Control and power will lead us to a new picture of progress.

Katie Burke, the Executive Creative Director, of the Metaverse Continuum at Accenture Song shares with us the five emerging trends identified in this year’s Accenture Life trends 2023.

We have five trends this year, and we have one meta theme; a theme that rolls between them all which is life-centricity, and examines the ways in which people are adapting their lives and making use of emerging technology to regain control. And once the world stabilizes, and it might take a while we are going to be looking at a new landscape. The world changes, and it doesn’t go back. It only just looks different, and that’s what we are exploring in this year’s report. We will explore each of the key trends, in turn.

People are seeking ways to adapt to an uncertain world.​

The first trend that we have is called “I will survive.” And this was the loudest trend that we heard from all of our designers, a sense of exasperation, a sense of anxiety, and a bit of hopelessness. This is really hard for us to hear from all of our people. But it makes sense… We call it “permacrisis” when it’s inevitable to read about the energy crisis here in Europe, the war in Ukraine, you’ve got inflation everywhere, you’ve got climate change, corruption, long Covid… you name it. We are going from one global crisis to the next. And you look at this and you think that this might be an anomaly for almost all of our generations.

But then we realize that humanity has always faced difficult times, but we manage to get through them. We adapt! The World War Two generation is definitely a good example: they had a different outlook on the world than before, and they were different when they emerged from it.

But what do we do right now, when we’re in the middle of it? And this is where we go into what’s next.

When you have these types of threats coming at us, you feel like you’ve lost control, and you react to these threats in four possible ways, what we call the four F’s: Fight, Flight, Focus, or Freeze.

To fight is to raise our voices against injustices, and we see this happening in surging protests everywhere; critical services like the nurses union, the ambulance union, taxis and airlines, and train stations, are all going on strike. Two of the most natural reactions are to fight or to flight, and when we take flight; it’s like mental escapism. It’s where you tune everything out and really just look for an alternative option.

Focus is another that comes in from a lot of our research, but it makes sense, a lot of mental health conversations speak of always focusing on what you can control. And our reaction is then to look at our neighborhoods, our family putting the emphasis on what matters to us, discarding the non-essentials. This means different things to different people, but when we internalize instability as a norm we tend to focus on immediacy, what’s closer and what’s more present.

And the last one is freeze. This is when people will switch off entirely. The anxiety and the hustle that people have to invest in dealing with uncertainty are not worth it.

Take this in a wider context. The “Big Resignation” is not just about quitting something, it’s also about not fighting anymore. Like a power-down to economy mode. But what’s interesting is that in the past, new culture driven by unsatisfied creative forces has emerged from similar circumstances. The emergence of rock ’n’ roll, punk, or rap, for example. We see the right conditions brewing for something new, culturally, that changes people’s outlook and brings them hope. As we make it through this state of permanent crisis, we’ll see the world differently.

What does this mean for brands? People’s needs are evolving fast, and companies must embrace a life-centric approach to meet these ever-changing circumstances and priorities.

Building a community will be essential to growing a customer base.

Our second trend explores what’s next for loyalty, and we call it “I’m a believer”.

It captures the underlying behavior shifts that have happened during the pandemic. When we were all forced to be at home and cut off from our social connections. And we found that social platforms don’t feel so social anymore as algorithms prioritize content over friends’ posts.

Being hyper-aware of the need for human connection, we found community digitally, in places like Reddit, Twitch or Discord… places where you have this kind of community of interest, and people have found a sense of belonging.

And that is where there has been an infusion of technology that’s opening up new ways for brands and customers to play with new tech, as tokenization is unlocking a lot of interesting community dynamics for creators, fans, and brands. A new wave of community-first, product-later models boosts customers’ connection with a brand. There are eight billion people on the planet, and every single one of them will find a community to which they belong no matter how niche it may seem.

The opportunity is to foster a deeper connection with people, the fans who are willing to go the extra mile, find the unique object, or token, and be part of an exclusive community. These

communities exist at macro and micro levels, global and local, offline and online, and they’re creating places where people feel they belong.

Return to office hasn’t been a success for many — it still needs work.

The third one is “As It Was”, which is really around the return to work and the intangible benefits of office life that have gone missing. it’s the little things, the office rituals that we do believe are absolutely missing and it’s causing a disconnect from work. And the office used to do that for us, but now with everyone distributed we think that some essential functions of shared office life are suffering, like informal learning, or seeing someone struggling with a project and just stepping over and helping them. Now people either struggle in silence or have to schedule a meeting to ask for help and it’s not something that intuitively a manager can just go and see how they can help. We feel like we have lost the accidental culture that was created by sharing space, sharing a struggle, sharing a smile…

So we’re calling a bit for a refresh of work with the intangibles built in. The intentional reimagination of work is a redesign of what’s acceptable with clear rules not just of where people work but also of how they work. The main problem that we’re seeing is that there’s a lack of clarity about what the new work life will be like for people.

AI is becoming people’s co-pilot for creativity.

The fourth one is “Ok, Creativity”. And what I love about this trend is that in the past four months, the tools that we use for creativity have gotten a spark added to them. Neural networks are using an open model to make AI engines available for everyone to use in the world.

And what happens when the ability to create sophisticated text, music, or images is in the hands of everyone? It’s pretty incredible. We always thought creativity was definitely a human skill. These AI engines are a tool that will enable creativity at a mass scale.

Technology is now acting as a co-pilot that sits alongside anyone who’s interested in harnessing their innate creativity.

What’s happening is that what we considered science fiction until very recently is a reality now, When it comes to neural networks and access to sophisticated technology “next” is becoming “now” at astounding speed.

Digital wallets could end the digital identity crisis.

And then the last one is on the digital wallet, and we call it “Signed, sealed, delivered”. Here we explore what digital wallets that contain tokens to represent ID, payment methods, loyalty cards, and eventually our identity could mean to brands. What happens when our identity is on the blockchain and we own it? And what does that mean for brands and their relationship with data and people?

After many years of abuse and lack of transparency using people’s data, trust in companies has diminished.

This idea is basically addressing the rise of digital ownership, and how it is shifting the power dynamic to users by putting them in control of their digital identity by storing it in digital wallets.

Eventually, we see the need for a full ecosystem shift in the years ahead, as blockchain-based technologies transform the experience of people’s online lives.

This means that businesses will have to work harder via loyalty programs and incentives to reward customers for sharing their data. Which is a big shift in the brand-consumer dynamic.

What we love about creating and sharing these trends is that it helps make the complex simple. And that’s the biggest feedback we get from CEOs and designers from all over the world. It’s really about making the language accessible to people.

It’s supposed to be a marker of what’s coming in our line of work. Putting all these trends and concepts out there now influences next year and three years from now. Some of the concepts we use in our 2019 report are emerging and bubbling up now, like the life-centered business model.

Follow Katie on Linkedin and read the report.