Running around like a headless chicken? Marketing trends in 2020!

So the sky did not fall in 2019. But why then have you been running around like a headless chicken in this breakneck speed changing landscape? Although ‘Miracle Mike’, the headless chicken lived for 18 months without a head, how can we survive the next 12 months with our heads on? Marketing trends to watch out for in 2020. 

Fall of Cookies and Rebirth of Contextual Targeting

Marketers and publishers have been abusing the use of consumer data with ads stalking, data leakages, and corporate misconduct. Now consumers want to take back the control to protect their own privacy. Digital giants Apple, Google and Facebook have started to crack down on third-party cookies. Hence going forward, marketers need to start looking at less-personalised advertising like email marketing and contextual advertising.

Contextual targeting was considered traditional after the rise of data-rich advertising. But with smart use of data and technology, contextual can be enhanced to enable brands to get closer to their customers in a less intrusive way. The New York Times changed its focused to contextual and geographical targeting for programmatic guaranteed and private marketplace deals and has not seen ad revenues drop. This may encourage more media owners and marketers to take the leap of faith. 

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

While AI has been around for a long time, it's only been in recent years that more brands are incorporating AI in their marketing. The simplest form has to be email marketing. AI can recommend content and predict the best time to send an email, to increase the engagement rate. For example, Dell saw an average of 50% increase in email CTR and a 46% increase in conversions after partnering Persado. 

Led by Amazon, the retail sector has been one of the early adopters of AI. To improve the customer journey, Levis launched Virtual Stylish on Levi.com to help users find the perfect fitting pair of jeans. Recently, L’Oréal and Shopee brought beauty and skincare partnership to life in Southeast Asia with AI and AR-powered tools.

Expecting more brands to leverage AI for their marketing as Salesforce worldwide research shows that 22% of marketers currently are using AI-based applications with an additional 57% planning to use in the next two years. 

Voice Assistants

Voice is going to be huge! Google Home and Alexa are starting to gain traction as more audiences are using voice-activated speakers to listen to news and music, send messages, and search for things. Data from Canalys forecasts that the worldwide smart speaker installed base will exceed 200 million in 2019 and climb to over 500 million by 2023. Comscore predicts that 50% of searches will be voice activated by 2020. Also, Adobe found that 42% of smart speaker owners prefer voice ads to TV and online ads.

Now, the biggest challenge is to figure out how to incorporate advertising into voice, since Google and Amazon do not accept direct advertising on their smart speakers. When 5G starts to roll-out, and new generation smart speakers start to link up with wearables, transportations, home devices and e-commerce sites, smart speakers' adoption will hasten!

Marketers who jump in early, and figure out how to engage consumers on smart devices will gain competitive advantages as consumers talk more to their devices.

Memes 

The rise of TikTok, Dongtu, Instagram and Giphy are helping to drive the popularity of memes and influencers, by making it easy for social media users to alter digital content and share them with their friends and followers. 

Recently we saw Liverpool and the NFL engaging the younger audiences by using memes. Liverpool used TikTok to share short videos and behind-the-scenes footage from the team players. The NFL #WeReady challenge encourages users to produce videos to show their support for their favourite teams. 

Netflix’s recent tweet “What’s something you can say during sex but also when you manage a brand Twitter account?” went viral, and other brands have replied to participate in the fun. Some of the "creative" tweets from other brands that made me ROTFL: 

Groupon: How likely would you be to recommend us to a friend?

Audi: “0 to 60 in 3.5 seconds.”

Snickers: Satisfied? 

Ben & Jerry’s Do you wanna take a lick?

Gary Vaynerchuk a huge believer in TikTok’s potential to reach the Gen Z has invested in TikTok. Facebook is building a TikTok competitor, “Lasso” and Google is considering an acquisition of TikTok-like "Firework”. Foreseeing more brands to jump onto the bandwagon next year.

The Rise of Gaming and Esports

Esports has been around for more than 20 years but it is only in the recent years that it has burst into the mainstream! The global esports audience will reach 453.8 million this year. This surge of interest in esports is due to its ability to engage Gen Z and Millennials who are hard to reach and have growing spending power. But this does not mean that older audiences are not part of this community. The GlobalWebIndex survey found that 28% of eSports fans 35 and above. 

With so many players in the ecosystem: developers, team and players, competition organisers, streaming platforms and content creators, who should brands work with?

To be successful in Esports, Carlos Alimurung, ONE Esports has advised that brands need to add values and build long term relationships with the community. They need to be viewed as helping the ecosystem to grow.

“This audience is particularly hard one to reach, so you have to be more clever. You can’t just simply do a standard media buy and shove a load of ads out there. It has to be very targeted and engaging,” Yvonne Hobden, Former HP.

