This last year, 2009 has been a blast in many ways. Almost every day I’ve received interesting news from friends, other bloggers and my RSS feeds. Even thought we’ve seen one of the most severe economical downturns this year it seems advertising, communication and technology has been the business to be in.

Brands seem to have learned from the history and brand spend has rather gone up than down for a lot of brands. We’ve also seen Twitter and Facebook continue to grown faster than anything else on the planet and social media and open technologies has prospered due to that fact. The iPhone has continued to grow and Android is picking up it’s pace. Google has released lots of new cool products even though the Wave didn’t really become the clean double over head a lot of us expected.

Most brands have been looking for one-offs and as I look back at the 2009 Cannes Lions winners it strikes me that I can’t really remember one single campaign that stood out and changed the world of advertising. We’re slowly moving away from bought space to earned space, this is most certainly the reason why my brain plays these tricks with me.

I’m not gonna spend more of this post summing up 2009. Other people, papers, bloggers and personalities has done a great job doing this already. Instead let’s move on to 2010.

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Here are the Brand and communication predictions for 2010 by Johan Ronnestam

REAL

This is more of a change in how we live, consume, work, advertise and communicate. We will of course use all technology available to become more real but we will strive to make things more realistic, true and touchable. As technology, much thanks to notepads, the iPhone and other portable technologies, becomes a part of our everyday life we will in 2010 look for inspiration in the nature and in life.

Brands will think twice about making up false stories about their brands. Product developers cannot trust advertising to sell their products cause transparency will bring you down. When you launch products or services in 2010 you better provide a true and real value – only then will you prosper.

The more we learn to search and compare products online the less room for multiple copies. We will search for the true branch leader and we will find it. Globalization and ease of localization means we’ll choose the best service or product not the locally produced one.

Open Source Win More Ground

Swapping content management systems from proprietary to open source is becoming socially acceptable among IT professionals. And why wouldn’t it. It’s usually better, more cost effective and more up to date.

Creative Commons have extended their program with Science Commons and CC Learn. We’ve already seen sites like Facebook and New York Times being built upon open source code and databases. Still companies seem reluctant to switch to code being written by a community rather than a company. But when the White House switched to Drupal I think we saw the start of a tsunami.

In 2010 Open Source will prosper and hopefully ever after! Sharing is the way forward!

Cloud Computing Will Spread Like Thunder

Most of you probably already got a large part of your digital life in the cloud. Think about it. All those images you’ve put on Facebook or better yet Flickr. That’s the cloud.

Earlier this year we saw the city of Los Angeles switch to Google Apps. There’s probably tons of more examples that I don’t know of but this is definitely one of the first and largest government adoptions of Googles cloud based Microsoft Office competitor.

Evernote, my personal favorite cloud based notebook, reached 2 million users the other day. Another cloud based service that reached 2 million users earlier this year is Dropbox. I’ve been syncing my files with this little sweetie since 2008. Wired, Mashable, MacWorld and PC Mag have all shouted out loud for this wonderful tool. When they launched their iPhone app this summer they completed my home office.

Practically everyone I know working with digital communication uses cloud based tools like Google Apps, Evernote and Dropbox. Once the mainstream users understand that these tools solve every problem a home user and small company has with backup, sync and office we’ll see people moving into the cloud like skydivers free falling from 15000 feet.

Management Consultants Moving Forward Into The Digital Space

If you’re working within digital advertising or communication you might have heard the rumors. Management Consultants like McKinsey and Accenture have put together digital swat teams who’s primary task is to conquer the business from digital agencies like RGA, AKQA, LBI etc.

Clients all over the world have grown tired listening to traditional digital agencies (yep, they’ve become traditional now) who’s employees aren’t senior enough to consider what good the digital world can do for their business. On top of that I’d say that not even 1% of the worlds traditional advertising agencies knows what they’re talking about when the talk future communication but they still got the Marketing Directors by the balls.

This is where the grey suits sees an opportunity. These guys got the CEO’s and Board Members by the ball and that’s worth more than marketing directors and advertising men & women. Will they do a good job? Some might but lots of them still look at the digital world as a single business area. Internet transforms business not distribute them!

Left somewhere in the middle you’ll have the digital agencies of today. They’re not good enough on communication, they don’t understand business processes and the web is about to shift from front-end to back-end.

Web TV Strikes With Full Force

We’ve only seen the beginning of Internet TV. In 2009 most established networks truly made themselves available online and HULU impressed us all by growing faster than you can say disruption. Personally I was privileged to given the assignment to draw up the strategy and design one of Swedens major TV channels, Kanal 5, web TV presence.

As the year passed we slowly saw iPhone apps being approved that let us consume TV however we want whenever we want. In 2010 however we’ll see the next stage. That’s when the TV manufacturers, just like Samsung already has done, start placing network connections into their screens. Suddenly Internet TV will move into our living room again. In the wake of that we’ll see fantastic mashups and recommendation sites that allows us to actually consume internet TV together. Today it’s to much of an ego product. After all, if we have access to everything from everywhere, who get’s to decide what we should look at tonight?

The downside is obvious. People will spend more time again in the sofa. That leads to stupidity. Stupidity leads to lack of innovation. Lack of innovation leads nowhere.

The happy ones are of course the traditional advertisers since the will start filling those internet TV episodes with advertising. The only problem is they cannot get paid what they want yet so we’ll have to live with tons of more ad breaks.

Twitter Spreads Beyond Early Adopters

This wonderful social networking ‘tool’ is loved by more than 18 million people today. And yet we’re all early adopters. One of the main problem is if course who the hell do you explain such a stupid tool as Twitter to someone? They have to try for themselves. It strikes me that none of my childhood friends that I regularly meet still today have used Twitter. Heck, most of them haven’t even started using Facebook. (did I mention their in the finance business).

But just like Facebook this microblog network will spread beyond early adopters and it’s all about invitations. So far Twitter hasn’t bothered to much about making you invite people. Once the make it simple for us users to invite more people as our followers/friends we’ll see Twitter spread like wildfire. Dare I say 100 million people on Twitter once 2010 is over?

Back End Computing Is The New Front End

Business moving their business online calls for enterprise resource planning software integration. And since those guys from the management side of the internet will start telling brands what to do we can definitely expect more complex websites in terms of how they’re built and integrated into the heart of businesses.

In 2010 we’ll see more companies like SnapLogic solving this by providing middleware. We’ll see less digital agencies earning the trust to build these kind of sites. Building a brand presence in 2010 will be about connecting data not creating cool interfaces.

An Augmented World

Layar, Wikitude, Sekai Camera, Twittaround, Avatars augmented promotion toys, Google Goggles, Mini Print Ads and much more.

Many were the augmented initiatives that started to spread via mobile apps and online campaign sites. So far however we’ve only seen the start of it all. As more people start using these technologies we’ll see widespread uses of augmented technology in 2010. It’s actually so obvious so I thought of not including it. Some of you might say it happened in 2009 but to me we’ve only seen the start of it all.

Apple Launch Their Tablet (iSlate?)

I’ve written about this before. But the amount of rumors circulating the web right now is quite enough to say that something must come soon. Not much more to say than if the rumors turn out to be true then I’ll change my media consumption pattern forever in 2010.

3D Printing Get Noticed By The Masses

During this last year I’ve done more than 50 speaking appearances. I often speak about democratization of technology, content and distribution. One part of that section usually is about 3D printing. You heard it right – 3D printing.

Stuff printed at Shapeways by gifted students The Royal High School of Edinburgh

3D printing is a technology that still is a little bit to expensive to be used at home but the awareness of it will surely spread in 2010. As more people become aware about this we’ll see more innovation. Say 2012. That’s when you’ll download Lego from Pirate Bay.

Mobile Handset Explosion Based On Interests

Android is being spread into more handsets every week. Inside that Open Source platform sits the app store that allows you to basically build whatever apps you like. Cost of technology is falling fast. Platforms like Bugbase and Arduino shows technology is no longer exclusive to large multinational corporations.

In 2010 I think, and hope, that we’ll see the first mobile phone brands that focus on segments. Surf brands, sailing brands, wildlife and so on. The opportunities are fantastic for any strong brand with a tribal-like fan base that would die to get their hands on a mobile hand set that positions themselves alongside their ‘star’.

