Insights in this issue:
* TRENDS IN 2008

Welcome to 2008, we thought it would be
helpful to give you our considered take on
what will be hot in 2008 and what won't,
where you will get a worthwhile return for
your efforts and where you won't and what
dangers to watch out for.

We all very much hope you have a great
2008, we will be doing our best to keep you
informed and hopefully entertained during the
year!

James Pearson - Editor

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
TRENDS IN 2008

1) Personal data paranoia

After last year's horrors related to data loss
you could be forgiven for thinking that
things would quieten down in 2008 - but no.
Lloyds TSB has sent a letter to some of its
customers warning them that their personal
data was available on a website as a result
of the customers' PCs being infected with a
Trojan. Unfortunately for poor old Lloyds,
one of the people they sent the letter to was
an IT Director who then proceeded to try to
get more information out of Lloyds - to no
avail. So he then complained to the
Information Commisioner and reported the
whole debacle to Computer Weekly. Which goes
to prove that where data privacy is concerned
2008 is the year where "only the paranoid
will survive". The solution is to put a much
greater emphasis on security - for example
you are likely to see websites collecting

personal data use SSL encryption. And expect
PayPal to roll out their
token-based security far more aggressively in
the UK.

2) Web 2.0

Web 2.0, or the semantic web or the
user-generated content web (choose your
favourite term) will be quietly dropped as
businesses and consumers recognize the
inherent risks of a) linking web systems
together and b) telling the whole world about
yourself. If Web 2.0 becomes anything, it
will become the home of web applications that
will work well on a mobile phone. As more and
more phones adopt the format of the iphone,
why would you need a big, heavy laptop or
clunky PDA?

3) The death of print media

Rumours of the death of print have been
greatly exaggerated to mis-quote Clarence
Clemens. 2008 will be the year where
newspapers gain ground against the onslaught
of web and other ephemeral news media. This
will be driven by greater than ever mis-trust
in the Web caused by 1) above and news
organisations finally investing more in
journalists than in the technology to render
the pages of their web-sites. If you want
proof, take a look at any commuter train.
There you'll find 100 people reading papers
for every 1 surfing the web on either a
laptop or a mobile phone.

4) Terrestrial TV's renaissance

TV too will make a strong comeback. As the
Xmas viewing figures showed, good content can
generate massive viewing figures for the main
UK channels that soundly beats the
unremitting US re-runs on 95% of the
satellite channels. Add in the fact that ITV
will have to write off its plans to bolster
its summer schedule with the European
Championships, thanks to the united stand
taken by the British Isles nations NOT to
qualify, and it could be that 2008 marks the
year that TV viewers return to ITV.

5) The rise and rise of Apple

The iPhone, despite the legion of naysayers
will become the default mobile phone choice.
Others will rush to ape its interface but
will not only fail to come up with anything
quite as brilliant, they will legitimize
Apple's approach. As a result Apple will move
into more areas of consumer electronics
because it understands, like no other
company, how to build intuitive products that
are, of themselves, a complete solution to a
complex problem.

6) Direct Mail nosedives

The meltdown in the financial services sector
will have one major impact - it will
dramatically reduce the volumes of junk mail
received by every home. The reason will be
that soaring refusal rates on new credit
applications will make the scattergun nature
of so much financial marketing very much
harder to justify. And the reduction in
marketing budgets will enforce a change in
behaviour from "economy of scale marketing"
to "effectiveness of result marketing" The
result will be a dramatic drop in Direct Mail
volumes. And, as other sectors see the
results of this change it will begin to
permeate the entire Direct Marketing sector -
driven, as with Formula 1's problems, by ever
greater environmental awareness.