5 Minutes with… Katie Burke

“Prediction is difficult”, wrote Mark Twain. “Particularly when it involves the future”. Spare a thought, then, for the team behind Accenture’s Life Trends report (formerly Fjord Trends). Every twelve months, the company taps into its unparalleled treasure trove of data and insights to pick out the trends transforming our world. And this year, the report has pulled no punches. 

Citing increasing tension between people, tech, and business, and depicting culture in a state of flux, this year’s report is essential reading for anyone looking to develop a deeper understanding of our society and economy. It found, for example, that the scale of change has become so great that people globally are “deconstructing everything as they try to figure out who they are in the world”. 

As Accenture Song’s global lead for innovation and thought leadership, Katie Burke had a significant role to play in putting the report together. So, when LBB had the chance to catch up with her, we wanted to pick her brain regarding the most intriguing elements of this year’s trends. 

Here, Katie reflects on the potential for a new era of personalisation, why our culture risks sinking into a swamp of blandness, and how - in spite of the challenges - there’s still a way for us to carve out a healthier, more meaningful relationship with technology. 

LBB> Katie, let’s dig into the big themes from this year’s trends. If you had to sum up a take-home message from the report as a whole, what would it be? 

Katie> In extremely broad brushstrokes, I would simply say that there are massive changes happening all around us. Whether it's in technology, the economy, or even geopolitics, we’re suddenly looking for new anchors to help us deal with the flux. 

And so, if everything is in flux, where do we even begin? That’s the central provocation that we’re grappling with. 

LBB> And do you have an answer for it? 

Katie> Unfortunately, there are a million different answers. But in a macro sense, any serious response must begin by recognising the scale of change that’s upon us. In some instances, it’s unlike anything that we’ve seen before in our lifetimes. 

So if you want to answer that provocation in the context of your business or your life, I think the only way you can start is by making the big seem small. Find out how these enormous changes are going to affect you on a granular level, and work up from there. 

LBB> In getting more granular, there was a line that jumped out to us from the ‘Where’s the Love?’ trend: “People’s perceptions of purpose-led initiatives are becoming less favourable”. Why do you think that is? 

Katie> I think there are three core factors behind that shift. The first is economic, where people are understandably prioritising price over purpose at the moment. The second is polarisation, where unfortunately the concept of purpose has become intertwined with our increasingly polarised politics. It’s hard for businesses to thrive and not drive consumers away when they take a stand, because a lot of purpose-led campaigns do stray into the fraught and risky world of politics. 

The other factor is timing. Are you asserting your purpose in a way that feels as though you’re not on the pulse of wider society? And does it feel like part of a movement that is detached from the reality of your customers’ lives? 

But the point of this trend overall is to highlight how you can never get too far away as a marketer from the idea of keeping your product in the basket. So, it’s counter-productive to do anything that might be driving customers away at a time where you need to be keeping them. The importance of that mindset is the key thing we’re trying to communicate. 

LBB> Meanwhile, ‘The Great Interface Shift’ lauds the ability of AI to help brands communicate with their audiences at a hyper-individual level. But what happens to the concept of a ‘brand’ when they suddenly become different things to different people?

Katie> The nature of personalisation is changing. That’s enabled by AI and data, but from a brand perspective, when you think about the opportunities for personal interactions that your brand can have in a million different ways, they need to be centred around the anchor of your overarching brand position. It’s essential to know who you are as a brand and your tone, in order to inform these touchpoints. 

To use a very basic example, you might have a very different conversation with your friends compared to your family. But they’re both still very much interacting with you. That’s how brands should now be thinking about their communications. 

This is one of many things that are going to force us to rethink the notion of a brand in the new evolution of the internet. In recent times we’ve had to figure out how a brand might adjust its personality across its e-commerce platform versus its Instagram feed, for example. And now this new change, which is broadly away from broadcasting and towards being more conversational, is the latest iteration of that dynamic. The brand will have to evolve and keep up with new tech-enabled features. 

I’ve no doubt we will see some hiccups along the way, as we did in the early days of social media. But, just as it was in that era, this is a question for every brand to answer. 

LBB> Zooming out to culture more broadly, ‘Meh-diocrity’ makes a powerful argument against the over-saturation of reboots and sequels that are dominating the world of entertainment. But, if we keep watching this stuff, what are studios supposed to do? Surely audiences should take some blame? 

Katie> I’d argue that people are only going to consume what they’re offered. And we have seen that, when presented with a choice, they choose the more creative and more interesting option. 

For example, every bit of data might have suggested that ‘Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning’ was going to blow the doors off the world of cinema this summer. But, for whatever reason, it ended up being released very close to ‘Barbie’ which, as we all know, was the unquestionable smash hit of 2023. 

The Barbie movie might seem like a counterintuitive example of creativity since it was obviously an established IP, but I’d argue that it was extremely experimental, and frankly a bit of a risk, in the way it was delivered. Yet it paid off massively. 

