OUTLOOK 2021 ① |” THE ANYWARE ECONOMY “

UM Worldwide and IPG Media Lab’s Outlook 2021: Forward Momentum is part of annual global outlook study running since 2006 that rounds up the ideas in the media landscape that excite and inform for the next few years ahead. Guided by a forward-thinking perspective, the outlook study explores emerging technologies and their potential to become new media platforms. Our focus on research and strategy enables us to analyze the latest platform developments, understand how they will impact consumers, and advise our clients on how to navigate the evolving landscape.

In China’s Outlook series, we will unlock the key shifts at play, and how marketers should respond to futureproof their business with four insights pieces – The Anyware Economy, Gaming Eats the World, The Splinternet and The Reinvention of Social Context.

In the global version of the Outlook 2021 report, a key tension was identified between those who want to capitalize on the “forward momentum” towards digital transformation accelerated by the pandemic, and those who wish to return to the way things were down before, as the driving force for the digital landscape over this new decade. This tension can also be found in the Chinese market, albeit with a different set of approaches and manifestations, compared to the rest of the world.

During the last Chinese New Year, China was in the throes of the pandemic, with hundreds of millions of people on lockdown and forced to adopt additional digital tools and conduct more aspects of our daily life online. This did create strong forward momentum in terms of getting more people to try out various online platforms for remote work, education, and healthcare. Thanks to a strong centralized response, China contained the spread of the pandemic fairly quickly and things snapped back to the way they were before new digital habits could fully set in.

Now, it is becoming clear that the end of the pandemic will mark the beginning of a new phase of China’s digital innovations. Although life has mostly returned to normal in China, the Covid-19 pandemic accelerated the transitioning of China’s economical structure and, similar to the global market, led to some rethinking around the digitization in domains such as healthcare, education, finance. This forward momentum may stern from different sources than the rest of the world, but it will nevertheless create new challenges and opportunities for Chinese and global brands to navigate.

THE ANYWARE ECONOMY

As we mentioned, the pandemic was swiftly and effectively handled in China and most Chinese people returned to offices and resumed their normal routines since last April. Therefore, compared to our international colleagues, we have yet to witness the same level of adoption for the remote working tools and platforms, nor the same type of cultural indicators of a growing “Anyware Economy” that would free Chinese consumers from their daily commutes and office chit-chats.

That being said, the brief work-from-home period did encourage more office workers to try out new platforms like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Tencent Meeting, Ali Ding-Ding. And even though people have returned to the office, adopting these new tools has led to a subtle mindset shift where in-personal meetings have been de-prioritized in favor of telecommunication. Although tourism has bounced back in most regions since May, most business travelers have remained cautious and avoided unnecessary trips, opting for online meetings instead. Most business travelers have remained cautious and avoided unnecessary trips, opting for online meetings instead.

A similar shift also happened in remote education. In fact, adopting remote learning tools have sustained much longer for students and educators than office workers have with remote working. Although Chinese schools have reopened around the same time the offices did, certain aspects of remote learning remained intact thanks to the efficiency they bring to the process. In particular, tasks as scheduling and classroom check-ins, homework announcement, exams and assessments stayed on digital platforms, providing students and parents, teachers and professors with easy remote access.

Healthcare is another industry that sustained a lingering impact of the pandemic. As part of the most recent Five Year Plan, policymakers reemphasized the goal of achieving “98% digitization to all hospitals and medical institutions in China”, focusing on things like enabling digital prescription, legalizing and standardizing remote treatments, as well as digital medical insurance. Most of these telehealth developments will be powered by platforms such as Alibaba’s Ali Health, Chun Yu Doctor, and JD Health – all of which were free-to-use during the pandemic last year but has since started to monetize their products as China continues to transform its healthcare sector.

In conclusion, the Anyware Economy will impact key industries such as education and healthcare in China, and the fastening adoption of 5G networks will bring more network capability for those sectors to digitize their operations and products. However, in terms of its impact in the shift towards remote working, the pandemic’s impact is negligible, reducing the chance of new consumer behaviors or media habits due to the rise of hybrid work lifestyle that some in the West may start to see.