Digital Prophet Shingy Shares 2024’s Top Market Trends
Simplified AI, Automation, Affinity, and More Will Take Center Stage This Year
David Shing, known in the marketing and advertising world as Shingy, is an Australian futurist, speaker, and strategic consultant. His career has taken him to agencies and major media companies, including Oath, AOL, and Verizon. Dubbed “a Digital Prophet” early in his career for his ability to see what was coming next, Shingy continues to be known by this provocative moniker. His passion lies in educating major brands on the opportunities presented by emerging digital, social, and mobile technologies, making him a sought-after visionary in the industry. In addition to his many presentations and speeches, Shingy has his own brand consultancy.
The Continuum caught up with Shingy right after he had presented a Keynote at CES (with Paris Hilton and Shelly Palmer) about the future of content, AI, and commerce and right before he went to Mexico to talk all things transformation with six leading retail brands.
After a brief conversation about his background, we asked Shingy to be our Digital Prophet and offer his advice and observations to The Continuum audience.
You’ve had such an exciting and varied career; can you give us the elevator version on how you got started?
I studied design and am a detail-oriented creative at heart. In my early 20s, I helped invent some internet technologies that moved me to America. And then after a few years in startup land, somebody who used to work for me offered me the opportunity to help launch AOL in eleven countries. That's where I got into the mega media, mega marketing world, focused on understanding the needs and behaviors of consumers. I found that I was working for a company that had a compelling audience size but not a compelling brand, which led to us rebooting the brand.
As part of that, I needed to be able to talk about the brand and essentially about digital marketing differently. That’s when I started talking about digital trends and when I got labeled the “Digital Prophet” by my boss, Tim Armstrong. The industry just needed some creativity because we had started and still are going down a road of programmatic only ads, and that’s what I tried to add.
That nickname has definitely stuck. What does being a Digital Prophet mean today?
I like how Forbes described me as an “Artist, globetrotting speaker, and market seeker, a storyteller who identifies emerging trends and inspires clients to think differently.” Unearthing the essence of trends, brands, and people’s self-knowledge is my great passion.
Throughout my career, I have been privileged to identify intriguing trends and share what I believed was going to happen with influential audiences. And some of these forecasts, you know, came to pass. People still come up to me and say, “I saw you present ten years ago, and what you said back then, I thought, you're crazy. But you were absolutely right.”
That’s happened a few times recently, actually, and it's been really nice.
“Omnichannel is important for brands to understand. It’s not like a series of TV ads, and you're done, or a TV series or radio ads, and you're done. It's all of these things coming together to reinforce different elements.”
What are some of the trends you predicted?
I predicted the friend unfollowing trend and the move to make personal networks more private. I talked about the consumer as a critic, curator, and creator rather than just someone who takes in what brands throw at them, which is how they were looked at for a long time. About ten years ago, I started talking about how the fourth industrial revolution will be powered by artificial intelligence.
I spend a lot of time speaking, which is fun. My brand consultancy allows me to do the deep work with clients, facilitating intensive personal development. I go from big audiences of 2,000 or 3,000 to audiences of one who desire help in understanding their own unique brand essence and how this plays across the future landscape.
Recently, I’ve been working with brands to streamline their teams moving forward. We clean up the extraneous messaging on the fringes. When they step back, they often realize that they need to retool and retrain their teams to be more specifically themselves.
So, I get to go from large stages where I’m inspiring and educating to the next layer down, which is focused on the doing and being modes. Rebooting essential understandings, making sure that we're answering the strategic questions, helping brands support their fundamental vision and values, and not muddling that precious clarity is the aim.
Would you be our Digital Prophet for 2024 and share your advice and observations for brands going into this new year?
Sure, I’d love that.
Here is some of what Shingy had to tell us:
Advice to Brands
Move Past Omnichannel by Developing an Ecosystem.
We come from this tradition of having multi-channel communications with consumers. Multi-channel, as in TV ads, radio ads, direct response, direct mail, social companies, social communications, entertainment, and communication. We talk to consumers in different places, but none of these things happen in harmony with the needs of a consumer.
Omnichannel, which is what brands have been talking about for a few years now, is the ability for each one of those channels to talk to each other. Let’s say I'm getting off a plane. I'm waiting for my bag to come off the carousel, and I see an outdoor display that talks about the values of this brand, but when I get into the taxi, and I hear an ad on the radio or on a podcast, it might describe the next part of the story. Then I jump on social, and another ad tells yet another part of the brand story. Now, it actually starts to connect.
Omnichannel is important for brands to understand. It’s not like a series of TV ads, and you're done, or a TV series or radio ads, and you're done. It's all of these things coming together to reinforce different elements.
But if brands really want to make this work, they have to start thinking of them not as different channels but as one ecosystem. These channels haven’t talked to each other previously because you've got different agencies doing different things. All of these agencies have their own agenda. And even with the brand setting an overall agenda, it often doesn't play in the symphony, and the harmony doesn't come across as being harmonious.
I don’t know where this music analogy came from, but to keep it going, it’s not enough to have all the players in the orchestra playing the same song. What if we have to change genres? Meaning, the first thing in the morning, it's classical, but at night, it's rock and roll. Can we do that so that we are meeting consumers’ ever-changing needs? That’s an ecosystem.
When Developing Content, Pay Attention To Context.
Content is not king or queen. Context is. Producing content at the speed of culture is incredibly difficult to do. I come back to the ecosystem. If they don't know what they're putting out there or who it’s for, brands are going to fatigue out. To do it smartly, brands need to think about context.
There are only three ways you can produce content: that's sight, sound, and motion. And really, what you're trying to do is drive emotion. Because we know that to have brand affinity and brand love, consumers have to feel emotionally connected to that brand. Younger audiences are growing up in this world where they want to have more brand affinity.
There are also only three things your brand can give them: inspiration, education, and entertainment. That's it, and if you can produce incredibly engaging experiences across those three lenses – you stand a chance of them loving your brand.
“We don’t need 100 AI tools. We need three tools with great interfaces on top of them. Otherwise, AI becomes a totally different programming language that I don’t want to learn.”
Focus On Brand Feel.
The biggest thing for me is the brand feel. How does it sound? What does it look like? In the real world, we understand what this means.
If you and I jump in a car today and close the door, we will immediately know whether we feel like we're in an economy car or in a premium luxury car. We’d know from the smell of the leather and the feel of the car.
I don't necessarily get that from a lot of brands today. They're producing content at the speed of culture, but they're not doing it in a way that brings this kind of emotion. If someone wants to just see this brand or just hear this brand, they won’t get a sense of the quality of the brand. It’s esoteric, but it's definitely important.
Look For Active Engagement On Social.
Most brands have outsourced their vibe to Facebook and Instagram. And, worse, they don’t own their audience. Sure, the brand decides what to put on Facebook, but they keep driving people back to Facebook or Instagram instead of to their own channels. It’s like they’re a cast member inside someone else’s show. But if Facebook goes away tomorrow, they don’t own that brand story.
Brands can’t just jump onto something like TikTok that they don’t really understand because they won’t do a good job of telling their brand story. If you're going to participate in these platforms, you have to answer a lot of questions: Why are you on this platform? Why should somebody care about your brand on this platform? What is it that you're trying to achieve out of the engagement or participation on this platform? How do you value that?
Yes, there are advertising opportunities around these platforms, but that's not engagement. That's passive. Brands should be looking for active engagement.
You also need the element of surprise; in fact, it’s the most important ingredient. Can you either make people laugh or cry in such a way that they're like, “Wow, that's so surprising from this brand? I'm going to share this with all my friends.”
Shares might be the largest KPI that a brand should look for, and the second largest KPI would be comments. Because if I'm looking to glean people's actual relationship with my brand, I would want to know what they say about it.
Fight Back Against Ad Blocking.
