3 BIG trends for 2016.

I'm writing my 2016 trends now and when you do such a thing, especially when you are lucky enough to get published in the Guardian, TechCrunch, Wired etc, you need to exploit your moment in the spotlight.

• So you cram in as much clever stuff as possible. Look at me!
• You decide on a round number, 8 themes for 2016, or 10 top trends, or some such.
• You don't dare miss off VR or 3D printing, because to do so makes you feel vulnerable.

So trends become bloated and clever, and not that clear. 

If you'd like to see my now published 8 Trends for 2016 on TechCrunch, click here. They've been viewed 25,000 times in the last day.

As a nice contrast to this piece, here are in my honest view, the three key dynamics and opportunities to face the world of Marketing in 2016.

1) IM for business.

Instant messaging take up has been the fastest growing technology / behavior the world has ever known. It's the default way for more than one generation to communicate about every aspect of their lives.

Instant messaging is not an app, it's a platform, it's a system where nearly every person that matters to us can be reached in a rich, personal, secure, immediate, asynchronous manner. 

This is arguably one of the greatest opportunities to ever strike business.

It is my belief that the future of commerce, communication and service will primarily move to an IM platform. This won't happen in one year, it will take 3-4, yet it is my belief that 2016 will be the year that this first becomes apparent to those in the West (China has seen this coming for years).

Our phone choice architecture will be either IM, or the rest of the phone (which then includes apps, the mobile web, contacts, SMS, etc).

If you are a business that sells things, you need to think about how IM can be used to browse, buy, pay, arrange delivery, show delivery notifications and do ongoing customer service.

If you are a service, you need to migrate from Twitter based customer service, or webchat or call centers and immediately re-tool for IM. I should be able to move flights, find out hotel room avails, upgrade, rent cars, book an Uber, all from an IM platform, with a few taps. 

My IM platform should be able to convey my location, my delivery address, my credit card details, all with a press of TouchID. Everything we do should be simple, secure, personalized, frictionless.

If companies were going to think about one thing for 2016 it should be how to steal market share via emerging IM behaviors, opportunities and expectations.

2) Frictionlessness.

Every surface in our lives is becoming digital, increasingly devices are becoming personal. Increasingly software is recording more data and becoming more context aware. 

At the same time, people that we care about have an abundance of stuff and are overwhelmed by great choices, they have less time than ever before.  People are impatient and more demanding than ever. 

These technologies should be focused on allowing more aspects of our lives to become easy. Software can make suggestions, the purchase funnel can turn into a swipe. Steps can be removed.

We should be applying all of this to ensure that everything we sell is incredibly easy to buy.

We should be offering upgrades wherever possible, that are buyable with a swipe.

We should be making smart suggestions, always. 

Why on your forms do I need to flick through 170 countries before getting to the USA or UK? — is Afghanistan a big market for you? 

Every ad should have a buy now button, every step should be removed from every process. Make assumptions that save time, store default addresses and credit cards.

Ads should move from retargeting to predictive.  

3) Last mover Advantage.

Have you ever noticed how Uber works wherever you are in the world, always and seamlessly? Have you noted that Hotel Tonight allows you to choose and book a hotel in seconds with a swipe or how One Medical Center offers the most incredible service via app? We're at a time where Blue Apron just works, Amazon's customer service is incredible and personal and our expectations get greater every day. 

Yet Airline employees type into Blue DOS screens from the 1970's, Healthcare employee's deal with paperwork that blows my mind, Car rental company staff have a fit if you try to enquire about upgrades because it takes 120 key strokes. We've retailers that don't allow returns from "online" (as if it's a place) and don't get me started on Government websites or systems. The DMV is cruel beyond Kafka's twisted mind. 

The truth is that we've companies built for today on the very best infrastructure and modern thinking and behaviors. They are likely mobile first, use bold design, offer customer centric processes, not company centric, they just work. No lost bookings or changing countries or downloading updates. 

And we've legacy companies, companies built on foundations for another age, with glitches and patches, workarounds, and hope. These are companies built in the wrong place, with endless quick fixes to try to repurpose. They have thin veneers of modernity, a wonderful homepage website for Virgin Atlantic, that soon fades into a 2005 variant once you try to do something uncommon. Kayak can price 10,000 flights in 20 seconds, airlines agents take 5 mins to reprice a single flight. On phone lines you type in member numbers and dates of birth, only to have to repeat it to an agent....2 more times...

These companies lose bookings, they have servers that crash, they require Java updates. The process of picking a seat on a British Airways flight, operated on American Airlines aircraft, is a level of complexity that melts down their servers. Heaven forbid you try it from an App. A world of computer says no.

In 2016, this won't happen, but it should.

In 2016 ALL legacy companies should seek to retool for the future. They shouldn't upgrade systems, it's like building a 3rd runway at Heathrow, they should build in parallel a new system for the future, to replace everything. To open in one new go.

It's not new signals on a old train line, it's a brand new high speed line built alongside, which is faster and always ends up cheaper and boosts capacity. It just needs one of CAPEX, not incremental.

And it's about people and behavior more than technology.

We should not just be adding new technology to our processes, we should be rebuilding processes around technology. We should be seeking to give all staff iPads and make their jobs and processes such that they don't need to use advanced PC's. Excel should be replaced by real time dashboards, presentations should be based on sharing information, not powerpoint slides.

We should aim to have fewer emails and more phone calls again.

We should be using Slack, not servers.

We should all be using calendar software brilliantly, let technology offload the burden.

We need to find a way to make conference calls with one press of a button. 

No person should ever be using the total junk software that kills us, the wasted billions on expenses, or timesheets software built by people who got paid to code not think. Both are very easy bits of software to build for mobile phones.

So yes, this won't happen, but it should. In 2016 every company should retool for modern behaviors and around the new opportunities that tech makes possible. 

Again, if you like this, you may like to see my now published 8 Trends for 2016 on TechCrunch, click here.