‘Tweet me Up’
This morning I went to the presentation “Tweet me Up” of Ubercool trend watcher Michael Tchong. Organized by HSMAI Curacao. Michael Tchong shared his vision on future trends.
(Michael Tchong is the founder of Ubercool Inc. and a trend tracking inspirational speaker who helps transform audiences worldwide. As the founder of five startups, he helped pioneer such sweeping changes as desktop publishing, personal information management, internet research and online marketing).
Uber trends
In the fully packed convention room at the Hyatt Regency hotel, Tchong states: “There are trends and there are Ubertrends”. These Ubertrends change values. He started his presentation with the trend that by the year 2050 we will marry robots??. Everybody was laughing about it but at the end of the presentation, the reality of this trend sank in.
We spend more time on our computer than we spend on our spouse. We are addicted to updates. Our laptop has a nickname and we talk about it as if it is human, because of that we make it fashionable with designs. The time we use on social media is higher than we spend on e-mail. (4,6 hours on social media & 4,4 hours on e-mail). 200 million people play games on social networks. Something Tchong refers to as ‘SocialNOTworking’. And who doesn’t put his mobile device near his bedside when you go to sleep……….
No Social manners
All of this changes the way we interact and so do our values. If we don’t respond to one of our friends within a few hours this is regarded as having no social manners! So what do we do? We are willing to risk our lives by driving while texting. (35% of American does DWT). We want to do everything and it should not take too much time. You can see this in the text language. As an example, Tchong mentioned the word OKAY, in texting it became OK en nowadays it’s just a K because it takes less time. This is of no importance if you send 1 or 2 text messages a day, but this will be if you are an American teen that sends about 3.000 messages per month.
We sleep 2 hours less than we did in 1920, to compensate we use coffee or energy drinks. Will this create a coffee bar on every corner? Everything should go fast we don’t have time for activities that take a lot of time. Golfing f.i. dropped with 7,3%. Nobody has time anymore for 18 holes, 3 may be an option?
We are also unwired, GPS helps us to find the best places in the city’s we’ve never been to. This leads to location-aware marketing (creating access to local businesses). Because we have little time we love order-tracking. Where is my order? when can I expect it? This will create complete new services: Think about Room service tracking in Tourism. “When will my order arrive at my room, so I can be representable?” Because people have less and less time, people will combine leisure/vacation with work or read vacation with work, to save time. Give them unexpected customer services. Save them time!
Tchong: “SAVE me TIME = the new luxury”.
Save me Time is the trend!!!! I wonder if this realistic for Curacao? What do we need to change to save the customer or future tourist time? How do we give them this luxury??
