HAVAS Red: Red Sky Predictions 2024

RED SKY PREDICTIONS 2024

8 Predictions for Communicators on the Cutting Edge

We’d like to thank

our clients, friends in academia and the media, as well as our partners for all their inputs, experience and research that helped us shape our Red Sky Predictions 2024. In particular, we thank the following Redsters for their contributions: Nancy Anderson Richard Clarke Linda Descano, CFA® Jodi Einhorn Gabby Forward Dave DiNuzzo Joseph Giumarra Selina Govind Kaylee Harrington Karina Heffers Stuart Hood Melanie Klausner Esther Lam Ellen Mallernee

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Tom Manning Julianne Muszynski Ellen Presutti Cristina Gómez Rico Romero Melissa Rieger Shane Russell Gennie Siegel Lesley Sillaman Pattie Sullivan Georgina Thompson Davitha Tiller Rachael Sansom James Wright

Like it or not, it was chaos that defined 2023. It was even our agency’s Word of the Year. In the wake of a global pandemic, we were walloped again and again by climate disasters, wars, mass shootings, humanitarian crises, economic upheaval, and social and political turmoil. Once upon a time, brands wouldn’t have been expected to have a perspective on any of these matters. Now, they are. And our job as communicators is to help brands expertly navigate this volatility. Our annual predictions are designed to help you do this — to find the order in the chaos and the solutions within the problems.

Our eight predictions explore the evolution of brand storytelling, curiosity as a competitive advantage, the redefinition of personalization, the impact of generative AI on social media, the fate of corporate purpose, the collective anger of the 2020s, the belated prioritization of women’s health in the workplace and the debut of the “minfluencer.” We expect these predictions to impact everything from consumption behaviors to sociopolitical priorities to brand strategies in the coming 12 months and beyond.

—James Wright

Global CEO, HAVAS Red & Global Chair, HAVAS PR Network 3

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Truth telling > storytelling

01 Truth telling > storytelling Prediction: Brands that meaningfully connect with consumers will find that truth telling is now more of a differentiator than storytelling.

We exist in what can sometimes feel like an alternate universe. Fake news headlines go viral. Algorithmic bias targets us with content that’s popular and engaging but not necessarily trustworthy. Chatbots are powered by artificial intelligence. Deepfake video technology runs amok. And there’s no respite in sight.

Disinformation has been used as a weapon throughout Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the Israel/Hamas war has triggered conspiracy theories since day one. And seeing as how it’s election year in 40 countries, there are concerns that this political palooza may be defined by the volume of election deepfakes it yields. This year will also be remembered as the year that schools began teaching media literacy classes so kids can learn how to spot fake news.

But consumers of all ages deserve more than just instructions on how to tune up their personal lie detectors. They deserve content they can trust.

The global rise of misinformation has led to the decline of consumer trust in both government and media. As a result, consumers are also tired

of brands making claims. HAVAS’ global annual Meaningful Brands™ study found that 77% think companies/brands should be transparent about their commitments and promises, but only 33% think they actually are.

So much broken trust has tarnished demand for brand strategists’ old tricks, too. Storytelling is one of these tricks. When it comes to brand communications, there’s far less room today for “creative liberties” and far more responsibility to tell the truth, be accountable and be accurate in how facts are presented. Fiction might be more exciting, but in 2024, more brands will recognize they have a responsibility in how they present their stories.

The role of PR and communications will no longer be about simply storytelling but truth telling, told well (and that’s the important part). Now more than ever, we need to help brands articulate, educate and facilitate to ensure they remain trusted and have maximum meaning to the stakeholders that matter to them.

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Curiosity as a competitive advantage

02 Curiosity as a competitive advantage Prediction: Brands that purposefully cultivate consumer curiosity will have the greatest success at changing behaviors.

What if, instead of providing more answers, a brand provides better questions? The pandemic has taught us that it’s okay to not have all the answers. Sometimes asking questions to get people thinking is an answer in itself.

After all, with curiosity, anything is possible.

When we’re curious about people, we consider new experiences and forge authentic human connection. When we’re curious about ideas, we’re more likely to solve problems, innovate and wake up to lives we’ve otherwise been sleepwalking through. Feeling burned out by work? Writer Tim Denning recommends taking a “curiosity day” instead of a day off to rest. “Following your curiosity is the most powerful drug in the world,” he says.

Curiosity also changes minds. Literally.

