It’s very important for businesses and organisations around the globe to stay on top of the rapidly changing trends that will arise in 2020. No one can predict them 100% accurately beforehand so staying active and current is a difficult task. Trends help companies understand what their consumers are interested in and talking about. On average, for a trend on social media to reach the top ten ‘hashtags’ on Twitter, it needs to gain more than 112,000 tweets and to reach the top spot around 263,000 tweets. From these numbers, you can see that trends are so important for companies to lock on to just for the sheer numbers in potential engagement that could result for the company.
Obviously, trends vary for different businesses as they need to focus on how the trends relate to their products. As a Visual communications company for some of the UK’s biggest brands, Tailwind Group needs to stay on top of the media trends in 2020 to bring creative but also current themes to our visual content. These can be trends with editing techniques or equipment that we use to shoot the projects. This also extends into methods of delivery, platforms for hosting, audience viewing platforms and finally how we expect viewers to consume the content.
The styles within editing are changing swiftly and can make a video feel outdated if older, less ‘experimental’ techniques are used. Therefore, editors and content creators need to be on top of their game, testing out new editing approaches and watching content from leading YouTube/ Vimeo creators to see what could be the next new technique such as the ‘Sam Kolder’ Zoom transition or the slow quick method to show progression through a scene without cutting. These are both relatively simple editing methods but have been trending in recent months.
The equipment that Tailwind Group utilizes can also follow trends with new technology becoming more popular and easily accessible such as shooting in 4/6/8k, aerial drones, 360 cams and VR. The trends can explode in popularity and then fizzle out quickly such as 3D or curved TV’s. It’s important for us to research and weigh up new equipment against the trends to make sure we don’t purchase equipment that will soon become obsolete but still stay at the forefront of technology that we can offer our clients.
Next on the list is method delivery. There are many platforms in which businesses can deliver content to their audience. Websites like WeTransfer, Google Drive and Dropbox are all popular ways in which to do so. However, video hosting sites such as Vimeo have creative feedback capabilities so that the client can use timestamps to add comments on to the video which is being privately hosted. This is a much easier and more professional way of giving feedback to content creator. But with technology being so accessible and quick changing, 2020 will bring many more options that both producers and consumers will prefer over current options.
Tailwind Group’s clients need to plan ahead for which platforms they want to produce content for. Whether that is social media, TV, streaming services or print, the platforms in which content is viewed on can make a huge difference in the format it is output in and received. We always encourage this in our initial meetings.
For example, HubSpot says that Mobile video consumption rises by 100% every year and YouTube say that 1 Billion hours of video content are watched every day on their site. With these numbers in viewership, it would seem smart to create content or adverts that are formatted for YouTube.
These stats show that consumption on TV is no longer the most popular way of consuming media. However, with the rise of Netflix and Amazon Prime which can be streamed to TV, they have had to adapt, and smart TV’s have been the result. So traditional TV channels such as The BBC and ITV will have to change their tactics in order to keep their audience retention. In this case, Mobile phones seem to be the most popular platform for video content consumption. These TV channels have created catch-up and on demand apps to keep the viewers with them on their mobile phones which is perfect for on the go.
How will this change in 2020? Just like BBC 3 turning to only online content maybe the other stations will follow suit. This way content can be viewed anywhere but also streamed to a television if someone wants to watch ‘Live’ TV. More importantly, BBC and ITV have created a joint vision for a Netflix style streaming service called ‘Britbox’. This in turn starts to give them power back over the content that is available and streamed.
With new popularity in Facebook live or Instagram TV, content will have to be produced in a portrait orientation for it to work with these giant content streaming platforms. In 2016, searches for Facebook Live increased by 330% in just one year. This form of content is easy to access for the consumer as there are no extra apps that are needed to be downloaded. They can also be watched anywhere like on a train or a bus into work. There are possibilities that these apps could hit new records of users and engagement or there could be a brand-new content app that takes the world by storm.
Finally, the way in which viewers consume the product is changing. There are now two opposite ends of the scale: Consumers with very little free time and consumers with a large amount of free time. With the popularity of streaming services, Netflix says that the average time for a user to watch the full fifth season of Breaking Bad which is 16 episodes long, is 4 days. If Breaking bad was released on standard tv with an episode a week, this would have taken 16 weeks to watch the same amount of content.
However, not everybody has the time to binge watch content at that sort of tempo. With lives getting busier and commute times rising, short form content could be better for those with less time on their hands. This brings us back to the viewer and how they consume content. Could there be a brand-new piece of tech in 2020 that allows users to watch more content in ways they haven’t before? We will have to wait and see.
In conclusion, trends year on year don’t change dramatically for the most part, but generally one trend takes off in the media world that changes the game and how we create and consume content.