Insights into The Future of Marketing

Every year around this time, I'm asked to write an article about my thoughts on what advertising will look like 5 or 10 years down the road.  As I sit down to start writing my own piece, I came across the following 3 articles touching on the Future of Marketing that I found very insightful, so I'm sharing them with you.  Many tactics we are already working into our programs, campaigns, products, etc.  Look out for my article in a couple of weeks

25 Predictions for What Marketing Will Look Like in 2020 by Jeff Beer - Fast Company

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.

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.
 

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.

 

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!

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. Mic, Vice, Fusion, Circa, 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.

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.

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.

"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."

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.

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.

5 Future Marketing Predictions by Jason Dooris, CEO of Atomic 212 - Ad News

What will the media and marketing look like in five years? 10 years? 20? The worlds of media and marketing are changing at such a rapid pace, making it next to impossible to future gaze, but if you take a look at the current climate, a few trends are noticeable:

1. Robots will rule the world

Programmatic buying is nothing new, but I expect that in the next decade this will become the primary channel for all media transactions, beyond display advertising and right into TV, the heartland of brand ads. We’re already seeing programmatic spread into multiple channels, but expect increased competition in this space, as premium players gradually get involved.

The only agencies which will survive in this landscape are those that invest heavily in technology, and those who invest in efficiency. This will likely lead to a reconfiguration of agency staff, away from administrators and towards creative storytellers who combine technological prowess with imagination.

2. Advertising, what advertising?

It’s highly doubtful that traditional advertising will disappear altogether. Having said that, is it really so far fetched to imagine a future brands engage most heavily through content? Non-intrusive, engaging, entertaining content. Look at brands like Red Bull, who own the content marketing and PR space – they are creating compelling stories which people want to consume.

Unique, likeable, captivating stories will always attract an audience, and in a future where consumers will be increasingly spoiled for choice, a good yarn will be key. Brands who only invest in traditional marketing instead of directing funds into social and content marketing will be left in the dust.

3. Talk to me, and only to me

We are moving into a world of hyper-targeting and one-to-one communications. Those who invest in truly understanding consumer behavior and psychology will overshadow brands that employ simple outdated messaging tactics; those who target individual consumers with relevant messaging and adapted creative will emerge the winners.

I expect we will see more technological advancements along the lines of iBeacon, a geo-targeting tool which pings messages to consumers’ mobiles based on their location; and more personal service advertising technologies along the lines of Siri, but infinitely more complex and personalised. Have you seen Minority Report – well, imagine digital outdoor ads which target individuals based on their personal details and purchase history. Of course, the increased growth of mobile marketing will only accelerate this process.

4. Self service and immediate gratification

Self service is nothing new, but I expect the future will see less human interaction at the point of sale. The explosion in online sales is proof. People want to be able to buy from the comfort of their own home, and they want instant gratification. The huge success of the Domino’s Pizza Tracker, or the runaway train that is Uber, are good examples of this trend.

This means that bricks and mortar retail spaces will need to rethink their place in the world. Physical spaces will become less about sales volume, and more like experience hubs – spaces where a consumer try out an item, scan the product with their smartphone and have the goods delivered directly to their front door.

5. Fluid working spaces

The boundaries that define agency verticals will become non-existent. Already, as media fragments and skillsets become more specialised, clients are clamouring to have multiple services under the one roof. Just look at my agency Atomic 212°, we define ourselves as a full service media agency, but we are also a production house, a content marketing company, a PR agency, and more.

The way we define ourselves is constantly evolving. But fast forward a few years and this space will be more fluid still. You might find many agencies moving away from large, cumbersome models, and towards flexible arrangements with fewer full time staff and huge databases of contractors and business partners who work from home, work in different time-zones or work across multiple agencies. The future will be an outsourced future – I foresee a centralised, full service agency model with a lean structure and a host of intersecting, outsourced resources.

Of course, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Regardless of how much media and marketing evolve, the end goal will still be the same: connect consumers with brands through storytelling. That much has been true since the beginning of media, and will continue.

