Thinking back on the changes over the last 10 years has us asking: What new opportunities await us in 2020?
Today, we are living in a new era of consumer behavior, technology and brand & marketing strategy. As your company looks to the next big game-changer in digital, brand, traditional marketing and beyond, here are some continuing trends to keep in mind as we enter the 2020’s.
A Comeback for Market Research
With the rise of digital data, it seemed as though formal market research was becoming a dying art. Marketers were hesitant to spend the time and money on primary research because all the information they could ever want was available via software and online databases. Right?
As of January 1, 2020, companies doing business in California will be required to comply with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), regarded as the most stringent consumer privacy law in the country. Often compared to Europe’s GDPR, and expected to impact business well beyond California’s borders, marketers are going to be held to a higher standard when it comes to managing customer data and providing transparency about third party data practices.
A Fresh Look at Brand Culture
When a brand is thoughtfully created and strategically supported, it can be felt throughout an entire organization. In 2019, we all had eyes on immersive, or experiential brands – moving into 2020, internal branding and brand culture will retake center stage.
Brand culture is an organization’s internally-facing experience, values, and a strategic branded foundation that creates a consistent company environment; this enables employees to feel part of a larger team and to deliver on the externally-facing brand promise with conviction.
With recent unemployment rates dropping to record lows, we have seen companies boosting their retention efforts and adding amenities to the workplace to ensure employees stay put in the midst of ample job opportunities.
However, brand culture is not the same thing as a foosball table in the breakroom. It’s a careful consideration of the type of experience you deliver to employees; defining your values and the way your company is unique so that employees can project that experience to everyone who encounters the brand. This is a fundamental shift in how brand strategists will approach developing a brand’s positioning platforms and messaging strategies – it has to start from the inside out.
“According to October 2019 market predictions, podcasts will be the next $1 billion media market. More publishers will build out their own podcasts to open a new revenue stream and advertisers will continue to increase spend.”
A Focus on Less Polished Content
Yes, you read that right.
To clarify – less polished doesn’t translate to poor quality. “Less polished” means branded content that adds value to the consumer experience beyond selling them something. It is authentic to the user experience, and appropriate for the medium in which it’s being received.
With thriving organic content platforms like Instagram Stories (500 Million DAU), Snapchat making a comeback (7 million new DAU in 2019), and TikTok being the most downloaded app in Q1 2019 (1 billion views daily) – there is one commonality between them: organic, user-generated, short-form content. Using this as an example, we expect to see more brands creating content that blends with this style, instead of disrupting it.
You can see this happening more and more on your own social media feeds. As users have adjusted to paid content, they begin to ignore the polished posts they can easily separate from their feeds. Brands hit back with consumer-created ads and edgier campaigns that engage people as equals rather than targets.
As a society, we have been shaped by digital mediums to absorb content in bite-size pieces, not as a narrative. However, in the past few years, we have watched the pendulum swing as consumers return to craving long-form storytelling. Yes – we are talking about podcasts.
