25 PREDICTIONS FOR WHAT MARKETING WILL LOOK LIKE IN 2020
Elite players—members of the Most Innovative Companies
list—representing key marketing constituencies give us their educated
predictions on how the brand landscape will evolve in 5 years.
Just as technology and
consumer behavior will evolve in unpredictable ways between now and 2020, the
ways marketers react to—or perhaps influence?—these new developments will also
change in ways we can't fully imagine now. But if anyone can offer a credible
forecast for the near-future trends that will change the way brands connect
with people, and the way creative companies will work in the next few years,
it's the people who are most influencing the ad and marketing world right now.
We asked innovators
behind some of the companies on this year's Most Innovative Companies in
Advertising/Marketing list, representing key constituencies in the ad
landscape—creative agencies, brands, marketing technology startups, and media
platforms—for five predictions for the next five years.
While some of their
answers spoke to now-familiar trends—the continued growth of mobile and its
attendant impact on brand messaging, the continued rise of video and virtual
reality, the need for brands to work on a timeline that matches culture, not ad
campaigns—their predictions touched on a much wider range of topics, from the
shrinking of the product development cycle to data and the place of technology
in the marketing continuum (and even a prediction that the banner will work!).
That range of topics, in itself, speaks to one, overall, very safe prediction,
summed up by Percolate's Noah Brier: "The complexity of modern marketing
is only going to keep increasing." See more forecasts below.
Chris Brandt, chief
marketing officer, Taco Bell Corp.
Mobile will enable more personal interactions between brands and people. The number one possession people have is their smartphone and there are more mobile devices than people on the planet. Mobile is the way people interact with friends and brands. The way they look at content is shifting to small screen and successful brands will be able to create a more personalized experience with consumers. Branding is rapidly becoming a two-way conversation as social media has given consumers a voice unlike anything ever seen before. As brands track individual consumer behavior in real-time, they can use it to tailor the experience for that specific person and their specific behaviors on a mass scale.
Mobile will enable more personal interactions between brands and people. The number one possession people have is their smartphone and there are more mobile devices than people on the planet. Mobile is the way people interact with friends and brands. The way they look at content is shifting to small screen and successful brands will be able to create a more personalized experience with consumers. Branding is rapidly becoming a two-way conversation as social media has given consumers a voice unlike anything ever seen before. As brands track individual consumer behavior in real-time, they can use it to tailor the experience for that specific person and their specific behaviors on a mass scale.
"Most branded content will come from consumers."
Transparency is the
new black. Consumers expect more information from the brands they use and they
expect brands to do good. They want to know who they are and what they stand
for. They reward companies that have similar values and ask, "Is the brand
good for me (the consumer) and good for we (society as a whole)?" Brands
have to be more transparent in a genuine and authentic way—to live and
demonstrate their values—they need to walk the talk. If they do, they will win
both the hearts and the minds of consumers, which builds sales overnight and
the brand over time.
(There will be) a shift from talking at the world to making the world talk. People don’t necessarily want to be marketed to, so brands should look to create engagement and conversations at every consumer touch point. We aim to make everything we do a catalyst for conversation. In terms of our advertising, we want people to ask, "What’s the product? What’s the music? Who’s the artist? What are others saying about it?" Everything must be about the conversation. We want people love our food, care about our brand, and want to share with others.
(There will be) a shift from talking at the world to making the world talk. People don’t necessarily want to be marketed to, so brands should look to create engagement and conversations at every consumer touch point. We aim to make everything we do a catalyst for conversation. In terms of our advertising, we want people to ask, "What’s the product? What’s the music? Who’s the artist? What are others saying about it?" Everything must be about the conversation. We want people love our food, care about our brand, and want to share with others.
Rise of video and
video sharing. With the rise of mobile, video is in high demand because people
love visual storytelling. This includes short form, long form, snippets,
streaming, etc. This shift in consumption shatters some of the conventional
marketing models. Brands will become more nimble and will see creative and
digital agencies morphing into one as ideas need to be cohesively executed
across all channels simultaneously. Content will need to be produced more
quickly and efficiently which has big implications for the traditional
agency/brand relationship.
Most branded content
will come from consumers. User generated content will far exceed branded
content and brands need to embrace this and accept they aren’t in complete
control of their own brand. As such, it’s imperative that brands create a
strong identity in the minds and hearts of consumers. At Taco Bell, we look at
three approaches to content: Create, Co-Create, and Curate. Create is our own
content, co-create is content created in partnership with consumers, and curate
is taking the user generated content we like and showing it to more people. The
most important ingredient in all of this is authenticity. We are lucky we have
passionate fans that do wonderful things like create dresses out of sauce
packets—now that is true passion!
