Can anyone really predict a trend? We can spot them, but predicting them is a bit like catching a snowflake – the moment it lands, it melts away, or lands on an existing pile of snow to which anyone can then safely say, “It’s definitely trending towards snow.” We don’t like to make pronouncements of absolute certainty, but we do pride ourselves on being astute observers of design.

Here’s what we’re talking about:

- Material Maturation and Morphing – Avatar comes to A + D
- After Stainless Steel – A resurgence comes to life
- Slim down and get healthy – Flooring products, that is
- Luxury and Green – and really mean it this time
- New Buzz words to impress your friends with
- Intelligent Design – Not that kind… the useful stuff like Smart Products for your home
- Lighting – not a burn out; just a new efficient way to guide our way
- Color de jour for 2010 – check please
- Something Old is something Good; even hipper meaning to “recycling”
- Look afar but look close to home too – Made in USA is making a comeback and designers love it

Want to read the whole scoop? Check out our newest Research + Trends article posted on our site: DRS and Associates.com

Every company should want to be a pillar of their online community, and in essence help the community while becoming an active part of it as it evolves (remember, your community is your market, so not wanting to become part of your community means you don’t want to offer your products and services to your market!) In order to become a pillar of your community, your company obviously cannot sit on the sidelines doing nothing at all. Your company will need to become an active part of this community in one way or another, but the bottom line is that by helping people find what they want, by brightening their day or making their lives better in some way you will be making the community better than when you found it. Basics rules to follow include: be kind and respectful to your customers and prospective customers (the whole community in fact!), serve the community in the best way possible and produce and distribute the best products to the community.

As a pillar of the community your company will then obtain sales from your market. The more active you are in the community, the more recognized your products will be and the more sales you will receive. This is not only the future of your online market, but this is also the reality of your present day market. As nearly 100% of all business will get online in the next ten years, the competitiveness of the online marketplace will continue to increase and online advertising will eclipse all other forms. In the future your online market will change, but if you are an active part of that market then you will be able to react instantly to these changes in a seamless manner that will make your business more profitable, while keeping your customers and potential customers happy.

We’ve just had a very interesting conversation in the office about how much people spend on traffic, and the bottom line is… they spend a lot. It’s really amazing to see what Web traffic costs, and by putting a number on search engine traffic specifically, it really puts it all in perspective and makes you realize how vital the Internet is to any business.

We started looking at different kinds of stores to see how much they are spending a month on their Google traffic, or how much their organic (free) traffic would be worth if they had to pay for it. We were absolutely blown away at the results. Sure, we expected people to be spending money, and also expected that their organic traffic would cost a lot to reproduce, but we were absolutely amazed at how deep the pockets went.

I’ve got two babies, one 3 months old, and one 20 months old, so we go through a lot of diapers. We recently began purchasing our diapers from Diapers.com because they have free next day shipping and it takes all of the hassle out of getting boxes and boxes of diapers every month. Well somehow Diapers.com got our business, maybe it’s because of the $92,000 worth of Google traffic they buy every month, or maybe because their organic traffic would cost someone without these rankings nearly $220,000 a month to reproduce!

You would expect big chain stores to spend a lot, but we were all shocked to see that Target spends around $2.82 million dollars a month on Google traffic alone! This is insane compared to Walmart who only spends around $55k a month which is the equivalent of a small or medium sized Web only ecommerce store. Target’s organic (free) traffic is also worth about $9 million if you were to have to pay for all of the positions and clicks they get from Google for free, while Walmart’s is worth about $8 million according to our tools.

Putting dollar amounts on other peoples search engine traffic is interesting, but also outlines a very important fact, if you’re not spending money on Web traffic, someone else is. You may not think that you need to purchase Web traffic because it doesn’t apply to your business model. You may think this because you’re a manufacturer, or you’ve got sales people that push sales, but how will you “pull” people to your brand through the use of the Internet if you are nowhere to be found?

In every corner of every market there are people using the Internet to search for products, services and information. In each of these marketplaces there are also online marketers that are showing them exactly what they want to see. Purchasing Web traffic is just one part of running a business, but it is quickly becoming evident that it’s one part of running a “business” when it used to be thought of as only a part of running an “Internet Business”.

With the new year there will be some major changes to how Yahoo! gets their natural search engine listings (organic listings picked through the search engine’s robot) for any given keyword result, including yours. The way Yahoo! used to gather the sites eligible for top results involved allowing sites to pay a flat rate to have their site’s feed (list of links) submitted to the search engine. With this program, called the Yahoo! Paid Inclusion program, sites would typically rank pretty well on Yahoo! for a small cost per click fee. We’ve gotten a few clients amazing #1 and first page listings through this system and it was by far the most cost effective program on the Internet. Another way that we used to get listings for clients on Yahoo! was to pay a nominal annual fee to be included in Yahoo’s search index… which will also be discontinued. (Click the below image for a larger version.)

Paid vs Organic Listings

Many designers, artists, and luxury product manufacturers out there reading this right now are thinking to themselves blah blah blah, so what???… but wait!

This is where the future of the search engines takes another turn. Yesterday Yahoo! announced that they are experimenting with providing real-time search results from services like Twitter. Google already announced similar developments with their search results weeks ago; so now it appears as though we have a “social results race” that has officially been kicked into high gear. Who will be the first to have fully integrated, real-time social media in their search engine results? Who will do it better? Who will gain more searchers? Why should YOU care?

This is why you should care, this will affect your business in one way or another:

The possibility exists, and is getting stronger by the moment, that tweeps (the equivalent of ‘peeps’ on twitter e.g. ‘people on twitter’) will be able to tweet their way to the top of the search engines by having strong, influential, authoritative twitter accounts. This means that if your competition already has a twitter account, or if some angry customer has been on twitter for years, you can probably expect that their tweets from twitter will be served right up there with your corporate website when someone searches for your brand name on Google or Yahoo! If someone went to a showroom and wants to get more information about your products or services and searches for your name or brand name you don’t want the competition’s tweets showing up above yours for everyone to see.

What should you do???

Sign up for a twitter account with your brand’s name and start tweeting daily, or better yet, hire us to do it for you. We manage numerous twitter accounts for ourselves and for our clients and these accounts have become some of the most high quality, influential twitter feeds in their respective industries. The next step is to really take this social media marketing thing seriously, because your company’s tweets and your company’s website will not be enough. You will need to be in numerous social networking arenas such as facebook, digg and others if you want to be able to have enough search engine listings to push ‘joe shmo’s’ tweets down in the search results. The more content and social media you put out the better, and this cannot just be done in a quick blast, but must be continuously maintained so that it doesn’t hurt your brand’s image. I often see a brand that makes a good, initial effort at creating and updating a twitter account, but then they let it die with their last message tarnishing their brand’s image with something like “We will have big news for all of our followers tomorrow! Stay tuned! 3:25 PM Mar 18th, 2008″.

Social media marketing is not new, but the impact that it will be playing in the near future with millions of people on twitter and facebook could have on every website out there is monumental( note: there are more people on facebook worldwide then there are people in the U.S.). It is much better to be prepared for the social search listings by maximizing your social presence through social networking platforms today, then be very very sorry tomorrow. Don’t forget that by building your own social presence now you will also be catering to your clients and consumers of tomorrow. Those companies that do not increase their brand awareness online and through social media will miss out on the new luxury marketplace of tomorrow.

New indicators over the past month or so have been showing that luxury markets are beginning to recover as the affluent are returning to their familiar spending habits. As the luxury market rebounds, however, will it be the same as it was before the worldwide economic crisis? We have been trying to get a head start on these market changes by encouraging all of our clients to take a more active roll in not only their websites but also things such as social networking, online marketing, and new online media.

