The 4 things exciting us about 2016

As we take a good, hard look into our crystal balls, we can see a few things that are going to be big in our world this year.

The Uber-istion of People

It’s no secret that the best businesses have the best people in them. At OSSC we take our hiring super seriously because our culture and the product we deliver to our clients is paramount. But a big part of our offering is supplemented by our collaborators. These people are specialists and bring a huge depth of knowledge in a certain area. Last year we built teams that included everyone from architects and venture capitalists to management consultants. In 2016 , we will see more and more people getting off the corporate treadmill and picking up projects instead. Using modern, remote working tools, they are swapping the security of the full time job for the flexibility and excitement of project work all around the world.

The year of mobile video

Talk to any Telco and they will tell you, video is exploding on mobile. More and more people are choosing to consume video on their mobile devices. in particular, we are seeing a rise in short, snackable content. Lots of media companies and TV stations are leading the charge but the best brands are also chipping in. 2016 will see the trend continue and we will see production values move to the small screens. Expect more 45-90 second mini films on your social feeds.

Data becomes more useable

2016 will be a breakout year for data. We will see more and more companies accessing big and small data sets, but not in such a rudimentary way. We will see a lot more smaller, live data sets coming together to give us a more holistic ‘live read’ on what’s happening. This will give smart businesses incredibly powerful information to be able to optimise on the fly, sometimes even in traditional media like print, radio and television.

At OSSC, we are particularly excited about this one. Late last year we were chosen to partner one of the world’s biggest social insights tools – Crimson Hexagon. Crimson measures and analyses over 900 billion posts allowing us to get an amazing read on what consumers are thinking about almost anything. It’s a crazy-powerful tool that we are using to plan, measure and analyse our clients’ business and brands. Let us know, if you’d like a demo. – You don’t know what you don’t know.

AI over everything

The last one here could be the most profound. The rise of the bot as the first touch point in customer service has the opportunity to change a lot- jobs, search, data capture, efficiencies etc. All of the big tech companies have a play in this space, what they are working out now is where is the interface that people feel most comfortable interacting with bots? The smart money at the moment suggests that it is likely in the ‘chat’ interface but voice is coming strong with the likes of Alexa and Siri and Siri’s powerful sister Viv (http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/9/11639992/viv-digital-assistant-ai-artificial-intelligence-siri).

We are watching this space intently as are a few of our clients as they look to begin to take away the meaningless and time-consuming tasks out of the corporate world.