Where is the world going? What we predict for the future of marketing.
Once upon a time a man named Ronald McDonald went into the burger business, or rather the real estate business. Buying up land for the fast food joints. There was something tangible there, I could probably reel off a few other examples of by-gone days and businesses.
However, something caught my eye today and it got me thinking, where is the world going? What does it mean for businesses, for marketing?
If you look at Facebook, they’re arguably one of the most popular (social) media owners in the world yet they do not create any content themselves. Airbnb has become one of the most prominent and biggest accommodation providers on the planet, yet they do not own any properties. And the newest success story to my radar, Uber are the fastest growing provider of taxis, worldwide… do they own any cars? No, they don’t.
Blockbuster was one of the most visible businesses of recent times to fall to the fate of change as they didn’t move with the times. Not that Netflix are bothered looking back on their failed attempt at offering Blockbuster their business. So where are we going and what can we do in our own marketing efforts to change and adapt?
What is the future of advertising and marketing?
In the 80s and 90s as I was growing up, advertising was limited to TV. Maybe some radio but it was easy for brands to advertise directly to their target audience. These days our attention spans are shrinking just as quickly as our national wealth, and media possibilities are expanding as rapidly as the average European waistline.
My prediction is that storytelling to connect people and brands is no longer going to be enough. People want to interact instantly during live events and they are becoming less and less concerned about privacy with the booming selfie generation. Stories will be for living, in the now… real time and really personalised.
Brands will need to be even more savvy in developing relationships with artists, sports personalities and celebrities to create winning content. Content needs to become entertaining, brands will start to think of consumers as fans and how to involve them.
I’m sure that the big companies who own our data out there are cooking up ways of serving media not only depending on what devise we are using, but tapping into the location services of our devise and seeing what our last purchase was!… Scary but it’s powerful stuff and they need more of our pennies and pounds, they will have to be more intelligent to get us to open our wallets!