"Offering a seamless blend of online and real-life, esports present a wide array of innovative media opportunities. It will be critical to understand the new rules; the huge and highly-engaged audience will spot inauthentic attempts to encroach on their community from a mile off. But for those who take time to understand how to fit into the esports world, there are valuable opportunities for content, advertising and sponsorship” Jose Colagrossi, Katar Sports.

Esports will continue to grow next year with 78% of senior marketers claim to expect to invest in the near future.

The Balancing Act between Brand Building and Sales Activation 

According to acclaimed marketing effectiveness experts; Les Binet and Peter Field, there are two types of marketing: brand building for long-term growth and sales activation, and for short-term sales volume. Their recent research showed that the optimum balance should be around 75% brand and 25% activation.

Controversially, recent Kantar’s research “Getting Media Right” reported that while nine out of ten APAC marketers recognise the importance of balancing short-term sales with long-term brand building, only 61% use both short and long-term measurement. And, almost a third still relies solely on short-term sales results. 

But mindsets are beginning to change for some advertisers like Adidas, Booking Holding, and Dulux. Adidas is refocusing its advertising budget to more brand-building after econometric modelling suggested that it “should be investing in video, which doesn't do very well in last-click attribution” and investing in TV, out of home and cinema which will help drive e-commerce sales. According to a CNBC report, Booking Holding said it was moving some of its advertising dollars away from Google into TV and digital videos. Dulux recently overhauled its marketing plan to drive both long-term brand equity and short-term sales. Dulux Promises, a new campaign used emotional stories to build its brand and ran ads across TV, outdoor, social and digital. 

“The difference between branding and sales is simple. Are you trying to convert or are you trying to create an experience? The latter always wins”, Gary Vaynerchuk.

Experiential Marketing 

Brands are struggling to capture consumers’ attention in this digital age. Experiential marketing when well-executed, can help to build immersive and informative user experiences, emotional connections, brand loyalty and word-of-mouth. 

A study conducted by Bizzabo Event Marketing 2019 reported that around 62% of marketers plan to increase their budgets for experiential. 

Some examples of experiential marketing:

To appeal to customers’ “sense and sensibilities” and link Mastercard to experiences, Mastercard launched its first flagship ‘Priceless’ restaurant in New York and a Bistro in Rome International Airport. In addition, Mastercard introduced two custom macarons using the colours of Mastercard's interlocking circle logo. “The macarons are one more step to really get into the taste buds of our customer and provide them with something really unique and extraordinary,” explained Raja Rajamanner.

HSBC Jade - a wealth management service for the ultra-high-net-worth individuals, unveiled a new Jade Centre inside the iconic Jewel Changi Airport. Marrying retail with experiential marketing, HSBC sponsored the world's tallest indoor waterfall “HSBC Rain Vortex”, the crown Jewel of Jewel Changi Airport. This aims to offer consumers a multi-sensory experience when they visit the Jewel.

Since 2012, DBS has organised the annual “The DBS Marina Regatta” to engage the community. This year's theme, “The Race Against Time”, DBS aims to raise awareness of environmental issues and inspires festival-goers to be more eco-conscious, through immersive and interactive activities like the eco-maze race and social enterprises pop-ups.

Sustainability 

The trends highlighted above are important for brands to do well but increasingly, consumers are demanding for brands to do good too!

Many brands have jumped onto the sustainability bandwagon after the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) launched the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015, but they are mostly "show-and-tell". 

Kudos to Amazon, Carlsberg, Coca-cola, Pepsi, Sunway, and Unilever that are taking real action. Amazon has pledged to be carbon neutral by 2040. Carlsberg is developing beer bottles made from paper. Coca-cola will make its packaging 100% recyclable by 2025. PepsiCo has issued a $1 billion sustainable bond. Sunway University recently launched its first Master's programme to train a new generation of leaders on sustainability and offer a bursary for the first batch of students. Unilever has announced that it aims to halve its reliance on plastic in five years.

More brands are expected to walk the talk as “today, more than 90% of CEOs state that sustainability is important to their company’s success” Stanford Social Innovation Review.

Final Note

Technology has definitely revolutionised marketing! The rise of cookies, AI, smart speakers, video games and memes were results of technology advances. At the same time, technology has also encouraged marketers to prioritise short term goals over long term growth, hence sacrificing the consumer experience. There’s no turning back now! As the new generation of consumers is becoming more critical, marketers need to be more agile and courageous to experiment on new trends to keep our heads in the game.

A sequel to B2B Sky Falling Marketing Trends 2019 : https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/b2b-sky-falling-marketing-trends-2019-eunice-goh/