So, for most creative organisations, you have to know when to stop doing what you’ve always been doing and try something new. Your data might be telling you that there’s a reliable ‘formula’ that works, but you need to make sure it’s also telling you when people are bored of it. 

LBB> We’re not just talking about films here, are we? Are we saying that there’s a formulaic, risk-averse mindset prevalent across all of our culture? 

Katie> We do think that is fair to say, yes. I mean, even when I load up my social media feeds, they’re so predictable and formulaic. I see a friend, then three content creators in a row, and then a couple of brands. So, in the first 20 posts I’ve scrolled past, only two or three of them at most have actually been updates from my friends and family. 

It’s easy to make that accusation of repetitiveness in the world of film because it’s happening in quite a blatant and obvious way. But if you look at the broader spectrum of the arts - and anything that we consider part of moving culture forwards - there’s a massive lean towards the familiar. And the result is that we’re missing out on the excitement, and the economic benefits, of novelty. 

LBB> But broadening this out, I thought that technology and the internet were combining to create a more meritocratic marketplace where smaller brands could go toe-to-toe with the behemoths and spark innovation. So what’s gone wrong? How has a recipe for creative dynamism produced a swamp of blandness?

Katie> There are two separate things going on in that question. If we are seriously asking whether the internet has made it easier for new brands to spring up I think the answer has to be yes. You see that in consumer packaged goods, banks, finance, you name it - we’ve become used to new brands popping up and reaching massive new audiences. 

But what’s challenging is that because of the whole ‘end of free money’ era that we’re now in, it’s become really hard for new businesses to get discovered and remain standing. Big firms have the cash reserves needed to survive, but they’re using them in a risk-averse way that’s not really an option for smaller enterprises. 

And then the second thread to unpick is how discovering new brands has actually become harder for consumers because of sheer volume. We have a lot of volume in our feeds - which is about to explode again thanks to generative AI - that we are expected to scroll and sift through. That’s a challenge. So, I’d suggest that the ‘swamp’ in your question is due less to a lack of creative dynamism and more to increasing volumes of content. 

LBB> Extending that line of logic, then, do you think we’ve simply asked too much of the consumer? Is it unrealistic to expect people to be able to continue soaking up this ever-increasing volume of content whilst still making informed decisions? 

Katie> I can sympathise with that conclusion. However, I think it is important to note that we are talking specifically about digital, here. When you go to an in-person experience, or even just walk down a street here in London with a creative brand activation, you still have your senses engaged and your attention is captured. It feels alive. 

But digitally, it is hard to avoid the sense that you are part of a scroll. And you also have the bizarre disassociation where you’re jumping between celebrity gossip, an ad, then a clip of a comedian, then another ad, and finally a gut-wrenching clip of a news reporter commenting on a humanitarian crisis before you finally put your phone down. I don’t have the necessary medical qualifications to say what that’s doing to our brains, but I’m confident that it isn’t anything good. 

LBB> On which note, there was another line from the report which stood out to me. “There’s a feeling that technology is happening to us, not for us”. AI is the perfect example of this, isn’t it? If 61% of Americans believe that “AI threatens the future of humanity”, is it time to admit that AI has a PR problem?

Katie> If you want a short answer to that question, it’s ‘yes’.

If you wanted a longer one, then I’d say that a lot of the PR-driven headlines that we’ve seen regarding AI have contributed to a dystopian framing of the technology. That’s not to underplay the risks, or indeed the gravity of what we’re talking about, because I do genuinely believe that this technology has a revolutionary potential. But we do need to accept that there is a lot - a lot - of nuance to be found in the debate. And, because of that, we owe it to ourselves to be open-minded. 

LBB> What about you? Do you think that AI is happening to you, or for you? 

Katie> It’s helpful to think about AI as having an impact on our processes, rather than on us as people. I’m talking about the kinds of processes that in some cases make certain jobs and tasks harder than they need to be, and perhaps it can bring a bit of simplicity back into our day-to-day lives. 

In that sense, I do get the feeling that it is happening for me - at least to a certain extent. It’s a tool with which I can push back on some of the things which are taking up more of a mental load than they ideally should. 

LBB> Finally, a recurring theme across all of this year’s trends is the interplay between humanity and technology. So, Katie, help our readers out: What do you think constitutes a “healthy” relationship with tech? 

Katie> One that puts our wellbeing first, above monetisation. Most of the challenges that we’ve discussed today can - at least in part - be traced back to monetisation models that drive addiction. 

Is our world shaped that way at the moment? No. But, our own worlds can be. And going forward, we do need to understand that in order to have a sustainable economic model, we are going to need well-being prioritised alongside profit in the digital space. That would go a long way towards shaping a ‘healthier’ relationship between humans and our technology.