The Next BIG Thing for 2017 is in Your Hands

Have you been searching for 2017’s next big thing? The answer might be right at your fingertips.

When was the last time you touched someone? We don't touch any longer. Fear of being accused of sexual harassment has created a nice, safe, antiseptic boundary around everyone. So has the fear of picking up bacteria and the fear of intruding on someone's privacy. The truth is, these days we rarely touch anything but keyboards and touchscreens. When we’re clothes shopping, we make a wild guess at how a shirt feels by looking at a picture, click away, and wait for it to show up on our doorstep. If you’re a state-of-the-art music aficionado, forget about a stack of LPs or CDs. That’s so yesterday. Instead, you just click away.

It's all so very convenient, but it has also launched a new, so-far-unrecognized trend. This loss of the opportunity to touch anything but a keyboard has created a sense of craving, especially among the younger generations. They have a deep, pressing desire to stimulate the sense of touch. As I argue in my latest book, Small Data, they are experiencing what I call an unbalance.

Life is all about seeking balance. If you feel overweight,you'll seek balance by buying a weight-loss product. Or if you feel lonely, you may find your counterbalance on a dating site. As marketers, when we notice such an imbalance in people’s lives, we know there are exciting new opportunities. This is the space where brands are born.

Especially in the Western world, I’ve become aware of teens’ need to touch. What I’m noticing isn’t anything sexual, but go to anyplace teens congregate, the mall or even their school, and you’ll see much more hugging, handshaking, playful punching, and all kinds of touching than when I was in school. Hang out with teens for any length of time, and you’ll find them leaning against you in a way I’ve never seen before.

Is this need to touch a symptom of the new out-of-balance? It might even be something common to all mammals. In a lab study, two groups of rats were treated very differently. One group received hourly petting, but the other group received no touching at all. Within three weeks, rats in the never-touch group began to die, while the rats that enjoyed regular petting thrived.

Tomorrow’s generation is born and raised to express their opinions and preferences with their fingertips, pointing and pressing, sliding and expanding. It is a behavior so intuitive that it is hard for them to imagine any other option. Recently at a school near New York City, I watched a seven-year-old girl tell her teacher, “My book doesn’t work. I can’t expand the page.” She expected her paperback book to work like her iPhone.

Every year, I write more than 400 holiday cards by hand and send them to friends, colleagues, and clients around the world. I've done so for nearly 15 years, despite everyone else I know having converted to the easier, cheaper solution of emails. I've stayed true to old-fashioned pen and paper. My father always said, “If you want to get ahead of the leader, don’t follow his tracks in the snow.” That’s exactly my point: When everyone else goes digital, go physical. When everyone avoids touch: Touch! My simple Christmas card is so iconic that people write emails to me, asking when this year’s card will arrive in the mail.

This is my point. If you want to stand out from the crowd — if you hope to build brands with impact — then reach into your tool box and rediscover touch. It may seem ironic, considering that touch has always been around, but touch will be the big trend of 2017. We’ve forgotten, but — in this world where there seems to be an app for everything — a handshake is still one of the best ways to touch someone’s heart.

Martin Lindstrom, one of the world’s foremost branding experts, is author of Small Data: The Tiny Clues That Uncover Huge Trends.

His previous books have been translated into 47 languages and have sold well over one million copies. He was named one of TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world. In 2016, Thinkers50 named him one of the top 20 business thinkers in the world, and he has been ranked the world’s #1 branding expert for three consecutive years. His articles appear in The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, and Fast Company. He advises startups and a Who’s Who of Fortune 100 companies on branding, communication, consumer psychology, retail, innovation, and transformation. Lindstrom currently hosts Main Street Makeover, a series on NBC’s TODAY show that creates solutions to business problems in less than just 24 hours.