2019 Predictions
By Scott Galloway ·
11 January 2019
I love predictions. Nothing is more certain than the past, nor more uncertain than the future. Similar to a jet launching off an aircraft carrier, predictions ask us to mentally chart a path on the hard surface of the past. We leave the safety of the flattop and trust our wings of logic and creativity to support the prediction on the airflow of the future. I’m not sure if what I just said is more poetic or lame. Good money is on “yes.”
Anyway, let’s review our predictions for 2018 and dispatch a new crop for 2019....
*****...Predictions for 2019
Snap is the walking dead
It will be cut in half … again.
Twitter also cut in half
60% of Twitter hot topics content is generated by bots and foreign agents, and two-thirds of all shared links are by bots.
Strange bedfellows
A bevy of consumer and tech firms enter into strategic alliances and partnerships with only one objective: Push back on Amazon.
Hot or not
VR and crypto go from bad to worse. AI fails to live up to the hype. 3D printing rises from the ashes. Smart cameras become a hot category.
Amazon spins AWS and births one of the 10 most valuable firms
Spinning AWS will reduce antitrust concerns for Amazon. The cloud is the fastest-growing part of technology, and there is no pure-play way to play it. At the spin, these two firms could be worth more than as a whole.
Woke as a business strategy
The majority of new wealth creation is being captured by urban dwellers with college degrees (i.e., progressives — see map). As a result, we will see a number of companies become very woke in the next 12-24 months. 70% of high school valedictorians are female; same-sex male couples make on average $60K per year more than straight couples, and college graduates make +$1M more than non-college grads over their lifetime. The people who burned their Nikes in protest used their Discover card to buy their first pair....
...MUCH MOREWell here we are on January 15th, just four days later, and we have CNN reporting that "Gillette's new ad isn't about shaving. It's about men in the age of #metoo".
Well you don't get much more woke than that.
And despite the ad possibly being fraught with...something...it is being talked about and apparently finding fans and selling blades:
Nailed it, Professor.I used to love beating up kids at barbecues. Now I realise that is wrong. Also, my balls have never been smoother. Thanks, Gillette.— Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) January 15, 2019
And a good thing too. If the big Proctor & Gamble brand hadn't come through for Mr. Gervais he might have resorted to one of these from Amazon. Dangerous, dangerous:
