What the hell is happening?

With the new year approaching I find myself trying to recap 2023 and make sense of it to formulate a plan for 2024 and how to navigate the trends and market. The best words to describe this past year are confusion, uncertainty and constriction.

Let me explain why those three are what I chose. Inflation is up, wages are stagnant, the job market needs to retreat according to the Fed, yet consumer spending has not slowed. One would think that last point for marketers would mean full steam ahead. If they are still spending shouldn't retail and businesses want to capture a bigger chunk of the market to show that shareholder value and growth that is of paramount importance? I mean record profits IS what it's all about right? Not so fast though. Budgets are shrinking, companies are paying later and later all in anticipation of the "slow down" everyone swears is coming but has not happened yet.

Added to that with the cookie going away in marketing and the ability to customize their marketing disappearing marketers are getting more and more paranoid about ROI and success rates, click throughs, KPI's and the like. Will online marketing still be as effective or are we back to the stone ages of TV, Billboards and newspapers with no attribution? Never mnd that most are not doing personalization or much anyways because data is too over-whelming and expesive to manage so they only do as much as they can or budget will allow AND attribution is next to impossible without better transparency from all involved. Secret sauces abound everywhere behind huge walled gardens. In a nutshell marketing is fractional at best and marketers spend most of their time chasing down answers to find what works and lock it in. If there is something better forget moving too it because its considered too risky and time consuming to change.

Where is this all going? Who will be the first to throw caution to the wind and go out and try to grab a bigger share of consumers or Businesses attention? If it's anything like the past most marketers wait for Big companies like Disney, Marriott, WalMart, Target and the like to come up with some new ground breaking way to reach consumers and again monopolize the market much the way Meta, Alphabet, Apple and Amazon have.

Kantar is showing growth for 2023's Gloab Media budget plans. Does that mean marketers and corporations are feeling better about where everything will be after the election? WIll the great reset not happen? Some interesting things to note are the biggest growth is being shown in online video and streaming. Streaming is hemmoraging cash and bringing companies like Disney and Netflix to their knees, so it will be interesting to see how that works out investment wise.

The bottom line is if consumers stop spending because debt is becoming too much and payments start to get missed, inflation continues to climb (consumers are currently in the beginning stages of putting necessities on credit) or wages don't start to increase, the uncertainty and stagnation we have seen in the market currently may continue. Companies hoarding cash to sure up their bottom line and show sharehold value is increasingly becoming a bigger threat to capitalism than anything. Any time you restrict the free flow of money it causes the government to print more and devalue what you're holding.

If you have budget and are looking for ways to improve your ROI on your marketing, demand gen and media spend, then give me a call. I'm always happy to help.

Thoughts? Solutions?