What are the top trends for 2019

There has been lots of talk about the blockchain revolution, even though most people haven't a clue what it is.According to a report by International Data Corporation, many Internet of Things companies will be incorporating blockchain technology into their products. IDC predicts that 20% of IoT deployments will have blockchain services installed by 2019. But I do definitely think we are going to see some significant uses of this for example in sport and maybe ticketing that will actually have a great impact

2018 saw the introduction of the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) data protection law in place and a lot of businesses now have had to seriously review their marketing data. There has been an explosion of marketing automation and funnel software and I do think this will be much more widespread in 2019. Funnelytics, Hubspot, BucketIO to name just a few

With the #metoo campaign and a lot of attention now on mental health, organisations are becoming more and more mindful of creating more flexible working patterns and introducing more welfare programmes for their staff and this will be more apparent next year. In fact those employers that do offer such programmes, will find this will be an increasing key staff benefit

Who doesn't depend on their phones, well if you were caught up in the O2 outage in December, you will remember how disruptive it was not having internet coverage. So with the roll out of 5G this will improve download speeds, greater connectivity for businesses and it will place even greater focus on mobile as an advertising tool.

Voice recognition, is becoming a really important trend now just looking at Siri and Alexa, Alexa has over 45,000 preloaded skills and by 2020 most brands will have a voice activation strategy in place.

Augmented reality is often overshadowed by its seemingly flashier counterpart, Virtual Reality. VR has become more mainstream, but AR has slowly been developing in its shadow. The global augmented reality market was valued at around $3.33 billion in 2015 and is expected to reach approximately $133bn by 2021 growing at a CAGR of slightly above 85.2% between 2016 and 2021.

Brexit is looming of course and I know most of us are sick of hearing about it, but it will be a defining moment for the UK economy on how it weathers the storm, the media will play its part too. Its still divides opinions in the workplace and in families. What we shouldnt be divided about however is how great this country is and its potential is still very great. We excel the world in so many areas, so I do think those companies that do have solid growth plans but also need to have contingencies will prosper well.

Content is king and as someone involved in this area and particularly the influencer space, next year will be a year where the influencer market will grow up and sharpen some of the malpractices weve seen but also help promote itself as a key and important marketing channel. Predictions for 2021 suggest the influencer marketing worldwide could be close to $20bn

And as far as the Cricket World Cup, its going to be an important year for the sport, but much as I would so dearly love england to win, I fear it will be a Southern Hemisphere side.