Found in the TrendWatching newsletter this month, this new trend:

More and more, the offline world (a.k.a. the real world, meatspace or atom-arena) is adjusting to and mirroring the increasingly dominant online world, from tone of voice to product development to business processes to customer relationships. Get ready to truly cater to an ONLINE OXYGEN generation even if you’re in ancient sectors like automotive or fast moving consumer goods.

What it means: I’m reminded of a great panel I saw at a Kelsey Conference in 2004.  Francis Barker, then SVP – Strategy & Corporate Development at Dex Media, came up with one of the most inspiring answers I’ve heard at one of those conferences.  When asked (by Greg Sterling I think)  what he thought would be “the biggest yellow pages industry change in the next five years not one had expected”, he answered that we would see a printed business directory influenced by search engines’ usage and patterns.  I thought that was a brilliant insight but unfortunately, we’re still waiting…