I will say the biggest elephant in the room is ad blocking. When I stand in front of these large audiences and ask who has an ad blocker, more and more hands are shooting up, and the audience that’s admitting it is getting younger and younger. People are blocking ads and making their Instagram private because the ad formats haven't evolved, and advertising hasn't kept up with the speed of people's evolution of brand affinity.
We have some catching up to do. Brands are going to have to create a different relationship to push through that. It will have to be very authentic so that people don't want to block you.
Brand Over Time Is Still More Important Than Sales Overnight.
There are many techniques to get sales overnight. That's performance-based marketing. We've all grown up with it. It’s “buy one, get one free.” It's “we bought these metrics for 90 days.” But the truth is if consumers want to know if a brand is as valuable as a brand, the first thing they run to is a story. That’s great because we get to start with “Once upon a time.” Most brand stories are typically quite remarkable (though they’re often told terribly).
“There will always be human curation, even if you use AI to do a ton of creation and editing work (which you should be doing).”
Trends to Watch
If It Can Be Automated, It Will Be Automated.
I'm a classically trained graphic designer, and I am the last generation trained in that tradition. By the time the next school came in, it was all computers. I grew up in a world where we had typesetting, Pantone squeaky markers, and entire industries built around these tools. Then this new thing called desktop publishing came along, and everyone had an inkjet printer at their desk, and people said to me, “Your career is dead.”
Yes, the industry took a dive for a while because people freaked out, but look at today and answer me this: “Is design a dead industry?” No, absolutely not. The number one thing people need is taste and style.
If it can be automated, it will be automated, but when people come to me panicked, I say, “Calm down.” AI is a set of tools that can help us with our efficiency so people can spend time doing the human traits of coming up with better solutions and better creativity.
What We Need Going Forward Are Good, Simple Tools For Using AI.
We don’t need 100 AI tools. We need three tools with great interfaces on top of them. Otherwise, AI becomes a totally different programming language that I don’t want to learn.
Thinking back to desktop publishing, Quark got too hard, so they launched QuarkXPress, but when that got too hard, we got InDesign and now Canva. It’s going to be all about tools that have great interfaces that people can understand so they don’t feel like they've missed the memo on AI.
Humans Will Always Have a Role.
AI won’t replace humans anytime soon. You can input the data into the machine to potentially produce content, but the quality and the value of the human interpretation are still way better than the machine.
If you’re going to replace all your content team of writers with AI, that's probably not the best position to be in. But you'll have to replace some of your copywriters with copy editors who look at what AI creates. Somebody still needs to have the human touch to understand which headline has the emotion.
There will always be human curation, even if you use AI to do a ton of creation and editing work (which you should be doing).
Shoppable Will Go Big.
Soon, you’ll have more things like shoppable voice ads or the ability to speak to your television or Smart TV. Instead of trying to look up a product on your phone while you’re watching television — because people always have a second device while they're watching TV these days — you’ll just be able to say, tell me about that sweater the baby's wearing. It will bring it up on one of your screens and you'll be able to directly buy the sweaters.
There’s actually a product coming out called Telly that's going to do just that. They’re manufacturing TVs with Telly and giving the TV for free. They're looking to get a whole bunch of household-level data to be able to create a transactional environment through this hardware. It’s really commerce as a service, but the consumer gets a free TV.
Shoppable events seem to be a vibe now. They’re not really taking off in the US yet, but if you go on Instagram Live, you can see these events elsewhere. It might be Uniqlo, and they're going to try and show this live experience to you and let you buy directly, perhaps before the products turn up in store, or maybe just a limited run that won’t be in stores. It sounds old school and feels very QVC, but it’s being emulated well across social and entertainment platforms.
We Will Continue To Live In An Age of Affinity Over Authority.
We’re no longer in a world of authority. I'm not influenced by people who are necessarily the authorities of the category. So, I'm not influenced by what Anna Wintour says about fashion; I’m influenced by somebody who I follow. Affinity over authority is the world brands need to play in.
January 30, 2024
