What’s happening in marketing
By Ashley
As a company we were recently asked to think about what’s happening in marketing, I challenged everyone in the business to produce 3-5 ideas to get a feel of the “zeitgeist” of the nation and their views about the future.
What I got back was Gold Dust!
I felt proud that the people in this company had such a wide diversity of thought and brilliant insight as to what’s happening in the world. I’ve pulled together the seven ideas I liked the best and these are listed below.
Frankly we have no idea that these will be big or hot or happening but no one else does!
Here goes…
Marketing as dialogue
Not just transmission of, but reception of ideas
This trend will lead to more consumer generated advertising in which the consumer is not just the star but leads the creative as well, not new but will develop over the year. http://www.mediaweek.co.uk/news/808509/Brand-Barometer—Sony-camera-ad-clicks-right-boxes/
And by the way, TRUTH will become very important in these types of ads…
This ties in to
Democratic Product Development
Customer builds their own product, this already happens with AUDI, I went to the factory and found out that no two cars come off the production line the same. The logistics of this are mind boggling and vastly impressive. The same could be true of a mobile phone. The customer could choose the camera they want, the memory they want, the tunes and applications they want. The cover they want, the keys, size, battery etc. upload photos and contacts to be pre-loaded with personal photo on case.
Change the system
Revolution not evolution
The world is changing, the traditional methods of doing business are falling away. This means that the old ways of charging are in decline. Take music, it used to be about charging for delivery of creativity. Now delivery is free and it’s getting harder to charge for creativity. Live music experiences are the place bands/artists can make money because they can’t be reproduced digitally.
The same is happening with film/TV/video.
We believe there’s scope for a revolution in the charging structure of most services, including mobile phones.
Consumers would pay what they feel a product or service deserves. Like Radiohead’s album on the internet, people paid what they thought it was worth and what the band deserved for the music. We don’t know if it was successful but the PR coverage alone was probably worth it.
Our idea is to get people to pay what they feel is fair and reasonable for things like books, video and even porn.
Why not get famous for deconstructing the standard business models!
Trusted editors and selectors
The rise of mediation (or you only get to see/hear about things you are interested in)
Too much choice, too little time. Not enough knowledge
We like it, a trusted third party recommends what you might like based on knowledge, Artificial Intelligence or an understanding of you.
We all love consumer reviews and can make the distinction between brand/company sponsored stuff and the real thing.
Look at Trip Advisor, Reevoo, spotify etc. all growing massively along with the rise in importance of word of mouth from friends.
Also this ties in to the growth of devices which screen out things we don’t like (SKY +, Tivo, Itunes etc.)
Applications built on the back of social media
Artificial trend engines
http://be-a-magpie.com very interesting advertising Twitter site
Also
http://thunderthimble.com/
Same idea across lots of other media, called Thunder Thimble the other day that allows you to track a brand’s popularity on the web. It currently supports just Twitter but they have plans to extend it to watch other stuff. Simple thing is to advertise but there’s more that can be done here to map trends, influence the agenda etc.
This is really hot at the moment.
Also Qik will become the new Twitter, instead of 160 characters people will Qik video live to the internet, and it’s on Nokia’s web site, Ovi already.
Marketing Applications that suit your way of life
Helpful things on your mobile phone
App downloads are big business.
There’s an obsession with healthy lifestyles, so develop scanning devices on mobile phones – can be used to scan food products throughout the day to calculate calories/fat.
We thought about developing this to an app that shows how balanced your life is, tie in with GPS on your phone, heart rate monitor, and log what you eat and where using the bar code scanner linked to a bar code database.
This would give you an all round check of calories burned consumed etc.
Fun approach would be to get people to rate the balance of items consumed against, good for you, good for the planet, money, happy etc.
Cloud based applications
Get all the power of a super computer in your hand
Cloud computing uses the distributed computing power of tens of thousands of connected devices to deliver great software to the phone, perhaps providing a computer generated cartoon of your photo interacting inside a virtual game.
No single device has the power by itself but together they could do so,
Massive social good programmes like the search for the cure for genetic disease would be done on loads of connected computers and phones.
Austerity, Make do and mend culture, what are we doing about this? EDF “this ad was made from recycled film clips” “this ad was made from recycled ideas…”
Green is a way of life not an outward statement