Neuroplasticity is our brain’s ability to change and adapt in response to experience, and neuroplasticity research has shown it’s possible to train yourself to become more curious. One of the ways to do this is with meditation. That’s because, during this practice, we’re more likely to get curious about the thoughts that continue to come up for us.

Because curiosity can change minds, it can also change behaviors. So, if curiosity is the secret to behavior change, among other feats, it stands to reason that brands that harness their customers’ curiosity in 2024 by dispensing knowledge and inspiring wonder will make themselves indispensable. Think TED and National Geographic.

When a brand inspires curiosity by asking its customers to use their own minds instead of telling them what to think, the brand also shows that it trusts and respects its consumer. The same goes for employers. Cultivating curiosity is vital if companies are going to achieve a truly inclusive culture.

In 2024, curiosity will emerge as an enabler of well-being — something many brands and employers are already focused on, considering the persistence of anxiety disorders and the fact that physical and emotional wellness are priorities for consumers worldwide.

Since curiosity is a skill that can be learned, cultivating curiosity may also be the next wave of mental health and well-being initiatives — at school, at work and in your personal relationships.

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GenerativeIRL

03 GenerativeIRL Prediction: Brands will use GenAI to deliver and integrate in-store and physical experiences.

In 2023, comms professionals absorbed and ultimately accepted the full-fledged arrival of generative AI. According to a Hootsuite analysis of over 15,500 news articles and blogs, interest was so high that from 2022 to 2023, topics on learning about AI increased by 550%. The platform predicts AI usage among social media managers will skyrocket in the next 12 months as a way to reduce staff workload — particularly by revising text, producing ad text from scratch and developing new ideas. (In our agency’s case, we just used the Adobe suite’s new AI updates to effortlessly remove all the “ahs” and “ums” from a podcast episode we produced — a very satisfying experience.)

will those purposes include? We’ll integrate it into our social media strategies and the IRL (in real life) experiences we create for brands — or better yet, both at the same time.

So, with 2024 all set to be the year we get comfortable suiting GenAI to our purposes, what

Social will also begin to lean on GenAI for providing customer service assistance.

With faux out-of-home (OOH) advertising, brands are already making a splash with GenAI-led brand stunts and experiences that go viral on social because people can’t tell if they’re real or not. Think JD Sports’ campaign featuring Big Ben outfitted with a North Face puffer jacket or L’Oréal’s hyper-realistic CGI ads promoting its new lipstick and mascara. (This approach is a win for brands that are big on sustainability since they require next-to-no actual materials.)

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The corporate purpose buddy system

04 The corporate purpose buddy system Prediction: Businesses that pull together to advocate for causes will create more impact and better safeguard their brand against backlash.

2024 is all set to become the year of reckoning for corporate purpose. Not so long ago, purpose was viewed to be the safest, most effective way for a brand to connect with its consumers, employees and other stakeholders. Especially during the pandemic, it became a powerful connector, spurring a new wave of companies talking about purpose.

Now, many of these companies find themselves drawn into contentious, high-stakes conversations about social issues. Several companies — from Disney to retailer Target to the brewer of Bud Light — have found themselves in the crosshairs due to controversial or otherwise divisive campaigns. More recently, after a Starbucks workers union took to X to express solidarity with Palestinians, Starbucks’ stock plummeted 8.96% — equating to a nearly $11 billion loss. Other corporations, such as Australia’s national airline Qantas, are being called out for “virtue signaling,” whereby a corporation makes a statement about a social or political issue but doesn’t appear to take action on it. In the case of Qantas, it backed the Voice to Parliament, which would recognize

Indigenous people in Australia’s constitution, even as the airline was coming under fire for illegally firing workers and allegedly selling tickets for cancelled flights.

In other words, purpose has become a powder keg. The challenge in 2024 will be for brands to find the right cause at the right time and the right place — and to find the right purpose buddy (or buddies) to join forces with. Brands will be most impactful with their purpose, and most protected from backlash when they take a stand alongside other businesses. Instead of pulling back on purpose in 2024, brands will change how they engage publicly by pulling together to advocate for causes with groups such as Business Roundtable and Chief Executives for Corporate Purpose (CECP). Even niche groups like PublicSq are finding power in numbers; on the “anti-woke” marketplace, companies can join with others that are pro-life, pro-family and pro-freedom to take an implicit stand with like-minded businesses — while meeting like-minded customers.

