It’s going to be one of the most interesting years ahead. There are disruptive marketing trends ahead and this list starts to build on the platform of sharing, something I’m very interested in and will be focusing even more on in 2015. I will focus on sharing platforms (not just social networks). More specifically, I’ll be focusing on how, why, when and where we share and how it will change the way customers do business with people and brands. Here we go:
Video Becomes Experiential – This shouldn’t be anything new to hear, but the growth that will happen in video marketing will take off in ways we’ve never seen. Again, Facebook is planning to outperform Youtube, and I believe it will. Video gives us the most context around people, companies and things over any other online medium. But start thinking about video as experiential. This is where 3D glasses and video start to give us the ability to play with video and experience stories, shopping and interactions in a new way.
Shareable Experiences – You will start to see shared experiences integrate into our lives because brands will have to partner with potentially unexpected people to offer a unique, delightful experience that’s personally tailored to the user. Brands will also be coming up with new, innovative ways to socially share this personal experience in real time. This won’t be accomplished overnight, but I think it’s getting there.
Narrative Science – The reports, white papers and research papers we produce take a long time to create and have a shelf life. The only difference from year to year is that a human has to go in and relay the story in-between the numbers, delivered in the same template. Narrative science starts to solve that problem by analyzing numbers and building the story on it’s own, in real time. For instance, if numbers have changed over one hour, one day, one year, narrative science will reflect that analysis back immediately if asked. I don’t believe there is any way for a system like this to pre-determine a storyline when it comes to making a gut based decision, but in these cases, we are all looking for ways to build on research and release it with confidence in minutes versus days, weeks or months.
Invective Marketing – I hesitated putting this one down here, but it’s becoming a thing more and more. It turns out being despicable to people online is a growth trend and, for aficionados of the discipline, the potential returns are substantial. Because individual brands now carry as much weight as company brands, some people have found a living literally arguing with people across social channels as a form of amplification and impression-building. The trickiest bit about invective marketing is that you first must establish a foothold in the media landscape somewhere and build a large following. Whatever you say must be nasty, argumentative and controversial enough for people to want to respond impulsively – i.e. it can’t be directed at people who everyone agrees deserves public scorn. Most businesses will not do this, but it is becoming a thing with a lot of notable people with a voice to combat vs converse. Remember this before you respond with an opinion to something controversial online, you could be falling into the sleazy trap they’ve set to selfishly profit from.