In 2010 a brand, maybe Nike, will build a phone filled with sweet free apps based on the Android platform.

We’ll Form Social Clusters

Some say Facebook might reach 1 billion users in 2010. What that means for digital branding and communication is hard to say. But one effect of us all moving online is overflow of social information. I love my friends online but when you get swarmed with too much content you start to think about clustering. I’ll keep my snowboarding friends in my snowboarding community. I’ll keep my close friends on Facebook. I’ll keep my social media/communication friends on Twitter. Like that we’ll suddenly see people creating social clusters and brands will have a VERY hard time penetrating those clusters.

Personal recommendations will be higher valued than ever and sadly we’ll also see protectionism much like the one already happening when the early social networkers seem pissed about the fact that other people find these tools.

In 2010 we’ll build walls around our social networks. The days of sharing outside our true followers/friends might be over. I sure hope not! But I’m not optimistic.

A New Global Car Brand Focused On Alternative Fuel

I know. This one might sound pretty stupid. But think again. It’s perfect timing for someone with money, ideas and a great industrial network to launch a brand focused solely on cars driven by alternative fuels. The traditional car brands have spent the last 70 years on perfecting fossil fuel driven cars. Their engines are state of the art and it would be practically impossible for you to compete with that industry…unless…all that competence suddenly isn’t worth jack shit.

Today if you’ve got the right connections you can shop all the technology you want on the market. That engine can be replaced with a huge battery. Wind tunnels are digital. You find 10 industrial designers worth the money on every car mechanic. And the world is craving for innovation. This could of course be done by Tata or any of the Chinese car manufacturers. But I think there’s tons of advantages to start ‘clean’. Please let us drive something new in 2010!

Swedens First Digital Election

And to put this post to an end. In Sweden we have our election coming up in 2010. Damn – the net will be swarmed with Barack Obama wannabees. And I’m not sure they will benefit from it. One tip to all you political parties – read my first prediction – STAY REAL!

Well. Then there’s really nothing left for me but to wish you all a HAPPY NEW YEAR! See you in 2010!

I’ve always wanted to write a book. This is NOT it!
So far this year my blog have had more than 115 000 unique visitors and just over 240 000 visits. I’ve written more than 500 blog posts covering everything from design, gadgets, trends, technology, advertising, innovations, personal things, branding and more.

About 28% of the visitors during this last year have ended up reading a post that was tagged with branding. That’s probably not a coincidence since besides trends and creativity I’d say branding is the subject that is the most dearest to me.

When I’ve been looking deeper down into the stats I’ve seen that many of you visitors haven’t really explored my blog beyond the posts on the first page or the actual post you came to read. This is why I thought it made sense to gather them all like this – ‘Top 10 Blog Posts on Future Branding and Communication From Ronnestam.com’ - My first book.

A Book, MashUp, PDF or Whatever You Wanna Call It By Johan Ronnestam

Even though this isn’t actually what I would call a book it’s been the perfect opportunity for me to experiment with the production process of a book. I’ve put a big block in my calendar covering January, February and March and if everything goes right I will present my ‘real’ book sometime in April or May next year. It will be a book on how to integrate future communication with product and service development. One things for sure – I’m doing it on my own. But for now you have to do with this first book, mashup, pdf or whatever you wanna call it.

4 Ways to get your hands on Top 10 Blog Posts on Future Branding and Communication From Ronnestam.com With Love

1. Buy a signed copy of the printed book – 39€ including shipping world wide.

I’ve printed 150 books in Denmark at Norhaven. Out of those 150 I’m giving 50 signed copies away to the first 50 Twitter retweets of this post (if you live outside Sweden you have to pay for the shipping). If you wanna get your hand on one of the other 100 signed ones you either hope to get one at one of my speaking occasions during 2010 or you contact me to buy one for €39 including shipping costs.

2. Download the PDF for free (pay by linking or tweeting this blog post)

Here’s the PDF if you wanna download it and read it off your screen (lower resolution due to file size) or maybe print it yourselves. Like everything else on my blog it’s licensed under my Creative Commons license.

3. Read it on Slideshare or Scribd

Head over to Slideshare or Scribd, it’s your choice. But remember to spread the love and tweet the book.

