It’s that time of year. To get a sense of what’s coming in 2014, we reached out to some senior marketers with a single, open-ended question about the coming year.
“What new consumer or technology trend do you expect to see in 2014 that will change your marketing strategy?”
The below response is from Scott Zalaznik, VP for digital at Sprint Nextel.
“The biggest trends I see are:
- Agencies will need to collapse process, thinking and execution between digital and non-digital resources.
- Digital media will be less about driving ecommerce, more about driving experiences and fulfillment across your channels.
- Mobile becomes a gateway to all things ‘in the moment,’ with insane growth in reach and a hastening path to more complex use cases and technology.
- Lastly, social, which has quickly become a paid media performance channel, will revert to its roots in complimentary storytelling and building brand equity to support macromarketing campaigns. I believe this shift back to equity will complement the progress the platforms and brands have made in performance. The trend over the past few years has been pure equity, then a shift to likes, then a shift to performance/DR in 2013 — and now it’s evolving to be a combo play.
All this is to say our digital teams can’t plan or execute in silos any more than our traditional media, retail or brand teams. The last time we saw a media channel pass another was TV over radio in the ’50s. With digital consumption surpassing TV in 2013 (source: Mary Meeker’s State of The Internet report) we have to rethink connecting the dots across media buying, agencies and marketing organizations (brands). Consumer behavior is the catalyst and digital technology will be the conduit to better map communications to the increasingly complex consumer journey.”
