Successful experts and famous business people aren’t immune from being wrong in predicting stuff.
Trend. What else the word that can make you feel missed out on? You got this trend on TikTok today. That trend on Netflix tomorrow. Those trends on Instagram yesterday – that’s the life today, eh? On LinkedIn, these “experts” predict that and these “experts” predict those. Many people take their words easily and religiously as if there’s something new, edgy, sophisticated, or over the top. That’s the problem with trends and predictions – when people overhype them. It’s such pain in the neck to see people herding towards the Viral Kingdom of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) every day.
What is a trend?
Merriam-Webster says “trend” is a general direction/ of change, a way of behaving, proceeding, etc., that is developing and becoming more common. Should we care about it? The answers are yes and no. It depends on your business objectives to follow or not to follow. The most important thing is finding the “Whys” before jumping into a bandwagon. Then, how should we react to trends? There are three ways of looking at it:
- Comprehensively. Find out the essence of it.
- Critically. Find your “why should I religiously follow this?”
- Creatively. When you’ve decided to jump on bandwagon, don’t be average.
What if you follow the trend for the sake of it? Remember what happened to First Media being bombarded by netizens’ negative comments while riding Eiger’s crisis wave.
Problems with predictions
Predictions can be misleading too. You’ll see reports from big management consulting companies, experts, social media platform companies, and alike, predicting changes or what would happen in the future. Predicting stuff doesn’t really have any consequence anyway. If it’s wrong, so what? It’s just a prediction anyway. It hasn’t happened until it happens. No expert wants to be responsible for any wrong predictions. The problem is when brands, companies, or professionals blindly subscribe to “popular mainstream experts” predictions and refuse to think critically about them.
Popular successful experts and famous business people aren’t immune from being wrong in predicting stuff.
Darryl F. Zanuck’s inaccurate predictions on the short-lived TV.
In 1946, Darryl Zanuck, Co-founder of 20th Century Pictures, Inc, predicted TV wouldn’t last for six months as people would get bored by it. Darryl is no ordinary man. But, look at how terribly poor his prediction was. TV is here to stay. Fast forward to 2021 in an archipelago named Indonesia, the Ikatan Cinta (A Love-bound) soap opera contributed approximately IDR12 billion/day to its parent company, MNC Group. It’s broadcasted through a good old TV. And my mother is one of its loyal viewers until today.
If some marketing or communications “experts” tell you “TV is dead”, then GlobalWebIndex’s data beg to differ. In Southeast Asia, streaming video’s penetration is lower than how long people spend hours with TV today. Indonesians spend about 2 hours/day watching TV compared to 1.5 hours/day of video streaming. In Southeast Asia, TV is still the victor.
Even the great William Henry “Bill” Gates III had his share of perplexing the world by misleading predictions.
Bill Gates and his faulty predictions on spam email in 2014.
Bill said at the 2014-Davos World Economic Forum (WEF) two years from now (that’d be 2016) the spam problems will be solved. His predictions turned out to be rubbish. Statista’s data of March 2021 shows that spam still accounts for 45.1% of e-mail traffic with 23.52% of its volume coming from Russia. Let’s be honest, we still receive some random e-mails from random Nigerian princes and whatnot until today.
My points
Be critical and sceptical when it comes to trends and predictions. Be smart. Don’t take any “popular successful experts” words on LinkedIn easily, let alone religiously. Question everything. Find your whys. If you can, don’t follow the trend. Instead, be the trend. Be different. Lead the pack. Champion your category.
