Everyone else is doing it, and so will I. Here, off the top of my head, and totally unsupported and unfounded, are my 20 predictions for 2008 in the worlds of marketing, media and culture. See if you agree with even one of them (or if you think I have gone totally off the reservation). I encourage you to share your own 2008 prognostications in this space. Hey, it doesn’t cost a thing and some of them might even come true! *

1. Go Daddy will again spend a cool couple of million to advertise its bad taste on the Super Bowl and most people will still wonder, "What exactly does that company do?"
2. Sensing an embarrassing defeat in the Republican primary (even Ron Paul is poised to beat him in New Hampshire next month), Rudy Giuliani will withdraw from the race, blaming a mysterious ailment or something equally vague. His recent "bad headache" was just a warm up to this inevitability.
3. Facebook will not live up to its $15 billion valuation, but Microsoft won’t care. They were just relieved to finally beat Google with their 2007 $240M investment in the social networking wunderkind.
4. Speaking of Google, they will continue to rule search, but their other ventures will, for the most part, falter.
5. Yahoo will just kind of run out of steam and sell all or most of the company.
6. At least one major fashion magazine will run a front page headline in its fall fashion edition that trumpets a "Return to Glamour."
7. The big ad agencies will wonder why they are not getting more digital business, even after naming big ticket Digital Czars. Consequently, many of these digital "heads" will be fired or reassigned.
8. Chrysler will not even come close to resuscitating itself and Cerberus Capital, the massive private equity firm that acquired it, will look like a three-headed chump for buying its debt in the first place.
9. Ford, on the other hand, will finally start to get back on track, especially with the launch of its new category changing Fairlane/Flex station wagon/crossover. The Blue Oval brand will also show its renewed vitality by green lighting the production of a retro but very fuel efficient version of the iconic Ford SUV, the Bronco.
10. The white male ceiling of the American presidency will finally be shattered by either a woman or a black man.
11. Blockbuster will start selling burritos as a prelude to getting out of the movie rental business altogether (the company’s new CEO is the former chief at 7/11, so he knows from burritos). At the same time, Netflix will start a decline that will force that former high flier to completely change its business model (the crystal ball is unclear whether it can ultimately survive this coming decline).
12. After the planned breakup of his InterActive Corp. into multiple pieces, Barry Diller will get out of the Internet business, claiming he never liked it in the first place. Rupert Murdoch will buy the Ask search engine and turn it into a real competitor.
13. The housing market will not come back (not yet, at least), and the Realtor monopoly will decline even further because of the continued growth of web-based home sellers like Zillow and the emergence of at least one new category killer. The decline and ultimate death of the 6% Realtor commission will be one of the few positive consequences of the mortgage and housing bust. 
14. In retailing, the Macy’s rebranding of local iconic stores (like Marshall Fields in Chicago) will be seen as even more of a marketing debacle, while the UK-based Tesco will stumble with its huge Fresh & Easy stores experiment (the postmortem will be that Tesco never really understood the tastes of US consumers). Tesco will learn, for one thing, that you don’t create Trader Joe’s overnight.
15. The business life expectancy of the Chief Marketing Officer will drop even further to something approaching the lifespan of a flea (or less).
16. The Green Revolution will finally go mainstream, but not because former global warming deniers got environmental religion. People are now getting real about sustainability because of hometown environmental disasters such as the historic drought in Red States like Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama, and the massive water problems in the West.
17. Marketers will start to realize that word of mouth (or "viral") marketing cannot be manufactured or manipulated. The whole point of word of mouth is that it happens spontaneously and naturally. Consumers tend to see through buzz that is created artificially and then ignore or reject it.
18. Despite the funeral dirges already being sounded for their deaths, traditional media such as magazines and even newspapers will continue to live on in the next 12 months. With any luck, Rupert Murdoch’s purchase of and investment in the Wall Street Journal could be the catalyst for other newspaper revivals in 2008 and beyond.
19. Misguided airlines will test in-flight cell phone use, and frequent fliers (like me) will rebel loudly and vigorously.
20. The web 2.0 bubble will remain intact…at least for now!

* This blog guarantees that at least a quarter of these predictions will actually come true this year.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS