Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

This is the time of year people post their prognostications for the next year. The predictions will be … predictable: More video! More Snapchat! More podcasts!

Well, OK. It’s pretty easy to make a prediction based on what’s already happening. But there are less obvious tectonic forces rumbling through our marketplace. Here’s a view of some of the underlying shifts, the marketing mega trends, you need be considering in 2017....

The selfie storm reached its pinnacle at the Oscars earlier this year when Ellen Degeneres took the record-breaking selfie heard round the Internet. But was that actually an “usie”?

The AP recently reported on the growing trend of group selfies.“Usies are a growing trend that I think have far more social value than selfies,” said Michal Ann Strahilevitz, a professor of marketing at Golden Gate University in San Francisco who studies consumer behavior. “It’s magical capturing moments we share with other people.” In contrast to one-person selfies, usies are “more about the relationship, and less about you and your hair,” she said. The word — sometimes spelled usie, sometimes ussie — has been showing up in written material since at least April 2013, according to Ben Zimmer, executive producer of Vocabulary.com and language columnist for The Wall Street Journal....