To take on issues of import, corporations will also rely more heavily on public-private partnerships with trade groups and nonprofits. Brands that want to demonstrate to their employees and customers that they are living their purpose and making an impact on important issues will be far able to do so if they outsource some of that expertise and power to corporate purpose partners.

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The raging ‘20s

05 The raging ‘20s Prediction: The brands that will be remembered in the 2020s will be the ones that turned this era’s anger and upheaval into a force for connection.

If you ever felt frustrated or angry as a result of the pandemic, you’ll want to know there’s a word for that. “Pangry” highlights the rage that many of us experienced and encountered during the “raging ‘20s.” Unlike the Roaring ‘20s, which were defined by excess and opulence a century earlier, this decade will be defined by rage at broken systems.

According to the National Customer Rage Survey from 2023, 43% of surveyed Americans raised their voice to a customer service representative to show displeasure about their most serious problems with a business, up from 35% in 2017. People are angry about so many things — as demonstrated by the outrage that followed George Floyd’s murder in May 2020, the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in January 2021, the “woke” boycotts that impacted brands ranging from Target to Anheuser-Busch to Doc Martens to Costa Coffee in 2023 and the present-day fury about the Israel-Hamas war.

Things won’t soon simmer down, as many backto-the-future moments will likely take us closer to where the anger originated, not farther away.

In 2024, we’re eyeing a packed election calendar (40 countries will be voting) that could further exacerbate geopolitical friction. According to

Jennifer Welch, Bloomberg Economics’ chief geo-economics analyst, the world faces perhaps its most tumultuous year in a generation from a geopolitical standpoint.

How can brands break through the anger and forge meaningful connections when their employees, customers and communities are so angry? By remembering that anger is passion. It can be a helpful and powerful motivator of people.

Per Kantar, digital ads that elicit strong emotions are 4 times more likely to generate impact than those with weaker emotional connections (they are also 2.6 times more likely to go viral and 4 times more powerful in driving long-term brand equity). While some companies provoke anger (let’s recall Pepsi’s commercial featuring Kendall Jenner), others harness it. Still others break through it.

Brands that have done that masterfully in the past include Nike, with its Believe in Something campaign featuring NFL player Colin Kaepernick.

While the ad proved controversial amongst some groups, it helped the brand to a 31% increase in online sales. Dove’s beloved Real Beauty campaign, meanwhile, tapped into the anger many women feel about unrealistic beauty standards. Rather than ignoring customers’ anger, brands that acknowledge it (by sincerely apologizing and responding compassionately to negative comments) can transform that emotionality into loyalty.

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Women’s well-being in the workplace moves to the forefront

06 Women’s well-being in the workplace moves to the forefront Prediction: Every company will become a women’s health company.

Women have long been the backbone of the workforce. But this is the first year more employers will treat them like it — by providing benefits that meet these valuable workers where they are, at all stages of their lives.

For too long, women workers have had to stomach underrepresentation in leadership and a gender pay gap that’s barely budged in decades. (Women still make 77 cents for every dollar men earn for work of equal value, and that gap is even wider for women with children.) Add to that the disproportionate negative impact of COVID on women and the rollback of abortion rights in the United States. Furthermore, studies show women in the workplace who experience a major life event (pregnancy, motherhood, menopause, beginning caretaking for aging parents, etc.) lower their potential earning power — the exact inverse to men going through major life changes.

In 2023, with persistent talent shortages and the dawning recognition that women over 50 are one of — if not the — largest untapped sources of talent, many countries are refocusing on how to help companies retain and attract more women.

This has resulted in a fresh look at benefits and a broader focus on the factors that affect women’s well-being (menstruation and menopause, for example), which in turn affect their productivity and engagement. The British government appointed a “menopause employment champion” to improve workplace support, and Spain became the first country in Europe to recognize the right to menstrual leave after its government approved a bill supporting this practice this year.

With more women returning to the workforce after pandemic disruptions, employers in 2024 will rethink ways to more tangibly support women’s well-being and flexibility in their policies, benefits and workplace culture — from offering menstrual leave for those with painful periods, to covering abortion travel costs to providing on-site daycare to adding menopause-specific care to their benefits.

This is triggering the question: Should every company in 2024 aspire to consider themselves a women’s health company? Let’s also consider the fact that women drive the majority of consumer spending and that companies that treat their women workers well are also more likely to attract women consumers.