The “Annual Worldwide Market Study” was just released by Bain & Company, and while it forecasts that luxury markets will continue to have a rough road ahead for the rest of 2009, they will begin to increase by a small 1% margin in 2010. The study also makes predictions which show that the luxury market will change in the coming decade. Bain concluded their presentation of their study with 10 global luxury trends that they foresee taking place in the coming decade, and starting in 2010. While these are just predictions, many of them hit on a common theme that we have seen firsthand with our clients and the markets they represent.

1. Bain – Younger consumers and new groups such as working women will become the dominant segments as baby boomers age and retire.

DRS Response – Marketing and catering to younger segments is a must. As the baby boomers retire and decrease in their numbers in the next decade, new generations will take their place as the luxury consumer of the future. A key point is to not overlook by any marketer – we must learn to communicate and reach this younger segment utilizing the methods they consider relevant – today.

2. Bain – Aspiration will evolve into new relationships with brands as consumers look to fill different emotional needs with their luxury purchasing.

DRS Response – New generations of  ”new” consumers will have new and different emotions within their purchasing habits.

3. Bain – Retail networks and product offerings will see greater and greater customization by country and even by city-one size fits all has stopped working.

DRS Response – Many if not all of our clients have caught on to this growing trend where the need to have the ability to customize luxury products is an essential part of the purchase. Not only do these customizations provide a more personalized product for the consumer, but it also gives the consumer a closer connection to the product as they have the ability to interact with the creation of the product directly, hitting on a new emotional bond with the luxury products similar to the IKEA effect.

4. Bain – Growth in China, South Asia and Central Asia may cause Asia to overtake Europe and the Americas as the largest global luxury market region.

DRS Response – This is a fairly obvious prediction as the balance of wealth has shifted over the last decade and with globalization, the availability of information, accessibility, logistics and access to more and more luxury goods from outside of Asia does not become an issue.

5. Bain – Asia`s diversity (more than 15 countries, more than 300 cities, and more than 50 million consumers) will stretch luxury brands` marketing and supply chain capabilities.

DRS Response – With new markets will come new challenges in serving these markets with the efficiency that has taken years to prefect in other regions. In addition, different cultures have different cultural needs, social faux pas’, and different ways of doing business. The luxury companies that are able to diversify to these markets most efficiently will be the ones that come out well ahead in these new, diverse countries.

6. Bain – Market pressures in a turbulent recovery will drive a second wave of luxury consolidation.

DRS Response – Consumers who are still willing to spend during these times will be looking for additional reasons to purchase and feel good about it. Hot points such as sustainability or environmental issues, authentic and original products, truly crafted or technical designed production, quality and durability, all with more of a story behind them will be important for luxury brands to bring forward. These consumers are also demanding more of an “experience” and automatically will expect a higher level of service, appreciation and relationship with their sales transaction (both online and through traditional resellers).

7. Bain – New luxury players will emerge as tastes and consumers change, including brands based in emerging market companies.

DRS Response – Your mother & father’s luxury products will no longer be applicable to the luxury consumers of tomorrow. New luxury brands that see the new trends and are able to diversify will gain new and existing market share.

8. Bain – The luxury shopping experience will transform as direct-owned stores, department stores and outlets look for ways to draw in the decade`s new luxury shoppers.

DRS Response – As more products and information become readily accessible retailers will need to market their business in a way to differentiate themselves from others. Probably the first areas to focus on will be on consumer’s experiences in doing business with the store as a whole. This includes items so often overlooked: experience and educated sales team, history of business, the process in doing business with a store, building personal relationships with the consumer, a compelling reason for a consumer to feel good about their purchase and where they have chosen to spend their money.

9. Bain – Online retail is still in its infancy, but quickly becoming more than a niche.

DRS Response – Taking luxury products online is a step that every brand will need to tackle sooner or later. The ones that conquer this task first, and exceptionally through expressing the emotional bonds that a luxury brand through online mediums will no doubt become the players in the big picture of luxury goods. The challenge we all will face is that a brand does not loose it’s value due to pricing and discounting issues normally associated with online sales.

10. Bain – Retailers will treat new shoppers as “in play,” and offer competitive products to those produced by typical luxury brands.

