Toilet paper shortages; community singing, clapping, and “howling”; the return of dolphins to the Bosporus—these were not events anyone predicted at the start of 2020. And while those examples may be some of the more fleeting trends from 2020, others will deeply impact the next 5 to 10 years and the way people interact with their environments. 

In January and early February of 2020, we asked an elite group of marketing practitioners, executives and academics to speculate on the future of advertising in the year 20301. At the time we conducted our research Covid-19 had not yet been declared a global pandemic or established its now-universal dominance over our lives, businesses, and priorities. Not long after publishing, however, it became clear we would need to revisit our research in light of the scale and transformational consequences of the coronavirus.

So, at the end of 2020, after a year spent in varying levels of lockdown or voluntary sequestration, we re-interviewed our growing panel of experts to understand how they think Covid-19 has impacted the likelihood of the 15 scenarios we originally explored.