Consumers have changed. Great digital experiences are no longer new … they are expected.
In response, marketing departments have flexed and stretched with each new disruption, channel, and technology … but only within the existing bounds of their confined, comfortable, and well-worn structures.
To succeed, marketers must step out of the shampoo-rinse-repeat cycle of chasing campaign-oriented capabilities around every emerging channel. They must not only describe the value of their brand, they must create differentiated value separate and distinct from that brand.
Content marketers – with their influence on all of the above – may be ideally poised to become the change agents of this decade.
“So, what’s next?” is a question I get asked with some regularity at conferences or when I’m asked to do a workshop or client advisory. And to be clear, the interrogators are not asking about next week, next month, or even next year. No. They’re asking what’s next after content marketing. You know – what’s the next Big Idea. When I answer “you,” they look at me a little like my dog does when I try to whistle.
Let me explain what I mean. There’s a wonderful quote by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Niels Bohr: “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it is about the future.”
The question – what’s next – really isn’t about predicting the future. If we peel back the layers, what we’re really asking is, “What is our place in the future?” How do we prepare ourselves now so that we’re ready for whatever comes next?
