It has been a tumultuous year — isn’t every year?! But this one, seriously…
The marketing community feels a little bit undervalued given slower career progression, a little bit annoyed about having to be back in the office the whole time, a little bit nervous about the drop-off in retail sales and media spend, and a few other emotions too!
In sum, the sea feels scary to navigate, with even choppier waters ahead.
While it’s likely impossible to say where we’ll get to in another 365 days with much certainty, I’m keen to try.
So without further ado, going into next year, here’s how I see the lay of the land in the world of big brand marketing across North America, the UK and Europe:
Marketing teams are not set up to deliver excellence in a world where competition for attention is so fragmented and individuals are so creative. Very few adverts/activations (maybe Just Eat x Christina Aguiliera and the JD Sports Christmas ad alone, in the UK, this year?) feel like content that most people would not skip over or fast forward through. In today’s world, anything a brand puts out is up against an algorithmically-driven mezze board of “organic” content and creativity (across Twitter, YouTube, Reddit) that is perfectly attuned to an individual’s likes and interests. To compete, you first need to pick topical swim lanes that your brand can play in. Then you need folks embedded in your team that are tapped into emergent cultures, who can produce owned content which deserves a place next to the hummus and carrots.
CPG marketers are feeling the pain of transitioning from B2B2C companies of the 2010s to genuine B2C companies. Previously, the objective was to win with retailers/restaurants/merchants by leveraging offline relationships to ensure physical availability in-store, then drive preference and mental availability through paid media on TV, OOH, Meta and Google. Now, it’s all about niche communities that control influence and drive preference. With 20%+ and rising of purchases made directly online, there’s a strong sense of competition with challenger brands who don’t need the moat of a relationship with big distributors. This transition is necessary pain — most of the data suggests a future by 2035 in which online purchases (in app, on websites, through social commerce etc) are in or around 40% of total consumption. So few brands are engineered to win in that world.
Everything, absolutely everything is becoming a retail/merchant media network. Why? Because it’s high profit-margin inventory that scales, so Wall Street loves it. This means that not just Walmart and Netflix, but Roblox, United Airlines, the McDonalds app and more will invest heavily to build an audience. Alpha is therefore available to those brands brave enough to run a new playbook and reach audiences in new places. A lot of bravery is needed to decouple from what has worked so well for a decade or so.
There is a crop of legacy businesses (auto, manufacturing, healthcare etc) where there remains no real understanding of what marketing can be internally. They are still talking about digital transformation, which was a hot buzzword 10 years ago. For folks working there, it feels like pushing water up a hill to get teams to go beyond the bare minimum, as the working environments are structured around process but not outcomes.
“I was sat in my agency meeting last week thinking: was is the point of any of this?”
Anonymous CMO of Global Consumer Tech companyIt’s truly an incredible opportunity for leadership to not just marvel at a company like Gymshark, but to steal their tactics.
There’s always room for brilliant brands that combine a differentiated product with a clever approach to winning mental availability. Check out Lifetime Fitness: in the same year as WeWork falls apart, another membership/community-driven offering emerges, makes a load of noise and makes $$$. If you’re at a big CPG/retail company, get to the “edge of the centre” (i.e. an important but not critical geo, or category) and put together something that generates organisational envy. That’s how you get ahead.