DRS Response – Smart retailers will realize that the definition of “luxury” means different things to the world of new consumers and in order to capture their attention (their dollars) they must offer products that clearly define themselves from each other – while at the same time be able to offer products that bring meaning and create an emotional connection with today’s consumers’ perception of what truly is luxury. The result will be a trend towards more options and choices. Retailers and Manufacturers – be ready to provide enough information and content online about your products so that these new shoppers can confidently and comfortably make their purchasing decisions.

The world of luxury has taken a hit during the past year, there’s no denying that, but the luxury companies that come out on the other end with a clear definition of what the consumer of the future wants will no doubt be wildly successful. By investing in the future of your luxury brand today, your future consumers will not only be aware of your brand today, but have existing emotional ties to your luxury brand tomorrow.

The types of Online media outlets have grown tremendously over the past few years. From e-newsletters and blogs to social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, as media outlets grow so does client Online coverage. Any type of Online coverage has always been a big piece of the pie, so to speak, in terms of overall client coverage. Blog coverage on average has grown by over 50 percent. Online coverage grows at a steadier pace, but grows nonetheless. Online coverage on trade related sites is up by an average of 7 percent compared to non-trade related sites. These statistics support the growth of Online reporting and how we are constantly trying to win our clients coverage using new mediums.

However,  you may be surprised that the number one place reporters go to learn more about your company (aside from your PR firm) is your website! According to this survey, 69 percent of respondents go to company websites to assist in their reporting. (They go to blogs 66 percent of the time, Wikipedia 51 percent of the time, to Online videos 47 percent of the time, and use Twitter or other microblogging services 30 percent of time. Podcasts and instant messaging are used 25 percent of the time.) With this information in hand, it is not hard to deduce that your website counts, BIG TIME! Keeping it updated with the correct information and your new product offerings is actually extremely important for your PR opportunities. Most times, if journalists can’t find what they’re looking for on a website, they might not include that company in their story or they may publish incorrect information about your company. Journalists repeatedly say that poor website usability could reduce or completely eliminate their press coverage of a company. But let’s not blame them, they are on deadline and looking for fact-laden quality information quickly. Keeping your website clean and easy to navigate is essential. Just as essential as having a press page on your website where you can direct reporters to your PR firm where they can get the information and images they are looking for in a timely manner.

This is the way the Web and search engines function:

1. New, updated or more feature-rich websites gain more exposure by both people and the search engines.
2. New, unique and interesting content is highly valued by both its readers and the search engines.
3. New and compelling exposure through the Web sits in the mind of the buyers so that when they are ready to purchase they’ve already made their decision on your brand, or at the very least your brand is fresh in their minds.
4. Search engines see the added Online branding efforts as a plus for your company’s brand and its website/s.

Regardless of whether or not you’re actively writing new content for the Web, putting pictures on your site, engaging Web users in all the different forms of social media or improving your websites – your competition is! This means if you’ve been so stressed about your business (and rightfully so in tough times) that you’ve totally forgotten about the Web, then you’ve actually taken an even bigger step backwards. In fact, many of your competitors might have been putting more into their Online holdings while your business was doing nothing.

Based on the cost effectiveness of investing in websites and content verses any other form of marketing or business expansion, many businesses use these downturns as times to really focus on the Web. The experiences, search engine listings, bookmarks and ideas that the active Online marketer has gained during the tough times will come back ten fold as the economy picks up and consumer confidence returns. Just think, even if someone has never heard of your company, but they are ready to do some research on a product that they’re interested in for their home,  the first place they’re going to do research is often the Internet. If you have been actively building your Online presence and show up in the places they are looking for information, then you are much more likely to get the sale. If you have been letting this part of your business sit on the back burner during the recession, then I fear you’ll be coming out of this downturn even worse off then you would have figured.

It’s never too late to market your brand Online, but just keep in mind that the longer you wait, the larger the hurdle gets as the competition gains your market share and Online authority with the search engines and Web users.