Linda Boff, executive
director of global brand marketing, General Electric
Virtual reality has
become real. It’s a great storytelling platform, particularly for GE, because
it gives us another incredible way to show how our big machines perform in extreme
conditions.
Connected everything:
homes, TVs, cars, jet engines, locomotives, wearables, lights. As marketers,
pay particular attention to TV, as the web starts to power your remote control,
look for more new players with high-quality content.
New faces to news
coverage. Emerging publishers who tailor content, context, and media to younger
audiences will surge ahead. Micnews, Vice, Fusion, Cir.c, and Quartz are
incredibly well-positioned.
Many of the hottest
new media apps will help filter the clutter. By either evaporating or
simplifying communication down to a "Yo," brands will need to behave
in a similar manner in these places to stay relevant.
Owning your audience.
In a world filled with incredible new tools to cultivate community, customers,
consumers, and fans are more accessible than ever. Look for more direct
conversations.
All channels are
"programmatic." Programmatic rightly gets a bad name, but the core
idea of marketing channels being accessible via an input like an API is a
really important concept. Right now that’s true of the social channels, and
increasingly, the rest of the digital marketing channels, but over the next five
years we’ll also see traditional channels like radio and television open
themselves up to receive marketing assets programmatically.
No more social. As
counterintuitive as it sounds, you know a new medium has succeeded when we
don’t talk about it anymore. No one mentions going online because we’re all
just always connected. The same is increasingly true of social and I expect
we’ll see the full transition over the next five years. Facebook now makes more
money on advertising than most of the major television networks and it’s
showing no signs of letting up. Instagram takes 15-second videos that look a
lot like commercials. The fact these are social doesn’t really matter anymore;
they’re part of the marketing mix and offer brands the sort of reach they only
got a few times a year on television. To that end, social will just be folded
into the broader marketing discipline.
The complexity of
modern marketing is only going to keep increasing. The job of being a marketer
in 2015 is undoubtedly more difficult than it was 20 years ago. The
proliferation of channels, markets, and, importantly, incomes in emerging
markets around the world, has made marketing a complex discipline. While this
is a big challenge, it’s also a good problem to have, as over the next five
years marketers will have an ever-growing customer base who, thanks to the
growth of smartphones, they will be able to reach directly (many for the first
time). All of this will drive more complexity inside and outside organizations,
but, when accompanied by growth, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Perfect end-to-end
attribution (or knowing exactly what messages and actions led someone to buy a
product) will remain an industry white whale. We’ve been talking about
attribution for at least 80 years in marketing. New technology has given us
much better data in some places, for instance, end-to-end attribution in search
is a current reality. But for the majority of companies who sell goods in
stores will still struggle with end-to-end attribution five years from now. New
technologies, especially mobile wallets, offer some compelling possibilities
for solving the problem, but at the end of the day, we’re still a long way from
being able to tie the billboard exposure in Times Square to the bar of soap
being purchased in Target.
Technology moves
upstream. If you look at how technology has moved through marketing, it started
at the edge (distribution of marketing assets) and has continued to move closer
and closer to the actual planning and development of marketing itself. Over the
next five years we’ll see technology complete this transition and become a part
of the core fabric of marketing itself.
Matt Jarvis, chief
strategy officer, 72andSunny
Doing good will be
good for business. People will reward brands who do good, and punish the ones
who don’t. Brand citizenship will move from a defensive, corporate affairs
function to a marketing function that drives transactions at scale and creates
advantages for companies in the talent wars.
Agencies will become
connectors. Brands want to connect with people through artist relationships and
artists want brand dollars. Agencies will be the force that brings them
together in partnerships that are about more than just pay to play.
Good agencies will act
like product companies, not service companies. Service companies aspire to a
happy customer and a contract renewal. Product companies innovate quickly and
offer better value with each iteration. Agencies who get the Silicon Valley
fast iteration memo will lead the next generation.
Big data will get
personal. The revolution that has changed how brands go to market will become
personalized and allow individuals to use data to pursue their passions and
goals. Products and experiences that help people along on this journey will
become a much bigger part of our lives. Marketers who participate in this
productively and respectfully will form deeper relationships. Those who intrude
will get shut out.
Culture will still be
king. People will continue to care more about culture than products, so brands
that operate on a cultural level will be the winners of the future as they are
of the present.
