20 for 2020: Revisiting the trends that shaped our conversations

In what feels like a lifetime ago (but was really only January), I spoke with Emperor’s senior practitioners to identify our ’20 for 2020’ – the important trends and themes that we felt would shape the coming decade.

The 2020s are barely eight months old and the temptation to throw any predictions out the window gets stronger with each passing day.

It’s easy to forget just how much has happened. We’ve seen bushfires, impeachment, Brexit and a Megxit. But all of that has paled in comparison to the devastating COVID-19 pandemic – alongside tragedy, illness and instability, it has flipped us into potentially the worst recession for 300 years.

So, it’s fair to say the coronavirus has made fools of all us ambitious enough to predict anything beyond a hangover on New Year’s Day. But that said, some of our themes actually seem more pertinent than ever before.

We highlighted the growing importance of ‘trust and confidence’, ‘purpose and culture’, ‘longer-term focus’, and ‘brand clarity and authenticity’. That certainly remains as true as ever. During this time, consumers are turning to brands they respect and trust, while employees want to work for purposeful businesses. We have seen brands live and die on their actions during lockdown – people have been unforgiving of irresponsible or selfish actions.

And while a short-term focus has been understandable as we ride out lockdown, the uncertainty and challenges posed by the pandemic show we cannot take anything for granted – long-term sustainable success needs to be worked for.

All of this chimes with our design trends: 'honest aesthetic', 'simplified creative and design' and 'data visualisation'. The former have become the visual watchwords of purposeful business, while the endless data tracking of the pandemic has pushed the importance of the latter further into the mainstream than ever before.

In the world of reporting, we identified ‘sustainability’ as being fundamental to the future, while ‘integrated thinking’ would be the key for corporate communications. Now more than ever, we recognise the enormous challenges facing our planet, the important role business has to play in making a difference and how all the different parts of companies – people, culture, social responsibility – drive us forward.

If the technology such as ‘virtual reality’, ‘augmented reality’ and ‘AI’ have been somewhat put on the backburner in favour of more practical advances such as video conferencing and remote access, expect to see them back with a bang in the coming years.

Perhaps most prescient of all, I pointed to ‘remote working’ as one of the most important trends for the new decade. I had no idea just how right we’d be, but this is just the beginning - we are already thinking about what the workplace of the future will mean for Emperor and our people; we’ve only really scratched the surface of what is possible.

I closed that original piece with the Bill Gates quote,

‘we always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten’.

Well, I don’t think anyone overestimated 2020’s change, but still expect the rest of the decade to throw up more than a few surprises.

You can read our original thoughts on the Emperor website.