Before we step away from the office and reach for the turkey and mince pies, we look back on the whirlwind that has been 2016. A quick fire round in the Active Profile office on the defining moments of the year threw out:

• Trump, Brexit, Boris, and May making for raised eye brows on ‘new’ UK politics
• Bowie and Prince - forever alive in our hearts and on repeat on the Active Profile sound system
• Climate change agreements
• The ice bucket challenge ALS breakthrough
• The world’s first three parent baby

Job done in 5 mins 25 secs. But being simple creatures facing forwards – or so we believe most of the time - we thought it might be more interesting to ask, what do we think is in store for communications in 2017?

Here’s a few of our team thoughts and predictions:

• We will see our physical spaces embracing digital. Amazon shopping stores, eye scanning security, smarter energy, interactive signage, virtual reality will be the norm - giving us new opportunities to communicate with the public in our spaces.
• Social media will drive exposure for events with ‘live streaming’. Done well this has great impact and high viewing capability, done badly – no one wins!
• News is still important but a cohesive content strategy will win real results. We will see inbound approaches and engagement strategies generating leads from wonderful content. And yes this will give better measurement to PR and marketing investment, hooray!
• Millennials: how do we continue to attract the new generation and keep their attention? Audiences are moving quicker and faster than ever. We will continue to be challenged by giving them what they want quickly or risking losing them as customers or indeed employees if we don’t keep thinking on our toes.
• Content and conversion is still king – sending people to your website homepage from communications won’t cut it, communications will need more investment in campaign landing pages, microsites and blogging platforms to really win results.

So as we wave a final farewell to 2016, we would like to thank all our wonderful client teams, our partners and collaborators for making everything we achieved this year possible and we look forward to much more in 2017.