Alex Hesz, director of
digital, adam&eveDDB
Metadata versus
personal data: The potential value of well-collected, well-interpreted metadata
is near limitless. Real-time traffic updates based on signals from mobile
phones. Faster and more accurate public health measurement. Supply chain
optimization via signals from fridges that reduce food waste. Metadata will
make life better. But last year's National Health Service metadata
scandal ("private
data sold to insurance firms!") in the U.K. proved that public
understanding is lacking. The fact that personal information is of demonstrably
no value within metadata (quite the contrary—the principle being that only once
a volume that negates the impact of rogue individual samples is achieved does
the data set become of use) was lacking, to the ultimate detriment of all. In
the next five years I see our ability to use metadata smartly evolving, but of
much more profound importance, I sincerely hope we will see a shift in public
understanding that personal privacy and a world made better by metadata can
very comfortably coexist.
Creative agency
capabilities: A bit of navel gazing here, but agency models will change. They
have to. The nature of marketing communications is now so much more complex and
nuanced that the dry ice and velvet curtain "grand reveal" of a
traditional advertising agency is starting to look hilariously outdated.
Marketers, emboldened often by their own direct relationships with the big
technology companies (fostered at vast effort and expense by the likes of
Facebook, Google, and Twitter) are beginning to suspect that in some cases they
are driving the marketing innovation agenda, not their agencies. The big ask
for agencies is to reclaim the innovation agenda without succumbing to the
magpie-like pursuit of shiny new things for their own sake.
Measurement of
campaign success: Metrics are all over the place. We had page views (which was
essentially like tracking escalator use at a department store—i.e., how many
times people had to do a thing that’s basically inconvenient), Facebook Likes
(which are now of no lasting utility), video views (now an indicator primarily
of paid investment), and click-through rates (which still fail to discern
quality of traffic). None of them are good. Even engagement rates and dwell
times are slippery. We are still yet to settle on a metric that is fit for
purpose; one that is easily repeatable, undeniably valuable, demonstrably
linked to ultimate effectiveness. I can’t help but feel that when we do, when
we’re able to say, "Yes it achieved 19, and our benchmark is 12," and
we know for sure that means it worked, then we will be in a transformed place.
Surely. Surely it’s going to happen soon.
Product development
life cycle is vanishing: We see it happening everywhere—the incredible
acceleration of product development, testing, iteration, and roll-out
processes. From pharmaceuticals to automotive, it just takes less time to
design and make something now. The potential impact on marketing is enormous.
No longer will marketing and advertising be too late to impact product. No
longer will the car be a fait accompli or the e-commerce platform be something
that exists, but can’t be touched. Product and marketing campaign development
will be on similar time frames, and the ability of those on the
marketing/advertising side of the fence to inform the product development process
with what ought to be superior understanding of consumer needs is a profound
one. Whether we’re ready for it, I’m not sure.
Mobile Internet in the
developing world: Mobile has been in every one of these lists for two decades.
And always correctly so. The next wave will matter. Because mobile web access
will change the lives of billions of people over the next five years. Whole
communities, whole regions, previously left without the sheer wonder (we’re
used to it, but the mobile web is utterly, literally wonderful) of mobile data
will gain access to it via projects like Google’s Android One, bringing
affordable, capable, up-to-date devices to the developing world. What these new
audiences will do with it can only begin to be imagined. Everyone talks about
irrigation and medical knowledge and optimizing supply chains in the developing
world. But I reckon a billion young people and Internet might be capable of a
whole lot more than that.
Spencer Baim, chief
strategic officer, Vice Media
Many of today's brands
will become irrelevant after failing to recognize that the millennial consumer
is a generation of people, not just a niche "youth" market.
Millennials will not turn into generation X when they turn 35, but will take
with them all the brand preferences and media habits they have today.
The central issue for
a marketer will be winning a battle for cultural relevance. The winners will
make marketing as valuable as the product or service he or she is selling.
Great marketers will
find a brand story that is worth following, and will create chapters to this
story that evolve over time. They will embrace brands that evolve.
Banner advertising,
through innovation, will actually work. Rather than disrupting user experience,
media will provide added value to a website, giving the consumer what they
want, producing tangible results.
Creative energy will
see a shift away from agencies and towards publishers and platforms. An
increasing number of the brightest creative minds will abandon standalone
agencies for creative divisions of media companies and tech companies, and in
turn, these will become the go-to shops for best-in-class brand services.
BY JEFF BEER
http://www.fastcocreate.com/3043109/sector-forecasting/25-predictions-for-what-marketing-will-look-like-in-2020
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