4. Read each and every blog post here at Ronnestam.com

This is of course the simplest and fastest way. Get going below and if you like it tweet it!

Blog Post 1 – { Originally Posted October 7, 2009 }
All Your Brands Are Belong To Us

Blog Post 2 – { Originally Posted October 7, 2009 }
If you wanna get some brand love tomorrow you better get into the conversation today

Blog Post 3 – { Originally Posted September 26, 2009 }
Dear CEO’s, Board Members and Top Management – what’s more important? Wine or Change?

Blog Post 4 – { Originally Posted February 18, 2009 }
Let’s start a revolution – get of the boat and build yourselves a new brand transportation system.

Blog Post 5 – { Originally Posted February 1, 2009 }
Controlling your brand with creative excellence

Blog Post 6 – { Originally Posted August 25, 2009 }
Seduce us or excuse us – 11 ways to bring your brand up to date

Blog Post 7 – { Originally Posted January 2, 2009 }
Get your clown suit ready if you wanna reach out to consumers in 2009

Blog Post 8 – { Originally Posted March 4, 2009 }
WWRD – 36 things Ronnestam would do differently if he had control of brand that delivered broadband, telecom and television services

Blog Post 9 – { Originally Posted September 8, 2009 }
Why SAAB, Volvo, Ford, BMW, Volkswagen, Mercedes, Peugeot, AUDI, Chevrolet, Buick and the rest of the car industry should the adopt the iPhone model and develop the InCar OS

Blog Post 10 – { Originally Posted December 29, 2008 }
Brand and communication predictions for ?2009 by Johan Ronnestam

ps. At the moment I’m trying hard to finalise my predictions for 2010. Keep a look out for that.

Happy New Year!

Obviously we’re not really there yet. But this spoof gives us a pretty good idea where technology is heading. On top of that I’m getting a smile for free! You will too.

Last year, inspired by ReadWriteWeb I stuck my nose out and tried to predict what 2008 would bring us in terms of trends, technology, communication and ideas. About 70% of my thoughts were confirmed but I of course missed out on some too.

2008 is coming to an end and it’s time for me to let that poor nose of mine feel the heat again. 2009 is harder to predict than ever since we have a free falling economy in the world at the moment. How will smaller budgets effect advertising, investments in technology, self confidence and personal evolvement? Hell if I knew, but here are some ideas.

Here are 9 things/trends I believe you should look out for and possibly follow in 2009

1. Technology becomes a commodity and ideas prosper from it
Open Source in combination with broadband access in low cost producing countries will make companies move their technology projects outside their local markets. Companies that earn money from building content management, blogs, communities and other common systems have to move their competence from production towards ideas. Cause after all, who will pay €100 000 for a content management system when you can get Typo3, Magento, WordPress, Pligg, Joomla, Drupal and other excellent systems for free. On top of that, have people in India bidding for it and you’ll end up paying $600 instead of $60 000 for the implementation of it.

Making it do the right thing and look right, that’s something we wont oursource just yet. So, bet on ideas and brains.

2. In 2009 print and outdoor advertising grow stronger while TV continues to die.
Analysts, brands and media agencies all say people move money from traditional advertising to digital. Personally I believe glossy magazines and outdoor locations close to standing still environments (bus-stops, squares, subways etc) will grow. These are locations where people cannot leave.

Solutions however will be far more customized than today and we’ll focus on fewer but better placements.

3. Communication Capitalism is born in 2009
We’ll see more and more brands moving from the strategy of putting it all on one card to campaign experimentation.
More brands than ever will in 2009 dare to loose control of their communication and try multiple campaigns beside each other. The ones that deliver on target will be feeded more money, the ones that doesn’t deliver are killed and new ones are born. Exactly like you would treat your stock portfolio – don’t put everything on one card.

In 2008 I started to call this strategy Communication Capitalism and it’s time for you to do that too cause in 2009 it’ll kick off.

4. Online advertising suffers from lack of competence and will slow down in 2009 for the first time in years
Lots of brands have now tried different strategies for online advertising. While doing so they’ve gotten better at measuring their campaigns and the results doesn’t meet expectations. Flash campaigns with full screen video doesn’t give shit. Banners keep on loosing click rate. RSS feeds are great but how do you place advertising that people see inside it? Facebook advertising didn’t deliver. Adwords is kinda of nice but where’s the branding?

On top of this the media companies doesn’t know jack shit about what’s going on. The digital agencies produce fantastic campaigns but there’s not enough senior employees to choose communication over cool technologies. Over at the brand side the competence on digital media is in generally low and the marketing directors has to choose a communication partner. Today that partner is the traditional advertising agency mostly because of their senior employees. The problem here is that they don’t understand the digital medium – and that’s a disaster for the brands and their communication efforts.

To sum of the problem.

• There’s just not enough senior people in the world that really understand how to combine traditional and digital communication.
• This means agencies, brands and media advisors continue to suggest the wrong things.

Result: Brands will pull out of online activities due to it.

5. SEO / SEM freelancers organize themselves
If you’re looking for people that truly understands SEO/SEM marketing you choice shouldn’t be a media agency or any other company for that sake. Most people out there that truly understands SEO/SEM are individuals or very small companies. The problem however for big brands is that these individuals or companies cannot cater for their needs, their basically too small.

In order for SEO/SEM to kick off we really need to see some sort of network that can bring all these great brains together but still let them run their own companies. Media companies are all about taking over everything. These SEO/SEM newcomers are all about networking and sharing so sooner or later something like this should come.

6. Apple launches the iPhone Pro and starts selling iPhone and rate plans in iTunes.
After winning the hearts of millions around the world it’s time for Apple to launch the second generation iPhones and I believe it’ll be a Pro version of the iPhone.

We’ll see better memory capacity, more space, better keyboard, maybe even a bigger flip out screen of some kind. On top of this they’ll use the magic bullet gained by cooperating with different operators in every country world wide. They’ve more or less gotten them all to pay for the iTunes implementation and now the exclusive deals are starting to run out. Haha says Apple as they will start selling iPhones in computer shops and sell the rate plans online.

(Rumors say that Apple will launch the iPhone Nano but I just thought it was boring to go with that one)

(Update: While I was writing this part, rumors started to spread about an iPhone Pro as well)

7. Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect continue to grow but Friendfeed Friends might be the winner in 2009
During the later part of 2008 we’ve seen how Facebook and Google has moved their positions forward to grab a larger part of the social networking cake. In the background however lurks Friendfeed. It’s quickly growing and the people that use Facebook Connect of Google Friend Connect would probably welcome a social connector from someone else than the big ones and use that one more. Friendfeed could and will be that third party.

Why not call it Friendfeed Friends?

8. Branding is being reevaluated in 2009
Digital communication is totally revamping the landscape of telling people about your brand. The base of brand strategies will remain the same but the tactical part of it – treatment of logotypes, typefaces, colors, graphical guidelines and who officially represent a brand will change.

In 2009 we’ll se more brand than ever that let their corporate guidelines loose and start experimenting. As more and more brand activities get digitized brands will learn that it’s not about the graphical guidelines but instead about keeping the conversation alive. 

In 2009 branding becomes being a personality and personalities change constantly but their heart and spine stay the same. You might say that this is not something new but until now most brands believe their brand manual is the guide to heaven when it’s actually the guide to hell. In 2009 this old fashioned way of communicating your brand will change.

9. Mashups grow up and conquer the corporate world.
This year we’ve seen how a lot of sites turned into mashups.

A mashup is about creating one place where visitors can view content from sources like YouTube, Flickr, Del.icio.us, Twitter, Facebook and much more.

Until now most of the good mashup sites has been personal websites or web 2.0 companies. In 2009 we’ll see how large brands like Nike, Diesel, adidas, Apple, Coca Cola, Disney, GM, Puma, Ikea, Samsung, Absolut and more will turn their websites into mashups.

All kind of brands will see the benefit of not hosting your videos inhouse but instead creating channels on multimple social video platforms. Your images will be better spread if placed on Flickr. That corporate blog of yours works better if it’s running on WordPress and mashed into your and your partners websites. Sites like Yahoo Pipes and Tarpipe will do wonders for the social spread and suddenly you find your brand site being turned into a true web 2.0 entity.

So, there we are. Nothing else to do this year now but wishing you all a happy new year. May 2009 be as interesting as this year has been.

See you next year – Johan Ronnestam