2020 - The Year Of No Excuses (from The Disruptive Marketing Summit panel)

This week I keynoted and then spoke on a very informative panel at the Disruptive Marketing Summit.

Nicky, Tariq and I had an extended panel and the last question really seemed to resonate with the attendees the most and was a theme that was discussed with many different people over lunch.

Here are my answers and why I am excited about how Marketing Departments and Businesses of all sizes can leverage new tech and platforms in 2020.

This is part of my 2020 success series over on my blog.

Q. What platforms/technology tools moving forward excite you the most?

Real 5G - when the real 5G rolls out the actual possibilities will be huge, quick downloads, instant large file transfer on the go, quicker more seamless video and voice communications and for many an opportunity to work more remotely and independently (and on the go).

AR - Snap and Facebook are the businesses fighting hardest here, AR can and should come into our lives in more organic, less social ways and enable businesses to build out characters, cartoons and personas around specific lenses, filters and importantly people. AR brings so much opportunity, especially to those who are creative and want to offer out AR filters to their customers or distribute their product across million of users via the social platforms or via an app or "sticker" collection.

The Streaming Wars - I cannot wait to see how creative the Streaming Companies are going to have to be to cut through and convince us of an additional subscription fee. The streaming companies will end up as channels (Netflix is a channel) not specific set top boxes (like in the past) so it will be more seamless and less friction for consumers. I look forward to seeing how Marketing and Business leaders think about how their products and services can be featured with product placement (think Pottery Barn in Friends, Coca Cola & Burger King in Stranger Things). Product Placement will continue to be important again and offer a creative way to be relevant and inspirational. You can also think about this with influencer marketing, it doesn't have to be "awareness" or just sales, it can be more organic.

QR Codes - There is another wave of innovation coming from QR and similar technology - look at the use cases in China alone, we need to really empower and influence this tech in the West. Payments = quicker payments, easier to discover people rather than a phone number or long URL's or handles, driving customers online from offline promotion (or scan clothes and order online while in store - this is happening, embrace it), all super simple, easy to create on mass and opportunity for many businesses.

Voice - although I am very bullish on its impact (especially as Alexa is over 5 years old), it is hard to cut through but as part of a campaign, Voice will be smart ways to integrate and with the tech now available, you can embed into websites, apps or leverage api's to have a joint up campaign where you can be super creative and gain exposure or preference over your competitors.

Audio Experience - We have only really scratched the surface with audio, voice notes are becoming more popular, we are sending more voice notes to friends and family members over instant messengers than ever before. Brands are enjoying experimenting with receiving "voicemails" (aka voice notes) from their customers and being able to offer a different (yes older but new again) experience. Audio provides so much more context than plain text and is far more personal than an email or a SMS.

Onto my favourite talking points Podcasts - podcast are not new but are resurfacing as alternatives, they are exploding in popularity for education and learning (so much so teachers have sustainable ways of making additional incomes and teach what they want) and part of Marketing campaign and Product releases and launches, keep an eye out and embrace. If there is a podcast for a TV show, you can be part of community and conversation. With tools like Descript now available there is no real excuse not to experiment.

Fintech - Open banking, cashless spending and transfers, instant peer to peer transfer and limiting the refund time, all awesome and important steps forward for businesses and consumers in whatever field you operate in. Fintech used to be the uncool department or function now is a hyper growth area for many large businesses, look out for the innovation from Apple, Google (Facebook is you trust them) and challenger banks and how they become even more creative or re-thinking the problems we have been served for years and make it seem like it shouldn't ever have been an issue. Peer to peer transfer has so much disruption left in it, we have only just seen the start of the creative journey. Interesting time to be a consumer.

Let me know what you are most excited about in 2020.

--Here is my keynote deck from the conference--

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