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Meet minfluencers: The next influencer generation

07 Meet minfluencers: The next influencer generation Prediction: With Gen Alpha now coming into a social presence of their own, “minfluencers” are the next big influencer category to consider.

Born between 2010 and 2025, Gen Alpha are our screentime kids. They’re also known as “iGeneration” because 2010 was the same year the iPad was introduced. Many of these kids have grown up with social-media-obsessed millennial parents and may have weathered more than one virtual school year during the pandemic.

They’ve been watching YouTube since they were in diapers, and they know how to make Instagram Reels as proficiently as their parents once knew how to burn CDs. These tastemakers have whet our appetite for much of the low-fi, user-generated content we love to see on social today (e.g., unboxings).

Whether or not they were born for this, they were born into it, so it stands to reason that the next influencer generation is underage. Minfluencers = child influencers. Sometimes these minfluencers have parents with no particular social influence

of their own. For example, Ryan Kaji, now 12, is among the highest-paid YouTube stars. With 36 million subscribers, he’s now worth an estimated $66 to $95 million and got his start on the channel at age 3, when his parents posted him unboxing and reviewing a Lego train set.

Often, minfluencers are the children of celebrities.

See North West, 10, and Penelope Disick, 11, who have both taken to TikTok to share their skincare routines. Or Bryn Hoppy (Bethany Frankel’s 13-year-old daughter). Quite literally her mom’s “mini-me,” Bryn mimics the ex-reality star and media mogul’s social presence to boost her own “minfluencer” brand on IG and TikTok. Many children have accounts run by their parents — e.g., six-year-old Elle Lively McBroom, whose 4.1 million Instagram followers look in on her travels, costumes, birthday parties and more. Or 7-yearold twins Taytum and Oakley, who now have more Instagram followers (3.1 million) than both of their celebrity parents (Kyler Fisher and Madison Bontempo) put together. Another set of twins, Koti and Haven, have amassed 4.7 million TikTok followers with their get-ready-with-me videos.

Brands that leverage minfluencers can best do so with certain content types — tutorials and challenges are big with the under-13 set — and on certain platforms. 51% of Alphas first hear about brands through YouTube, compared to 47% of Gen Z viewers who hear about brands on Instagram and TikTok. You’ll also want to brush up on the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA), child labor laws, responsible marketing practices and get comfortable working hand in hand with parents.

Whether or not the idea of minfluencers is growing on you, their influence certainly will.

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Redefining personalization

08 Redefining personalization Prediction: Personalization will become a journey that brands embark on with consumers, not an end point As more people crave a personalized experience across every touch point with a brand, we expect to see more brands and businesses rethink their approach to personalization, from a one-sizefits-all approach to creating personalization journeys based on where the consumer is in their relationship with a brand.

An analyst at Forrester says personalization is a lot like dating: Consumers don’t want to share everything from the get-go. Rather, they are more receptive to personalization in the postpurchase stages. While 38% enjoy personalized experiences when they’re initially discovering or researching a product/service, 43% enjoy personalized experiences when they’re buying a product/service and then using it, and 47% enjoy personalized experiences after they’ve bought a product/service. For example, you first subscribe to Netflix and only then do you begin receiving recommendations about what to watch.

According to the latest round of the HAVAS Meaningful Brands research, we’ve now entered the era of the Me-conomy and it’s all about “me”: my needs, my well-being and what brands can do for me. One of the ways brands will rise up to

meet these consumers in 2024 is by reevaluating their approach to personalization to make it less problematic. While social media algorithms are intended to help us connect with like-minded individuals and serve us content that reflects our interests and beliefs, they’ve also encapsulated some of us in a filter or a bubble that’s contributing to a shrinking world view, greater polarization and the spread of extremism.

There’s also growing awareness about the need to protect personal information from fraud or misappropriation (consider the ChatGPT lawsuits that are underway), leading some consumers to opt out of personalization and complicating how brands can deliver a personalized experience.

Brands that succeed at personalization in 2024 will do so because they map personalization to their customers’ entire journey. In particular, it’s important to pay attention to them after purchase, and not before and at purchase. This will help consumers trust brands more and help to level out a value exchange that can feel lopsided when consumers part with personal information before they’ve even decided on a purchase.

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UNBLINKERED thinking.

UNEXPECTED ideas.

HAVAS RED

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