The biggest marketing trend for 2018 is a lot more boring and a lot more important than AI, VR, voice or anything else...

It's the wonderful twilight zone time of the year between the mayhem of Christmas and the mayhem of New Year's Eve. The turkey has been turned into curry, soup and finally fed to the dog, and your blood is 90% alcohol and chocolate.

So what better time to take a look forward to 2018. Here's my take on the biggest marketing trend for 2018.

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You have no doubt read plenty of the biggest marketing trend decks for 2018 already. As have I. Some of them give a good grounding in the changes we're seeing in the discipline. I particularly liked James and Marshall's Ogilvy report and JWT's Future 100. It's fun to look at trends right?

Unfortunately, many of these reports are plainly marketing babble, full of jargon, badly researched surface level thinking with plenty of cliches about how voice/VR/millennials are going to change marketing for good in the new year.

Indeed, I've created year end trend decks myself in the past, where I asked some of Ireland's best marketers their thoughts on the new year. That fell midway between the two stools I describe above.

But in the past few years my perspective on 'trend' reports has turned 180 degrees.

Magpies

I sort of see them as an example of marketers acting as magpies with ADHD, focusing on supposed big technology trends instead of on getting the nuts and bolts of their marketing strategy correct. Sure, it's interesting and exciting to think of new possibilities. The challenges and opportunities of artificial intelligence, voice and changing consumer behaviour should be at the forefront of our minds. But is it smart to pick the end of the year as an arbitrary starting point for a new period when everything will be different and these trends will come true?

We tend to predict these trends that will occur within the next year. But they rarely have any major direct impact on our day to day. Will VR, voice or AI really have a bigger impact on your business in 2018 than smart segmentation, good solid strategy and effective media planning? Bleeding edge tech rarely has an immediate application for most companies.

We're too prone to reversing the Pareto principle and wasting our time spending 80% of it thinking about this 20% of stuff that we likely won't even see mature in 2018.

Our future gazing exercises should only count for a small part of getting ready for the new year. It would be much better to devote more time to re-learning and reminding ourselves of the basics and delivering on what we know already works (integrated work across a variety of channels). Could you do more with digital video instead of wasting all your time pontificating about blockchain?

As Charlie Munger once said:

"In business we tend to reward difficult, complex behaviour more than simple behaviour, but simple behaviour is often more effective"

The same goes for thinking about complex, nebulous trends while ignoring the simple fixes that we could be making to our marketing approach. Tom Goodwin sums it up well:

MarkITing? Really?

I came across a quote from professor of marketing from one of Ireland's most renowned colleges recently. She said that:

" The most important skill for a marketer starting out now is to understand that you're a futurist. I think the word marketing should be spelled 'markITing'." 

(Her emphasis was on the 'I.T.')

Now perhaps it's unfair to call that one line out, but it did stick with me. It's a small example of a larger macro problem.

We're so focused on new technology, new tactics and the future, that we forget to live in the present and remember to look at the lessons of the past.

The most important skill for a marketer is nothing to do with technology, or indeed I.T. or digital or social media. It's a basic understanding of marketing 101. It's having a viewpoint on how brands grow. It's having expertise in all the building blocks of smart, reasonable marketing strategy, not just advertising but knowing about pricing, distribution, segmentation and strategy.

Personally, working in a world of digital, I lost sight of that. So I paid a small fortune last year to do a course that would remind me of and update some of the basics I learned in college. It was worth 10x what I paid. You should do it.

Principles

How many of us can really say we've nailed the core principles of marketing in 2017?

Trends, innovations, 'cultural insights' and any futurology are nothing but us gambling on beliefs for the medium term future. Are these really the priorities that marketers should have over the next 12 months? It's frustrating to see because its a clear example of marketers chasing the next shiny new thing.

Though it would be more boring, it would be far more efficient to instead focus on getting the basics right. Too many marketers these days believe that digital has changed everything, and the old conventions have gone out the window.

Wouldn't it serve us better to stop being so preoccupied with the next big thing and start to remind ourselves of the basics? To earn the lessons of marketing history and apply them to the new era.

Irish marketing legend John Fanning is particularly big on learning from the past. We tend to ignore case studies from the 'pre-digital' era, seeing them as defunct and irrelevant. But this couldn't be further from the truth. I spend about an hour each week just reading old case studies from various databases, and it's amazing how many good strategic insights I get. It's hubristic to think we have all the answers and everything has completely changed. 

As the famous quote goes:

"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

Sure, we need to understand new trends and watch them very closely, but we can't lose sight of what makes a good marketer, and we can't lose ourselves in tactics while forgetting about great strategy.

Maybe we need to replenish the industry's confidence in marketing and mature a bit next year, instead of acting like cats chasing a laser when it comes to trends.

Maybe we need to think more about what won't change in 2018 than what may.

For me, the biggest marketing trend for 2018 isn't (or shouldn't be) AI, or voice, or blockchain or some new social platform that none of us have heard of yet.

It's a return to getting the basics right.

It's the unsexy, mature stuff that underpins good marketing.

It's a return to a level of maturity and objectivity that has gone missing across the industry.

It's an understanding that maybe we need to look at how digital is maturing and integrate it but remind ourselves that TV, print and radio are still incredible effective.

It's spotting how 'big data' is blinding us all.

It's knowing that creativity is the most effective weapon in our arsenal, but creativity needs a big idea not a tactical execution.

It's realising that having a consistent focus on your customer is still incredibly important.

It's knowing that without a great product, most marketing is lipstick on a pig.

It's knowing that the small stuff matters to customers, so sweat it. Fix the basics and then get fancy.

It's understanding that consumers still place enormous value in the in store retail.

It's understanding that everything new and shiny shouldn't usurp everything that has gone before.

So how about we make the trend of 2018 to be the year when we get the basics right? The year of integrated, effective smart marketing. When we park the shiny new things and double down on the most important places to invest.

Imagine what that focusing on that 'trend prediction' would do for your business and your clients.

Imagine what it would do for you as a marketer.

Shane O'Leary

@shaneoleary1

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Footnote: As with most opinions I have, I certainly haven't come to it on my own. The above piece stands on the shoulders of some giants in the marketing world, some really smart people who have been beating this drum throughout December. Mark Ritson wrote a brilliantly satirical piece on trendwatching. Russell Parsons likewise had a great piece in Marketing Week. Daniel Hochuli wrote a fantastic post on the topic. The excellent Samuel Scott wrote about 71 ways marketing will not change in 2018, and the always enlightening Tom Goodwin and Alex Steer also put in their tuppence worth. I apologise for any 'kleptonesia' in the above piece and any unattributed quotes!