is something that marketers have to hang on to because this is what's coming at us. It doesn't mean this is what we want. And so that, again, it is a friction of where will it land? We have got to find the right balance. Do we want a world where we can't trust anything we see if everything is not real or generated? What does that make us feel as humans? To me, we are going to be uncovering that for the foreseeable future, and that balance is in the middle because if you're a marketer, the biggest thing you want is for your customers to trust your brand, and trust is really at the heart of it. So, I do believe that we're seeing people trying to make sure they're in control of the situation, and it's not just happening to them.

CS: Trust uniformly is a core problem. Many people don't know what to trust and where to look for sources of accuracy. Brands are going to struggle with that as well. What have you seen in terms of how marketers are responding to that and how technology can help them?

KB: Our third trend is called ‘The Impatience Economy’ - there's something fascinating with that trend which is highlighting the power of the influencer who is helping navigate very big life decisions. It's not just the message, it's the relevancy of a human who empathises with you, or that content is connecting on an emotional level and you feel either validated or you feel relevant, you feel heard.

What's most surprising is that humans are looking at other humans for sources of trust because they don't believe much else, and that's very powerful. If you think about it, from just community platforms like Reddit for example, and you look at how people will search using ‘Reddit’, just to pull up what real humans are responding to. Or they'll look at the social platforms or video content on anything, whether it's fixing an appliance, making financial decisions, or even a health diagnosis. A lot of that's happening because they feel heard. There's something very human to human and I think you juxtapose that with where we think we're heading, where we think consumers are traditionally learning about these types of navigations of their lives.

To me, whether it's a banking organisation that believes that people are learning about all their finance needs from their website? We need to be realistic that they're actually learning about it beyond the brand, and that's an acquisition angle for me - being relevant is happening way up the funnel in social channels because that's where people are learning. It's not just for marketing, it's for learning. I find that the most interesting place where trust is emerging which is through other people.

CS: Does producing 'How to' videos on social channels to support consumers improve trust for brands?

KB: That might be down to the convenience of finding the answer and how quick you can get it, and what's the place to go, Traditionally, for the sake of a maintenance issue for example, it's really hard to go through the manuals, or the manuals that have been turned into an FAQ or a chatbot, versus just some guy who tells me how to fix it so I don't have to spend a bunch of money. There's always that kind of dynamic. And I think that brand or not, people are just getting on with it while not often thinking about the brand. They just want their purchase to work right.

CS: With so much content across social channels, and the growth of Gen AI adoption, we’re only going to see even more brand communications produced. How might that affect consumer awareness, as well as trust or engagement?

KB: I will flip this just a bit to say I think it's going to pose a volume question overall in things, not just content from a brand perspective, it's more and more of everything. The algorithms that distribute content and show the content to us in our experiences are going to have to work harder. Getting that balance right is important, but then it's also an intermediary that we're all very aware of now, there's an algorithm there that's filtering and suggesting content.

That's one side that people are realising, that the algorithm is a thing now. But then it's also just the sheer volume of processes it might break. Look at recruiting for example. We had a job posting that that had only been posted for two days - 700 applications came in. A majority of those were AI-generated. So, the question then is, if this process is not going to work anymore, because that's the traditional way to do it, if that doesn't work, well, what will people do? And part of my hypothesis from the research, from ‘Social Rewilding’ is they'll go back to human-to-human networking. We're in a state of flux because the volume for anything is going to test the limits of the integrity of the process.

CS: What surprised you most while producing the report?

KB: What surprised me the most is how fast people are pushing the technology narrative without regard to humans within the equation. It's just the AI, not that it's a bad thing. There are going to be some fantastic cases, but if we assume that all content will be AI do we think humans will accept that we haven't asked? I mean, we've started to see some of it. We haven't asked the ethical questions overall. And I do think that there are a lot of people who do care about the ethical questions of this.

This is not some type of new technology that's a tool to get your job done, like a camera, or something like that. You're talking about a technology that's really been made without consent from a lot of the people who are putting content out there. The consent piece is very ethical for people, and it does matter. We're in a phase where we're trying to figure out right and wrong. Good for business, good for humans - that kind of dynamics are polarities and we have to figure out how we're balancing those things.

I think that's the biggest surprise - that the human is a very big part of this equation. I call it the pendulum swinging on some of this stuff. It's going to come at you. They're getting back out in the real world and they're finding ways to navigate their lives, whether it's meeting people through running clubs, or meeting people through something in real life that feels a bit more real and tangible. Watch human behaviour, that’s all I'm saying. I think that it's not a done deal that this is going to change all of humanity overall. I think humans will have a big say in this.