10 Top Trends Driving the Future of Marketing by Daniel Newman - Forbes CMO Network

Marketers are constantly looking into the future, trying to predict the next big trend, be it for their brands or their clients. Naturally, marketers are preoccupied with questions like: What is the next big campaign? How can we turn our client into the “next big thing”? What is the next hot trend going to be in retail? Etc.  Everyone wants to the answers. Knowing this, what do some of the top minds in marketing predict for their own futures? A recent article by Jeff Beer on Fast Company Create collected 25 future trends that will change the marketing landscape five years from now based on top innovators in marketing and advertising. After reading this, I started to ponder what I saw as the top trends driving marketing.

While reading about about these marketing predictions, I came across a great article by Daniel Newman on Forbes  about the 10 trends that will have the biggest impact on the future of marketing.

1. Mobile is going to become the center of marketing. From cell phones to smartphones, tablets to wearable gadgets, the evolution of mobile devices is one of the prime factors influencing the marketing world. As the focus is shifting to smaller screens, brands will be able to strike up a more personalized relationship with their customers by leveraging the power of mobile.

2. Transparency will dictate brand-customer relationships. Currently, customers are seeking more engagement from brands. This trend will continue with customers becoming more demanding in their expectation of transparency. Genuine brands – the ones that “walk the talk” and create real value – will be rewarded. This means brands that still haven’t made their customer dealings transparent are headed to a future of doom.

3. The need for good content will not slow down. Ever. Content, particularly visual content, will rule the roost in the online marketing world, evolving into various forms and disrupting the conventional marketing models. Moreover, the speed at which a brand can create amazing content will play a part in their success.

4. User-generated content will be the new hit. The power of user-generated content will surpass branded content as brands begin to relinquish control of their own brands’ marketing to their customers. From online reviews, to social media posts and blogs, this means there will be a strong need for brands to create a positive impact in their consumers’ minds. In response to this model of content production, content co-creation between brands and consumers will become a popular trend.

5. Social will become the next Internet. Social will become an integral part of the “broader marketing discipline.” As its impact grows stronger, most brands will fully transition their marketing efforts to social channels. As such, social has the full potential to become not just one of the channels but thechannel.

6. Brands will own their audience. By cultivating brand community and entering into direct conversations with their customers, brands will begin to own their audience in a way that will create loyalists and brand advocates. In the future of marketing, branding and marketing efforts will have their seeds rooted in what customers are talking about. The customers’ responses and feelings toward the brand will dictate future campaigns. Essentially, if the customers are happy, they’ll gladly wear the marketer’s hat and do what is needed to bring their favorite brand in focus.

7. Brands solely-focused on Millennials will go out of relevance. Brands will need to understand that the millennials are not a niche “youth” segment but a generation of people who will ultimately give way to a newer generation. Therefore, millennial-focused brands will have to change their game to stay relevant.

8. Good brands will behave like product companies and not like service companies. While service companies aim to create a happy customer and look forward to a contract renewal, product companies thrive on innovation. So, for brands of the future, customer satisfaction and retention will not be enough. They will need to innovate more efficiently to create more value for their customers. However, great service will NEVER go out of style.

9. Personalized, data-driven marketing will become more refined. There is a difference between data-driven marketing and intrusive marketing. While the former is based on relationship-building, the latter is nothing but old-school push marketing wrapped in a new cover. The difference between these two formats will become even more prominent in future. Marketers who focus on relationship building will be rewarded, while intruders will be shut out.

10. More accurate metrics will surface. What most brands do in the name of measuring marketing success is look at hollow “vanity” metrics such as likes, shares, or tweets. Even in terms of data mining, we are still developing more sophisticated means to capture the right data. Many ideas are hypothesized, but few are practical. The future will witness the rise of better analytical tools to help marketers gauge the success of their campaigns.

Read more about 25 Predictions for What Marketing Will Look Like in 2020 by Jeff Beer - Fast Company https://www.fastcocreate.com/3043109/sector-forecasting/25-predictions-for-what-marketing-will-look-like-in-2020

Read more about the 5 Future of Marketing Predictions by Jason Dooris, CEO of Atomic 212 - Ad News at https://www.adnews.com.au/opinion/five-predictions-about-the-future-of-marketing#QZHO8VuQo7h0tyew.99

Read more about the 10 Top Trends Driving the Future of Marketing by Daniel Newman - Forbes CMO Network at https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielnewman/2015/04/14/10-top-trends-driving-the-future-of-marketing/2/