Forecasting and the AT&T "You Will" Campaign

 

Forecasting is a necessary tool for businesses as it can help to create business predictions and give insight into what paths an organization should take. Looking into the future can help businesses plan financially, estimate market trends, or predict customer interest to optimize their revenue. Forecasting can be performed within many business areas such as accounting, supply and demand trends, marketing, sales, and production. Decisions within any organization take time to plan and implement, with many decisions taking years to come to fruition, which is why forecasting must be used to create accurate predictions, so the business can have the largest possible return on investment (Vazquez, 2021). To give an example, when I was in college, I worked in a research facility for a seed corn production company. My job was to help pollinate and harvest plots of test plants. While many people picture these test plants being grown quickly in a lab, in reality the process of creating new strains of plants can take 10 to 15 years with the time it takes to perform research, pollinate by hand (you could not use machinery since it could easily spread the pollen and contaminate the sample), collect and analyze data, and then to begin the actual production. With development of new products possibly taking decades to accomplish, businesses need to utilize forecasting to predict the production costs and potential revenue to determine if the investment is worthwhile.

Thankfully, this week’s topic relates to a topic I’ve been wanting to discuss on my blog; AT&T’s “You Will” campaign from 1993. The “You Will” campaign aimed to provide consumers with an imaginative view of the future, but these predictions were not pure speculation. At the time, AT&T was promoting “the spirit of innovation” as they believed we would soon be making great developments in the digital era. AT&T assembled a team of their own researchers, philosophers, MIT researchers, and futurists to create predictions of what technology would look like 25 years in the future, in 2018 (Wired Insider, 2018). The number of accurate predictions made during this campaign is astounding, and while I hate to give away my age, it's a very bizarre feeling to see an ad that is older than me get so many things right because I grew up around this technology. The accurate predictions include:

1. Dash-mounted GPS,

2. Ebooks,

3. Online ticket purchasing (concerts, sports, movies, etc.),

4. video calls,

5. voice activated locks (not popular today, but it is existing technology),

6. smart TVs,

7. video streaming,

8. distance learning (Bipper Media, 2009).

9. tablets,

10. smart homes,

11. smartwatches/wearables,

12. real-time translators (RobotPorter, 2016).

To consumers, these ads seemed like a presentation of sci-fi technology, but these were devices that AT&T was planning to begin working on. While AT&T was not the pioneer for some of these pieces of technology, they certainly helped to support them by forecasting their development and by generating public interest. The diversity of the prediction team also helped to support these ideas as their different backgrounds and academic acumen gave the campaign more credibility than if it were a simple marketing campaign created solely by AT&T employees (Wired Insider, 2018).

While researching the 25^th anniversary of the “You Will” campaign, I stumbled upon a blog post from 2009 that was reflecting on the campaign’s predictions at that time. Again, many of the predictions had already come to fruition by 2009, but it's funny to see the author complain about an “incorrect” prediction. In one of the ads, a woman enters a phone booth and is able to have a video call with her family. The author, Danny Allen, voices his frustration with his iPhone not having a forward-facing camera. Just you wait, Danny! Less than a year later, Apple unveiled the iPhone 4 which featured an innovative front camera and a new feature known as “FaceTime” (Allen, 2009).

To mimic Danny Allen’s retrospective, I would like to discuss one of the predictions that has yet to come true. In one of the ads, a man hands a doctor a card, the doctor scans it, and it allows the doctor to see all the man’s medical information. While I have security concerns with this prediction, I can see this becoming a reality by 2050 or earlier. With electronic medical records (EMR) being mandated in the US in 2014, a centralized EMR system already has some supporting technology. I can envision this system using an implant instead of a card that can be easily lost or stolen. The technology to implement a system like this does currently exist; however, it will need public and political support, advanced security measures, and financial support.

Here are links to the “You Will” advertisements:

AT&T You Will Ads From 1993 - Amazingly accurate predictions

AT&T "You Will" Commercials (high quality)

References

Allen, D. (2009, September 18). Remember The AT&T Ads About the Future? You Will. Gizmodo. https://gizmodo.com/remember-the-at-t-ads-about-the-future-you-will-5362625

Bipper Media. (2009, September 24). AT&T You Will Ads From 1993 - Amazingly accurate predictions [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PJcABbtvtA

RobotPorter. (2016, April 22). AT&T "You Will" Commercials (high quality) [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2EgfkhC1eo

Vazquez, A. (2021, November 29). What Is Business Forecasting? Predictions to Drive Success. Learn Hub. https://learn.g2.com/business-forecasting

Wired Insider. (2018, May 25). 25 Years Ago, AT&T Predicted the Future We’re Living Now. Wired. https://www.wired.com/brandlab/2018/11/25-years-ago-att-predicted-future-living-now/